Hacker News Reader

Comment by leoc | Hacker News Reader

This probably helps to explain why aircraft design has flirted with full escape capsules https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escape_crew_capsule in the past.

View on HN

The B-58 Hustler escape capsule is probably the best operational example of this. It allowed pilots to eject at speeds up to Mach 2 (!!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbgeUNjsenA

and this guy survived SR-7 mid-air disintegration at mach 3+, wearing pressure suit...

theaviationist.com/2015/03/17/sr-71-mid-air-disintegration/

I'd say the F-111's system is just about perfect, although having a chunk of the airplane (the cockpit) thrust away and deploy its own parachute isn't always going to be practical.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8l79lSjVMg http://www.f-111.net/ejection.htm

Yes, I was thinking about the same thing...

And I feel even a commercial airline could make a similar device a standard configuration...that might make flying more expensive, but perhaps we could be able to reduce the cost somehow when manufacturing in massive scale...

Ejector pods a standard part in airlines? My mind boggles at the amount of weight that would be added. Manufacturing scale might bring down the capital cost, but it would never bring down the operational cost of lugging around all that extra weight, not to mention the inspections and tests required to ensure the devices are working as expected. Airline tickets would be 2x the cost, if not more.

People were still willing to fly when the crude oil price was at $100+ a barrel, although I am not sure if a well-designed and tested escape capsule is more complicated than the plane it self...

I just feel that is do-able, and had we made a good one now, we could use it for all the years to come -- and that could also be used in other travels or in case of catastrophic event...

Surviving a water landing from an ejector seat takes a fair bit of training. IMO, a backup parachute system would probably be about as safe and cheaper. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_Recovery_Systems

Granted, scaling up from a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_D-Jet to a 787 would be extremely difficult.

Mid-air accidents are a tiny fraction of plane crashes.

Not to mention the protocol for usage of something like that. Do people get to pull the handle whenever they feel like it?

This is interesting, if the plane could have 3 sections each with a parachute then if a bomb went off it might only take out 1 of the sections leaving whoever is in the other sections to survive.

> And I feel even a commercial airline could make a similar device a standard configuration

What failure are you trying to shield against? I can think of very very few commercial crashes where an escape pod would have helped.

Any capital invested in escape pods would be much better utilized trying to reduce the (already tremendously low) failure rate of aircrafts. I'm not convinced this OP isn't trolling...

Airliners are already the safest mode of travel out there. You are probably safer in your microscopic Economy-class seat at 36,000ft than you are lying in bed at home. The effort is probably more usefully spent elsewhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com