If I was him, I’d be afraid that the self-destruct device would be set to go off immediately, so the pilot could not be captured by the enemy.
On a similar note, during the war with Yugoslavia in the late 90’s, I recall hearing a rumor (probably not true, but who knows?) that the ejector seats on the B2 bomber were disabled, so if one got shot down the crew wouldn’t get captured.
Some one time pads are made from flash paper. They don’t have an actual self destruction mechanism built in, but they are designed to be very easily and very thoroughly destroyed.
All I can confirm, from the OP, is that **no **wells (deep water or otherwise) have any kind self destruct feature.
They do however contain down hole annular valves that are designed to close off production in the event of a loss of well containment. The equivalent in a drilling well is the BOP.
Actually, all sounding (suborbital) and space launch vehicles have a flight termination system (as mentioned upthread). However, contrary to popular belief, this isn’t intended to “destroy” the vehicle in the sense of blowing it into tiny pieces but rather render it non-propulsive, causing it to fall within the defined hazard limits where it poses minimum danger to people and structures on the ground. To this end, the system consists of fully redundant transponders (which relay the progress to the ground or ship based range station), command destruct receivers (which receive destruct tones from the range), a destruct logic system (which automatically destructs if the system loses range link for longer than a predefined duration, shows signs of breaking up or uncontrolled tumbling), and flight termination ordnance (cutting charges to split open motor cases and propellant tankage, pyrovalves that close propellant feed lines, et cetera. The system is typically commanded to destruct by a Range Safety Officer (RSO) which is the guy who has the unenviable duty of deciding whether to destroy a launch in progress within seconds.
These systems are mandated by the American ranges and have to meet a strict set of standards (the Range Commanders Council RCC-319 Flight Termination Commonality Standard). There has been an effort for over a decade to develop and qualify an autonomous flight safety system (AFSS) which would be able to automagically assess whether the vehicle is on course and assuredly destruct should it become uncontrolled or fly outside the hazard lines, but getting the ranges approve such a system has been very challenging.
This meme–that Francis Gary Powers deliberately bailed from his aircraft without arming a destruct system (with the implication that he was too cowardly to risk death)–continues to be propagated although it isn’t true. The camera and film canister had a small (~1/2 lb) explosive charge on it which was intended to destroy the film and camera to prevent Soviet engineers from evaluating the capability and resolution of the camera then used in U-2 flights. The aircraft itself had no destruct system, and given the size of the vehicle and the weight criticality (the aircraft often landed with less than 100 lbm of fuel onboard after Soviet overflights) there is no practical way to destroy the U-2 with an onboard system. Powers, by his own accounting, which is consistent with what we now know about the attack, lost consciousness and awoke to find himself in the aircraft in a flat, inverted spin. He was unable to activate the film destruct system and was barely able to bail from the aircraft. (The U-2 that Powers flew did not have a conventional rocket-powered ejection seat and required releasing the canopy, releasing the seat locking system, and then basically tossing out a drogue chute which would pull the seat and pilot out into the air. It had a low likelihood of successful ejection and it is surprising that Powers ejected safely. Later seats on the U-2 and U-2R were upgraded several times to assure positive ejection.) The aircraft was not hit by SA-2 fire as claimed by the Soviets but actually rammed by a Sukhoi SU-9 interceptor which flipped the U-2 over and caused at least one of the wings to break off. (Another pursuing Mig-19 was struck by a missile and destroyed.) The resulting airframe and camera crashed but was sufficiently intact for the Soviets to collect and display during Powers’ show trial, and were returned to the US after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Stranger
From my reading it sounds like the charge was a bit larger, between 2 and 2.5 pounds. And Powers was heavily criticized for failing to activate it, even though, as you say, it probably didn’t make that much of a difference in the end.
I’ve worked with networking gear in classified environments that was extremely “tamper proof.” It was a pain in the ass to work with, because it seems like at least half the time, the bouncing around in transit from the warehouse made the darn things commit “suicide.” You also had to be careful mounting the stuff in the rack.
My haphazard handling of hardware has hosed (yay! alliteration) many installations. Sorry for the tax increase; my bad.
Classic self-destruct:
Rosanne Barr + Star=Spangled Banner.
Most effective device yet invented.
Pregnant rabbits can re-absorb the kittens if they get stressed.
I’d say that this particular activation of a flight termination system nevertheless managed to comprehensively blow the rocket into tiny pieces.
Any idea why the termination system on this launch seemingly never activated? Range Safety Officer asleep at the button?
Then there’s the Bruce effect in rodents. A whiff of pheromone from a new male and the female aborts in preparation of breeding with him.
I’m on travel and can’t view the videos, but I would infer from the comments that the first video is a solid propellant booster or uses strap-on solid boosters. In this case, termination of thrust is performed by the use of a linear shaped charge which splits the case open lengthwise. The purpose of this is to vent the high pressure of the combustion chamber (which is formed by the motor grain), thus terminating prolusion and “snuffing” the propellant, but it generally results in fracture of the propellant grain throwing slowly burning propellant outward in an impressive pyrotechnic display. In general, this doesn’t result in high order detonation of the grain except in certain types of propellants (DOT Hazard Class 1.1C) which contain sufficient detonation-sensitive energetics like nitroglycerine or HMX to propagate detonation through the web thickness (though detonation can occur upon impact with both 1.1 and 1.3 propellants). The range doesn’t really like this and would prefer that the terminated booster or stage come down intact because the imparted velocities can spread hazardous propellant over a wide area which increases the *expectation of casualty (E[SUB]c[/SUB]) calculation, but unless the motor is equipped with thrust termination ports which are exposed at the time of vehicle flight termination there just isn’t a practical way to bring it down intact.
I’m also going to guess that the second video is the widely seen recent failure of the Russian Proton launch which flew out of control due to an improperly installed inertial measurement unit. (If it isn’t, go look it up as it is an interesting failure, and the comments below apply to it.) The Russians don’t install a flight termination ordnance system (FTOS) on this vehicle (nor on Dnepr, Rokot, or Strela) and in general eschew the use of energetic flight termination systems, which reflects their different approach to safety and hazards, i.e. if it falls on some poor schmuck down range, he probably had it coming anyway. The Russians also have the luxury of launching from a couple of very remote sites that have little population or any shipping or flight lanes near the trajectory. American ranges, on the other hand, have to be very concerned about both the nearby population and shipping/travel, as well as all being situated near or within protected wildlife areas, which is one of the reasons that US vehicles no longer use storable propellants for the main stages (the Titan family was the last to do so and was retired in 2005.
Stranger
Good guesses on both counts–the first was the Delta II failure in 1997 (cracked casing in a solid booster failed 13 seconds after launch), and the second was indeed the Proton launch from a year or so ago. The explosion of the Delta spread fiery debris over about a 1 km circle and (among other things) destroyed 20 cars in a nearby parking lot. I don’t know if it detonated but it was certainly a powerful explosion.
It seems like if you’re going to install an energetic FTS on anything, you should do it on a storable propellant rocket, since N2O2, UDMH, etc. are pretty damn toxic and ideally you’d get them to mix and react as well as possible in the air in a semi-controlled manner… but hey, Russia.
I wonder if SpaceX’s new complex on the southern tip of Texas will allow them a tad more flexibility in improving range safety systems.
The propellants used in the Proton–nitrogen tetraoxide (NiTet or N[SUB]2[/SUB]H[SUB]4[/SUB]) and 1,1-dimethylhydrazine (UDMH or H[SUB]2[/SUB]NN(CH[SUB]3[/SUB])[SUB]2[/SUB])–are hypergolic (ignite when combined) and the combustion products aren’t much less toxic. After combustion the products will disperse further as a cloud over a long distances. The dispersal of propellant also creates what is essentially a thermobaric bomb, which when exploded at altitude can create distance focusing overpressure wave which can damage structures or people at longer distances than predicted by the normal quantity-distance (QD) calculations used for estimating hazard distances.
The location of the SpaceX private spaceport in Brownsville poses some interesting problems. There is pretty much no way to fly low inclination orbits without overflying Florida, Cuba, the Bahamas, or Turks and Caicos. Trajectories to higher inclinations will pass over Mexico and various countries in Latin America and/or northern South America. How SpaceX plans to deal with this is unclear. (Presumably they’ll pay affected nations for overflight clearance but that may be diplomatically challenging and probably not legal in the case of Cuba.) They will also have to establish a new range; all existing launch operators in the United States launch from the existing Eastern and Western ranges (EWR) which are run under the auspices of the USAF 45th and 30th Space Wings, respectively. SpaceX will have to provide launch tracking, range destruct, interfaces with JSpOC, and a host of other services to support launch operations, all of which will have to be certified by the FAA before they will get approvals to perform space launches from there. Nobody has ever gone through this entire process including the FAA, so how long it will take to get approval and how much latitude they’ll have to perform launches to various orbits is unknown. However, SpaceX currently has an EWR-approved flight termination system which they’ll probably continue to use for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches from Brownsville as they do from CCAFS and VAFB.
Stranger
There’s at least one bit of communication gear currently used by the US Army that has a self-destruct button built in. It’s literally push this red button, confirm, and you soon have a very expensive brick on your hands. I don’t know what mechanism it uses because we were not allowed to destroy thousands of dollars of equipment just to see what happened.
There’s also doctrine on how, exactly, a team is meant to destroy their vehicle if they’re overrun and capture is imminent, but that’s more “this person smashes this commo gear while that person cuts these oil/coolant/whatever lines” than an actual self-destruct.
I wouldn’t say that. Certainly there will be nasties in the reaction products, but most of it will be harmless H[sub]2[/sub]O, CO[sub]2[/sub], and N[sub]2[/sub]. Some of the remainder will be CO, NO, N[sub]2[/sub]O, and NO[sub]2[/sub], which are not quite harmless but certainly less toxic than N[sub]2[/sub]H[sub]4[/sub] or UDMH. Obviously there will be some toxic products as well, there will be much less of it given that the inputs are all quite toxic.
I suppose it depends on the nature of the surrounding structures. Within limits, you can harden structures against overpressure waves. I doubt the same can be said of a fully-fuelled rocket landing on you.
In terms of overflight clearance, how far from a country’s shores do their borders project? If it’s zero, then it seems there are a few ways for SpaceX to “thread the needle” in that region, though it will be tight in spots.
Also, it’s not clear to me at which point SpaceX no longer has to ask for permission. Obviously, orbiting satellites don’t have to negotiate clearance with every country they pass over. Airspace ends at a certain point. Depending on their launch profile, they may have a certain flexibility. I know that the first-stage reuse implies a more dog-leg shaped profile so that the stage doesn’t end up too far downrange. It could be that they have enough altitude by the time they get to Turks and Caicos that it’s not an issue.
Well, the other answer is that they don’t launch those flights from the Texas facility. They’ll still be flying out of Cape Canaveral and Vandenburg.
All true, though they may have an easier time doing forward. For instance, the Air Force will no longer be using C-band tracking radars for their launches, instead relying on GPS. So that piece of the ground segment is no longer required; there may be others.
For sailing ships, the self destruct mechanism often consists of disabling all of the pumps designed to keep the ship from sinking all by itself (evidently the big ships leak constantly due to the physical strain of such a large vessel sailing in the ocean). Additionally, at least some military ships have special valves expressly intended to be used for scuttling the ship by letting the ocean in.
Also, if you have a warship carrying a substantial amount of explosives intended for the destruction of enemy ships, presumably that’s more than adequate for someone to adapt for the purpose without needing a specially designed Self Destruct device installed. Set some kind of fuse in the ship’s magazine and enact the “Run Like Hell” procedure.
Miss Manners suggests that you give the order to Abandon Ship before setting the fuse, if at all possible.
And if all else fails, get a friendly ship to sink your ship after your crew is safely off. The most effective method historically is to lob a torpedo into it. Gunfire is also used, but seems to be less effective since artillery shells typically hit above the water line while torpedos always hit below the water line.
IIRC, the Bismark was scuttled by her crew after the Royal Navy hammered her into scrap, and the Vichy French scuttled their fleet at Toulon in 1942 to keep the Germans from seizing it in violation of the armistice agreement, using both explosive charges and opened valves.
The self-destruction of the German High Seas Fleet in 1919.
Hypergolic propellants from ruptured tanks will not combust in stoichiometric balance and will result in a significant volume of partly reacted or unreacted constituents which will be aerosolized and potentially dispersed over hundreds of square kilometers. Hydrazine in particular (bee it UDMH or MMH) is a carcinogen and will persist in the environment for days or even weeks. The distance focusing overpressure wave produced by an explosion at altitude under the right meteorological conditions can convey a powerful overpressure blast wave (>1 psi, enough to damage even hard structures) over dozens of kilometers, far more distance than standard QD calculations would suggest. The Russians, who prefer to operate regardless of weather or climate conditions, would probably not like to placard their launches to avoid DFO-propagating conditions as NASA does.
The question of overflight isn’t so much one of invading airspace as it is the potential for casualty from a failure resulting in “flydown” of the launch vehicle, its payload, or debris resulting from unplanned catastrophic disassembly (e.g. the rocket blows up). For this reason flights south-bearing out of the Vandenberg AFB “North Base” have to dogleg around Point Arguello. Unfortunately, there is no trajectory flying out of Brownsville which can possibly avoid a trajectory with potential hazard impact points on foreign soil, which may not be a showstopper but will certainly require negotiation with both the FAA and the affected nations. To give some sense of proportion, I’ve worked missions with potentially hazard zones through Madagascar and off the coast of Western Africa, and we had to go back and do a lot of “pencil sharpening” (and in one case adjust the entire trajectory to a non-optimal state which impacted the upper stage performance to the point that it fell outside the orbital parameters) in order to demonstrate that the E[SUB]c[/SUB] was low enough that we didn’t have to get the State Department involved, and this was after the vehicle had flown more than halfway around the world (albeit in a long duration coast). Brownsville, TX to Havana, Cuba, is less than 1600 km. They may be able to shape their trajectory such that they can boost the upper stage into an abort-to-orbit speed prior to a Cuba splashdown point (especially since they are launching somewhat closer to the equator and clearly intend to bring the first stage down in the Gulf) but it still places some significant constraints on where they can delivery payloads. This is the reason that existing launch sites are located on the East and West coasts, and why the French launch the Ariane rockets from French Guiana. Brownsville may be logistically convenient as it is located within ready hauling distance from McGregor (and probably also relatively close to refineries providing RP-1), but it isn’t the site I would pick for launch for a number of reasons.
Stranger
No doubt; basically all I’m saying is that if nothing combusts, 100% of the mass is in a highly toxic form. If some of it combusts, then at least some fraction of the mass will be nontoxic or less toxic. So you’re almost certainly better off if you can mix the propellants as well as possible. Obviously you’ll get a big boom once it hits the ground, but I have to imagine that a well-designed FTS could achieve a higher level of mixing than a totally uncontrolled flight into terrain.
Gotcha–thanks. That raises a question:
Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you have a small island in your flight path. There will be some point during the flight that if the engines shut down, the stage will almost certainly hit the island. However, if you hit the FTS, the stage is now a bunch of debris with a different ballistic coefficient. Most bits will probably fall in front of the island; some denser bits will probably fall farther on.
Regardless, though, there will be a probability distribution of some kind. Are there known models for predicting likely ground damage? Is there some level of safety beyond which you no longer worry? Or do you just buy insurance for the 1:1,000,000 (or whatever) chance that an engine lands on some old lady?
The flight termination system isn’t designed to mix propellants. It is designed to terminate thrust. The reason would prefer the now ballistic, uncontrolled vehicle come down in as few pieces and in the smallest target area as possible so as to minimize both hazard and environmental mediation.
Yes, there are models for both predicting the effective ballistic size/drag (beta), imparted velocity, and amount of debris (hazard breakup models) and the dispersal given the body state conditions at the moment of breakup or termination (flydown model). There are also secondary models which predict the distance solid debris may travel after impact or the amount and effect of blast energy released by energetic debris, all of which feeds into the the expectation of casualty calculation. In general, it is desired that E[SUB]c[/SUB] < 10[SUP]-5[/SUP] per launch, or in other words, the expectation that there is a single ground casualty on average 1:100,000 flights. This is the number to beat in terms of getting range approval for your trajectory and breakup/flydown models. Whether this is realistic–especially in a commercial environment in which launches may be a weekly or even daily rate, and thus it is impractical to clear out high probability hazard zones off the coast, is another issue entirely. Unless an entity conducts launches off of a remote island or floating platform into a broad ocean area, the ability to assure this degree of launch safety is impractical and has been one of the pressing issues in defining an effective process for commercial licensing of spaceports and routine spaceflight.
Stranger