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First Emergency Use of Whole-Aircraft Parachute
Ahotasu writes "Over at SpaceFlightNow, there is a short NASA news release discussing the development of and first emergency use of a production parachute system for a general aviation aircraft. Whole-ultralight parachute systems have been available and used for some time, but this is apparently the first use in a "certified general-aviation aircraft". From the article: "In October 2002, a pilot released his single engine aircraft's parachute and landed safely in a Texas mesquite- tree grove. The pilot was uninjured, and there was minimal damage to the plane. The safe landing made aviation history, as it was the first emergency application of an airframe parachute on a certified aircraft." Here's the company's website. Looks like right now, they only have models for a select few gen. aviation aircraft, probably the most popular models."
If only Scotty had one of these for the Enterprise!!??
...they can make this work in bigger aeroplanes as well. Put a para on a 747 and i'll be really impressed, and perhaps even a bit more confident i will reach the ground safe :-)
Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.
Aristotele
I heard this guy interviewd on NPR on the way to work about a month ago...
Here's the link: NPR Story It's a real audio file.
And this is interesting because... ?
Whole boat lifevests?
Sigpilot : I'm in the pipe, 5 by 5.
Of course, Tom Swift did this in one of his books in 1965....
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
and one giant leap for airplane drag racing.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
Now, I will no longer be deathly afraid of flying! Well, not quite, I will still only fly if it is an absolute emergency. This is after years of flying, sometimes spending as long as 14 hours in the air. One BAD flight later, and I will not get in a plane without a very compelling reason to do so. Even then, it is with great fear and trepidation that I will venture skyward.
Propelled by a solid-fuel rocket motor, the parachute is released from a special opening on top of the fuselage.
Cool!!! A rocket-propelled parachute!
Now it just needs a nuclear-powered life raft for the 'water landings'.
-- Heisenberg might have slept here.
As a person who is seriously afraid to fly, I think these things would be great.
Granted, it wouldn't stop the plane from blowing up, but it could do a lot of good.
It certainly will be interesting to myself, and people who are afraid to fly like me, to see how the technology developes in the future.
"It's a tarp!" -- Dyslexic Admiral Ackbar
but i'd rather not "in a tree grove." Ouch! How exactly do you land "safely" into a bunch of trees? =P
If this works as well as I've heard, look for it to eventually become mandatory on small planes.
I've seen these used on ultralights - when the aircraft is being used for aerobatics that stress it far beyond design tolerances. I guess the product is a good idea for pilots who push the limits.
But any pilot has to demonstrate the basics of unpowered flight to get their license. The engine dies - so what! Just look for a place to land.
The space shuttle's parachute is to slow the craft down, NOT to let it drift slowly to Earth in case they lose control!
This parachute system for planes is meant to bring the plane down to the ground slowly, not to simply act as an aide to braking.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
Crane your neck 90 degrees to the right and think about it for just a moment...
-- Heisenberg might have slept here.
This isn't a parachute that slows the aircraft down (like the space shuttle, or in drag racing..) This parachute is deployed and actually slows the aircraft down to the ground. (as if you were skydiving) The size of these chutes have to be HUGE.. Just imagine the size of the chute, not to mention the wires holding the chute to the plane, for a commercial airliner!
... before these things were working 99+% of the time during real failures.
I read that it was difficult to get the parachute to open quickly with minimal altitude loss if deployed at low airspeeds, while at the same time limiting the inflation loads to a tolerable level if deployed at high airspeeds.
"The concept is comparable to automotive safety systems, which utilize energy absorbing structures, airbags, inertial restraint systems, padded interiors, and occupant protection cages working in unison to promote a very controlled and survivable crash condition." - http://www.aviation-engines.co.za/brs.htm
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
I know that the parachute is just a backup, and flying is safer than driving blah blah blah, but the thought of riding in a plane that has a parachute just creeps me out, worse even than the lectures the airline attendants give in case of a crash. It's kinda like, having health insurance can create a need for health insurance, so a parachute could create... I'm gonna go crawl under my bed now.
Denver Isuzu Suzuki
seat cushions should be parachutes too, sure it's a false sense of security but no more then the seat as a flotation device.
This sounds just like W.E. DuBois' book 21 Balloons. In the book, the secret society living on Krakatau has an emergency escape airlift that consists of a large platform, large enough for 20 families, lifted by 20 balloons. The only trouble was landing it...
pirates
I agree that reliability of the plane as a whole is far more important in terms of R&D investment, but a real sustained focus on emergency procedures would be extremely welcome too.
How will they compensate for a plane that has spun out of control or is upside-down? Either way, it seems like the chute would get tangled up with the plane and not do much good.
Just because I doubt myself does not mean I find your position compelling.
for any sort of aircraft actually used in passenger airlines - I mean, it may be able to have enough lift to carry a small Cesna (or whatever's on the picture), but not even the smallest jet...
It'll have just as much effect as giving Red Bull to all passengers, i.e. none
Join the elite! Post at score:2! Ghostwheel is online.
This aircraft was produced in my hometown. It is made by Cirrus Designs Corporation. They just started delivering their planes a couple years ago. Their aircraft are called the SR20 and SR22. These aircraft are designed and built in Duluth, Minnesota. Their test pilot, who was a jet fighter pilot in the Air National Guard(I knew him) actually died during a test flight about 4 years ago...the parachute had not been installed on the test platform. Very sad to see a test pilot killed in an aircraft that is designed to have the parachute for exactly that purpose. The next week our fighter wing flew the 'missing man formation'. I shed a tear. On the positive side, this system will probably help save numerous other lives in the future. I highly recommend this company's aircraft to any pilot...
Who is this that even the wind and the waves obey Him? Surely this computer must submit also!
Too bad they cannot make one of these for USAirways!
If you lose your engine in a single engine plane, and you have somewhere reasonably flat to land, you're probably better of just making a normal (emergency, dead-stick) landing.
Even helicopters don't just `fall out of the sky' when the engine shuts off :)
Let's hope these things never deploy accidently. It would get really interesting really fast if one accidently deployed close to the ground (right after takeoff, or before a landing, for example), or while your plane was cruising at 180 mph ...
(they must be strong enough to survive a deployment at Vne (Velocity to never exceed), but I can see where it could easily cause structural damage j
it should read "certificated general-aviation aircraft". certified and certificated are not the save in the avation world.
Just what I would buy if I were a Democratic Party congressperson who was considering flying in a private aircraft before next term's elections.
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
You're not the first person to laugh at the concept. In this article the owner of Cirrus Design Corp says that the rest of the industry harshly ridiculed the idea all through development. Now vindicated, he countered, "We spent more than $10 million developing our parachute system, and if this is the only life we save, it will have been worth it."
Who did the testing?
Tower: Tower to Flight XYZ123, you have been nominated to test our new airplane parachute.
Bob: How well does it work?
Tower: We don't know, that's why you're testing it!
I fly gliders, no engine to fail there, but people still crash and die...
Controls can stick, birds can impact the plane in flight. The list goes on, and on...
This is useful for those situations
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
I don't see this as being such a huge benefit. A majority of crashes will occur shortly after takeoff or shortly before landing which would make a paraschute needless because it couldn't deploy in time to catch enough air. Nevertheless, if it works at least once in an emergency situation, it is still a benefit.
that will rebound the post 9-11 economy. If this could be fitted on commercial airplanes, insurance rates should drop drastically. I would buy stocks in this if I had the money...
How will we get rid of unwanted politicians and pop stars???
Xaotik Designs
And this is incredibly good news for those of us nerds who fly. In-flight structural damage is very rare but does happen, and this is the first tool that gives pilots an option other than prayer when a midair or whatever leaves the plane unflyable.
DDB (PP ASEL since 8/02)
Life is like surrealism: if you have to have it explained to you, you can't afford it.
Which type are you? After all, you *did* go.
After many unsuccessful attemps with the "Half-Aircraft Parachute" engineers finally decided to advance their idea and encompass the entire plane.
Uh oh, we're gonna need another Bobby!
This is my sig. Its pathetic.
My roomate is an aerospace engineering major, we both graduate in December, right here in the twin cities. Would be nice (for him) to see the demand for this system increase, then he can get a job, and I can work at Arby's.
And watch his planes sail, drifting softly to the earth . . .
hi, I like pancakes -.-- -.-- --..
http://www.stratoquest.com/default.cfm?page=5 thats just plain crazy. free falling at the speed of sound for 4 min. damn.
I've always heard stories of airlines breaking up in mid air from over stress. So now people will be rushing for the seats next to the parachute section.
I'm curious if there will ever be an commercial airline version. I could see an application that has a parachute for sections of the fusalodge(sp). Then in a catastrophic event charges could fire seperating the plain into compartments which could be carried to earth safely. Each section could have air tight emergency doors which seals when the charges fire.
Wow... they should be able to bring down a 747 safly.
will be to make a parachute big enough to slow the descent of a plane that large that won't tear the wings off when it opens at cruising speed. A big enough chute (assuming they can find cables) will exert an unbelieveable amount of pressure on the anchor points. Far more than the forces needed to keep the plane aloft.
I vaguely remember a Discovery-type special on this years ago, where they were trying for chutes that would only open partway (using some sort of ring) until it slowed the plane enough to survive full opening, but I've forgotten the details.
The plane was made by a Duluth, MN company called Cirrus Design. Their (shitty) website is: http://www.cirrusdesign.com/
--
Don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things.
There are a few, very rare situations where a whole-plane parachute might be useful in a certified airplane, such as structural breakup in flight or a midair collision. Overall, however, the main purpose of the parachute would be to reassure passengers who don't know much about flying.
Most fatal accidents take place either just after takeoff or just before landing, when you're too low for a chute to do any good, or during continued flight into instrument conditions, where the pilot often doesn't realize there's a problem. Presumably, the chute would be useful for engine failures, but which would you prefer?
glide the plane, under control, into a field or parking lot; or
descend at a relatively high speed, possibly smashing into the middle of a freeway, the edge of a tall building, a cliff slope, tree tops, water, etc.?
With an engine failure over hostile terrain (no flat surfaces for landing) the chute might help, but the terrain probably isn't too friendly for a 2000fpm plunge any more than for a gliding landing. Even with only tiny trees in the reported case, the plane suffered substantial damage when it nosed over.
So, yes, if I had one I might use it in a pinch, but I might also be tempted to use it when I didn't need to (a simple engine failure near lots of open fields) and perhaps kill myself, my passengers, and people on the ground when I could have done a routine forced landing instead and walked away from an intact plane.
The newscaster asked a company representative if this chute could help prevent lots of deaths in an airliner crash. The company rep just about laughed at the guy, and replied, essentially, that a parachute big enough to save an airliner would have to be so much bigger than the plane itself as to be infeasible.
My other thought on this (and I must admit that I am not a pilot and have never done any "flying" more realistic than flying a fighter plane in a number of "flight simulators" except the really realistic ones) is that it would seem to me that aviation accidents tend to happen in such a sudden and severe manner that this chute would have limited success. I question whether the chute can be useful in an uncontrolled spin. In addition, I suspect that most fatal aviation accidents (start to) occur under 500 feet, at which height I doubt the chute would have enough time to deploy effectively.
Anyone else get the mental image of a 747 sticking out of the ground with a giant parachute draped over it when they read the headline?
The rotary wing aircraft talked about a few days ago here could use one of these - one of the major drawbacks was that it couldn't glide in the event of an engine failure, but if it can just deploy a chute...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Then maybe my wife wont get so mad when I bring home a box of match sticks
Except when after pulling the chute, the pilot jumped out of the plane...
--"The perfect example of the man of action is the suicide." - William Carlos Williams
used in ultralights... It's too bad John Denver didn't have one of those babies!!
This occured near the intersection of route 121 and Main in The Colony, TX. The plane landed near the edge of a golf course just into the trees. The BRS apparently work flawlessless as the guy walked away from the site. From the pictures I saw on the news, the plane looked salvagable too. I had no idea this was the first use of the BRS on something other than an ultralight. I figured the guy would at least have a broken leg (many BRS survivors have something broken because there isn't much protection in an Ultralight) but he walked away with just a few scratches.
There is nothing inherently safe about liberty. That's why so many people died protecting it.
My first literal "laugh out loud" read of the day. Good show!
Sometimes you parachute from the airplane... Sometimes the airplace parachutes from you.
Also, the airplane has to be designed for it, and the chute is custom designed for the airplane. Just like any system on an airplane, pilots have to be trained in its use, and they need to maintain that knowledge; and the chute itself needs to be maintained. The whole thing is covered by much FAA paperwork, and anyone who's a pilot knows how expensive that is. There are a couple of airplanes that BRS has an "STC" (Supplemental Type Certificate, i.e. FAA permission to install) for the chute, but they are smaller training aircraft like the Cessna 152 and 172.)
The number of people that can afford a new Lancair is small. Pilots like me will continue to fly older and cheaper airplanes, and if there's an emergency, we will just land the airplane. Structural failures are rare, and there is not much country where a forced landing will result in injuries to occupants. Prudent pilots won't fly at night over hostile terrain. (In an emergency, I don't give a shit about saving the airplane; at that point it belongs to the insurance company, and I'd rather save life than their money.)
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
It will not proctect you near the blast. But if you are in the much larger area outside the lethal zone where structural damage will occur to buildings, then "duck and cover" will help keep you from being injured from falling objects and other minor building damage (for the same reason you want to take similar actions during an earthquake or tornado). If it had been needed, then it almost certainly would have reduced casualites resulting from a nuclear attack.
Just because it can't protect everyone doesn't mean it should be ridiculed as useless.
and democratic senators. How long will it be before we see the first 'mysterious parachute failure?'
"...eyewitnesses report seeing a bright flash, before the senator's plane began to tumble earthward. A moment later the safety chute deployed. There was a second bright flash, and the plane mysteriously seperated from the chute..."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
The kind of pilot that can't dead stick is a pilot partially incapacitated by some on-board accident, medical condition or just panic.
Passengers can also hit the emergency button if the pilot is totally incapacitated or even dead.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
For the unhappy alternative, go to www.ntsb.gov and look what happened to N837CD. As someone already pointed out, Cirrus aircraft come w/the BRS parachutes. N837CD was a Cirrus, and those guys are dead.
I'm all for safety, etc. I think it would be nice to have an option to pull the chute (even if it does destroy the aircraft). But I'm gonna fly the airplane, and I'm gonna fly it all the way down.
Flame away if you flew yourself to work today... I did.
The military doesn't need one.
Mordor...a magical, mythical land where women are more rare than dragons--but where every man would rather find a dragon
...I was thinking of a giant anvil popping out of the chute moments before the plane, anvil, and coyote plummet to the desert floor below.
An interesting note about this type of aircraft parachute: most of the ones that are deployed on GA aircraft are ballistic-assisted parachutes. Once triggered, the parachute is fully extended from a compacted state inside a tube by a small rocket. The chute itself reaches full extension in a little over 1 second. That short deployment time makes the chute more useful in the lower altitudes that a small aircraft would frequent.
Then there's the matter of "spillover" -- the state that a parachute will quickly find itself in if deployed behind a fast-moving heavy ballast. If this happens, the chute will collapse and begin to work a little more line a streamer than a parachute -- it won't inflate after the air gets forced out of it. To combat this, a "speed ring" -- essentially a small baffled airfoil attached to the chute harness -- blocks the air entering the chute from the bottom. As forward momentum decreases, gravity causes the ring to slowly fall downward, allowing the chute to slowly and safely inflate.
A really fascinating thing about the BRS type parachutes: Once they deploy the aircraft is totalled. It can never fly again. First, a deployment typically stresses an airframe in two ways that it usually never is stressed -- the wing spars are pulled backwards while in flight, and the vertical impact of the ground with the aircraft at a relatively high speed. The FAA will never allow the aircraft to be flown again.
The second reason: the parachute tethers are typically stowed under the skin of most aircraft, and in deployment can actually rip through the skin. Damage of this type is very difficult to repair, so the pilot that chooses to use the BRS system _knows_ that he will lose the plane permanently.
That usually keeps pilots looking for that tempting field or road if they have an in-flight emergency.
http://www.cirrusdesign.com/
Maybe large passenger aircraft manufacturers (like Boeing and Airbus) could redesign the structure of those aircrafts so that the whole row of passengers can be ejected and then dropped slowly to the ground using a parachute. Who cares about the cargo, fuel and everything else that's making the plain heavy?
Of course, you don't want to end up like this
Corporate Gadfly
Jonathan Archer: the most beaten up Enterprise captain in Star Trek history
I wish I didn't think this way sometimes...
... there is no spoon
why would you want to take off when you already have an engine failure? (besides, of course, a whole army of orcs and a dragon on your tail...)
just wondering....
nbfn
Why can't anybody do a research on something like producing the whole plane's skin with the same material they use on those indestructible blackboxes?
Hehe, can't believe I'm not first one to bring this up.
This is real old news to aviation types. Cirrus has been producing these things for a couple of years now. A few points:
1. The Cirrus safety record is pretty poor compared to other plane types. There have been at least six fatal crashes in Cirrus planes already, which is unusually high, statistically. There have been a number of theories advanced as to why this is -- mostly it seems that there are pilots who buy one thinking it's a "lexus in the sky" and who get themselves into conditions they can't handle.
2. This was a good scenario for deployment. Stuck aileron means the plane is gonna be almost impossible to land.
3. You might have a parachute out there but you're dropping at 2600 fpm in an SR-22. I would not want to hit the ground going that fast. If you still have control authority I'd be going in for an emergency landing unless the terrain below prohibited it, or it was night.
4. This guy landed in some trees which may have helped out with the 2600 fpm factor noted above.
Light general aviation aircraft don't suffer very many airframe problems -- they're pretty damn strong. You can get yourself into trouble if you exceed Vne which is how most airframe breakups happen. And that usually happens because of sensory confusion during flight into weather the pilot can't handle (clouds).
Ultralights are where the BRS parachute system has saved at least a hundred people's lives. Who the hell would ride in one of those things anyway? Crazy fools.
All you slashdot types should start flying planes. I did. It's the best way I know to burn money.
I'm going to call you on this bullshit. How many instances are there where a control surface "fell off" an airplane? This only happens with completely crappy maintenance. An airplane that was that badly maintained is not likely to have a $15,000 BRS chute.
How many instances of mid-air collisions where a BRS chute would have saved lives? I'll grant that this number is non-zero. Is this number large enough that we will see (or should have) large-scale deployment of BRS chutes? No.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
when can we just get the planes made out of more ruggid parts and the fucking airlines to have more city to city flights. Ever try to fly to LA? or San Francisco from NewMexico or NewYork? other than to refuel, WTF is with them having to fly me to bolder fucking caulerado (Southworst dot shit)? I'm sure theirs a reason these apes can't have more than TWO fucking city to city flights. jeses even jetblue can do it and they have a woping 10 cities and all of 300 airplanes. I'm sure somewear in the back of their little peon brane they don't need to have it come all the way from washington DC (no shit I know I saw it tried to take off from SJO ) just from me to go to LA.
and for the love of fucking god:
Security != Paraniod!!!
I know the pathetic ape who talks on TV says otherwise:THAT WAS A ONE TIME WAKE UP CALL AIMED TO DO WHAT WERE DOING NOW!!!!
Yes we use IRAQ as our wiping boy, and we need to be conserned about security (no shit we're geographically several thousand times larger than ~1/4 of the world). I just don't want to get anally penetrated and violated because of it when I want to go to my development confrence.
Fucking a youassholes make me sick
Yeah, just so long as they weren't Jewish, Catholic, Muslim, Buddist, Hindu, or too Protestant, and just so long as they weren't Black, Asian, Hispanic, Semetic, or Slavic.
What a fucktard you must be.
I think the answer would be to design modular plane, where the passenger compartment could be separeted from the rest of the plane. That way you have a much lighter escape capsule if you will. Dump the baggage, dump the fuel, dump all the crap, but save the people.
It would work great in case of a hijacking also. Somebody starts making trouble and telling you to fly the plane somewhere...just push the button and separate the plane. Then you gently flow down to the ground and wait for the people with guns.
I suppose fatal plane crashes just don't happen often enough for any company to invest into such a drastic redesign. However, I am pretty disappointed that the safety of airplanes has improved only marginally in the entire history of the commercial airline industry.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Where are the flying cars?!
seriously though, if falling out of the sky is the main concern, just give everyone's car a parachute!
C'mon, I want my holographic video telephone to be mounted on the dashboard too.
- passion
Speaking from experience, the one plant on earth that I least want to fall wile-e-coyote style onto would be a Texas mesquite.
I once spent a spring break picking the immature ones (1' tall at most) out of some dry, rocky soil, and it was horrible. Those plants were created by cross pollinating pure evil with cruelty.
If all the parachute does is drop you into something WORSE than a cactus patch, well, maybe I wouldn't deploy...
Austin is more fun than Dallas.
I saw a news story on one variant. It used a really nifty limiter ring around the shroud lines. At high speed, the wind pushed the ring up towards the chute, thus pinching it mostly closed. As the speed reduces, the chute's expansion force overcomes the wind's push on the ring, and it slides forward, allowing full deployment.
WINGS FALL OFF (it happens). PARTS FALL OFF (it happens). ENGINE DIES, STRONG WIND CONDITIONS (it happens).
While I don't doubt the validity of the article, comments like this make me wonder.
We have Mesquite trees here in Hawaii (we call 'em Keawe). The trees support 2 to 3 inch thorns and drop branches like there's no tomorrow. I've been lost in a Keawe forest and let me tell you , by the time I made it out I was slashed dotted.
A friend of mine once pulled his car under a Keawe tree and popped two tires.
While I don't doubt that he landed safely thanks to the parachute... I DO doubt that he got out of the grove safely :))
Of course, maybe he just hunkered down... lit a few branches and grilled a delicious dinner and waited for helecopters to drop him a ladder.
Aloha
Sounds like this happened to be one of the few situations when a chute would be useful. It's only useful when the plane is more or less under control, has some altitude, and the pilot is aware there's a problem. Most aviation accidents don't fit those criteria. It won't help on takeoff. Won't help on landing. Won't help on loss of control accidents. Won't help on controlled flight into terrain.
Remember, a capitialist will never turn down a situation to make money. What will happen is this will be required on small aircrafts, not by law of the land, but by the para-governmental, judicial precedence of quasi-civil insurance law. Thus, since there is little competition, there is no modivation to compete on prices, as such, the cost of the plane goes up, and the cost of insurance stays about the same unless you have one of these. If you don't have one, expect to pay 20 times more than others.
Democrats and Republicans only disagree about how to enslave you
While not a general aviation aircraft, wasn't the F-111 the first aircraft overall to employ the idea of ejecting the whole cockpit on a parachute?
My father has been a bush-pilot overseas for 17 years (i also have a logbook of my own), and his take on all this is that it is bogus and a waste of time..
Apart from the fact that a fully loaded airliner is just too dang heavy, there are a few facts..
1. Most (a very high percentage) of airline accidents occur during take off and landing. This is due to the fact that flying itself is inherintly safe, but throw takeoffs and landings in the mix and it gets hairy. At such low altitudes, parachutes become worthless..
2. If a plane has any sort of problem short of exploding, then a parachute would do no good (although im not sure it would do much good in that case either). An airplane can glide for more miles than you can see without any engine power. (Assuming you loose all engines at once, most planes can cover ALOT of distance with one engine). It is much more prefferable to glide the plane down to a safe landing spot, be it an empty field, or even the ocean. A parachute would render the all remaining control that the pilot has worthless..
Mind you, terrorism can put the destiny of the flight beyond pilot control, but heck, not even a parachute can save that...
~ Maintainer of the Skajake Projects
Understanding that your fear _is_ irrational is half the battle I guess. Ironically I'm scared to death of heights, or more to the point, not falling, but the sudden stop.
:)
I guess I'm scared to stop too quickly...
--yes, I'm a private pilot
Fuel related accidents are due to fuel mismanagement. Just like pouring more money into a fundamentally mismanaged startup, or giving a guy more rope to hang himself, someone who doesn't manage their fuel is going to run into trouble no matter how big the tanks are.
Having more fuel will not save you from a mid-air collision (which happened to the CEO of Cirrus when he was learning to fly), nor will it enable your passengers to land your plane should you become incapacitated, nor, as in the recent example, will it save you should you experience a control failure.
You're right, it's not a panacea, but it is one more safety component to have at your disposal should there be a problem. I suspect Lloyd (the pilot) doesn't mind the fact that he gave up 88lbs of useful load for the parachute. Neither do I.
Obligatory correction: The chute and all assorted equipment (lines, anchors, squibs) weighs 88lbs. The aircraft itself has an 81 gal fuel tank, and the usuable load of the aircraft *WITH*FULL*FUEL* is 647 lbs. The plane flies 4:50 with full tanks, which is far beyond most passenger's bladder range.
Jim Fallows wrote a book called Free Flight last year about the company that built this plane. It's an excellent read.
It also happens that I like to fly acro, and wear a chute when doing so; that is a much better tradeoff for me.
Or, in other words, I agree with you!
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
A C150's Vne is 141 KIAS, so theoretically you could fly one at above the lowest stall speed of a 747, and since these are strong little buggers, it'd hold together pretty well some percentage above Vne. You'd have to climb to about 9000' (just make sure the doors are latched real good and you don't have any suicidal ex-NASA employee on board with you, especially over Houston) and point the nose straight down to get that kind of airspeed out of one. I've never got one much over 108 kts (~ 125mph) myself, and believe me I tried.
Also I take offense to "gear down and welded" on the 150. The spring steel main gear on the C150 is bolted, not welded to the fuselage.
Weight scales with a cube function
Parachutes are mainly a surface area.
They scale with a square function
They get more efficent with a larger scale.
Also contributing to this is the reynolds number.
i.e. small scales go inefficent (turbulent) at a slower speed.
Trust me, I'm a parachute rigger.
I saw that special, they were talking about the development of the chute that saved this plane.
The REAL trick would be to make it light enough. Any wieght that they add in chute would have to be shed in fuel, and no airline likes range reduction
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
Lots of little chutes...yeah, what if one or more doesn't deploy properly, and you end up with tremendous drag forces on one end of the plane and little to none on the other? They might stand a better chance in the more traditional crash.
Older aircraft are where you have structural failure. Aluminum has an endurance limit, at some point it will fail, unlike steel which can be designed to last forever. Steel aircraft don't fly very well, chuckle.
In any case, structural failure is not the only situation you might consider deploying a parachute. You might have failed control surfaces. No control = no glide. It happened to my step father about five minutes after a flight once. The hydraulic system failed.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Well, IANAP but I just *HAD* to use the FLA IANAP!
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
It's a simple idea. Sure, a complicated one to engineer, but far less complex than the plane itself, and certainly one that could have been realized a long time ago. It surprises me that it's taken almost a century of aviation to implement something like this. Better late than never, though.
Or you would need one with 24 times the diameter.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
The U.S. Air Force developed special parachutes for nuclear weapons that allowed a high-speed aircraft to drop a parachute-retarded bomb on a target. These parachutes can be deployed at high-speed without self-destructing or putting unacceptable loads on the nuclear weapon.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
I was surprised to read that the pilot of this aircraft actually intends to fly it again. Regardless of whither it will happen or not, I think it's sad that we only care to investigate fatal crashes...
I would think that NASA/FAA/BRS would outright buy this aircraft from its previous owner...a thorough investigation is certainly called for...what did the pilot do right? What did the pilot do wrong? How could we have made this crash more "survivable"? At the very least, this plane belongs in an aviation museum...
This is great for those of us in the states, and I realize that it will be a while before this system wind up in some of the poorer nations of the world. But there is a lot of small aircraft aviation in poor regions where (stupidly) maintenance is viewed as a luxury. When this gets down there, it WILL save lives, lots of them.
"I'll have a Guinness, no wait, make that a Coors Light" -Grad student I work with, who shall remain anonymous...
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/n ews/4210058.htm
http://www.aopa.org/asf/publications/01nall.pdf.
In 2000, Fuel mismanagement was determined to be the cause of 5.5% of all pilot-related accidents, ranking it #5.
For comparision:
This is for all accidents. Fatal accidents have a different distribution: Fuel mismanagement is tied for 6th place with three other causes.
More important than this first (non-test) use of the BRS system, what about the months-old crash where the pilot did NOT deploy the BRS after losing control of the acft? THAT seems like a more newsworthy item... a system working as it's designed to shouldn't be news. This smells like a PR effort, or the excrement of a marketing department.
The glaring drawback to the BRS system is that, once deployed, the acft is almost gauranteed to be damaged in the crash-landing, so pilots are reluctant to give up control.. it goes against the lessons pounded into them by (competent) instructors. The BRS system is a waste of money and weight if pilots aren't trained to utilize it properly.
The people who made the thing know it, and aren't trying to install any on airliners. It's used mainly in ultralights, where catastrophic structural failures (ie, a wing (or two) falls off) are common enough for a system like this to be useful, and are light enough that a parachute the size of a few large city blocks wouldn't be required. The exceptionally low speed of ultralights is also very very helpful.
The only reason this case is special is that it's the first time it's been used successfully in anything other than an ultralight in a real emergency.
So yes, a system like this won't be used in airliners anytime in the near future. They probably won't even be used in the majority of civilian single engine airplanes. But they will be used in some, and will probably be present in a lot of ultralights.
Also, this system isn't intended to be used when an engine fails. (well, it would be useful if an engine failed immediately after takeoff- keep in mind it can be used effectively in as little as 300 feet of altitude) It's main intent is for when the plane is incapable of landing safely. In this case, it was because an aileron was stuck.
In case these haven't already been posted: the story in detail (as part of an interview with the pilor) is available at aero-news.net
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird.
The ASCII representation of breasts is generally accepted to be this ( o Y o ) or this (.Y.) not (.)(.) Please make a note for use in further ASCII masterpieces. Thank you,
Rob Malda,
Federaton of ASCII Art Generators
FAAG
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These parachutes will almost certainly be used prematurely on occasion, "saving" the occupants from what would have otherwise been a survivable off-airport landing.
The most likely use for the parachute is to recover from spins. Most countries (other than the U.S.A.) teach their pilots how to recover from spins using brain-power and control surfaces instead of relying on silk.
Speaking of which, does the pilot of the airplane in question get a membership in the Caterpiller Club?
Betty, go back to the kitchen.
There is a story on the net (at PBS, I think) about the development of that. One of the people in charge of creating a parachute which could handle a bomb weighing tons remembered a story that the German military airdropped a tank in WWII. He found the inventor of the ribbon parachute and had to obtusely ask him if an object weighing about so much or that much could be handled, as the inventor could not be told what the cargo was.
"This technology has been successful on many levels," added Yang. Yang said he sees it as a quality-of-life improvement."
Yeah, sure... tell that to your older brother Ying, who was the first guy to live-test the Beta version (may he rest in peace)
If ignorance is Bliss, why aren't there more happy people?
"It is essential that justice be done
This was first announced in 1999 on Tomorrows World -- http://www.bbc.co.uk/tw -- though I coulnd't find the article. They did demonstrate video footage of it being used in practice on a similar small aircraft and had plans _BACK THEN_ to develop a full size version for a commercial airliner. Seems like it's just another stab at PR with no new developments to me.
Hey, I won't have to buy another plane if it crashes. Isn't this great? As an aircraft owner you can save on burials, as pilot, err, you know. :)
In other news, approximated life expectancy of democratic senators just increased by 50%.
They don't need a chut to glide down out of power failure. Wings are fine in that regard
Really a chut's only needed if the wings break off
there was an article on these things a couple of years back in flight international. They employ a slip ring that keeps the parachute from fully deploying until it has sufficiently slowed the ac to a safe speed. If I remember rightly they said that to support a 747 would require a chute with area about that of 2 football fields, the main problem was the space that storing the thing inside the ac would require, Youd probably loose a couple of toilets in economy, an idea which the airlines dont like too much for something you may never need to loose. (accident rates in heavies are much lower than in general aviation - when you then factor in that this wouldnt help in a number of accident types the need for it is questionable.)
I just wonder if a parachute could save an airplane stuck in something like a tailspin where it's either falling very fast or tumbling. In the event of an engine failure, a pilot ought to still be able to land, normally.
I'm glad somebody else remembers. :) The other bit I liked was the chute they had that could open instantly at ground level-- compressed air or an explosive charge or something. For low-altitude ejection, I think. It was pretty cool to see them set their demo box on the hangar floor, step back, and then *BOOM* the chute was just standing up in the air as if the box had landed there.
cirrus design is a small startup that, according to articles in Popular Science, for one, is producing small single engine planes that come with an airframe parachute standard. I think eclipse aviation might have said something about doing this, too, but im not sure.
Point is that if these become standard, use will go up. I for one wouldnt want to go buy one and install it, but if it came built in...
Just attach a parachute to THE PLANE, people! Does anyone hear me? THE PLANE!!!
Quid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Anything said in Latin, sounds profound.
Attila the motherfucking Hun was badder than all those pink-ruffled pansy faggots mentioned here, combined. You'd better make your offerings real fucking soon, 'cause you miserable dicklickers are totally fucking doomed if he rises again on the Dark Solstice and shows your queeny asses the meaning of "total pain".
Lemme make sure I'm not wasting time here... bcwhite will remove :)
pkgs that havent been fixed that have outstanding bugs of severity
"important". True or false?
jim: "important" or higher. True.
Then we're about to lose ftp.debian.org and dpkg
* netgod will miss dpkg -- it was occasionally useful
We still have rpm....
-- Seen on #Debian
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