A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight | Hacker News Reader

A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight

military.com

231 pointsgscott192 comments

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>> It can take pilots up to 30 seconds to reorient themselves, a long time while behind the stick of a jet aircraft.

Their is an old chopper pilot saying: the faster the aircraft the slower the pilot. You think 30 seconds is a long time in a fighter jet at 30,000 feet? Try 30 seconds when trying to land helicopter on the deck of a pitching ship. A 747 flies at basically the same speed as a fighter (~mach 0.8), in many cases actually faster. Nobody talks about those pilots having to think quickly. The time to make decisions is a function of how close you are to the ground, not how fast you are moving.

By design, a 747 pilot is a glorified bus driver that flys in a fairly straight path. Nobody talks about quick thinking until they do. Captain Sully ring any bells? That wasn't a 30k feet either. When an airliner has something go wrong, it's hundreds of people that are affected and will always make the news.

By design, a fighter pilot does a heck of a lot more than a airline pilot. When a pilot does something wrong, we rarely hear about it.

Comparing them in this manner is just disenginuous.

> Comparing them in this manner is just disenginuous.

True, a 747 pilot will have in the vicinity of 400 souls on board, while a fighter jet pilot will have 1 or 2.

Might have upwards of hundred thousand if he doesn’t complete the mission, so I wouldn’t say it’s as clear cut as you make it out to be.

Normally, fighter jets kill peoples...not safe them. The "could"-safe-way is not proof-able, the killings are.

Yes. They kill people piloting bombers carrying bombs, potentially nuclear, again potentially aimed at cities... sometimes you have to pick the lesser evil.

When was the last time an American fighter pilot shot down a bomber?

“Deterrence” is the word you’re looking for. Bombers don’t fly against the US because our fighters (and various other AA systems) would shoot them down.

Sorry but not even north Korea would use bombers, however fighters are good for airspace policing...but shooting down bombers....that's 60's mindset.

No need to apologize. NK doesn’t use bombers because fighters and are prolific. Without those fighters bombers become more viable.

I think you should educate yourself about something called rockets.

I converse here on HN because the discourse is usually a little higher than the “middle school” level that you find elsewhere on the Internet. Won’t you join me in preserving that property?

If you change your username, i don't like talk to "throwaway"-trolls

My name has the string "throwaway" in it, but I have 4x your karma so I think it's safe to say I'm just as valid a contributor in this community as you are. Anyway, neither of us are using our legal names, so I don't know why you're throwing that stone in particular.

That said, you're breaking the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

>That said, you're breaking the site guidelines

>>usually a little higher than the “middle school”

You too.

I'm sure you weren't trying to mislead by sharing a cropped version of my quote which may seem more nefarious than the full sentence; however, it should be noted that the original sentence read:

> I converse here on HN because the discourse is usually a little higher than the “middle school” level that you find elsewhere on the Internet.

Rather than your edit:

> usually a little higher than the “middle school”

Edits like these don't inspire good faith discussion. Frankly, I think this thread has thoroughly outlived its useful life.

Your stuck in the 60's.

Might I suggest you watch some videos from Ukraine dated 2022. Granted Su-25 does not carry nuclear weapons, but there are examples of rather dramatically “successful” bombing runs in the Mariupol theater of operations.

>Granted Su-25 does not carry nuclear weapons

If you think the Su-25 is a bomber then the A-10 is one too ;)

Both are subsonic attack aircraft's, completely different missions.

Those are Bombers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_bomber

And since you mentioned Ukraine:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-160

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-160#Former_operator...

Pretty interesting backstory.

Not yet a bus driver, but we're heading that way. Slowly.

I disagree, I think the destination is "elevator operator" and we are half way there.

Automating flight has quite a bit of low hanging fruits and Airbus has become the first harvester out there. The rest opposed at first, but the only logical path forward is automating people out of the systems. Yes, we had the 737MAX thingy but even then arguments for re-humanisation of aircraft controls didn't catch much traction.

737MAX would not have crashed if it were being flown autonomously, as the entire MCAS system would have been unnecessary. It was there to meet regulations regarding control feel for human pilots.

You are incorrect.

The MCAS system was built to work on a very buggy angle of attack sensor. They are notoriously unreliable. The max kept one on each side of the plane (the airbus equivalent has 3 on each side). Further compounded by the fact that the (this was true at the time and theyve joined systems now) pilots computer only used the left side of the plane instruments and the copilots computer only used the right side.

So no. Boeing fucked up in the first place by trying to stealth fix a hardware problem (stalling at a new lower angle of attack in the "same model airplane") with software. And then lying through their teeth about the impact of this.

The equivalent military 737max with MCAS simply allowed the pilot to more forcefully adjust the flight control stick to turn it off. So they knew better.

Companies attempting to skirt legislation in the face of better profits is always going to cause issues here.

The entire max disaster was an attempt by management at Boeing to get pilots to be able to fly all 737s with basically no retraining.

You call him incorrect but your comment is riddled with inaccuracies.

> only used the left side of the plane instruments and the copilots computer only used the right side

These aren't really "pilot" and "copilot" computers, but two redundant computer systems (each with redundant processors) that take turns running every other flight.

> trying to stealth fix a hardware problem (stalling at a new lower angle of attack in the "same model airplane") with software

Actually, trying to stealth fix a human-related hardware problem (stick feel and overpitching tendency, not stall) with a crappy software approach.

> And then lying through their teeth about the impact of this.

A big factor here is that runaway trim was considered a serious problem but also one that flight crews regularly train for and are tested on and are expected to handle. But MCAS gave this exam to pilots far more frequently than runaway trim had happened before and we found that crews often fail the test.

The system design didn't try very hard to prevent this occurrence, because it was thought that flight crews could handle the problem when it occurred.

> The equivalent military 737max with MCAS simply allowed the pilot to more forcefully adjust the flight control stick to turn it off. So they knew better.

It's not really the same system, and it's not a "military 737max"-- I think you're referring to the KC-46, which is built upon the 767, and has a pitch feel control system also called "MCAS" that solves a related problem but overall operates very differently.

> The entire max disaster was an attempt by management at Boeing to get pilots to be able to fly all 737s with basically no retraining.

This worsened things, but the main issue is that there is a certification requirement -- https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/14/25.173 -- for pilot pitch feel on climb which is hard to meet with larger engines under the wing.

The greed of the beancounters killed 343 people.

MCAS only exists as a bandaid to a terrible idea. They should've built a new aircraft, not strap bigger engines into a 40ish year old frame.

If MCAS _actually_ worked, you and I wouldn't even know about it. But as tribute to how poorly it was designed and delivered, we know about MCAS because it killed over 300 people.

Just an absurd point you're making.

Airbus are an engineering firm, so they are doing clever engineering things. Boeing was an engineering firm that has been run by bean counters the past few decades.

It wasn't "opposition to automation" it was opposition to innovation for the sake of short term profit.

Boeing's executives should all be hanged :) hundreds of people dead for no reason whatsoever.

They would have built a new aircraft if one of their big customers hasn't announced they were buying a new 737 variant that Boeing hadn't even thought they were going to be making.

Boeing was going to start a clean sheet small aircraft. And then American Airlines announced they were going to buy 100 of a new 737 variant.

Wasn't it the airlines who pressured the manufacturer to avoid the need for recertification of pilots? I think if Boeing had a choice MCAS would have never been needed?

Also because full automation means pilots, so no certifications for any aircraft types, let alone the same one. So there would be no need to force the plane to be a "737".

Why not? Full certification of automatic piloting of a new plane type might have run into the same kind of situation - that you want to "preserve the plane type" to get to market quicker with the product. This is conjecture since we're nowhere near this yet?

"Preserve the plane type" definitely delayed the 737MAX and only served to save pilot training costs. With no pilots, even that (dubious) advantage would be gone.

As someone who knows the basics of driver automation software - I would love an in-depth breakdown from an expert on the topic of aircraft pilot automation.

I'd imagine there would be a many-decade long period of overlap where pilots would observe the plane flying before the plane can fly solo.

> nowhere near this yet

Is that sure?

Autonomous cars are hard because of “surprise”. Other drivers, kids, bicycles, randomness intersecting the street that has to be dealt with.

By and large, aircraft have the way cleared for them by ATC, and objects that may intersect with them tend to be on a path that is neither “came out of nowhere” nor erratic (UFOs aside!). Weather is a challenge, but autopilot deals with weather already. Arguably there’s much less surprise for a sky bus than a road bus, and arguably the fact it’s a big airliner instead of a crossover SUV doesn’t make it particularly harder for a machine.

TL;DR: Planes seem “nearer” than cars and some cars pretend to be automatic already.

Surprises exist of course. It's rare but when it happens the consequences are greater than for a car accident.

No, it still would have crashed, because it only was taking angle of attack from one sensor, and so would have been under the erroneous belief that it was stalling

No it would not have crashed because it wouldn't have the run-away trim problem that prevented pilot recovery from the "stall". Trim is something that is only really needed for humans who hold onto sticks to fly.

Sully is spoken about, but not always in the best light. There is a line of though that an automated system could well have landed that aircraft. Other lines of thought blame reliance on checklists, that a quick abandonment of checklists might have been more effective. But imho the unsung hero of that incident remains the airliner, designed by human engineers, that was able to survive landing on water and remain afloat long enough for an evacuation. The design and regulatory decisions that created that ability happened long before the bird strike.

Isn't throwing out the checklist exactly how Sully was able to make his decision? He realized from experience that he was too low to make it through the checklist in time, and jumped ahead knowing things needed to have a hurry-up applied.

Those checklists exist for a reason. Far, far more incidents and accidents are caused by ignoring them than by relying on them. These planes are sufficiently complex that pilots can't come close to holding all possible contingencies in their heads; the checklists are designed specifically to allow them to react appropriately in any foreseeable situation.

I'm not saying it's impossible that if they'd ignored the checklists and immediately made the perfect decision they could have turned back and landed the plane - just that it's far from certain, and if pilots get in the habit of doing this, it will harm more than it helps.

You are correct, but the captain is ultimately the final authority how to handle anything that happens in-flight. If he or she feels that the checklist will not help, or will take too long, the decision can be made to do something else. If they survive, the captain can expect a lot of questions if standard procedures were not followed, but as they say, any landing you can walk away from is a good landing.

That's true, and as the other reply mentions, one obvious scenario for that would be if there literally isn't enough time to execute the checklist. I just didn't like the implication that checklists are bad and if they'd just been ignored things would've been better. Like, maybe, but it depends on how the pilot reacts absent a checklist. Sometimes that will be correctly, but there are just so many incidents caused (in part) by pilots just doing one thing they remember while skipping over other checklist items that would have helped.

I wonder why new planes are so complex.

Computers make it technologically feasible to simplify things, but also to make them more complicated. Big organizations always inject as much complexity as possible into engineering projects.

> I wonder why new planes are so complex.

They're not. Older planes required more personnel (flight engineers, navigators, etc.). Newer planes are vastly easier to operate with just a captain and first officer.

Broadly speaking, because they have to be able to handle a huge range of conditions.

A Cessna 152 (a single-engine, two-seat, low-performance aircraft popular for flight training) isn't very complex to operate. It can't fly at 30,000 feet, cross continents in a single flight, fly in icing conditions, land in zero visibility, safely take off or land in a crosswind that could be described as more than a stiff breeze, or carry much more than two people and a backpack. Airliners do all of those things. Military aircraft have similar performance demands, and people shooting at them.

Automation can probably simplify everyday operation more than it has so far, but virtually every system that can be put on an aircraft has failed in flight at some point so pilots have to be able to quickly identify malfunctions and manually override a half-working system. For a recent example of what happens when that isn't the case, see the 737 Max.

OK, but older airliners and military vessels also met those demands and were much simpler than modern airliners.

Back about 20 years ago a buddy was showing me his new airplane. Damn avionics ran on Windows NT. I told him he’d never ever get me up on that thing.

Some info about that product here, starting on page 7:

https://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/design_approvals/air_s...

Here’s the funny part at the end:

> The manufacturer admitted that desktop products in general are not good candidates for avionics, and the COTS components that are most likely to be effective are industrial-grade components with a wide distribution base such as medical-based products.

Thats awesome.

What’s ironic—I think he thought I’d be impressed…and that I would be more likely to want to fly in it. However at the time I was working as a Network Engineer (for him) and I while I was happy to entrust my livelihood to Microsoft, I would definitely not trust my life to Microsoft

> Damn avionics ran on Windows NT

OMG.

I thought for things where human lives are acutely at stake they audit every single line of code.

I mean, Windows has a known history of crashes and freezes and things like that.

I'd trust some kind of unix (BSD) a lot more than NT.

Tangential: For many non-consumer applications, I see plenty of situations where you'd think a Unix variant (or even bare metal electronics) would be an obvious choice, but no it's usually a software running on top of Windows.

Like, my local tyre shop has their wheel alignment software running on Windows XP. Before seeing that, I'd have thought it'd be some contraption with sensors attached to 7-segment LED display or something, which would also theoretically be able to run forever.

Yeah, I wasn’t too keen on the notion of being a couple thousand feet in the air watching the pilot having to bounce their avionics software.

Or…asking me to troubleshoot the damn thing since I had a Windows NT MCP at that time.

"Is there a software engineer on board?"

(similar to "is there a doctor on board?")

Interestingly, the F-22 appears to handle stuff like engine failures for you[1].

Perhaps it's inertia of regulations and training. Radically automating airplanes involves training loads of people. There's also certification, which is different for military aircraft than for civilian aircraft.

[1] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=n068fel-W9I

The kind of disorientation I think they are thinking about is the plane ends up upside down in cloud but the pilot thinks he's the right way up. In that situation the plane will be accelerating towards the ground at 2G which will have you going downwards at 400 mph in 10 seconds. In that context 30 seconds would see you pancaked.

747s don't do maneuvers that lead to them being in extreme orientations but fighter jets etc do.

747s can see and survive major upsets especially if people don’t trust their instruments.

In one case a 747 survived the pilot pulling 5.1g’s on China Airlines flight 006 in 1985: https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Reports/...

More generally commercial aircraft should be able to take +2.5g to -1g safely at max takeoff weight, and roughly 50% above that before massive structural damage.

Yes, but fighter jets often fly closer to the ground and change direction more often (than airliners).

Fighter jets are also unstable, by design. Commercial aircraft are required to be stable, as they don't need to change direction quickly, but rather be as safe as possible.

https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-fly/aerodynamics/3-types...

So that's why I can't properly trim my fighter jet in DCS to fly in a straight line with no altitude change. I still think I'm bad at it tho.

At the point of closest approach, airliners fly just as close to the ground as fighter aircraft.

Usually twice per flight.

In a very straight, guided, line, down an uncluttered path.

[usually, weather conditions may make things more difficult of course, and some city airports are dubiously enough placed to put the willies up your average pilot]

> The time to make decisions is a function of how close you are to the ground, not how fast you are moving.

Why is that the conclusion of 747 vs F-16? Proximity to ground is a glaringly incomplete takeaway. Fighter jets are a-priori designed for quicker decision making, not primarily because of the ground, but primarily because they’re built for fighting other fighter jets. Proximity to other jets can happen at 30k feet. Fighter jets are built to withstand a much higher limit load than 747s - at least 2x higher G forces; the fighter jet was designed for faster turns. Everything about the fighter jet is intended for faster decision making and everything about the 747 and it’s flight procedures is designed to be as boring (safe) as possible.

> Nobody talks about those pilots having to think quickly.

Most pilot training talks about staying on top of and evaluating the situation.

Staying ahead of the airplane (managing your workload) and falling behind (and the fact that speed changes that) are not uncommon topics.

There's as similar vibro-tactile device, which is a belt you wear and always vibrates strongest in the direction of north, and over time the user would learn or improve their internal navigation.

A quick search reveals a company, feelSpace, tried to bring this idea market for the purposes of navigation: https://newatlas.com/feelspace-navigation-belt/43571/ If I knew, I probably would have bought the belt for learning better navigation just as a fun little project!

Cool stuff! As we start to have more devices constantly around us, it will be interesting to see how haptic feedback can provide a more intuitive to our devices as we move through space.

It's worth noting that, anecdotally, your sense of direction becomes WAY worse when you stop using the device. It seems that your brain encodes it as a piece of input to its navigation and deemphasizes more instinctive way finding, which hurts you when you no longer have the input.

The whole idea reminds me of those people who got magnets inserted underneath their skin on their fingers so the tactile response allowed them to feel magnetic fields. It’s neat how our brains seem to rewire and adapt to new sensory input like that

There's a whole field of related experiments called "sensory substitution", and similar "brain rewiring" experiments that include wearing vision inverting goggles for extended periods.

They're all really interesting, but tricky to do controlled experiments with, and impossible to do double blind experiments with. All the papers in this area make for fascinating reading.

There's also a cool paper that shows these adaptations happen quicker than can be attributed to "rewiring". (I get that the parent used the term informally in their post, but it's important to me!)

There are also some DIY versions of this, often in the form of ankle bracelets.

Lehpt Anonym, a 'biohacker' even planned to implant a similar device in their leg[1], though I don't know if they succeeded.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2010/12/transcending-the-human-diy-sty...

One of the surprises I got after being locally anesthetized for a surgery, was that I could no longer localize my arm in space without looking at it. Proprioception is heavily based on the flow of air against our skin and hair.

Some flowmeters are based on that principle, using a tiny mechanical hair that vibrates as air flows over it, and I've always felt robotics should just dump a whole bunch of them on their moving parts rather than rely on a few gyroscopes and servomotors to estimate their position in space.

Is that really true? Anecdotally, I have no trouble keeping track of where my arm is when I have a coat and gloves on :)

I wonder if there's a side effect of anesthesia that inhibits the body's kinesthetic sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception#Proprioception_...

A quick google search says muscles are the primary receptors in humans, before it was believed the joints played that role. From my experience with anesthesia I reckon it's a little bit of everything, with the sensation of different organs being weighed differently in the final estimation.

Unless you're in a vacuum as suggested in another comment I don't think you could draw definitive conclusions on the role of the skin from wearing a coat, the air flow might be mostly prevented but the weight and friction of your coat over the top of your arm as you move would be essentially the same input.

I think that linking skin sensations to proprioception is pretty dubious. Think about walking in a high gale. The air will be pressing your outer layers to your body in a way that adds extra 'weight', but there's not even the slightest sensation of phantom movement in your limbs. Maybe it's a very low-weighted input, but I very much doubt proprioception is 'heavily based' on it as you said earlier.

You don't get phantom movements when you get a deep tissue massage yet the muscles are very much involved. There is also literature on the role of the skin in proprioception in humans. That being said, heavily might be overstated, I wasn't trying to claim an authoritative view on the matter, only reporting what I felt while anesthesia was wearing off.

Hm, yeah, that's a fair point.

My antipsychotic causes this problem severely enough I have difficulty placing my feet correctly the first few hours after I take it. (Meaning I fall really easily.) I take additional medication (Benadryl, surprisingly) to counteract a lot of neurological side effects like this.

Do you know how Benadryl counteracts that effect? That's fascinating! (I hope you don't mind me asking, you're not a research subject and I respect that you may not want to discuss it)

Always happy to discuss it. From what my psychiatrist said, Seroquel messes with histamine channels in a way that Benadryl counteracts. From personal experience Allegra does not have this effect.

It could be one input used to correct/fine-tune awareness, but I'd be surprised if it's a primary one.

Incidentally, there's a good article (plus embedded videos) on impaired proprioception here: https://theconversation.com/proprioception-our-imperceptible...

>> Proprioception is heavily based on the flow of air against our skin and hair.

> Is that really true?

No, it isn't true and it cannot even theoretically be true. There's nothing about air currents that suggests a particular location in space. When the wind changes, nobody gets confused about where they are.

I've always learned that proprioception is a standalone thing, not based on the air moving over the skin etc, but really just your own nervous system telling you the position of your joints. Which together tells you where your arm is.

As far as I know it would theoretically still work in a vacuum with your eyes closed.

Proprioception is the overall sense of knowing where your body parts are.

You don’t just have a bunch of ‘proprioceptor’ nerves dedicated solely to that task, you have a whole wealth of signals coming into your brain that it aggregates into that overall sense.

Similar to how vision isn’t just the raw signals on your optic nerve, but a whole machinery around filling in the details and blanks and saccades from memory and inference to constitute a full visual sense.

> You don’t just have a bunch of ‘proprioceptor’ nerves dedicated solely to that task,

Actually you do. Most animals have capsule joint receptors which are dedicated to sensing stretching/relaxing of the joint capsule tissue.

This signal is then sent through dedicated nerve paths on the dorsal part of your spine.

And... they aren't just used for proprioception. They also tell you how heavy things are when you pick them up, and sense vibrations, and help you sense changes in acceleration, which are distinct sensations from 'where in space are my hands right now.'

Jup, that’s what I meant. Your nerve cells sensing where things are as opposed to other external senses like skin touch being used to figure it out.

> Proprioception is heavily based on the flow of air against our skin and hair.

feeling sensations on the skin doesn't tell you where the skin is...?

It does, the air flow going downward on your skin tells you your arm went up.

I recall my arm being very numb, I had to poke myself strongly to feel it, I could move it but I had no idea where it went without looking at it, multiple times I was surprised to find it in a spot I didn't know it was. As I recovered sensation in my skin I regained proprioception gradually. Really trippy experience.

I once woke up, sober, from a night at home alone watching tv, with a strange person in my bed.

Their arm was resting on my stomach above the sheets. I could see it. It was terrifying.

I freaked out and tried to throw that arm off me when I realized it was my own. I’d slept on it, gone numb and my sleepy brain considered it someone else’s arm.

I had a co-worker lose his life to spatial disorientation during a night-training flight in Italy: "Maj. Lucas "Gaza" Gruenther, a pilot assigned 31st Fighter Wing, went missing during a nighttime training mission over the Adriatic Sea Jan. 28. In the days that followed, Italian and U.S. authorities collaborated as part of in an immense search effort to locate Gruenther. The search ended Jan. 31 when Gruenther's body was recovered by an Italian vessel... Gruenther completed more than 2,640 hours of flying time to include 400 combat hours."

It's also how John F. Kennedy Jr. died. He was neither trained nor rated for instrument flying, and crashed when his plane flew into fog. This is an all-too-common way for GA pilots to die. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_Jr._plane_cras...

"In 1974, the future Dr. Rupert was skydiving naked while he was a student at the University of Illinois. He noticed that the rush of air on so much bare skin kept him oriented, even as he spun and twirled in midair."

Where do you sign up for naked skydiving?

It's usually tradition that your 100th jump is supposed to be naked, at least amongst the skydiving communities I was a part of.

Can confirm - did once for my 100th jump, and once on a birthday. Nothing quite like naked skydiving.

At the risk of being pedantic, I assume the parachute and harness are still necessary clothing.

I'll see your pedantry and raise it: Is a parachute and harness actually "clothing"?

Plenty of WW2 brides got married wearing a modified silk parachute...

I'd guess just about anything can be clothing if you wear it.

You start naked, and then put on the parachute on the way down.

At basically any local skydiving club.

Skydiving is cold. Skydiving while naked sounds freezing

> The estimated damages caused by spatial disorientation cost the U.S. military an estimated $300 million every year, along with the lives of around 30 pilots.

I find it surprising that 30 pilots die every year because of this. I would think every time US loses a military plane there are some news about it on TV. But now 30 pilots dies per year only because of this? What about other causes of death? How many? US is not at war currently.

How many US pilots died during Iraq war? I seem to remember (based on TV news) it was about or close to 0.

"Military aviation accidents have killed 224 pilots or aircrew, destroyed 186 aircraft, and cost more than $11.6 billion since 2013"[1]

"Combined with information from the Federal Aviation Administration, an average of 383 pilots die every year in the US." [2]

[1] https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-aviation-mishaps-de...

[2] https://www.skytough.com/post/how-many-pilots-die-a-year

That is 32 pilots or aircrew killed in military aviation accidents total per year from 2013-2020. The article claims 30 pilot die every year from spatial disorientation alone. I find it unlikely that 30 out of 32 deaths of "pilots and crew" are pilots, and also unlikely that all of these accidents are due to spatial disorientation.

(Edit- just read the source article- https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19990606&slug... it says 30 lives, not 30 pilots... the posted article got it wrong. Even then, I have some doubts as to the number, but its definitely closer to the truth).

I think the sentence is just poorly worded. I see this "it costs $300 per year" and "30 lives" as two separate ideas. I think we might just be assuming that its also 30 lives per year, when it might just have been $300 million and 30 lives in recent years. I struggled with that sentence too, so I could also be totally wrong.

It costs a lot of money to train a military pilot. All thr trainig, all the simulators, even salary.

Then fuel for hours of flight every year. Aircraft mainenance.

That's why everyone tries to save them when shot down (also they know secrets).

As far as journalism goes these days, that looks like an accurate portrayal of the numbers.

So in this case, they are trying to say that this costs the U.S. military an estimated $300 million every year, and also kills 30 (non-military and military combined) pilots?

I think they're two separate ideas maybe. The "per year" in that sentence is ambiguous. It's unclear if it applies to the $300 million, or both that and the 30 lives.

They are misquoting their own source:

> The spatial disorientation, or vertigo, suffered by the pilot is very common and causes accidents that cost the U.S. military more than $300 million and about 30 lives every year [1]

Lives, not pilots. It could be 2 pilots and 28 other service members on the same one aircraft.

[1] https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19990606&slug...

Accidents dominate this, you hear about quite a lot of them, not all fatal.

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/04/08/...

I only know one pilot, but the number of other pilots he knows that have died is pretty insane. This is non-military.

About 30 US military pilots a year are killed in all accidents.

That propaganda you might have heard on TV nearly 20 years ago is bullshit.

Spatial disorientation occurs in the IMC conditions without visual reference to the natural horizon: inside clouds, pitch black night over the water (e.g. Kennedy 1999), etc. Pilots specifically train to fly in these conditions (IFR rating) and also practice to be proficient. I heard there is a research that a pilot w/o IFR rating or w/o current recurrent training or w/o recent actual experience loses control in less than 60 seconds.

The key here is recent experience or training. I fly IFR a lot (I live in Michigan and we have clouds 12 months a year) - I clocked 0.6 hrs instrument time on 1.4 hrs flight today. I always hand fly (w/o autopilot) at least part of the flight and I feel safe doing so. Many (if not all) other pilots who regularly fly on instruments feel the same - when you are proficient, it’s really not a big deal (and honestly kind of boring after a while).

Now, I am not surprised that researcher was able to do all these cool tricks with his invention after recent training and experience using this tool. But that would not help with real problem of pilots being out of proficiency. I wonder if this invention will be as effective for a pilot who didn’t fly for a couple weeks or a couple months. Can this pilot do all the same tricks safely? That would be the actual test on the usefulness of this invention.

Edit: grammar

The title had me assuming this article would be about using a yaw string.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaw_string

Flappy, highly sensitive and a few inches long, it gives you an intuitive feeling of airflow without having to look down at your instrumentation.

I thought the same thing!

I used to be an avid skydiver, this article reminds me of the time my buddy Todd and his friend Jason jumped out of a jet, naked, at the World Freefall Convention in Illinois. They underestimated how bad the spot was going to be and ended up having to walk back like four miles wrapped in nothing but their parachutes. Ha ha. RIP Todd Jacobsen, he died after a bad landing back in 2008.

(Spoiler) Disappointed that they didn't end up with naked pilots. But it reminded me how Polynesian navigators in the Pacific would use their testicles to detect subtle ocean swells. We're used to relying on our eyes but our other senses can be just as useful.

A similar striking phenomena happened when I shaved my head instead of haircuts.

I was immediately very aware of every slight motion of air even in what seemed like still rooms, or generated by my motion, not even walking. It was like I had a new sensor upgrade. Almost more interesting is that it did not fade or degrade over the months that I kept that (non-)hairstyle.

The tactile sense can be a very high-bandwidth information feed.

So I actually buzz my hair really short for high power rifle season so I can feel the wind better. I'm also balding, so that helps.

It mostly boils down to using it as a "don't pull the trigger, the wind just did something funky" sensor.

Granted about half the time I end up throwing a baseball cap on it because not getting sunburn/skin cancer is more important to me than a few points at 600 yards, but it does help.

> I'm also balding, so that helps.

Opportunist...

Sunscreen?

Sunscreen above eye level + sweat = stinging eyes.

Yup pretty much this. I do use sunscreen on ears, neck, right hand, or basically anywhere that can't drip down into my eyes

Similar experience, I mostly noticed that I could feel certain sources of radiation, like hot kitchen equipment and bright lights.

I also found myself bumping my head a lot when working in semi-cramped spaces which I was doing a lot at the time. Hair normally acts as a small proximity sensor around your dome in a way I was completely unaware of before that.

Yeah, doing some home renovation work with my dad in confined spaces, I noticed he bumps his head A LOT (way more than me). The main difference between us is amount of hair on our domes (he's got practically none).

Swimmers and cyclists also shave part or all (public) parts of their body. For swimmers, "shaved and tapered" performances are classed apart from the rest. (Tapering refers to reduced workout intensity, shaving to removal of body hair.)

Sounds like the first step to being an airbender

For more: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/testicular-navigation

I just can say thank you for this priceless piece of human knowledge

> Rupert's first prototype used a 69-cent toy to provide the necessary tactile stimulation to reorient a pilot. More than 30 years later, vibrations are the main indicators.

Nice.

> The estimated damages caused by spatial disorientation cost the U.S. military an estimated $300 million every year, along with the lives of around 30 pilots.

Can that be right? 30 pilots a year sounds really high.

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-aviation-mishaps-de... indicates that the U.S. have had 224 deaths and lost 186 aircraft over seven years, so roughly thirty airmen a year sounds about right.

I suppose one could be pedantic about pilots rather than aircrew at large, since those 186 aircraft would have had one pilot each, but the larger point still stands. Someone probably just saw the 224 number and thought each indicated a plane manned by a single pilot.

Hm that would attribute all accidents to orientation issues, which I guess is possible? It also state the cost as over 11.6B between 2013 and 2020, which would make the cost more like 1.5B per year?

Either way though, 224 deaths from accidents in 8ish years is way higher than I had expected. Hopefully with the withdrawal from Afghanistan we will see this number decline.

Not to mention that it is perfectly possible to lose an aircraft without losing the pilot.

I read this as 30 pilots over all time, $300 million a year.

I thought the same thing. I wondered if perhaps they meant $300 Million per year annualized and also a total of 30 pilots over some number of years.

This makes me wonder.

I get car-sick when I'm a passenger in a car. Sometimes it takes an hour. Sometimes 10 minutes.

However, if I'm riding in a convertible with the top down... I haven't gotten car-sick yet.

Is the wind "fixing" the problem with my brain?

Motion sickness is body's way to protect itself against eating hallucinogens by mistake. Large mismatch between what your inner ear is feeling about your motion, and what your eyes perceive as your motion, imply possible hallucinogens, so your body is trying to make you throw them up. Humans haven't evolved riding in vehicles. Interior of car is not moving much relative to you, but your inner ear feels movement.

This seems very odd as by the time you start feeling the effects of an hallucinogen, your body has already absorbed them past the point of expelling them being effective.

Apparently dosing was enough of a difference at some point that this mechanism evolved (assuming the stated reason is accurate).

Perhaps our distant ancestors also tended to eat a small bite first, then proceed with other foods, before consuming the remainder? For that matter the drug wouldn't be absorbed all at once. If it is toxic better to eject whatever hasn't been digested than continue absorbing it. There's a bonus psychological side-effect: vomiting is not pleasant and the individual (if they survive) will be more likely to remember what they ate and how sick it made them to avoid it in the future.

> There's a bonus psychological side-effect: vomiting is not pleasant

I never want to do it, but it nearly always makes me feel much better. You can even get a sort of sense of calm or euphoria from vomiting. I can't say that it's pleasant, but if it were less gross and smelly it wouldn't be so bad... although the muscle contractions would still be hell on my under-trained abs.

I believe that's just endorphins.

I'm familiar with the sensation; it's enough to make you feel better, possibly even sober (if it was a drinking related episode), but the effect is unfortunately very temporary.

Is that always the case? I suspect the hallucinogens that people have selected to intentionally trip on are a bit unusual (intentional dose sizes, presumably they are selected to get the person tripping in some particular timeframe, right? I'm obviously showing some ignorance on this topic).

This would have evolved in our rodent ancestors. They would have nibbled a bit of anything they came across that seemed like it might possibly be food.

Oddly, I gather rats cannot barf, which is why coumarin works as rat killer.

> Oddly, I gather rats cannot barf, which is why coumarin works as rat killer.

I think your recollection is off by a little. Coumarin is an anticoagulant and damages rats' livers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coumarin

You might be thinking of corn gluten meal, which kills rats by preventing them from absorbing water? It's sold as RatX: https://www.ecoclearproducts.com/pages/ratx-faqs

You've defined it via the general mismatch in a good way. Sea sickness is your eyes saying, "I'm not moving", but your inner ear saying, "Oh yes we are". VR sickness is your eyes saying, "We are moving" and your inner ear saying, "No we're not"

I wonder whether having something to blow air on you in particular directions as you move in VR might help with that, then?

That shouldn't be too hard to try out. A few fans controlled by the motion in the game. Sounds worth a shot.

That would be really, really nifty.

This is one evolutionary explanation, but hasn't been proven, and is not widely accepted. I don't buy it, as by the time you're feeling effects from ingesting something, you're already 45 minutes to an hour in. Additionally, our taste buds and nose do a great job of warning us about things we shouldn't be eating.

Tangential but maybe corroborating point:

Disney World has a ride ( I think called Mission Space ? ) that spins you in an enclosed space to imitate acceleration in space flight

Lots of motion sickness warnings on that ride and there are two key mitigations in each seat:

1. A “cockpit window” lcd screen showing a POV video that tracks with the acceleration

2. A powerful fan impelling air at your face

Looking away from the screen, even for a moment, can cause immense nausea and iirc is advised against on the ride

Neat!

Wind blowing into a face is something special. Watch dogs, they are crazy about it. Like cats can't resist hiding in a box, so dogs can't resist heading against the wind. :)

Though, seriously speaking, I don't know really. I think wind helps against car-sickness, and maybe more than in one way: sickness can be triggered by too much of CO2 in a bloodstream. It normally doesn't but I believe effects of disorientation and increased levels of CO2 are additive. So it is possible to be slightly disoriented (but not enough for a sickness), slightly deprived of fresh air (but not enough for a sickness), but to feel sickness because of a combined effect.

It is hard to keep your vision limited on the interiors of a car when driving a convertible, because no roof. Looking outside gives your vision sensory alignment with the orientation fluid in your inner ear.

In a non convertible, your vision senses betray what your balance sense perceives (motion instead of stillness) and the body decides it’s time to throw up whatever poisonous stuff made you

For me it helps to have as much of a view of the outside as possible. Feeling the wind helps also. If I'm in the back seat looking mostly at the interior of the car, my inner ear senses motion but my eyes tell me I'm stationary. I think those conflicting inputs are the cause of most motion sickness.

Much less of an issue for me when I'm in front looking out the front window.

> Much less of an issue for me when I'm in front looking out the front window.

And it never an issue when your are behind the wheel. In this case nothing can surprise you, because any acceleration or rotation not just predicted by your brain, but directly caused by it.

This is also why nudists who spend most of their time naked with air flowing over their bodies as they move have better proprioception than clothed individuals.

Good article.

I can't help but wonder why way-finding / path-finding vibrational orienteering vests aren't a thing yet.

You could vibratory signal a path in complete darkness, indicate obstacles and threats or directions to supply caches etc.

I remember reading about an experiment where they gave somebody a belt which would vibrate at the north side and the subjects became very spatially aware would never get lost. Even when they were taken at night, blindfolded and driven around for like half an hour they could point to the way home without really thinking about it.

ah seems to be a product now: https://point-iot.eu/success-story/navibelt/

This is a skill you can teach yourself through mindfulness alone. I've never been driven around blindfolded, but I can enter a building, go through a big maze of hallways, and be able to tell you which direction north is.

We probably have a magnetic sense that we lose conscious awareness of through not paying attention.

There are cultures whose language grammar depends on all directions being relative to cardinal points. Even three-year-olds never get it wrong.

> You could vibratory signal a path in complete darkness, indicate obstacles and threats or directions to supply caches etc.

What sensors would this vest use to figure out where you are and where the obstacles and threats around you are?

It could get regular situation updates from base, and rely on GPS and compass to relate local position and orientation to interesting points. Just knowing at all times, without need to look at anything, the directions to mission objective and back to base would be useful.

> Just knowing at all times, without need to look at anything, the directions to mission objective and back to base would be useful.

You are not going to get direction from GPS sadly. You could have it from differential GPS but I can’t imagine a way how to do mount a long fixed baseline comfortably on a vest.

You get direction by combining GPS with a compass.

I read about a hobby project a while back that used vibrating motors to keep the wearer aware of magnetic north. It supposedly made quite a difference. Here's a project that could be the same thing. https://newatlas.com/north-paw-vibrating-ankle-compass-kit/2...

That was a good idea, but a very stupid execution. All you need is an ear bud that clicks as your head turns past each cardinal point. (The click can vary by which point it is.) You can implement this with 10 grams of microcontroller and a magnetic sensor.

Add a couple of grams more for GPS, and you can have it click when your head points to where you parked your jeep or tent. To maintain battery life, you turn on the GPS only once every 5 minutes, and rely on the compass for real-time orientation.

(This might not be so useful for soldiers, because they have mostly long since wrecked their hearing. Maybe use barely perceptible electric shocks, for mil application.)

After a very short time, the clicks etc. fade from conscious perception, and you just know your directions at all times.

That's not going to save as much power as you think--civilian GPS has to download a message from the satellites that repeats on a 30 second interval before it can give a good answer.

You may not need an answer that good.

To have it be useful for those with hearing loss, it could use a little haptic motor instead to provide a virtual click you feel instead of hear.

Electric shock would be more hard-core though. Soldiers who complained about a barely perceptible electric shock would be laughed at.

There was a Youtuber that made a device like this with the lidar from an iPad and a 3x3 grid of dots to detect obstacles. The problem he ran into was sensory resolution vs. ability to perceive that resolution. (Unsurpisingly) your eyes are unparalleled for picking up visual resolution.

https://youtu.be/8Au47gnXs0w

In general: battery life, difficulty of fitting, limited usefulness for the costs.

Also, for your task, you’d need the precise location of your subject, or highly reliable obstacle detection (including “there’s nothing, not even a good path” obstacles), probably both. The latter sort-of works for self-driving cars, but their computers are rather big to carry around, and they can declare anything “clearly not a road” as “obstacle”. They don’t have to recognize a small footpath across a mountain ridge, or alongside a river.

The market for people who need a non-visual device to help them detect obstacles, threats, or supply caches is too small to justify the expense (both per-unit and of development) of such devices.

Hunters complain bitterly about GPS ruining their night vision, and all those gadgets using up heavy batteries.

Soldiers have it even worse, carrying, literally, pounds of batteries, sometimes tens of. Anything that works without needing to produce power-burning, night-vision destroying light they have to look at, and weighing them down, is a huge benefit.

Wouldn't they use reflective LCDs ? As low as you want brightness, and tiny power consumption !

Reflective LCDs are useless in the dark.

Are they ? I tried to find some information on scotopic visual acuity, but nothing solid...

Otherwise, transflective LCDs with red backlight (rods aren't sensitive to red light).

Fine, but it is strictly better not to need to look.

For information more detailed than can be delivered by ambient channels, of course, you need to get it some other way. But audio will often be better than needing to focus on a little display, even if with red backlight.

Just list military applications of whatever you want developed. They are not concerned with how big of a market it might be. If can give their troops advantages, they are interested.

I can't really see this having use in a high-tech military. The main differentiator of contemporary technologized militaries is their incredible logistics and coordination capacities, which have a very hard dependency on knowing your own location. They know this obviously and so those systems are robust and redundant already.

When those systems and their backups fail you're into like, "hide and wait for help" or even straight up sere training shit, because the entire thing that makes you a powerful force rather than just a guy with a gun is gone. Knowing which way is north is not gonna solve your problem at that point. Knowing "which way to the supply cache" might but if that piece of tech is still working probably so is your normal radio and gps.

Anything they have to look at to get informed is a huge burden.

Anything that burns up batteries driving a display is a huge burden.

Anything that destroys night vision is a huge burden.

So, anything that provides them the most essential bits of combat information (e.g. that is the direction back to base) without need to look at it, and using only microwatts, is a huge benefit.

One person might be all the market you need, if that one person is wealthy enough. Aside: I think stating opinions as facts is poor form.

Are vibrators really the best option? I would think small actuators that apply pressure, with a dull point perhaps, would be more energy efficient and could provide higher resolution.

Looks like the kit discussed here is geared towards emergency use, so vibration makes sense as clear & hard to miss. Power to the haptics is probably insignificant. For more regular uses different concerns would apply!

Airplanes have big jet engines. The available power isn't going to be of concern.

Electric shocks FTW.

In the late 1960s, Dr. Paul Bach-y-Rita discovered that people can be trained to "see" images represented by electrical impulses on the tongue. I wonder if there is an overlap between these two ideas. https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna12459883

This reminds me what the yaw string [0] in effect does for aircraft, but turns that visual cue into a tactile sensation, also because there's no wind drag in the cockpit.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yaw_string

Tangent: I find I get less motion sickness with VR goggles if I put a small box fan on the floor in front of me, blowing upward toward my face. If you buy the theory that motion sickness is a physiological response to neurotoxin ingestion, then the breeze is another signal voting for everything being OK.

I thought of this idea years ago, and I never sky dived naked.

My idea was to use the soles of the feet instead, since there are a lot of nerves there, enabling very high resolution information.

But ideas without execution are useless......

The naked sky dive part is a hook to get people who are not interested in planes or military. If the military needed that particular experience to come up with this idea.. well .. that does not suggest good things.

This is called a "vibrotactile display", and they've been around for a good, long time.

That's nice, but aren't military combat pilots about to be replaced by AI, anyway?

VR, anyway. VR pilots will have even greater need for haptic clues.

I'll admit I expected this to be about the origin of that bit of red yarn you see on gliders and sailplanes as a low-tech, reliable slip indicator.

Why I expected this to be about that, I leave to those reading this comment to deduce.

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