General Question What Would Have Happened if the Apollo LAS Tower collided with the CM during Launch?

[Urwumpe]

Well in this case it was tumbling end over end vertically in relation to the spacecraft so it tumbled by harmlessly, and orbiter doesn't model collisions anyway. It would have missed the CM entirely and probably glanced off the side of the SIVB stage. That would have been real real bad.

The problem with that is, that in reality, it would never have happened. Both rocket and LAS are flying completely different trajectories, while the rocket remains powered, the LAS would drop by gravity on a ballistic trajectory,

The LAS would always pass below the rocket, unless the rocket is strongly pitching down in the few seconds after LAS separation. That can happen in Orbiter, if you annoy the autopilot with low or high framerates, but can't happen in reality, where the "framerate" of the autopilot is always constant.

 

[Siliconaut]

Yeah. I know. I was more curious about how the Apollo LAS is designed to prevent such things from happening really. Just a mind exercise.

 

[indy91]

As I said earlier, the Tower Jettison Motor was slightly angled to the Center of Gravity of the LES. NASSP simulates this, although I don't know how historically accurate. Here is a quick and dirty screenshot I just made:

This is just after burnout of the Jettison Motor. As you can see, it's probably not going to hit the Saturn V.