SpaceX – Pad abort test successful

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bhW2h08zhY

Couple of points of interest: There were a couple of puffs of smoke from the engines that might be a sign of premature shutdown. Having one engine out would cause uneven thrust which will cause the vehicle to rotate or tumble. The test continued successfully, so if an engine did indeed die, we can assume that another was also intentionally shutdown to balance the thrust. The remaining engines would have fired for a little longer to make up for the lost ones.

The engine chambers are the first entirely 3d printed production rocket motors in the world. They're printed in inconel using Direct Metal Laser Sintering. This is the first time that so many of them have been fired in an actual mission scenario. The tech is so new and untested that special shields were built round the motors to isolate the rest of the vehicle in case of an explosion. I'm very interested to see how they held up.

There was some pretty severe tumbling during the drogue and main chute deploys. While easily survivable, this would have been quite uncomfortable for any passengers inside. I wouldn't be surprised if SpaceX tweaked the deployment sequence a little to help reduce this.

Good job, SpaceX... I can't wait for the In-Flight abort test later this year!

But to see something so small with relatively little fuel on board, take off so fast is really incredible.

What sort of G loads do the astronauts in that capsule experience in an abort scenario? It shoots up much faster than a typical launch. The separation from the trunk looks fairly violent too.