https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOOSE

MOOSE

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For the animal, see Moose. For the software, see MOOSE (software).
For other uses, see Moose (disambiguation).
[250px-Operation_MOOSE_]
 
Fig. 110 from Analysis and Design of Space Vehicle Flight Control
Systems
[250px-Operation_MOOSE_]
 
Fig. 111 from Analysis and Design of Space Vehicle Flight Control
Systems
[250px-Operation_MOOSE_]
 
Fig. 112 from Analysis and Design of Space Vehicle Flight Control
Systems

MOOSE, originally an acronym for Man Out Of Space Easiest but later
changed to the more professional-sounding Manned Orbital Operations
Safety Equipment,^[1] was a proposed emergency "bail-out" system
capable of bringing a single astronaut safely down from Earth orbit
to the planet's surface.^[2]^[3] The design was proposed by General
Electric in the early 1960s. The system was quite compact, weighing
200 lb (91 kg) and fitting inside a suitcase-sized container. It
consisted of a small twin-nozzle rocket motor sufficient to deorbit
the astronaut, a PET film bag 6 ft (1.8 m) long with a flexible
0.25 in (6.4 mm) ablative heat shield on the back, two pressurized
canisters to fill it with polyurethane foam, a parachute, radio
equipment and a survival kit.^[4]

The astronaut would leave the vehicle in a space suit, climb inside
the plastic bag, and then fill it with foam.^[5] The bag had the
shape of a blunt cone, with the astronaut embedded in its base facing
the apex of the cone. The rocket pack would protrude from the bag and
be used to slow the astronaut's orbital speed enough so that he would
reenter Earth's atmosphere, and the foam-filled bag would act as
insulation during the subsequent aerobraking. Finally, once the
astronaut had descended to 30,000 ft (9.1 km) where the air was
sufficiently dense, the parachute would automatically deploy and slow
the astronaut's fall to 17 mph (7.6 m/s). The foam heat shield would
serve a final role as cushioning when the astronaut touched down and
as a flotation device should they land on water. The radio beacon
would guide rescuers.^[citation needed]

General Electric performed preliminary testing on some of the
components of the MOOSE system, including flying samples of heat
shield material on a Mercury mission, inflating a foam-filled bag
with a human subject embedded inside, and test-dropping dummies and a
human subject^[2] in MOOSE foam shields short distances. U.S. Air
Force Capt. Joe Kittinger's historic freefall from a balloon at
103,000 ft (31,000 m) in August 1960 also helped demonstrate the
feasibility of such extreme parachuting. However, the MOOSE system
was nonetheless always intended as an extreme emergency measure when
no other option for returning an astronaut to Earth existed; falling
from orbit protected by nothing more than a spacesuit and a bag of
foam was unlikely to ever become a particularly safe--or
enticing--maneuver.

Neither NASA nor the U.S. Air Force expressed an interest in the
MOOSE system,^[6] and so by the end of the 1960s the program had been
quietly shelved.^[citation needed]

See also[edit]

  * Paracone - Inflatable cone-shaped reentry vehicle.
  * Personal Rescue Enclosure - Inflatable ball-shaped space suit
  * Lunar Escape Systems - Proposed system to rescue Apollo
    astronauts from lunar surface

References[edit]

 1. ^ MOOSE means Manned Orbital Operations Safety Equipment, All
    Acronyms. Retrieved 9 June 2021.
 2. ^ ^a ^b "MOOSE", Encyclopedia Astronautica. Retrieved 9 June
    2021.
 3. ^ Amy Shira Teitel (Oct. 12, 2017). "The Wearable Reentry
    Spacecraft Of Yesteryear", Discover Magazine. Retrieved 9 June
    2021.
 4. ^ Gravity: Forgotten Space Escape Pod Could Bring Sandra Bullock
    Home Safe, GE.com, March 01, 2014. Retrieved 9 June 2021.
 5. ^ "How to survive a spaceship disaster", The Week, Jan. 8, 2015.
    Retrieved 9 June 2021.
 6. ^ "Free Falling", New Scientist, 29 July 2006. Retrieved 9 June
    2021.

External links[edit]

  * Encyclopedia Astronautica article on MOOSE
  * Analysis and design of space vehicle flight control systems.
    Volume 16 - Abort see page 145

*
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oldid=1027735436"
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