Why the hell does there "got" to be an override. Humans are generally not good at doing hypersonic/supersonic aerodynamic modeling in their heads, especially remotely
I would argue there has "got" to be an override precisely because humans make mistakes all the time and so there's no reason to think that an autonomous failsafe should work in all possible situations.
I don't know much about rocketry, but if it's true that there's no remote abort capability, that seems like a deeply misguided decision.
There you go.
You are welcome to try and disagree with decades of rocket launch practices.
The range safety officer can blow up the rocket if the rocket veers off and is in danger of overshooting the safe area.
Otherwise, you know the reason why we launch over water? Since it doesn't goddamn matter after it clears the tower and clears the danger zone. It either blows up over water, and who cares, it lands in the water, who cares, or it blows up in the upper atmosphere, and who cares.
Also, the rocket blowing itself up is a reference to the fact that if it is going off course, there is damn good chance it will destroy itself since aerodynamic forces are calculated to a specific launch window with upper weather. If not following a calculated path, good chance it will rip itself apart.
Also many abort modes are disabled for the first few seconds in flight so a dumb human or computer wont accidentally trigger a abort after flight starts and blow up the launch pad
>> The range safety officer can blow up the rocket if the rocket veers off and is in danger of overshooting the safe area.
I'm confused. Am I not the one arguing for a remote abort command (which, so far as I know, has been standard practice for a while) and you, above, argue that rockets don't need one because humans are bad at modeling rocket aerodynamics?
What if "missing the drone ship" means "hitting Chicago"?
I'm somewhat surprised to hear that there may not be a functional remote abort mechanism.
It doesn't and never will. The rocket is never on a trajectory that will hit Chicago (or any other populated area). The splashdown point of the ballistic trajectory is always over the ocean, until the final burn puts it on the drone ship or landing pad. If that burn doesn't happen for whatever reason, it crashes in the ocean (and that has happened in the past).