ATK test fires new launch abort system

PROMONTORY, Box Elder County — The new era of manned space exploration officially began here Thursday with the successful five-second firing of the main motor for NASA's new launch abort system.

The test, which marks the first such test since the Apollo program tested its launch escape system in the 1960s, was the culmination envisioned when work on the project began three years ago, much of it conducted at Alliant Techsystems' Promontory facility.

"It was a short test but nothing short of what we were hoping for," NASA's deputy project chief Stephen Gaddis told the Deseret News a few moments after the test. "This is a milestone and a historic moment in this country's space exploration program, not only just because it signals a new era but because we have put all this work into a system we hope that we never have to use."

Employing it would mean something has gone terribly awry with a launch, he said. "But this is the safest system we've ever developed and most reliable, but it's important that the astronauts are protected just in case."

This milestone brings the Constellation Program one step closer to completion of the Orion vehicle that will carry astronauts to the International Space Station in 2015 and return humans to the moon by 2020, said Mark Geyer, Orion project manager at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. It is to replace what is now the bulky, aging space shuttles, much like a Hummer being replaced with a Prius — a Prius with a Ferrari engine.

Adding a safety system to the Orion crew exploration vehicle isn't as easy as putting airbags into an automobile, but the overall purpose has the same underlying principle, Gaddis said.

The idea is to safely lift the crew module away from the launch vehicle, pulling the crew to safety in the event of an emergency on the launch pad or during the initial ascent phase. Pulling them away requires 500,000 pounds of thrust in a short burst that creates 16 G's — 16 times earth's normal gravity for the occupants, and more than five times the G-force of a liftoff.

Breaking away from a vehicle already moving at an incredible speed requires a big blast to get the crew separated and out of the way, Barry Meredith, Orion Launch Abort System project manager, said just prior to the test, noting that the module has to essentially jump away from, not just get out of the way of, the giant engines below.

The sleek, eight-nozzle, 30-foot-long rocket, which was positioned upside down for Thursday's test, has an almost back-to-the-future look, a design similar to the capsules used during the Apollo missions in the 1960s.