Star Liner has all the same problems that the Space Shuttle had. In an emergency, how do you get the crew out safely?
Starliner has a launch abort system; the Shuttle did not.
From what I understand, they use a very powerful rocket (much more powerful than Crew Dragon) to get the capsule far away from the booster. I guess it can get far enough away that NASA is satisfied that falling bits of burning SRB aren't a danger to the parachutes.
For those who might not know SRB = solid rocket booster. Boeing uses them, SpaceX doesn't. An SRB is basically like a giant firecracker. You light it and it starts burning and doesn't stop until its done. It poses substantial safety concerns in the case of an accident where you need to abort the flight. But they're cheap, extremely powerful, and relatively simple contrasted against liquid fuel engines.
> It poses substantial safety concerns in the case of an accident where you need to abort the flight
SRBs are in general very safe, which is why they're still used for human rated rockets.
I would also observe that NASA has a relatively poor safety record contrasted against the Soyuz (which has not lost crew since 1971 in spite of flying more manned missions), and one of the few completely catastrophic crashes we have had, Challenger, was directly related to the SRB. In either case, I expect variance is playing a much larger role than most might appreciate.
Interestingly, both Crew Dragon and Starliner have eschewed SRB based LES/LAS systems for liquid fueled hypergolic ones. You can tell this because neither capsule has a "puller" on the nose like Apollo/Orion does.
I thought I read about that. Of course that's effectively no actual escape system lol. They'd be long dead by the time they managed all that in an out of control shuttle.
I guess it depends on what you mean by that. Astronauts were trained on the system and it was aboard the shuttle.
Did the astronauts believe that it's likely that the system would save them? Probably not.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/escape-spe...
Yeah personally I would have taken my chances ditching the craft, tbh. It would probably ditch pretty well considering it doesn't have huge engine pods under the wings.
Harebrained is right.
How far did this plan go? Just because it was discussed and documented and thought through does not mean it was something that was actually going to happen. Was this actually developed and the parts&pieces put into place with procedures written up in the flight manual?
Yes.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/escape-spe...