The Design, Testing, and Implementation of a Halon 1301 Fire Extinguishment System for Use in the Service Lunar Adapter at KSC Launch Complex 39

Since the advent of hypergolic fuels usage at the Kennedy Space Center and the Kennedy Air Force Station, personnel safety during fueling operations has been provided by limiting the number of persons having access to hazardous areas to those who were essential to the operation, and by providing these people with protective clothing. With the Apollo Program, a new problem has introduced itself; the Lunar Module (LM) (Fig. 1) is actually two launch vehicles which leave the launch pad as part of the Apollo payload. Fueling of these launch vehicles takes place approximately two weeks before the launch of the Apollo/Saturn V. Personnel are required to continue servicing the LM after fueling; this requires them to be enclosed within the Saturn/ Lunar Module Adapter (SLA) . Special egress equipment has been installed but will not be discussed in this presentation. To minimize the hazard of a flash fire resulting from the ignition of a spilled hypergol, a Halon 1301 (bromotriflouromethane) protection system has been designed and has been available during the launches of AS-204 and AS-504. Since improvements over the original system which was installed at Launch Complex 37 were incorporated into the design of the system for Launch Complex 39, our discussion will deal only with the Launch Complex 39 system