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Comment by the_third_wave | Hacker News Reader

I suspect SpaceX will have to add something resembling an escape system before the thing gets "man-rated". That system could also be used to protect the passengers in case of a failed landing. It will add weight and thus lower the carrying capacity but they seem to have enough margin to allow for such an addition. They already have the header tanks in the top of Starship, adding a number of escape engines and some explosive bolts to separate the nose cone from the rest of the ship should be doable. Add some parachutes to make the thing land at a survivable speed and you're done - beer coaster calculation style that is.

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Something like the B-58's armored escape capsule, perhaps. Each seat had an armored capsule that could close up, including oxygen and steering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_crew_capsule

The B-58 article has an interesting note:

> Unusually, the ejection system was tested with live bears and chimpanzees; it was qualified for use during 1963 and a bear became the first living being to survive a supersonic ejection.

I was thinking more in terms of the B-1 crew escape capsule [1] consisting of the whole cockpit equipped with rocket engines and parachutes to push it away from the plane and allowing it to land in one piece. The same could be done with the top of Starship, the part above the fuel tanks.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0TVr0_m34s

They want to carry 100 people. An escape system for those many people is the same scale of a commercial airliner escape system, which is designed to be operated on a stationary plane, on land or water. Astronauts will be well trained to use it but I think that there must be a lot of openings to let 100 people get out quickly in mid air. Maybe they'll agree that Starship is its own escape system.

There is a section about Space Shuttle's crew bailout at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_abort_modes

Before the "Ejection escape systems" there are a few paragraphs about "inflight crew escape system"

> The vehicle was put in a stable glide on autopilot, the hatch was blown, and the crew slid out a pole to clear the orbiter's left wing. They would then parachute to earth or the sea

But 100 people is a different matter IMHO.

Ejections seats and capsule were not pursued, the Wikipedia page explains the reasons.

The big problem with the Space Shuttle was that the orbiter was located next to the fuel tank and between the solid boosters instead of on top of it. This made it impossible to perform the normal "accelerate away from the big boom" manoeuvre which normal rocket escape systems use. On Starship the passengers will be situated above the explosives instead of next to them/between them. As to whether it is possible to add escape engines of sufficient power to pull away the nose cone, push it up into a parabolic trajectory of sufficient height to give parachutes the chance to deploy I don't know but at least it could be done in theory where the design of the Space Shuttle and its "close cousin" Buran made this impossible.

"Abort Once Around" was the name my band used in college for a few weeks before people realized who we were.

and who are you ?

We also went by "Human Interference Task Force" and "Angus MacHammer and the Ukrainian Glowplugs," renown in North Texas for our musical mediocrity. We were once introduced as "DJ Control Rat and MC 1000 Inch Buddha," which was interesting 'cause we were completely unrelated to MC 1000 Foot Jesus and played bluegrass.

Fun, little known fact: The Shuttle program's only successful post-launch abort was performed by Challenger in STS-51-F (not to be confused with Challenger's STS-51-L, which ended... suboptimally)

It's not going to hold 100 people anytime soon.

Airliners don't have an in-flight escape system, anyways.

> It's not going to hold 100 people anytime soon.

Right now we don’t even have that many astronauts.

I think they're using the Starship to go from Gateway Station to lunar surface. So you could add an escape system, but where would you escape to?

No spacecraft (except the ISS) has a post-launch escape vehicle. Lunar Starship isn't really in-scope for a launch escape system.

Mercury. Apollo.

If you're counting the capsule itself, Starship qualifies too.

If you're talking about the launch escape tower, that's for during launch. It's gone by the time you reach orbit, leaving you in the same scenario of Lunar Starship in the event of a failure; in space, but no way to get down.

Ah, got it. I was thinking “clear of the tower” is the same as post launch but of course, you are completely right.

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