Escape tower in action. Unmanned Mercury capsule saved when test launch goes awry.

[SSgt Baloo]

When I was a kid, I always wondered what those towers on the top of Mercury and Apollo capsules was. I never asked an adult, though. I suspected none of the ones I knew would know the answer*.

 

* Grandma believed that space exploration was mortals trespassing on God's turf, and therefore blasphemous. She was a nice lady, but she though Jack Chick was a prophet of God. *shrugs*
 

Related question: I haven't seen anything like the escape towers on American space vessels on Soviet ones. Am I missing something? I have heard that at least one Soviet astronaut crew owes their lives to the use of such a system. How did their escape systems function? I have heard that at least one Soviet astronaut crew owes their lives to the use of such a system.

Edited February 26, 2016 by SSgt Baloo

[Nibb31]

Soyuz has a launch abort system:

The LAS pulls away the Orbital Module and the Descent Module inside the fairing, leaving the Service Module on the stack. The fairing has grid fins that open to stabilise the flight. Then it separates the DM, which lands normally.

Note that Gemini never had a LES. They had ejection seats, which would have been of dubious use, especially in case of a pad abort or a hypersonic abort.

I think the same method was used for Vostok. Voskhod however was pretty much a death trap, with no launch escape system at all.

 

Edited February 25, 2016 by Nibb31

[Ten Key]

The Soviet Vostok spacecraft had an ejection seat-- there was a hole in the fairing over the escape hatch, and the cosmonaut could eject in an emergency. The American Gemini spacecraft also used ejection seats. 

The Soviet Voskhod did not have an abort system of any kind. 

[fredinno]

12 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:

Soyuz has a launch abort system:

The LAS pulls away the Orbital Module and the Descent Module inside the fairing, leaving the Service Module on the stack. The fairing has grid fins that open to stabilise the flight. Then it separates the DM, which lands normally.

Note that Gemini never had a LES. They had ejection seats, which would have been of dubious use, especially in case of a pad abort or a hypersonic abort.

I think the same method was used for Vostok. Voskhod however was pretty much a death trap, with no launch escape system at all.

 

Well, for the Gemini, they decided that the Titan II's explosions weren't energetic enough- in hindsight, it's a good thing they never needed to abort...

[sgt_flyer]

2 minutes ago, Ten Key said:

The Soviet Vostok spacecraft had an ejection seat-- there was a hole in the fairing over the escape hatch, and the cosmonaut could eject in an emergency. The American Gemini spacecraft also used ejection seats. 

The Soviet Voskhod did not have an abort system of any kind. 

Vostok ejection seat was always used before the capsule landing, as Vostok did not have a soft landing system - Vostok cosmonauts used their own parachutes to land separately of the vostok capsule after reentry - for ascent, the ejection seat could perform the same - you can see the lateral hole for the ejection seath in the vostok rocket fairing .

http://www.russianspaceweb.com/vostok_lv.html

for Voskhod, as the cosmonauts had no ejection system, they added retrorockets to the parachute lines, to soft land the capsule, as the cosmonauts could not eject. (the voskhod reentry capsule has roughly the same size as the vostok one - to be able to fit more cosmonauts inside the capsule, they removed the bulkier ejection seat + it's ramps and put 3 normal seats.)

[Motokid600]

We should never have stopped using these towers. Thankfully were going back to capsules. 

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Two interesting facts about LESes:

After aero forces were low enough, the Mercury LES would decouple and the abort mode would have been to fire the retropack.
In the Apollo LES, depleted uranium was used so that the pendulum rocket fallacy would not make it unstable.

[kerbiloid]

Another real Soviet/Russian spaceship - TKS.
Although it haven't ever been used as a manned ship, it was designed, tested and certified as a heavy replace for Soyuz.
It has been successfully launched several times as unmanned cargo craft docked to Salyuts and to Mir.

It's re-entry vehicle (VA) is, in fact, an escape capsule attached to a large and heavy habitat module (FGB) - rather than in other spaceships where re-entry vehicle is a full-featured command module.
It has an escape tower and its de-orbiting engine was placed on the nose of the capsule, enforcing the escape tower by their simultaneous ignition.

One of its launches (unmanned) has been aborted due to malfunction, and the escape pod successfully landed engaging LES.

In fact, only two Voskhods had no escape system except an emergency parachute.

Btw, during manned flights LES of Soyuz has been successfully used not once, but twice: on Soyuz-18-1 during the ascent and on Soyuz-T-10-1 when the rocket exploded on the launchpad .

Edited February 26, 2016 by kerbiloid

[fredinno]

On 2/26/2016 at 6:37 PM, kerbiloid said:

Another real Soviet/Russian spaceship - TKS.
Although it haven't ever been used as a manned ship, it was designed, tested and certified as a heavy replace for Soyuz.
It has been successfully launched several times as unmanned cargo craft docked to Salyuts and to Mir.

It's re-entry vehicle (VA) is, in fact, an escape capsule attached to a large and heavy habitat module (FGB) - rather than in other spaceships where re-entry vehicle is a full-featured command module.
It has an escape tower and its de-orbiting engine was placed on the nose of the capsule, enforcing the escape tower by their simultaneous ignition.

One of its launches (unmanned) has been aborted due to malfunction, and the escape pod successfully landed engaging LES.

In fact, only two Voskhods had no escape system except an emergency parachute.

Btw, during manned flights LES of Soyuz has been successfully used not once, but twice: on Soyuz-18-1 during the ascent and on Soyuz-T-10-1 when the rocket exploded on the launchpad .

I always wondered why that thing had such a huge module at the back.

[sgt_flyer]

On 26/2/2016 at 3:37 AM, kerbiloid said:

Another real Soviet/Russian spaceship - TKS.
Although it haven't ever been used as a manned ship, it was designed, tested and certified as a heavy replace for Soyuz.
It has been successfully launched several times as unmanned cargo craft docked to Salyuts and to Mir.

It's re-entry vehicle (VA) is, in fact, an escape capsule attached to a large and heavy habitat module (FGB) - rather than in other spaceships where re-entry vehicle is a full-featured command module.
It has an escape tower and its de-orbiting engine was placed on the nose of the capsule, enforcing the escape tower by their simultaneous ignition.

One of its launches (unmanned) has been aborted due to malfunction, and the escape pod successfully landed engaging LES.

In fact, only two Voskhods had no escape system except an emergency parachute.

Btw, during manned flights LES of Soyuz has been successfully used not once, but twice: on Soyuz-18-1 during the ascent and on Soyuz-T-10-1 when the rocket exploded on the launchpad .

soyuz 18-1 did not have it's escape tower anymore ny the time it had to abort. they had to abort because the separation between the core stage and the upper stage malfunctionned, sending the upperstage on the wrong trajectory, while the escape tower was ejected shortly after the side booster separations, so in this particular case, they did the same as Saturn V mode II abort - they separated the spacecraft from the block I upperstage, used the spacecraft's own engine to put some distance and get to the proper attitude, then separated the spacecraft like they used to for normal reentries. 

Edited February 27, 2016 by sgt_flyer

[InsaneDruid]

On 26.2.2016 at 3:37 AM, kerbiloid said:

Another real Soviet/Russian spaceship - TKS.
Although it haven't ever been used as a manned ship, it was designed, tested and certified as a heavy replace for Soyuz.
It has been successfully launched several times as unmanned cargo craft docked to Salyuts and to Mir.

It's re-entry vehicle (VA) is, in fact, an escape capsule attached to a large and heavy habitat module (FGB) - rather than in other spaceships where re-entry vehicle is a full-featured command module.
It has an escape tower and its de-orbiting engine was placed on the nose of the capsule, enforcing the escape tower by their simultaneous ignition.

One of its launches (unmanned) has been aborted due to malfunction, and the escape pod successfully landed engaging LES.

I have to say that the VA capsule was NOT "an escape capsule attached to the FGB". In fact, it was a fully featured spaceship, with its own life-support systems, thermal management , guidance and control, telecommunications, emergency rescue, etc and capable of fully autonomous flight for days without the fgb. It could be used with an FGB or a OPS (Almaz station body) attached to it. Actually, sojuz and even apollo rerentry capsules are less "full featured" than a VA so to speak. They are fully dependant to their service blocks. They cannot deorbit without them, they cannot survive long without them. VA can. Or could.^^ It was even reusable several times. Without the need for full replacement of its thermal shield, which could be restorated up to 10 times.

 

PS: during testing, the VA capsules where even launched without an FGB in a special double launch fairing (two VA capsules stacked, the lower one with the escape tower, but with its deorbit block). AFAIR on one if these tests the proton failed and the upper VA could be salvaged by using the excape tower. It flew again.

Edited February 27, 2016 by InsaneDruid

[fredinno]

6 hours ago, sgt_flyer said:

soyuz 18-1 did not have it's escape tower anymore ny the time it had to abort. they had to abort because the separation between the core stage and the upper stage malfunctionned, sending the upperstage on the wrong trajectory, while the escape tower was ejected shortly after the side booster separations, so in this particular case, they did the same as Saturn V mode II abort - they separated the spacecraft from the block I upperstage, used the spacecraft's own engine to put some distance and get to the proper attitude, then separated the spacecraft like they used to for normal reentries. 

...which is a capability the Shuttle needed, desperately, in 1986.

[kerbiloid]

On 27.02.2016 at 4:34 PM, sgt_flyer said:

soyuz 18-1 did not have it's escape tower anymore ny the time it had to abort. they had to abort because the separation between the core stage and the upper stage malfunctionned, sending the upperstage on the wrong trajectory, while the escape tower was ejected shortly after the side booster separations, so in this particular case, they did the same as Saturn V mode II abort - they separated the spacecraft from the block I upperstage, used the spacecraft's own engine to put some distance and get to the proper attitude, then separated the spacecraft like they used to for normal reentries. 

Yes, you  are right, I've took a look in the book - indeed, Soyuz-18-1 had separated after the LES had been ejected.