Re: Full Falcon 1.3 launch video up

"Jeff Findley" <jeff.findley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

:
:"Rick Jones" <rick.jones2@xxxxxx> wrote in message
:news:g7fg70$apq$3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
:>
:> I'm just a lowly member of the peanut gallery, but everytime I see
:> someone talking about waiting just a little longer I think about
:> people using sleep() as a syncronization mechanism in a computer
:> program. Is there no other way to be certain the stages are far
:> enough apart before igniting the next stage?
:
:You could solve this with some sort of fancy sensor. Perhaps a space
:qualified laser range finder similar to the ones used for rendezvous and
:docking to ISS. But obviously this drives up the cost and is a lot more
:complex and prone to failure when compared to a simple timer.
:

Surely you wouldn't need anything that fancy, would you? I'd think a
simple lanyard would be sufficient. Make it long enough so that if it
gets pulled (or have a wire that breaks) you know the trailing stage
is far enough away so that it won't be "catching up".

It's really kind of scary that all this is done by simple timers. I
would think even cheap accelerometers would give you much better
assurance that the stage was actually separated.

--
"Insisting on perfect safety is for people who don't have the balls to
live in the real world." -- Mary Shafer, NASA Dryden
.

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