Red Acoustics News Article December 5 2014

Today we have witnessed the first steps towards a manned flight to mars with the launch of the orion space craft, sat on top of the delta rocket. The huge amounts of energy used to propel a spacecraft out of the Earths atmosphere and enter the weightless vacuum of space is not a hush hush affair, it’s definitely not going to go quietly. So recently NASA put their new Space Launch System (SLS) to the test in a small scale environment and found that at close proximity to the SLS would mean definite damage to humans and structures as well as impact on the rocket itself through the physical motion of sound (and vibration). They manage this by using suppression systems mainly consisting of huge volumes of water to “dampen” the sound. The high sound power levels that are generated from the rocket boosters on take off are not distributed evenly across the whole frequency spectrum and are more concentrated towards the low and mid range frequencies meaning you get a nice throaty rumble… but the possibility of some damage. How loud will the Orion space craft be? It will be incredibly loud considering it is bigger than the historic Saturn V launch system that boasts the world record for the highest recorded sound power level with a staggering 204dB! Now, if we put things into prospective, and compared this to some ordinary everyday objects (not the Saturn V), we will find (not surprisingly) a stark contrast.