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Helicopter Lands top Mount Everest

Posted by Hemos on from the new-methods-of-flying dept.

FlyByPC writes "The Eurcopter team has succeeded in landing a helicopter on Everest and returning safely to base, setting another ultimate aviation milestone -- for highest-altitude takeoff and landing. Interesting pictures of Lukla airfield, as well -- essentially a runway carved out of a mountainside."

11 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting "landing" by volsung · · Score: 4, Informative
    For those who haven't watched the video, they "landed" the helicopter not in the way you think.

    From the pictures it looks like the top of Everest isn't flat enough to actually touch down and turn off your engines. Instead, they lowered until one of the landing gear ("feet"? not sure what you call those things on a helicopter) sunk into the snow, but kept the engines running the whole time to keep them balanced. The video makes it appear that they just hovered that way, partially airborne, partially touching the surface, until the 2 minute time requirement was achieved. Then they powered back to full engines and took off again.

    Not that I fault them.... :) This is probably the best you can do given the area.

    1. Re:Interesting "landing" by earthman · · Score: 4, Funny

      Perhaps they should flatten the top of the mountain to make a helipad and make it a tourist attraction.

    2. Re:Interesting "landing" by uradu · · Score: 3, Funny

      I would have thought the real problem would be finding a spot to touch down amongst all the flags up there.

    3. Re:Interesting "landing" by wertarbyte · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This reminds me of an old sketch of the german tv show "Verstehen Sie Spaß?". It's a hidden camera show, where celebrities are tricked into a strange situations (you certainly know the concept). One of the greatest episodes featured Reinhold Messner, famous mountaineer and conservationist, climbing the Matterhorn. They put up a kiosk right beneath the top via helicopter, selling all kinds of kitsch and junk to visitors...a nightmare to Messner, who got into rage after his (well-informed) companion even wanted to buy some kind of firework "to celebrate the reaching of the top". The TV crew then lowered the shows host from a helicopter, resolving the delicate situation

      --
      Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
  2. The seem to be on top of things.... by selfsealingstembolt · · Score: 2, Funny

    *ducks*

    Sorry, couldn't help myself. *g*

    --
    Keep open minded - but not that open your brain falls out...
  3. Re:Hold up by Paul+Rose · · Score: 2, Informative

    essentially a runway carved out of a mountainside
    That was describing the base camp...
    They didn't build a runway atop Everest!

  4. Re:Two words are coming to mind.. by kyle90 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Yes, because it's clearly so easy to land a helicopter on top of Everest... even ignoring the challenge of performing a landing in such extreme conditions, it's impressive that they were able to design a helicopter that could function perfectly up where the air is so thin. Quite an achievement. I know there will be those who say this "cheapens" the experience of climbing the mountain, but I hope that maybe now we could use helis to clean up Everest; get rid of all those oxy tanks, dead bodies, etc.

    --
    Real_men_don't_need_spacebars.
  5. Re:Hold up by hedronist · · Score: 5, Informative

    Short version: Yes, helicopters use runways.

    Long version: Most people assume helicopters just jump off the ground and are suddenly flying. The reality is a good deal more complex than that. (Which is a true statement about almost everything to do with helicopters.)

    1. When a helicopter first lifts off the ground it is inside its 'ground effect envelope', where part of its lift is coming from pushing air against the ground. Once it is above a certain height (varies by aircraft -- anywhere from 10 feet to 80 feet), the ground effect falls away and it is now fully airborne.

    2. Pure hovering (outside of the ground effect) takes an amazing amount of energy. It also has the danger, if maintained in one place on a still day, of creating a torroid of moving air: first pushed down by the blades, then sucked up and over the top to be pushed down again. This means the copter now has to push harder and faster to make up for the fact that the air it is pushing against is already moving down at some speed.

    3. Most fly time in a helictopter is spent moving forward in the air. The disc created by the spinning blade generates lift as it moves forward through the air. In fact, helicopters are called 'rotary-wing aricraft'.

    4. During takeoff, a heavily loaded helicopter -- or one operating at high alititude -- will want to stay inside its ground effect envelope while building up forward speed. Once it's going fast enough to generate lift forward motion, then they can start to gain altitude and move out of the ground effect.

    One page with more info: http://www.helicopterpage.com/
    Peter
    284th AVN Co, ATC, 8th Army

  6. Re:Hold up by fname · · Score: 2, Informative

    I flew into Lukla once, so I can assure you it's used all the time for plane arrivals and departures. There were a few planes pushed off the end of the runway, for the times when a plane couldn't stop fast enough and crashed. It's probably too hard to retrieve the plane or fix it, since there's no driveable roads to Lukla and not much in the way of airplane facilities. The airstrip gets shut quite often due to clouds, since if you can't see the runway you can't land.

  7. Did you make up this statistic? by BraceletWinner · · Score: 5, Informative
    From http://www.mounteverest.net/story/MountEverestKill erMountainsAnExplorersWebSeriesOct292003.shtml/ (a link from 2003):

    To date, there have been 1,924 ascents of Mount Everest (more than 1,300 different climbers), and 179 people have died. The overall fatality rate is thus about 9% (fatality rate is defined as successful summits compared to fatalities). However, since 1990 there has been an explosion of summiteers and fatality statistics have changed. Up to 1990, the Everest fatality rate is a whopping 37%, with 106 deaths and only 284 summits. Yet from 1990 until today, the rate has dropped to 4.4%; 73 people have died, and 1,640 have summited. Thus, the rate decreased to about eight times less than the pre-1990 fatality rate!

    The fatality rate from attempts is even less since more people attempt it each year than actually summit. Look something up before you spout off stats that sound good.

  8. Re:Some thoughts by CrosbieFitch · · Score: 2, Funny

    Check out this piccie:

    http://everestnews.com/stories2005/pictures/029p.j pg

    Why does it look like the helicopter has been Photoshopped into the shot?

    Are they using photomontage for 'artists impressions' these days?