THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 25, 1995 TAG: 9510250440
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JAMES SCHULTZ, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
On a day when debris from a destroyed Conestoga rocket began to wash up on Virginia's Eastern Shore beaches, clues to what doomed the flight began to surface.
After viewing preliminary video evidence, officials with NASA and Conestoga's manufacturer said Tuesday that at least one of the vehicle's seven rocket boosters appeared to shift slightly from its moorings 45 seconds after liftoff.
The movements may have caused the Conestoga to veer off course at the worst possible moment - as it entered a realm of severe aerodynamic pressure, called ``max Q'' by engineers. The craft was then traveling about 1,230 mph.
The course deviation may have turned the vehicle in such a way as to also cause structural failure.
``It (the video) gives the appearance that the pressure crumbled the front end of the whole rocket,'' said H. Ray Stanley, a senior official with NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, from whose rocket range the Conestoga was launched. ``It just broke the front end right off. Then things started going all over hell and Georgia.''
Long-range video cameras revealed a rightward wobble of the Conestoga 45 seconds into the flight. Detecting the anomaly at 46 seconds, on-board auto-destruct devices separated each of the solid rockets, and then blew a hole in the side of each booster to rapidly dissipate thrust.
As spectators watched, the motors lazily corkscrewed into the Atlantic, 14 miles offshore.
Stanley cautioned, however, that the video record was but one bit of a multitude of information being sifted by investigators. Pinpointing an exact cause will be a complex task. There could have been a number of things that occurred simultaneously. And theories currently proposed may not survive stricter scrutiny.
``Was that (crumpling) cause or effect?'' he said. ``We'll know only from the telemetry.'' The telemetry - flight information radioed back to ground control from the Conestoga's sensors - will be analyzed by a strike force of investigators from NASA, the U.S. Department of Transportation, and EER Systems Inc., the Conestoga's manufacturer.
``What caused it, we don't know,'' said EER spokesman Michael Bryant. ``It could have been dozens of things. This (investigation) could take weeks.''
Designers have known from the early days of rocket launches about the dangers posed by ``max Q.'' Although the Conestoga used proven rocket technology, says Robert L. Ash, Old Dominion University professor of aerospace engineering, aerodynamic pressures may have exerted unanticipated stresses on the vehicle's basic configuration.
``Think of an arrow hitting a target,'' Ash said. ``It vibrates. You're essentially driving the rocket into increasing resistance. And the air is pushing back.''
In the push-back, Ash explains, some sort of oscillation could have occurred that would have affected the solid rockets, even the entire craft. Despite any number of tests - and by all accounts EER conducted many - the final proof of structural soundness must always come in flight.
``If that's what caused it, they can design it (the structural flaws) out,'' Ash said. ``That's what engineering is all about.''
Though all 14 experiments on the Conestoga have been declared complete losses, at least one payloader wants EER to rise up, dust itself off and try again.
``All new rockets have problems. Fix it and press on,'' said John M. Cassanto, president of Instrumentation Technology Associates Inc. in Exton, Pa. Cassanto's company had provided a brick-size, automated biotechnology lab for the Conestoga manifest.
``All new rockets have problems. We think the concept is sound. We're all hopeful EER will continue, because the nation needs this.''
For EER, the loss of the $20 million Conestoga - the larger development cost shared by the company, NASA, and several experimenters amounts to at least $73 million - is a bitter disappointment. The rocket's destruction Monday caps four years of on-again, off-again efforts to open up a relatively inexpensive route into orbit.
``Obviously, this is a major blow,'' said Bryant of EER. ``On the other hand, EER is a national company with 500 employees. We have other activities than the space launch business.''
On Tuesday, NASA investigators began to collect the remnants from the destroyed Conestoga, which began to come ashore on the barrier islands near Chincoteague.
According to Wallops spokesman Keith Koehler, the rocket remnants included Fiberglas-like material that comprised the nose cones on each of the Conestoga boosters, parts of the re-entry capsule's heat shield, and bits of the electrical system of at least one of the experiments.
EER has no salvage plans, said spokesman Bryant. Everything is thought to be a complete loss.
The investigation could last weeks or months, Bryant said. Once the company pinpoints an exact cause for the Conestoga's failure, Jai N. Gupta, EER's chief executive officer and president, will decide whether EER will launch any more rockets. ILLUSTRATION: Graphic
KEN WRIGHT/The Virginian-Pilot
WHAT HAPPENED
[For complete graphic, please see microfilm]
by CNB