For those who don't know: The solid fuel inside the rocket boosters was not one solid cylinder of fuel burning from the bottom up. It had a hollow center running from bottom to top, which ignited so the fuel was burning all along the length, from the center out. That increased the burning surface area, which increased thrust. However, if the fuel burnt outward from the center, the area of fuel-burn surface would increase, increasing thrust too much. So, the rocket scientists made the hollow core into a star shape instead of a simple cylinder. That gave a larger surface at first ignition, and as the points of the star burnt away into a larger, rounded shape, the overall burning surface remained constant. The star can be seen in the sketches in the video. There were other factors, of course, that were addressed by varying the overall size of the hollow core, as discussed.
Thank you very much for the explanation. The video did a poor job describing this engineering design and left me with more questions at completion than at the start of the short.
I'm fascinated with SRBs. I know SRBs can't be shut down in emergencies, but I can't think of any circumstances when shutting down a rocket in flight would be helpful. It seems their simplicity would make for an overall safer rocket.
Also keeps the center of gravity of the SRB constant by burning the entire length at once. 1 other fun fact is that it was lit from the top, not the bottom.
Storey Musgrave used to say, "The main engines would start, and the stack would flex, but before it came straight upright again it could still be aborted. When it got straight up and the solids went off ... well, you _knew_ you were going *_SOMEWHERE!"_*
The crew really took the "one-way" trip ticket to the heart as they can't abort the launch. Once lit up, *those big fellas WILL stay lit* 'til they're empty and get separated Mad respect to those guys
It is my understanding that once the main engine fired, they had 7 seconds to determine whether the ship was performing to nominal spec and when they got the greenlight they ignited the SRBs. Once the SRBs lit up there was no going back. Like it or not, they were going.
@@howardtreesong4860There was a saying. Once the SRB’s lit, it wasn’t a question of if you were going to Space. It was a question of if the launch pad was going with you.
@@scottshinbaum1772 I had not heard that, it sounds like something you'd hear astronauts say 🙂. Chris Hadfield mentioned an astronaut saying "There's no situation so bad that you can't make it worse." As people who have to work in the unforgiving environment of space it's a stark reminder of the reality of the endeavour. I'd really wish we'd spend a lot more money on space exploration and have it be run by engineers, not be a political committee. We're not going to be able to terraform Mars but we might find a way to build sustainable colonies there.
According to the Space Shuttle Owner’s Manual there are actually 4 abort scenarios the Space Shuttle had depending on where they were after liftoff. The first one was a return to launch site which would require jettisoning the external fuel tank after the SRB’s ran out, turning the shuttle around and landing back at KSC. That would’ve been the most difficult to pull off. The others required suborbit or an orbital trajectory and an alternate landing site.
After each mission there was a post flight evaluation of each SRB. During these evaluations it was documented that during cold weather launches there was hot gas leaking through the joint seals. The fix was to redesign the field joints. The redesign would take, at a minimum, 2 years. NASA elected Instead of implementing the seal redesign to use an administrative control. This control was to not launch in weather below 42F. On the morning of the Challenger launch there were ice cycles on the launch pad. Subsequently, NASA violated their own launch criteria and green lighted the launch. You know the rest of the story. Check out this bio: Roger Mark Boisjoly (/ˌboʊʒəˈleɪ/ BOH-zhə-LAY,; April 25, 1938 - January 6, 2012) was an American mechanical engineer, fluid dynamicist, and an aerodynamicist. He is best known for having raised strenuous objections to the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger months before the loss of the spacecraft and its crew in January 1986.
The machine itself told them that the o rings didn't like cold. Previous launches showed a definite pattern of the colder the launch the more the o rings were burnt.
@Google_Does_Evil_Now I don't know if these people work at Boeing, hopefully not but you never know. After the Challenger disaster in 1986 the O rings on the shuttle s.r.b. in cold weather was a huge topic. Safety was a concern before the ill fated Challenger disaster, especially in cold weather. If memory serves, some wanted the January 28, 1986 mission scrubbed.
Yes! In fact, those were mainly used to gimbal the entire shuttle, something not many people get right. While the RS-25s do gimbal, it's actually mainly for the roll program, while the SRB gimbal was for the gravity turn.
Smart design meant better performance. Much higher T:W and much less complex during flight and safe storage is incredibly easy. These took another rather large rocket motor at the top in order to ignite them and that motor starter was lit by a special blend of fancy igniter. You can't just walk up to rubber with a lit match or an arc igniter and expect the propellant to care. (The propellant is a rubber based binder.)
@@gregorydahl This misleading and wrong. Iron oxide was part of the propellant but only at about 2% and its purpose was a to act as a catalyst, not like in thermite, where it is the main oxidizer. The SRBs burned aluminum and rubber. The main oxidizer was Ammonium perchlorate.
@@douglasmesina6922RUclips auto generates those captions and does so with the accuracy of an 80s all your base are belong to us game. You know what happens when you assume right buddy 😂😂😂
Just getting in that shuttle to pretty much be strapped to a bomb to LEAVE your planet is absolutely INSANE! And has to take balls made of titanium. Shout out to the men and women that have had the privilege to take that journey. 👍🏾
The Soviet Buran shuttle used liquid boosters instead with the main engine as part of the core stage of the Energia booster. I always wish it has flown more, would have loved to compare its flight profile and staging.
SRBs were a bold choice. But Morton Thiokol warned NASA that the O-rings were brittle at freezing temperatures. They were ignored and the astronauts died.
Someone in the early days suggested using solid fuel rockets. Werner Von Braun and his team stated they would never work on such dangerous rockets for manned flights.
The fact that the FUEL in the SRBs was SHAPED to burn from the inside out AND that it was engineered to lower it's thrust during Max q simply by CHANGING the shape of the fuel inside, AND the fact that they got it right on the first try, was absolutely astounding.
@@dr.OgataSerizawa Same exact components are used to this day aboard the Space Launch System. Instead of 4 fueled segments as used with Shuttle SLS will use 5 fueled segments for each booster.
I used to work for Lockheed and Rolls-Royce at Stennis Space Center, from 2004-2012. The Rolls-Royce facility I worked at was the former ASRM test faculty. Advanced Solid Rocket Motor, that was intended to replace the original SRM that we see in this video. Ultimately, the ASRM project was cancelled so the site was left dorment into RR showed up and took it over in 2007, where I worked.
The amount of thought and then Engineering involved in the boosters alone is amazing, Nevermind the rest of the system. Over 1 million moving parts and it worked reliably.
From all the RUclips videos I have watched on rocketry and engineering and history and NAASA and space travel I’m honestly starting to feel like I actually understand how rockets work. Nice shorts super and useful. a little bit smarter every day thank you to the creators out there!
Go play KSP (Kerbal Space Program). You will *really* learn how rockets and orbital mechanics work. (Do not get KSP 2 at this time, that is not in shape yet, many bugs, and may or may not be dead. Bad news recently.) There is a very lively modding scene around KSP who have added everything from a multiplayer idea (time warp works w/o having to coordinate), a whole set of historical early rocket engines and capsules, to great eye candy, to a much more in-depth game (like Kerbalism, now food, oxygen, radiation protection, space to stretch your legs, phoning home, loneliness start to matter for longer missions) to a scale and settings mirroring the real world (KSP is a 1:10 scale), with real weights and costs of real world engines and tanks and so on (Realism Overhaul, and a progression on top of that, RP-1 (Realistic Progression One)), mods replacing the planets-on-rails patched conics mode with n-body physics (Principia), automate your crafts by writing programs for them in kOS, Chatterer for beeps, SSTV and other ambiance noises, alternative sky boxes (including “as seen from Earth” ones), mods adding the Orion drive and the Medusa drive (nuclear bombs and pusher plate/pulling sail), and a lot of other mods for quality of life, automatically annotating your screen shots, … Oh, unmanned and manned rovers, planes, etc are also a thing.
The designers AFAICT wanted to use liquid-fueled boosters, but a powerful senator or representative demanded that his state get jobs relating to the shuttle program or he'd stop them from getting enough money. The only significant thing his state produced that might be useful were solid rocket boosters (or the fuel thereof?), so the shuttle design had to be modified to use them. (Note that I'm going from memory, here, so bits may be a little off.)
Well considering you just described every step government spaceflight has taken since the end of Apollo to the beginning of Dragon I’ll bet that’s what happened.
The Space Shuttle program was already going to be ridiculously over budget. Though I'm sure pork was part of the consideration of who made the boosters, I'm guessing since solid rocket boosters were much cheaper than liquid, that consideration was a significant part of the reason solid was ultimately chosen.
@@ranman7688 it’s actually more like they’re easier to refurbish. The plan was always reuse and fuel for liquid and propellant loading for liquid is a lot cheaper and easier. However they are significantly less tolerant to salt water.
I hadn't even considered that these things had a trust profile built in that allowed for throttle down in certain phases of the flight. This means that if the two boosters would not be ignited at exactly the same time or they would burn at slightly different rates, at some point there would be asymmetric thrust that would have to be compensated for somehow. I believe these boosters had thrust vectoring nozzles which might have helped with that, but still.
That’s why they used small solid rocket boosters (basically) to ignite the actual SRBs. Gotta make sure that the ignition happens quickly and that’s a pretty smart way of doing so I think lol
@@SangheiliSpecOpA smaller igniter. And so on, until you come to some element that, say, reacts violently to a sharp strike or an electric current or the heat of a wire or whatever.
The vectoring nozzles will have helped a LOT. Point them so the force goes through the centre of mass and there’s no tumbling or anything, there might be a sideways drift if one side pushes stronger, but small corrections of either the solid or the liquid vectoring nozzles or even the RCS can induce a slight tilt that corrects the overall force vector back to where it needs to go - and while the shuttle might be slipping a bit sideways, unless that causes undue aerodynamic stresses … but if it does, aerodynamic flight controls work too!
I was joking when I wrote this, but going down the wikipedia rabbit hole, those boosters are sorta similar to some bombs. Liquid hydrogen fuel was even used in the fusion reaction of some atomic bombs.
Such an iconic look. I'll always remember being in awe of them when I was a child even as they stopped being used in lieu of the Columbia disaster. A true space-ship nothing like it 👏
54 years ago, my physics prof had written this on the chalkboard on my first day…… ‘The angle of the dangle is directly proportional to the heat of the meat provided the mass of the ass remains constant.’ I remember this like it happened yesterday. However, I don’t recall where I left my car keys last night😵💫
The solid rocket boosters had skins of half inch thick steel . ( 13mm thick steel) Producing 6.8 million pounds of thrust . All three shuttle engines produced less than one million pounds thrust . But after solid rocket booster separation the shuttle was traveling horizontal with the earths surface and fired the shuttles engines in a dive to build up tremendous speed in the thin upper atmoshere using the low aerodynamic drag and gravity to swoop up into orbit .
The buran was a superior vehicle and i'm not ashamed to admit it, even as an american. Liquid boosters, self-flying and landing shuttle, and stupidly efficient closed-cycle engines.
The auto-generated subtitles actually have it as "colume", so I thought it was a newly-invented word (or just one I hadn't heard of) meaning a column-shaped volume
Knowing the faults of these shuttles now, I wish these could have been approved upon and fixed because these birds are incredible! And it was always so exciting to see them coming back down to Earth! RIP to the crews of the Challenger and the Columbia...
Just because the SRBs were extremely well engineered for flight dynamics does NOT mean they weren't a bloody stupid idea from the word go. It was making a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
@@gregorydahl As a general rule, if the choice is between "firecracker that burns the way it wants to once it's lit and can't be stopped" on the one hand and "rocket engine you can throttle or shut down at will," it doesn't take much brains to say the first option is idiotic. It was only adopted in the theory that reusing SRB shells would be cheaper and faster than making them from scratch. It wasn't.
There was a third shuttle that lost heat tiles on reentry, but luckily for the crew, it lost them in a place where the metal underneath was thick enough to withstand the heat. It was almost another disaster like that of Columbia
There was also the loss of 5 ground personnel when they entered one of the orbiter main engine compartment that was flooded with GN2 during STS1 ground processing operations. You are correct. All in all, for the processing operations and number of missions safely completed it was a pretty successful program.
@@jackf.7415Losing two craft over thirty years sounds good on the face of it, but it doesn't sound near as good when you consider the number of launches. That is a 1.5% catastrophic loss rate (including all crew lost).
Boeing bid to build a liquid fuel booster. THE idea was rejected, Boeing's response to publish a study that said that NASA would LOSE a shuttle due to a malfunction with a solid booster within 50 launches. Challenger was launch 57....
The space shuttle was crewed. The narrator could have said manned. The solid rocket boosters were crude, relatively speaking. Manned missions previously had engines that could be started, stopped, gimbaled and throttled.
It's "crewed". It's no longer politically correct to say "manned" and nobody has the backbone to stand up to the loonies who insist on rewriting history.
It also killed 14 astronauts. More then all other space craft combined. The Soyuz has been launched 1700 times and only killed 2. The Orbiter was a terrible spacecraft
How to stop solid rocket engines: Cut open the side (det -cord alike) and let the internal pressure blow through the fuel and vent all pressure through that gap. Use 2 symmetrical ones to balance out the sideways thrusts if you have to. Make sure it doesn’t rip into 2 halves unless you want that to happen. Blow open the top, ideally designed to produce the exact counter to the nozzle force. [1] Introduce something that will cause the solid fuel to stop burning by carefully designing the solid fuel to react that way. Blow-out panels. There are more ways. [1] shaping the solid fuel can give you a regressive thrust curve without the top and bottom having to be different.
that is a whole lot of fail there. solid boosters are ok for models, but for real ships, it is asking for disaster. one of the biggest problems is keeping the weight down by making the parts flimsy and fragile. this is still an issue. iirc, the tanks spaceX uses have to be pressurized or they will collapse like a deflated pool toy. with models, they can weigh a lot more because they do not go far.
@@itoibo4208 The weight is not that much of a problem for the first stage. Solid engines are power-dense, though not very weight-efficient. And you might want to look up ullage engines and squibs and pyrotechnic devices. Liquid engines are not easy, and you won’t like what happens if you start them in free fall. Solid engines are simple, rugged and just work.
@@advorak8529 I get that that solid engines have their uses, but it sounds a lot like putting a rocket engine on a car. I just do not like the idea of a solid that cannot be started and stopped or throttled. Hybrid engines are a thing, too. They have some of the advantages of both. I have not worked with commercial engines so I am just going by the basic pros and cons or abilities I have seen for each kind. What happens when you start a liquid engine in freefall? Do they need a bladder to keep the fuel on the firey end or something?
@@itoibo4208 _it sounds a lot like putting a rocket engine on a car._ Except that it’s a spaceship, not a car. _I just do not like the idea of a solid that cannot be started and stopped or throttled._ Almost all liquid engines can only be stopped once, only be started once (unless you use a hypergolic fuel combination, that stuff that goes BOOM when it just sees the other fluid) and most have only one, maybe two power settings that work well. The 3rd stage of the Saturn V being able to restart a few times so they could use it for the TLI was a Big Thing. The ability for the LM descent engine to deep throttle (they could not run it between 60-99%, if memory serves, due to excessive nozzle erosion) was a Big Thing. Yes, you can feed less fuel to an engine, and in space you will not have to worry about underexpansion - where the air creeps into and up the nozzle at the sides, and can do real bad things - but the engine is likely not going to perform efficiently. In the X-15 they used an engine that could throttle 50-100% and the XLR11, a rocket engine with 4 chambers and nozzles they could separately turn on and off to have 5 power settings: 0-25-50-75-100%. And as to restarting the engine - some engines are primed by pumping some special stuff into the end of the fuel lines to start the engines, others use one-time-use spark plugs and so on. _Hybrid engines are a thing, too. They have some of the advantages of both._ And they combine some of the problems and disadvantages. Weight, density, toxic, carcinogenic, cryogenic, dangerous, … _What happens when you start a liquid engine in freefall?_ Often, Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly. Or a “hard start” (read, you need a new engine). Or a fizzle (engine fails to provide thrust)z … unless you do it the right way. You do NOT want bubbles of air or helium or nitrogen or even gaseous oxygen if you use liquid oxygen in your fuel/oxidiser lines. _Do they need a bladder to keep the fuel on the firey end or something?_ Yes, pretty much. Mostly something. The Saturn V had ullage engines, small solid fuel engines that would give some seconds of positive thrust to settle the fuel and oxidiser after separation to start the next stage. The CM used the RCS thrusters for ullage - 5 seconds normally, I believe. The LM descent engine, IIRC, used a bladder plus normal reservoir that allowed restarts through some portion of the fuel usage. The R-7 - the family started by the 1950’s first ever intercontinental ballistic missile, avoids in-flight starts: Everything is lit up at launch, 4 liquid engine boosters and the main sustainer in the middle. The sustainer has more fuel (and may be running in reduced throttle, so you end up with a mostly full sustainer at booster separation. The N1 used open-grid stage interconnects, so they could fire up the next stage while the previous stage was still producing thrust and so sidestepping the problem, (but they had larger problems!) and Space-X has been trying that as well recently.
@@advorak8529 thank you. Spacex seems to be doing ok with their boosters. I believe they run on liquid fuel, and are adjustable thrust. iirc, the space shuttle also had liquid engines that could be relit for orbital maneuvers?
Hey! Yeah! I'm not making fun of his accent, he mispronounced "umbilical" in the full shuttle video and "column" in this short. It's hard not to notice that stuff. Plus, I like this youtube account and want it to improve.
And it was designed and flown by men and women that didn't use computers at all in the beginning (just like the SR-71 & A-12) We have some very intelligent people in the world. And yet it seems like, those people are NOT the ones attempting to be the representatives that we so desperately NEED. (You Know who you are). There's a reason they call it "serving your country". Even George Washington didn't WANT to be president, (but General Washington understood how important that job was for a new country and it's people). THAT'S Patriotism. 🇺🇸💪🏻🙂
So why do you find SRB's so stupid and their use arrogant?? Maybe you just aren't aware of how reliable SRB's are and how they are still used to today. The ULA Atlas used rocket uses up to 5 SRB's. And the Vulcan can use up to 6! Scott Manley has a good video on the exceptionally good engineering in SRB's.
@@gummiente3622 So you have a bias against SRB's, but that doesn't negate the fact that they are reliable. And two SRB 's were used on Atlas V launch with Starliner in a perfectly nominal liftoff.
@@michaeldeierhoi4096 It's not bias if there is valid reason for the argument. Putting people atop an unstoppable machine is an unecessary risk. And some people payed with their lives for it.
@@ENCHANTMEN_Thats a good argument for unmanned flights. But for manned spaceflight a few more safety concerns should be considered. At least put a Launch Escape System somewhere...
The original design of the Space Shuttle had a reusable first stage. However, in order to reduce cost, NASA chose to use the solid fuel boosters and the external fuel tank instead of the reusable first stage. The Challenger disaster was caused by an o-ring failure on a solid fuel booster. The Columbia disaster was caused by a piece of insulation that fell off the external fuel tank and made a hole in the heat shield on the leading edge of a wing.
The narrator left out a great deal. Im not a rocket scientist, so bear with me. The "solid" propellant has the consistency of an eraser. Its mixed in liquid form, poured into a mold held vertically in a deep pit with a removable core. After the mix "hardens" the core is pulled out by an overhead crane. This is the scary part and one of the reasons the core is tapered. The core has to release evenly and be pulled up so as not to drag on the sides of the propellant, because friction/static electricity could ignite the propellant. That would be a catastrophe. It worked pretty well every time, except once, when it didn't, and exploded catastrophically.
The SRB's were actually very reliable, and in the aftermath of the "Columbia" disaster people got the idea that the new capsule-launching booster would be one of the SRBs, i.e. the Aries Project. However, the one and only test flight of the concept showed it vibrated far too much and it was dropped.
@@i_have_noname-t2h Still, there wouldn't be time for a separation and parachute deployment, but thank you. That possibility never occurred to me before.
Unlike liquid rocket engines, Solid rocket boosters are extremely reliable, although ironically, one of the major fatal incidents that occurred during the space shuttle's lifetime, was due to one of the solid rocket booster's seal failing. But, overall, Solid rocket boosters are considered very very reliable and due to the relatively simple operation and cheap fuel, it makes it a very suitable candidate for most rockets. The drawback, as shown, is controlablity. SRBs are simple fire and forget rockets, once lit, they will continue until the entire fuel is burnt up, leaving no reserve, and ofcourse, no dynamic adjustability of the thrust in flight, their thrust is preprogrammed using the shape of the solid fuel. So, just like the space shuttle, whenever more control and flexibility is necessary, the more complicated liquid rocket engines are used.
I guarantee you that many a sleepless night was given over pouring over the calculations and equations related to the propellent systems on the space shuttle.
I would have liked to see them forming the solid fuel shape. Did they use a mold? Pieces? Did they form it inside the booster shell or build the shell around the fuel?
Its crazy to think that they used the most dangerous and difficult method to succeed. The amount of engineering and dedication to this is hard to fathom. I reality none of this should work but the genius behind every person involved made it work. Now a new generation of engineers decided to stop engineering with what they had and went into the most novel way but the most logical because of everything that was learned about how propulsion works and the tasks needed. New engineers should always be required to learn how this worked so its never forgotten. One day we will need it again.
Hey Paul, there's a map tool that shows the elevation as a 3d view of the various areas in Ukraine that I'd recommend you use when you're trying to figure out the tactical area advantages as the control map changes. I don't know what it's called, but Denys used it in his video from 2 days ago, like the one before the debate
@@ghost307 lol. Maybe. I remember that they were inexperienced with solid booster rockets. We had been using them on other craft, so it was reasonably comfortable for our engineers. I think another issue is that their space program had a lot of interference from the kremlin, which could prove very dangerous when they were forced to rush. If you screw up with a liquid rocket you can turn it off, mostly.
Please tell me they just ground those angles with huge tapered countersinks. Just making a tool that could cut those angles continuously across something that big would be a feat of engineering in and of itself. If they didnt do that and made it out of modular sections they mated ill be genuinely surprised because that wouldve been harder especially given the weakness of computers generally and gpus specifically at the time. Modeling, measuring and testing wouldve been arduous at best. I wish i could say which idea sounds less possible or more likely but i kinda dont understand how they did either. And id like to see what tools they needed and how clever they got with what they had. Those boosters could be thanks to some wizard machinist that can dial in cyclopean tools to no runout across 90' of run or some kind of nearly equally mythical QC and record-keeping standards that allowed for matching angles across smaller sections of a larger whole angle. I feel like you end up with extremely compounded tolerances with things built that way which usually means tight oversight is required, which is also hard to do and impressive to see the results of. Careful work can change stuff.
For anyone to climb aboard that rickety, haphazardly cobbled together looking monstrosity, and go for a ride, demonstrates implicit trust in the design and builders of the contraption.
Might be an idea to make a solid rocket that sends the solid fuel out like a sand blaster. Would reduce weight by not having hollowed out area within and wouldn't need to have to hold back as much pressure throughout the whole structure.
For those who don't know: The solid fuel inside the rocket boosters was not one solid cylinder of fuel burning from the bottom up. It had a hollow center running from bottom to top, which ignited so the fuel was burning all along the length, from the center out. That increased the burning surface area, which increased thrust.
However, if the fuel burnt outward from the center, the area of fuel-burn surface would increase, increasing thrust too much.
So, the rocket scientists made the hollow core into a star shape instead of a simple cylinder. That gave a larger surface at first ignition, and as the points of the star burnt away into a larger, rounded shape, the overall burning surface remained constant.
The star can be seen in the sketches in the video.
There were other factors, of course, that were addressed by varying the overall size of the hollow core, as discussed.
Thank you very much for the explanation. The video did a poor job describing this engineering design and left me with more questions at completion than at the start of the short.
I'm fascinated with SRBs. I know SRBs can't be shut down in emergencies, but I can't think of any circumstances when shutting down a rocket in flight would be helpful. It seems their simplicity would make for an overall safer rocket.
Also keeps the center of gravity of the SRB constant by burning the entire length at once. 1 other fun fact is that it was lit from the top, not the bottom.
Thank you! An elegant solution. ✌️
O rings in the cold were the problem.
Storey Musgrave used to say, "The main engines would start, and the stack would flex, but before it came straight upright again it could still be aborted. When it got straight up and the solids went off ... well, you _knew_ you were going *_SOMEWHERE!"_*
The swaying motion before SRB ignition was called “twang”.
Yea, "somewhere" being in space or "somewhere" being the afterlife.
@@rustyshackleford1114way to explain the obvious
@@jaykaygxd8497 not that obvious, I had the sea, or two very similar tower buildings somewhere in my mind as the flying thing's final destination.
@jaykaygxd8497 feeling better bout yourself now?
The crew really took the "one-way" trip ticket to the heart as they can't abort the launch. Once lit up, *those big fellas WILL stay lit* 'til they're empty and get separated
Mad respect to those guys
It is my understanding that once the main engine fired, they had 7 seconds to determine whether the ship was performing to nominal spec and when they got the greenlight they ignited the SRBs.
Once the SRBs lit up there was no going back. Like it or not, they were going.
@@howardtreesong4860There was a saying. Once the SRB’s lit, it wasn’t a question of if you were going to Space. It was a question of if the launch pad was going with you.
@@scottshinbaum1772 I had not heard that, it sounds like something you'd hear astronauts say 🙂.
Chris Hadfield mentioned an astronaut saying "There's no situation so bad that you can't make it worse." As people who have to work in the unforgiving environment of space it's a stark reminder of the reality of the endeavour.
I'd really wish we'd spend a lot more money on space exploration and have it be run by engineers, not be a political committee.
We're not going to be able to terraform Mars but we might find a way to build sustainable colonies there.
Love 💕 watching the Shuttle blast off. Wish could have been at Cape Canaveral and seen it for real😮
According to the Space Shuttle Owner’s Manual there are actually 4 abort scenarios the Space Shuttle had depending on where they were after liftoff. The first one was a return to launch site which would require jettisoning the external fuel tank after the SRB’s ran out, turning the shuttle around and landing back at KSC. That would’ve been the most difficult to pull off. The others required suborbit or an orbital trajectory and an alternate landing site.
I didn't know they had engineered the solid fuel rockets to have a varying thrust like this. A simple but effective way to do this. Brilliant!
alot of them are made like this it's called a ramp down grain
Each one 40% as powerful as a Saturn V, burn for two minutes with no abort option. absolutely wild
If only the warnings of the engineers about O ring performance in cold temperatures was met with extreme concern.
If only they understood that the O-rings were never meant to be scorched in any way instead of “went through 1/3rd, so safety factor is 3” …
After each mission there was a post flight evaluation of each SRB. During these evaluations it was documented that during cold weather launches there was hot gas leaking through the joint seals. The fix was to redesign the field joints. The redesign would take, at a minimum, 2 years. NASA elected Instead of implementing the seal redesign to use an administrative control. This control was to not launch in weather below 42F. On the morning of the Challenger launch there were ice cycles on the launch pad. Subsequently, NASA violated their own launch criteria and green lighted the launch. You know the rest of the story.
Check out this bio:
Roger Mark Boisjoly (/ˌboʊʒəˈleɪ/ BOH-zhə-LAY,; April 25, 1938 - January 6, 2012) was an American mechanical engineer, fluid dynamicist, and an aerodynamicist. He is best known for having raised strenuous objections to the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger months before the loss of the spacecraft and its crew in January 1986.
The machine itself told them that the o rings didn't like cold.
Previous launches showed a definite pattern of the colder the launch the more the o rings were burnt.
Are these statements true?
Do these safety people now work at Boeing?
@Google_Does_Evil_Now I don't know if these people work at Boeing, hopefully not but you never know.
After the Challenger disaster in 1986 the O rings on the shuttle s.r.b. in cold weather was a huge topic. Safety was a concern before the ill fated Challenger disaster, especially in cold weather. If memory serves, some wanted the January 28, 1986 mission scrubbed.
The SRBs also had steerable exhaust nozzles, could adjust thrust about 4-5 degrees. The avionics were in the nosecones
Yes! In fact, those were mainly used to gimbal the entire shuttle, something not many people get right. While the RS-25s do gimbal, it's actually mainly for the roll program, while the SRB gimbal was for the gravity turn.
Smart design meant better performance. Much higher T:W and much less complex during flight and safe storage is incredibly easy. These took another rather large rocket motor at the top in order to ignite them and that motor starter was lit by a special blend of fancy igniter. You can't just walk up to rubber with a lit match or an arc igniter and expect the propellant to care. (The propellant is a rubber based binder.)
Its main ingredients are powdered aluminum and rust . Or thermite .
@@gregorydahl This misleading and wrong. Iron oxide was part of the propellant but only at about 2% and its purpose was a to act as a catalyst, not like in thermite, where it is the main oxidizer. The SRBs burned aluminum and rubber. The main oxidizer was Ammonium perchlorate.
"The very notion of using SRBs for a crude space shuttle..."
Ah, youtube autocaptions. Never change.
Pretty sure it was talking about a "crewed" shuttle.
@@douglasmesina6922 he was making fun of the captions making the mistake not making it himself 😂😂😂
@@douglasmesina6922RUclips auto generates those captions and does so with the accuracy of an 80s all your base are belong to us game. You know what happens when you assume right buddy 😂😂😂
@@joshschneider9766 feeling better bout yourself now?
@@davidaustin6962 lol you're the one taking random shots at people in a comment section. Look in the mirror when you ask that
Just getting in that shuttle to pretty much be strapped to a bomb to LEAVE your planet is absolutely INSANE! And has to take balls made of titanium. Shout out to the men and women that have had the privilege to take that journey. 👍🏾
You are not shouting very far no one has ever taken that journey
The Soviet Buran shuttle used liquid boosters instead with the main engine as part of the core stage of the Energia booster. I always wish it has flown more, would have loved to compare its flight profile and staging.
It flew once and only experimentally. Nobody inside.
SRBs were a bold choice. But Morton Thiokol warned NASA that the O-rings were brittle at freezing temperatures. They were ignored and the astronauts died.
They were overruled by the Managers who were intent on sticking to their arbitrary schedule.
The question is did they go to prison?
@@w花b No.
Prison is for poor people.
honestly they signed waivers and were aware of the risks. unfortunately .
Someone in the early days suggested using solid fuel rockets.
Werner Von Braun and his team stated they would never work on such dangerous rockets for manned flights.
So many have exploded from minor flaws like bubbles in the fuel
Werner Von Braun knew best. He never killed a single person on one of his rockets.
@TheSilentJackYT
The V-2 killed many people .
@@TheSilentJackYTExcept for V-2s in WW2 …
@@bigkahunauk1 well. Were talking bout space race 😂
The fact that the FUEL in the SRBs was SHAPED to burn from the inside out AND that it was engineered to lower it's thrust during Max q simply by CHANGING the shape of the fuel inside, AND the fact that they got it right on the first try, was absolutely astounding.
There were plenty of tests prior to STS-1.
A broken clock is ‘right’ 2 times a day…..
@@dr.OgataSerizawa Same exact components are used to this day aboard the Space Launch System. Instead of 4 fueled segments as used with Shuttle SLS will use 5 fueled segments for each booster.
I used to work for Lockheed and Rolls-Royce at Stennis Space Center, from 2004-2012.
The Rolls-Royce facility I worked at was the former ASRM test faculty. Advanced Solid Rocket Motor, that was intended to replace the original SRM that we see in this video.
Ultimately, the ASRM project was cancelled so the site was left dorment into RR showed up and took it over in 2007, where I worked.
Just going off what you said and your name,I gather your probably quite an excentric individual. I mean that in the best possible way
@JarheadCrayonEater
It’s *canceled. And *dormant.
Very interesting, never really knew how SRBs worked. Some commenters give even more detail.
A unique clear footage of the buster's ring in flame 👍
R.I.P. brave crew
The amount of thought and then Engineering involved in the boosters alone is amazing, Nevermind the rest of the system. Over 1 million moving parts and it worked reliably.
@@west264 too bad it never went to space
Once the Solid Rocket Boosters were lit you were going somewhere. It may not be in the correct direction but you were going and fast.
Going somewhere but not in the direction of space
Wile E Coyote ACME rocket.
From all the RUclips videos I have watched on rocketry and engineering and history and NAASA and space travel I’m honestly starting to feel like I actually understand how rockets work. Nice shorts super and useful. a little bit smarter every day thank you to the creators out there!
Go play KSP (Kerbal Space Program). You will *really* learn how rockets and orbital mechanics work.
(Do not get KSP 2 at this time, that is not in shape yet, many bugs, and may or may not be dead. Bad news recently.)
There is a very lively modding scene around KSP who have added everything from a multiplayer idea (time warp works w/o having to coordinate), a whole set of historical early rocket engines and capsules, to great eye candy, to a much more in-depth game (like Kerbalism, now food, oxygen, radiation protection, space to stretch your legs, phoning home, loneliness start to matter for longer missions) to a scale and settings mirroring the real world (KSP is a 1:10 scale), with real weights and costs of real world engines and tanks and so on (Realism Overhaul, and a progression on top of that, RP-1 (Realistic Progression One)), mods replacing the planets-on-rails patched conics mode with n-body physics (Principia), automate your crafts by writing programs for them in kOS, Chatterer for beeps, SSTV and other ambiance noises, alternative sky boxes (including “as seen from Earth” ones), mods adding the Orion drive and the Medusa drive (nuclear bombs and pusher plate/pulling sail), and a lot of other mods for quality of life, automatically annotating your screen shots, …
Oh, unmanned and manned rovers, planes, etc are also a thing.
Newton knew how rockets worked 350 years ago.
The designers AFAICT wanted to use liquid-fueled boosters, but a powerful senator or representative demanded that his state get jobs relating to the shuttle program or he'd stop them from getting enough money. The only significant thing his state produced that might be useful were solid rocket boosters (or the fuel thereof?), so the shuttle design had to be modified to use them. (Note that I'm going from memory, here, so bits may be a little off.)
Well considering you just described every step government spaceflight has taken since the end of Apollo to the beginning of Dragon I’ll bet that’s what happened.
and basically the same reasons (job protection) on why the SLS is late and over budget
The Space Shuttle program was already going to be ridiculously over budget. Though I'm sure pork was part of the consideration of who made the boosters, I'm guessing since solid rocket boosters were much cheaper than liquid, that consideration was a significant part of the reason solid was ultimately chosen.
@@ranman7688 it’s actually more like they’re easier to refurbish. The plan was always reuse and fuel for liquid and propellant loading for liquid is a lot cheaper and easier. However they are significantly less tolerant to salt water.
I'm
I hadn't even considered that these things had a trust profile built in that allowed for throttle down in certain phases of the flight. This means that if the two boosters would not be ignited at exactly the same time or they would burn at slightly different rates, at some point there would be asymmetric thrust that would have to be compensated for somehow.
I believe these boosters had thrust vectoring nozzles which might have helped with that, but still.
That’s why they used small solid rocket boosters (basically) to ignite the actual SRBs. Gotta make sure that the ignition happens quickly and that’s a pretty smart way of doing so I think lol
@@alekseicalhoun856pyrogen igniters are cool
@@alekseicalhoun856 but what ignites the igniter
@@SangheiliSpecOpA smaller igniter. And so on, until you come to some element that, say, reacts violently to a sharp strike or an electric current or the heat of a wire or whatever.
The vectoring nozzles will have helped a LOT. Point them so the force goes through the centre of mass and there’s no tumbling or anything, there might be a sideways drift if one side pushes stronger, but small corrections of either the solid or the liquid vectoring nozzles or even the RCS can induce a slight tilt that corrects the overall force vector back to where it needs to go - and while the shuttle might be slipping a bit sideways, unless that causes undue aerodynamic stresses … but if it does, aerodynamic flight controls work too!
It’s like they were building a bomb but got bored, so they glued a spaceship on it.
that's basically what solid boosters are. if they were fully sealed at the bottom, they'd be massive pipe bombs.
That’s funny …😂
I was joking when I wrote this, but going down the wikipedia rabbit hole, those boosters are sorta similar to some bombs. Liquid hydrogen fuel was even used in the fusion reaction of some atomic bombs.
Such an iconic look. I'll always remember being in awe of them when I was a child even as they stopped being used in lieu of the Columbia disaster. A true space-ship nothing like it 👏
The pilots sphincter operated inversely to the diagram as the rocket was blasting off.
🤣😂🤣
Weird fetish, but I ain't judging.
No idea why you're talking about astronaut sphincters....
And providing compensatory thrust
My Oh my, Santa will be sure to get you a little extra something special this year!! FUNNY 😂
54 years ago, my physics prof had written this on the chalkboard on my first day……
‘The angle of the dangle is directly proportional to the heat of the meat provided the mass of the ass remains constant.’ I remember this like it happened yesterday. However, I don’t recall where I left my car keys last night😵💫
The solid rocket boosters had skins of half inch thick steel . ( 13mm thick steel)
Producing 6.8 million pounds of thrust .
All three shuttle engines produced less than one million pounds thrust . But after solid rocket booster separation the shuttle was traveling horizontal with the earths surface and fired the shuttles engines in a dive to build up tremendous speed in the thin upper atmoshere using the low aerodynamic drag and gravity to swoop up into orbit .
The buran was a superior vehicle and i'm not ashamed to admit it, even as an american. Liquid boosters, self-flying and landing shuttle, and stupidly efficient closed-cycle engines.
Yeah, Russians steal designs but they do seem ok with the blast off part.
More payload capacity as well due to it not having to carry the dead weight of three SSMEs.
Superior to what ?
How was it superior when it never carried a crew or went into Space or production (beyond a prototype) for that matter? LOL.
Entire "colyoom" ignited, hehe
The auto-generated subtitles actually have it as "colume", so I thought it was a newly-invented word (or just one I hadn't heard of) meaning a column-shaped volume
Hey, don’t make fun of his speech impediment. 😂
@@xiaokaThat's just Irish people
@@nerdfighter2004 I didn’t know AI was Irish
@@johnlacey3857 this guy aint ai lol
So bold it killed 7 astronauts.
Knowing the faults of these shuttles now, I wish these could have been approved upon and fixed because these birds are incredible! And it was always so exciting to see them coming back down to Earth! RIP to the crews of the Challenger and the Columbia...
Just because the SRBs were extremely well engineered for flight dynamics does NOT mean they weren't a bloody stupid idea from the word go. It was making a silk purse out of a sow's ear.
What ?
@@gregorydahl As a general rule, if the choice is between "firecracker that burns the way it wants to once it's lit and can't be stopped" on the one hand and "rocket engine you can throttle or shut down at will," it doesn't take much brains to say the first option is idiotic. It was only adopted in the theory that reusing SRB shells would be cheaper and faster than making them from scratch. It wasn't.
I really miss the space shuttle program. It's unfortunate, the way things went, but I do understand why it ultimately ended.
The fact there were only 2 catastrophic incidents it's staggering to me.
Both, one loss on ascent and one loss on descent, were preventable. Both can be attributed to poor risk management.
There was a third shuttle that lost heat tiles on reentry, but luckily for the crew, it lost them in a place where the metal underneath was thick enough to withstand the heat. It was almost another disaster like that of Columbia
There was also the loss of 5 ground personnel when they entered one of the orbiter main engine compartment that was flooded with GN2 during STS1 ground processing operations.
You are correct. All in all, for the processing operations and number of missions safely completed it was a pretty successful program.
@@jackf.7415Losing two craft over thirty years sounds good on the face of it, but it doesn't sound near as good when you consider the number of launches. That is a 1.5% catastrophic loss rate (including all crew lost).
@@88porpoise Agreed.
The more that I learn, the more incredible every aspect of this stuff becomes to me. I am absolutely blown away.
Choice of words. But, yes, absolutely!
@@agbook2007: 😆
Yes! Incredible that anyone actually buys it
sounds great as long as the O-ring doesnt become a C-ring
Basically 2,000 yo Chinese Fireworks technology .
Boeing bid to build a liquid fuel booster. THE idea was rejected, Boeing's response to publish a study that said that NASA would LOSE a shuttle due to a malfunction with a solid booster within 50 launches. Challenger was launch 57....
Boeing is the last Engineering folks to be giving advice.
@@WALTERBROADDUS and Air Bus is a great example....
Just amazing engineering the space programs have done. Humanity’s finest moments.
Am I the only one who thinks the space shuttle from the beginning shot looks like a terrified shark?
We had 2 stroke engines, we had 4 stroke engines- But nothing beats the 1 stroke engine
Crude? Let me remind you that from 1981 to 2011 a total of 135 successful missions were flown.
The space shuttle was crewed. The narrator could have said manned. The solid rocket boosters were crude, relatively speaking. Manned missions previously had engines that could be started, stopped, gimbaled and throttled.
It's "crewed".
It's no longer politically correct to say "manned" and nobody has the backbone to stand up to the loonies who insist on rewriting history.
Crewed
@@GarySBCA AI voice.
It also killed 14 astronauts. More then all other space craft combined. The Soyuz has been launched 1700 times and only killed 2. The Orbiter was a terrible spacecraft
How to stop solid rocket engines:
Cut open the side (det -cord alike) and let the internal pressure blow through the fuel and vent all pressure through that gap. Use 2 symmetrical ones to balance out the sideways thrusts if you have to. Make sure it doesn’t rip into 2 halves unless you want that to happen.
Blow open the top, ideally designed to produce the exact counter to the nozzle force. [1]
Introduce something that will cause the solid fuel to stop burning by carefully designing the solid fuel to react that way.
Blow-out panels.
There are more ways.
[1] shaping the solid fuel can give you a regressive thrust curve without the top and bottom having to be different.
that is a whole lot of fail there. solid boosters are ok for models, but for real ships, it is asking for disaster. one of the biggest problems is keeping the weight down by making the parts flimsy and fragile. this is still an issue. iirc, the tanks spaceX uses have to be pressurized or they will collapse like a deflated pool toy. with models, they can weigh a lot more because they do not go far.
@@itoibo4208 The weight is not that much of a problem for the first stage. Solid engines are power-dense, though not very weight-efficient.
And you might want to look up ullage engines and squibs and pyrotechnic devices.
Liquid engines are not easy, and you won’t like what happens if you start them in free fall. Solid engines are simple, rugged and just work.
@@advorak8529 I get that that solid engines have their uses, but it sounds a lot like putting a rocket engine on a car. I just do not like the idea of a solid that cannot be started and stopped or throttled. Hybrid engines are a thing, too. They have some of the advantages of both. I have not worked with commercial engines so I am just going by the basic pros and cons or abilities I have seen for each kind. What happens when you start a liquid engine in freefall? Do they need a bladder to keep the fuel on the firey end or something?
@@itoibo4208 _it sounds a lot like putting a rocket engine on a car._
Except that it’s a spaceship, not a car.
_I just do not like the idea of a solid that cannot be started and stopped or throttled._
Almost all liquid engines can only be stopped once, only be started once (unless you use a hypergolic fuel combination, that stuff that goes BOOM when it just sees the other fluid) and most have only one, maybe two power settings that work well.
The 3rd stage of the Saturn V being able to restart a few times so they could use it for the TLI was a Big Thing.
The ability for the LM descent engine to deep throttle (they could not run it between 60-99%, if memory serves, due to excessive nozzle erosion) was a Big Thing.
Yes, you can feed less fuel to an engine, and in space you will not have to worry about underexpansion - where the air creeps into and up the nozzle at the sides, and can do real bad things - but the engine is likely not going to perform efficiently. In the X-15 they used an engine that could throttle 50-100% and the XLR11, a rocket engine with 4 chambers and nozzles they could separately turn on and off to have 5 power settings: 0-25-50-75-100%.
And as to restarting the engine - some engines are primed by pumping some special stuff into the end of the fuel lines to start the engines, others use one-time-use spark plugs and so on.
_Hybrid engines are a thing, too. They have some of the advantages of both._
And they combine some of the problems and disadvantages. Weight, density, toxic, carcinogenic, cryogenic, dangerous, …
_What happens when you start a liquid engine in freefall?_
Often, Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly.
Or a “hard start” (read, you need a new engine).
Or a fizzle (engine fails to provide thrust)z
… unless you do it the right way.
You do NOT want bubbles of air or helium or nitrogen or even gaseous oxygen if you use liquid oxygen in your fuel/oxidiser lines.
_Do they need a bladder to keep the fuel on the firey end or something?_
Yes, pretty much. Mostly something.
The Saturn V had ullage engines, small solid fuel engines that would give some seconds of positive thrust to settle the fuel and oxidiser after separation to start the next stage.
The CM used the RCS thrusters for ullage - 5 seconds normally, I believe. The LM descent engine, IIRC, used a bladder plus normal reservoir that allowed restarts through some portion of the fuel usage.
The R-7 - the family started by the 1950’s first ever intercontinental ballistic missile, avoids in-flight starts: Everything is lit up at launch, 4 liquid engine boosters and the main sustainer in the middle. The sustainer has more fuel (and may be running in reduced throttle, so you end up with a mostly full sustainer at booster separation.
The N1 used open-grid stage interconnects, so they could fire up the next stage while the previous stage was still producing thrust and so sidestepping the problem, (but they had larger problems!) and Space-X has been trying that as well recently.
@@advorak8529 thank you. Spacex seems to be doing ok with their boosters. I believe they run on liquid fuel, and are adjustable thrust. iirc, the space shuttle also had liquid engines that could be relit for orbital maneuvers?
As a fourth grader my father and i came up with a similar design. But then we also designed concrete submarines because of the bouancy issue.
Concrete submarine? Fascinating! Seems to have potential - concrete good under compression etc... What problems did you run into?
Those men and women during challenger and discovery launches were nuts. Even Apollo, so many things can go wrong. Brave people
It's just a semi controlled bomb that can't be stopped until it runs out.
And the reason for SRBs is they don't slosh around like liquid fuel, (which destabilizes the rocket).
I was at home sick from school when I heard that horrible “go for throttle up” command come from the tv, 😢
Me too….
The most beautiful machine ever made. 🇺🇸🌏🖤
Everyone making fun of the accent will never leave their hometown hahaha
I can’t find any, can you show me any example of this?
I’m not upset at the accent. I’m upset that his brain spelled “colume” wrong.
Hey! Yeah! I'm not making fun of his accent, he mispronounced "umbilical" in the full shuttle video and "column" in this short. It's hard not to notice that stuff. Plus, I like this youtube account and want it to improve.
Someone is called out for mispronouncing
"Racist!"
@Blundabus1337 how is that racist? Just saying they'll never see beyond their hometown
A literal leap of faith to go for a ride in such an unguided missile.
‘Faith’??? This is science, not religion. Science doesn’t require faith. It has FACTS to back it up, unlike religion.
And it was designed and flown by men and women that didn't use computers at all in the beginning (just like the SR-71 & A-12)
We have some very intelligent people in the world. And yet it seems like, those people are NOT the ones attempting to be the representatives that we so desperately NEED.
(You Know who you are). There's a reason they call it "serving your country". Even George Washington didn't WANT to be president, (but General Washington understood how important that job was for a new country and it's people).
THAT'S Patriotism. 🇺🇸💪🏻🙂
And yet we have people who think we’ve never even been into space. Education is important y’all.
Is it just me or does the rocket at the beginning of the video look like a shark?
I swear that's the first thing i saw before understanding that it was indeed a shuttle. 😂
The combination of a solid rocket booster _and_ a non-stacked design is what made it so dangerous. It's ultimately what caused both Shuttle disasters.
It was an incredibly stupid and arrogant thing to do using solid boosters. Hope and pray that absolutely NOTHING goes wrong for 2 minutes.
So why do you find SRB's so stupid and their use arrogant?? Maybe you just aren't aware of how reliable SRB's are and how they are still used to today.
The ULA Atlas used rocket uses up to 5 SRB's. And the Vulcan can use up to 6! Scott Manley has a good video on the exceptionally good engineering in SRB's.
Thank Richard Nixon and Orrin Hatch.
@@michaeldeierhoi4096 They are great if you have no living payload. Von Braun always was against srbs. They are a nightmare regarding securuty.
@@gummiente3622 So you have a bias against SRB's, but that doesn't negate the fact that they are reliable. And two SRB 's were used on Atlas V launch with Starliner in a perfectly nominal liftoff.
@@michaeldeierhoi4096 It's not bias if there is valid reason for the argument. Putting people atop an unstoppable machine is an unecessary risk. And some people payed with their lives for it.
Ah yes, the entire "col-yoom" of propellant... a man of culture, this narrator
The use of SRB's was the biggest mistake ever in manned spaceflight.
Cheap, powerful, storeable and ready to launch at a moment's notice... (Remember the origin of most launchers.)
SRBs are very useful. The ISP is low, sure, but in the early stages they provide excellent TWR and, importantly, are cheap.
SRBs are cheap. Space programs don't care how heavy their boosters are, only how much they cost.
@@ENCHANTMEN_Thats a good argument for unmanned flights. But for manned spaceflight a few more safety concerns should be considered.
At least put a Launch Escape System somewhere...
Cheap... what are you talking about. 🤡
The original design of the Space Shuttle had a reusable first stage. However, in order to reduce cost, NASA chose to use the solid fuel boosters and the external fuel tank instead of the reusable first stage. The Challenger disaster was caused by an o-ring failure on a solid fuel booster. The Columbia disaster was caused by a piece of insulation that fell off the external fuel tank and made a hole in the heat shield on the leading edge of a wing.
the sad part is, on the one that burned up on entry, they apparently had no way to go outside of the ship and fix it while it was still in orbit.
The narrator left out a great deal. Im not a rocket scientist, so bear with me. The "solid" propellant has the consistency of an eraser. Its mixed in liquid form, poured into a mold held vertically in a deep pit with a removable core. After the mix "hardens" the core is pulled out by an overhead crane. This is the scary part and one of the reasons the core is tapered. The core has to release evenly and be pulled up so as not to drag on the sides of the propellant, because friction/static electricity could ignite the propellant. That would be a catastrophe. It worked pretty well every time, except once, when it didn't, and exploded catastrophically.
The SRB's were actually very reliable, and in the aftermath of the "Columbia" disaster people got the idea that the new capsule-launching booster would be one of the SRBs, i.e. the Aries Project. However, the one and only test flight of the concept showed it vibrated far too much and it was dropped.
Buran was a copy, but it used all liquid fuel. Would have been safer with a higher payload capacity if the program werent cancelled
That’s one HUGE Estes engine
Thrust decreased by 33% at 50 seconds. Life was decreased by 700% at 73 seconds.
I fly for a living and I can’t imagine flipping a switch and the engines turn on full power and stay on until the fuel is spent.
No escape option like on the Apollo missions. Money above safety.
to be fair, no one is worth a space shuttle
They can abort, It just requires the shutttle itself
@@i_have_noname-t2h Still, there wouldn't be time for a separation and parachute deployment, but thank you. That possibility never occurred to me before.
Unlike liquid rocket engines, Solid rocket boosters are extremely reliable, although ironically, one of the major fatal incidents that occurred during the space shuttle's lifetime, was due to one of the solid rocket booster's seal failing. But, overall, Solid rocket boosters are considered very very reliable and due to the relatively simple operation and cheap fuel, it makes it a very suitable candidate for most rockets. The drawback, as shown, is controlablity. SRBs are simple fire and forget rockets, once lit, they will continue until the entire fuel is burnt up, leaving no reserve, and ofcourse, no dynamic adjustability of the thrust in flight, their thrust is preprogrammed using the shape of the solid fuel. So, just like the space shuttle, whenever more control and flexibility is necessary, the more complicated liquid rocket engines are used.
Bold? My guy, it was a POLITICAL choice!!! #ThisIsAmerica unfortunately
I guarantee you that many a sleepless night was given over pouring over the calculations and equations related to the propellent systems on the space shuttle.
My Fathers Cousin was one of them who worked for Morton Thiokol doing those calculations.
Colllumme 💀
Nitpicking nitwit how's that ?
Thanks
Extreme concern I shared, and that was totally confirmed as valid.
Coluewm
I would have liked to see them forming the solid fuel shape. Did they use a mold? Pieces? Did they form it inside the booster shell or build the shell around the fuel?
Wow.
Didn't know that.
I was in library at school, when challenger launch...
Unbelievable, RIP,
American badasses.
🇺🇸😎🙏❤️❤️❤️🔥
What an incredible piece of human engineering 👍🏻
Light it and ride it! They knew the risks and ran with it anyway
in ksp i can detach the solid boosters before they're done, but that usually ends up with everything exploding
Its crazy to think that they used the most dangerous and difficult method to succeed. The amount of engineering and dedication to this is hard to fathom.
I reality none of this should work but the genius behind every person involved made it work. Now a new generation of engineers decided to stop engineering with what they had and went into the most novel way but the most logical because of everything that was learned about how propulsion works and the tasks needed.
New engineers should always be required to learn how this worked so its never forgotten. One day we will need it again.
They always knew what they were stepping into, so brave
I've been a space nerd my whole life, but now I see the truth... the space shuddle is an upside down shark that's mad
"Trottled" i freaking love this accent.
The shuttle in the first few seconds of this video looks like a surprised fish
Hey Paul, there's a map tool that shows the elevation as a 3d view of the various areas in Ukraine that I'd recommend you use when you're trying to figure out the tactical area advantages as the control map changes. I don't know what it's called, but Denys used it in his video from 2 days ago, like the one before the debate
Inserting use of the long “u” sound where it doesn’t belong is a favorite pastime of mine as well.
Solid boosters are scary, but they’re why our shuttle worked and the Soviet one didn’t.
More likely it was the misinformation we sent them when we found out where they were stealing the designs from.
@@ghost307 lol. Maybe. I remember that they were inexperienced with solid booster rockets. We had been using them on other craft, so it was reasonably comfortable for our engineers.
I think another issue is that their space program had a lot of interference from the kremlin, which could prove very dangerous when they were forced to rush. If you screw up with a liquid rocket you can turn it off, mostly.
Please tell me they just ground those angles with huge tapered countersinks. Just making a tool that could cut those angles continuously across something that big would be a feat of engineering in and of itself.
If they didnt do that and made it out of modular sections they mated ill be genuinely surprised because that wouldve been harder especially given the weakness of computers generally and gpus specifically at the time. Modeling, measuring and testing wouldve been arduous at best. I wish i could say which idea sounds less possible or more likely but i kinda dont understand how they did either. And id like to see what tools they needed and how clever they got with what they had.
Those boosters could be thanks to some wizard machinist that can dial in cyclopean tools to no runout across 90' of run or some kind of nearly equally mythical QC and record-keeping standards that allowed for matching angles across smaller sections of a larger whole angle. I feel like you end up with extremely compounded tolerances with things built that way which usually means tight oversight is required, which is also hard to do and impressive to see the results of. Careful work can change stuff.
Elon really reinvented the wheel when it comes to rockets
For anyone to climb aboard that rickety, haphazardly cobbled together looking monstrosity, and go for a ride, demonstrates implicit trust in the design and builders of the contraption.
NO STOPPING
SOLID BOOSTERS
ONCE LIT 🔥
Craziest pronunciation of “column” I’ve ever heard
Incredible vehicle with the astronauts wrapped with a lot of fuel
Solid rockets seem like Stone Age technology. I am surprised that they were still using them for shuttle launches.
Might be an idea to make a solid rocket that sends the solid fuel out like a sand blaster. Would reduce weight by not having hollowed out area within and wouldn't need to have to hold back as much pressure throughout the whole structure.
I heard it said that the shuttle was a 70's implementation of '60's designs.
Yet NASA went with solid rocket boosters. Seeing the problems afterwards is what we call hindsight.
The Flintstones did it best,
Fred and Barney wearing helmets sitting in a dugout rock and slingshotted into space 😂
NASA: *engineers the most advanced craft known to man at the time*
This guy: "Crude."
There are old astronauts and there are bold astronauts. There are no old, bold astronauts.
Imagine getting in that on purpose...and trusting that you'll be okay. We really forget the risks astronauts take. 💯
I was absolutely fascinated by the orbiter as a kid and even then when i found out the boosters couldnt be "shut off" I was like wait.....thats silly
These guys were literally strapped to a bomb - kinda like when we used to crazy glue flies on to bottle rockets.