Comments on: New Ares Construction "Towers" Over 39B

By: fsm

fsm — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 13:05:25 +0000

I wonder if the towers will double up as camera platforms, to film the launches..

By: Imo

Imo — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 20:55:08 +0000

Ares is inherently more susceptible to a catastrophic failure due to lightning as it uses pre-mixed fuel, unlike Apollo. Similarly if lightning somehow induced an early ignition signal, Ares cannot be shut down.

The towers are needed due to the nature of propellant.

By: Keith A

Keith A — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 19:50:22 +0000

Huygens wrote:
"I wonder why they did not have something like this during the Apollo days? The Saturn 5 was 363 feet tall and it was struck by lightning during the Apollo 12 launch in 1969."

Further, according to Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_12), the lightening strike occurred *36.5 seconds* after launch. Altitude at that moment isn't mentioned, but I'm quite sure no technology of the day was available to build towers of ANY sort as high as the craft was at that moment (nanotech theoretically COULD be used to build such towers, but I'm guessing that will never occur).

By: Huygens

Huygens — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 18:33:33 +0000

Lightning rods as a way to draw lightning away from structures and send it into the ground were well known in the 1960s, along with the fact that the taller you are (and especially if you are made of metal), the better your chances of being zapped. And if you are full of explosive fuel, even moreso.

By: Nephish777

Nephish777 — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:20:26 +0000

Perhaps NASA, nor anyone else, understood lightning well enough to design an effect lightning protection/suppression system.

By: Zvezdichko

Zvezdichko — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:18:30 +0000

I still wonder why we need to build something like this. Ares' future is not sure, in my opinion the stick design is flawed in its roots and actually there may be a transition to existing rockets like Ares V and Delta IV.

Which is the best decision, because these rockets are already built.

By: Nancy Atkinson

Nancy Atkinson — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 16:13:05 +0000

Live and learn!

By: Huygens

Huygens — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 15:57:45 +0000

I wonder why they did not have something like this during the Apollo days? The Saturn 5 was 363 feet tall and it was struck by lightning during the Apollo 12 launch in 1969.