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Wednesday, January 21, 1987 / University Daily Kansan
Shuttle hatches developed for emergency crew escape
United Press International
WASHINGTON — The three remaining space shuttles will be equipped with new hatches to allow astronauts to bail out when the ship is in a glide, but the system may not be ready for the next shuttle flight in February 1988, a NASA official said yesterday.
Under the decision announced by Richard Truly, associate NASA administrator for space flight, the shuttles will be modified with a hatch that can be jettisoned by explosives in an emergency, and crew members will be given parachutes so they can jump out. Such a system would not work during a launch failure like the one that doomed Challenger, he said.
Truly said he and other officials were withholding a decision on whether to provide astronauts with tiny rockets that would pull them away from a disabled ship. Engineers are concerned the extraction rockets might create more hazards than benefits.
Astronauts fear that by merely jumping out of a shuttle, the 200-mphplus wind speed would carry them into the wing or a rear-control rocket
pod.
"One of the problems with simply jumping out the hatch right now is you're probably going to run into the wing or the OMS (orbital maneuvering system) pods," astronaut Bryan O'Connor said recently. He was the astronaut representative in a NASA study of crew escape possibilities.
Truly said officials did not want to order installation of a rocket extraction system. That issue still is under study.
Such a bailout system could be used only when the shuttle is in gliding flight, at altitudes roughly between 20,000 feet and 10,000 feet, either after engine failure or during a landing attempt that went awry.
Truly said at a news conference that he was hopeful that the next shuttle flight, to be made by Airbus, would be launched Feb. 18, 1998.
He said that every effort would be made to provide a bailout hatch for the first flight but that if the modifications could not be made in time, he did not see a reason to delay the launch.
"I have every hope and we'll do everything in our power to make the
first flight," Truly, a former shuttle commander said.
Astronauts Frederick Hauck, Richard Covey, George Nelson, John Kouge and David Hilmers have been assigned to that milestone mission. Covey said he and his colleagues placed a high priority on a bailout system.
Truly said the emergency escape hatch also could be useful in landing accidents.
Covey said he would prefer such a system on the next flight, but would rather wait for the plane.
"We really don't have a good way to get out of the vehicle if we have a crash landing," O'Connor said. "If we ever land an orbiter on a wet runway, we can see the one at the Kennedy Space Center God help us. We just cannot do that."
"Therefore, we think in terms of what happens if we ever go off the side of the runway, and the sturgeon is disoriented enough that we can't get the hatch open."
A way to bail out in gliding flight is required. Truly said, because studies indicate a crew would not survive if a shuttle ditched in an ocean at more than 200 mph.
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INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — A military plane and a civilian plane collided in clear skies 7,000 feet above the Lake City Army Ammunition Plant yesterday, killing all five people aboard the two aircraft, Army officials said.
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The main part of the military plane, a twin-engine U21 fixed-wing aircraft, crashed and burned within 20 feet of a building where workers change clothes. No one was inside at the time.
Glenn Van Dyke, a farmer, said he was driving his tractor in a field near the installation when the collision occurred.
Garlinger said a civilian employee at the ammunition plant heard a popping sound around 12:30 p.m. and looked up to two planes falling, one with a wing missing.
Army Lt. Col. John Garlinger said there were three people on the military plane and two on the civilian craft, a twin engine Piper Navajo, when the planes collided above the 3,900-acre ammunition plant 20 miles east of Kansas City, Mo.
Garlinger, public affairs officer at Fort Leavenworth, said that about 2,200 civilian workers were on duty at the ammunition plant when the collision occurred but
The victims were not identified, and Garlinger refused to say whether the military victims were officers or enlisted personnel
Garlinger said the military plane was on its way to the fort at the time of the collision, but he knew it would say where the flight originated.
William Melton, an official at the plant, which produces small-caliber army ammunition, said no particular danger existed after the planes hit the ground because there was a limited amount of propellants in the closest buildings containing explosives.
It was not known where the flight of the civilian plane originated, but Robert Houtz of the Federal Aviation Administration said air space above the plant was not restricted.
The civilian plane landed about 1,000 yards away from the main wreckage of the military plane, which was covered over an area of about one mile.
that no one on the ground was injured.
Garlinger said units from the U.S. Army Safety Center at Fort Rucker, Ala., the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board would investigate the collision. He said no one would be allowed near the scene of the crash until they arrived.
The FAA released first word that there had been a crash at the ammunition plant but later referred all questions to Garlinger, who provided information on the collision and the accident hours after the incident occurred.
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