credit: NASA
The simulations are part of the space agency's Simulation Assisted Risk Assessment (SARA) project. SARA is to provide physics-based analyses to assess "failure environments associated with space exploration system failures". The study's results will be incorporated into the SARA ascent abort risk modeling effort
Ames states that the contractor's capabilities must include "first-principles physics models" for cryogenic fuel vaporization, turbulent mixing and the finite-rate combustion chemistry of hydrogen and oxygen with "subsequent blast wave initiation and propagation"
For this Ames is going to purchase the services of Craft-Tech, a company that has already carried out similar work for the agency. It has modelled cryogenic real fluid flow and related "multi-phase phenomena such as cavitation" under two NASA small business innovation research contracts
Previously Craft-Tech has studied technology for NASA's cancelled Next Generation Launch Technology programme and worked on improving Space Shuttle Main Engine turbopumps and expendable launch vehicles
on August 27, 2008 6:10 PM | Reply
Please let them skip that darned solid rocket solution for the Ares I ! Liquid rockets can be used again too. Better be a radical now than try to patch things up that increasingly appear to be the product of wrong thinking. They know it and will come around some time, I'm sure. If not... well that's not an option really.
on August 27, 2008 11:20 PM | Reply
what's to study? spontaneous detonation occurs within 200msec of the initial h2/o2 mixing (apparently due to the h2 crystallizing the o2). We had SwRI studying this before Ames was on the scene and 10 healthy centers killed our study. Don't drink too deeply the Ames kool-aid regarding SARA.
on August 28, 2008 9:18 AM | Reply
Thanks for the detail. We don't have kool-aid here in the UK, but I get the drift. I know the simulations of the Ares I upper stage hydrogen tank are showing buckling so that will require additional mass to strengthen. If you have detonation in 200ms your abort system doesn't have much time to react. Maybe the blast propagation element of the work is aimed at seeing how you can have an escape system operate when enveloped by a fireball and tank shrapnel is ripping through everything...?
on September 11, 2008 2:30 AM | Reply
Best to chuck Ares I for direct launcher the Jupiter 120 is so much safer then Ares I it's not even funny.
Also I never liked common bulkheads with lO2 lH2 rockets because the propellants are at such different temperatures and the fact they would explode on contact with each other.
200ms no escape system is going to save you in time maybe if the Orion capsule was literally built like a tank the crew might survive.