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Comment by anotheryou | Hacker News Reader

I didn't get why the orange or red light is scary. Because it could mean landing in the desert when you are a glider?

You don't 'land in the desert'. It has to come down on a runway. Any risk to that means very high likelihood of injuries or death.

Was that the case here? Maybe, maybe not. But the flight plan was built with safety in mind, and the pilots should have aborted.

Makes sense :)

I forgot the space shuttle was also dubbed a flying/gliding brick

It's a glider, but a glider capable of mach 3 flight. So, approach speeds will be much faster than a typical glider. Probably higher speed than an airliner. That would be dangerous to land off field.

Also, it could mean the vehicle is exposed to aerodynamic conditions it is not designed for, operating outside of the flight envelope.

For reference, here's a video of a Boing 727 landing in the desert: https://youtu.be/kJZ1eHU_JZg?t=51

It doesn't go terribly well.

I don't believe the intention of that test was to try and safely put a plane down in a desert. It was a remote controlled crash test. The wiki page[1] says the descent rate was 1500 feet per minute. A typical touchdown rate according to the linked MIT article about this crash[2] puts airliner landings at 10-20 feet per minute.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Boeing_727_crash_experime...

[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20130129040232/http://alum.mit.e...

So if this ever happens to a plane you're on, it's the rich guys in first and business that will cop it. Economy will probably survive.

Nice reversal of the way things normally happen!

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