Comment Re:Would this kind of system have saved Challenger (Score 2) 44
This came up with Orion in the Ares I design. When solids are breached — either intentionally by range-safety or on-board abort systems, or due to the failure itself — they release a cloud of burning solid fuel debris. With a breach of liquid fuel tanks, such as the shuttle ET, you do get that big pretty fireball, but the actual heat being produced is fairly trivial; so as long as you are beyond the over-pressure wave, you are golden. Burning solid fuel is hot particles, when you pass back through the debris cloud, at the very least your parachute will melt and possibly the capsule itself will be damaged.
(At a more human scale, it's like the difference between getting that whumph of gas fireball from starting your gas griller, versus getting sprayed with burning oil. Accept that solid rocket fuel is more like thermite.)
In order to get far enough away from the solid rocket debris cloud, you need a monster LAS with monster acceleration. That results in a LAS as heavy as the capsule itself. And since Orion is already an over-size, over-weight capsule...