#meanwhile among capsules only soyuz has suffered an locv | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

piratesexmachine420 · 6 days ago

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It's interesting to note that all but one of the four manned spaceplane to make a flight above the 50 mile US definition of space have had a LOCV, namely:

X-15 no. 3 on X-15 Flight 3-65-97 (1967)

OV-099 Challenger on STS-51-L (1986)

OV-102 Columbia on STS-107 (2003)

VSS Enterprise (N339SS) on PF04 (2014)

Only SpaceShipOne avoided catastrophe. Perhaps that's because it was the safest of the bunch, perhaps it's only due to a small sample size of 15 non-captive flights. I lean towards the latter -- there were a lot of problems across those 15 flights.

#i may have made this post before but regardless im making it now #my thoughts #spaceflight #aviation #meanwhile among capsules only soyuz has suffered an locv #apollo 1 was of course only a ground test #though its possible that the mission would have ended fatally had it actually gone up #also worth noting that theres #lots of bias in these samples though given that no spaceflight-capable nation has ever really flown more than one spacecraft model at a tim #its hard to compare eg gemini to eg the shuttle given the major technological developments and also the totally alien political climates

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