NASA Studies Crew Escape Systems for Space Shuttles

Fifteen years after Challenger disintegrated in the sky, NASA is considering a variety of escape systems--ejection seats, flyaway capsules--that could save the crew in another space shuttle accident.

It is the most extensive and expensive look at shuttle crew escape systems undertaken by the National Aeronautical and Space Administration. Engineers expect to wrap up the yearlong $5-million study by spring. But ultimately, the space agency may decide not to add any such features.

NASA puts the odds of a catastrophic accident during launch--the most dangerous part of any shuttle mission--at 1 in 438. Shuttle flight No. 102 is coming up in a week and a half.

The leading contender among the safety features under consideration is the ejection seat--the same system used for the Gemini program and the first four shuttle flights. The Mercury and Apollo spacecraft had rocket-powered towers to fling the capsules away in an emergency. None was ever used, but in the former Soviet Union, an escape rocket safely pulled two cosmonauts from a burning booster in 1983.

Ejection seats no longer were considered necessary once NASA declared the space shuttle operational, beginning with flight No. 5 in 1982.

“It was the Titanic syndrome: ‘Not even God can sink this ship,’ ” recalls former astronaut Bryan O’Connor, director of engineering at Futron Corp.

NASA’s attitude changed with flight No. 25--the doomed launch of Challenger, which took place 15 years ago Sunday, on Jan. 28, 1986. All seven crew members were killed, including teacher Christa McAuliffe. The cause: a gas leak in the right booster rocket.

In the explosion, the crew module separated from the fireball and plunged into the sea. But the crew members had no parachutes and no way to jettison the hatch. They were wearing flimsy jumpsuits.

O’Connor headed a panel that looked at crew escape systems after the disaster. When shuttle flights resumed in 1988, he and other astronauts ended up with parachutes; partially pressurized, bright orange suits with emergency oxygen and survival gear; a hatch that blows open; and a pole for sliding out of the spacecraft.

The Challenger explosion happened 73 seconds after liftoff. The escape systems now under consideration could be used during the first three minutes of flight at an altitude of 150,000 feet or more, as well as during landing and even on the launch pad.

Any one of these systems might have saved the Challenger crew, says Kevin Templin, a project manager in the shuttle engineering office. Challenger’s crew module separated intact and went into a 2 1/2-minute free fall from 50,000 feet.

Military-style ejection seats probably would be the easiest system to implement.

More extreme would be a crew cabin-turned-escape capsule that would be capable of parachuting to land or water.

There also is the extraction method, in which miniature rockets would pull astronauts from their seats.