Finally, after a week of drying the interior of space capsule Betty and general cleaning up I have been able to take a closer look at the damages caused by the high velocity impact from our LES test.
In the previous post flight blog I claimed that our astronaut test dummy might have made it. Now, I am not so sure...
The interior of the cabin was stuffed with bags of styrofoam pellets to prevent the capsule from sinking in case of major hull damage. This never happened, but the millions of styrofoam pellets left the bags and covered everything. So, during the first inspections, Randy looked quite OK but later I found his lower leg near his head, covered in pellets, and his foot near the main electronics panel.
Of course, Randy is a dummy with seriously rusty knees so I would not expect a real astronaut to lose his leg, but seriously break.
The following images shows the results of the impact on seat and various installations.
Soon I will remove Randy and perform more inspections to his body. He will undergo surgery until he is ready for yet another flight.
A new capsule is already on paper and liquid cooling long johns is soon to be developed. Also, Peter Madsen has a new hypergolic engine (Spectre) ready for testing. Stay tuned...
The adventure has just begun!
Ad Astra
