In article ,
says...

Jeff Findley wrote on Wed, 22 Aug 2018
06:41:13 -0400:

In article ,
says...

Will SpaceX provide emergency egress joy ride in a basket down a long
rope like for Shuttle?


No. That would be stupid.


And yet that is exactly what they are doing. SpaceX will reuse the
shuttle system, just attached higher on the fixed service structure.
ULA will have its own version of the egress system which will consist of
individual harnesses sliding along the ziplines instead of the larger
multi-person basket(s) at pad 39A.

https://www.floridatoday.com/story/t.../04/03/atlasv-
rocket-boeing-starliner-astronauts-emergency-egress-system-commercial-
crew/99972784/


OK, I have to ask the obvious question. Why? If it's really an
emergency, how long does it take to unbutton the capsule and get
everyone out as opposed to just firing the escape system?

I personally don't see the utility of the ziplines and slide baskets. I
have no idea when you'd actually use it as opposed to just staying
strapped into your seats and either manually activating the abort system
or simply waiting to see if the automatic abort system fires (we've had
at least one incident like that in the past where the astronauts "should
have" aborted according to the rules, but instead just sat there knowing
the stack hadn't really moved).

Again, these systems are simply there to keep NASA happy (and enable
astronauts to do lots of training for abort scenarios to make management
feel good about "safety"). In my opinion, they add little cost to the
pads, so both NASA and SpaceX are willing to provide these so called
"escape mechanisms". But, IMHO, they're also quite slow and not at all
effective in a true emergency. Makes you wonder exactly what types of
scenarios would call for the use of them.

Jeff
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