Press Release

NASA presents Space Flight Awareness Team Award to Floyd and Beyler for their analysis of VAB

Dr. Jason Floyd and Dr. Craig Beyler, along with the other members of the “KSC VAB Quantity Distance Working Group”, were awarded the Space Flight Awareness Team Award in 2011 in recognition of their analysis of thermal hazards to adjacent buildings and personnel resulting from solid rocket motor accidents in the Kennedy Space Flight Center Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB). The analysis, done as a part of a working group effort, involved predictions of the ignition of adjacent rocket motors resulting from an initiating motor accident, as well as thermal hazards to buildings and people outside the VAB. The work supported a risk analysis conducted by NASA of enhanced VAB activity levels on adjacent buildings and personnel. The work was done using the FDS computational fluid mechanics model and a thermal hazard model developed in the project. The project showed the way for transitioning quantity-distance evaluations for Hazard Class 1.3 materials from the existing ad hoc methods to physics-based methods. The working group included members of the NASA and DOD explosives safety communities.