Re: Noise during Titan II Start Up Prior to Ignition



Dale Carlson wrote:
Odd, indeed. How was this little glitch solved? Do they now turn off the gyro after an abort, or did they go to an entirely different
sensor system?

I don't know what they did about it.
I'm not sure if they ever had the situation arise again, I assume they added some way to disable the system before they went anywhere near the rocket.
This is another case where they made the same mistake they did in the Nedelin disaster - they sent people to work on a faulty rocket without first removing the propellants from it.
We did that at least once during the White Sands V-2 launches when a V-2 had the pyrotechnic igniter in the combustion chamber fail, and someone went out to replace it and was rendered drunk by the alcohol fumes.
We've done it several times on scrubbed shuttle launches where the motors haven't been fired, but on STS-41D they had to evacuate the crew while there was a fire on the launchpad after a shutdown during SSME ignition, and of course the aborted launch of Gemini 6 was a dangerous situation for the ground crew to approach the vehicle due to possibility of hydrazine poisoning and unknown condition in regards to the safety of the rocket itself.
Think if the fire in the capsule on Apollo 1 had caused the wiring to short in such a way as the activate the LES while people were trying to get the astronauts out of the capsule.
Very bad day.
There's a interesting PDF on space close calls and failures here: http://www.wylelabs.com/content/global/documents/Health%20Threats%20-%20Clark.pdf

Pat


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