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Discovery Channel Crashes a Boeing 727 For Science Documentary (latimes.com)
A Boeing 727 passenger jet has been deliberately crash-landed. The pilot ejected just minutes before the collision. The plane was packed with scientific experiments, including crash test dummies. Dozens of cameras recorded the crash from inside the aircraft, on the ground, in chase planes and even on the ejecting pilot's helmet. All of this was done for a feature length documentary to be shown on the Discovery Channel later this year."
First cool thing Discovery Channel has done in like... 10 years?
Captain sully feels about it.
My first thought: Entertainment industry wields far too much money these days.
it was the Mythbusters doing the crashing?
Tragic!
Their they're doing there hair.
Fucking awesome!
Cave Johnson: The enrichment center reminds all test subjects who opted for the 727 crash test to fasten their seat-belts. Cake will be served on board. It will be fucking awesome. For science.
Why risk human life when you can fly it via remote control? There are some *very* good RC pilots out there who would have creamed their shorts to get a chance to auger one of these planes in!
Cake will be served on board.
So it's a Church of England flight then?
(Cake or death? for those wondering).
"Total destruction the only solution" - Bob Marley
Johnny Depp ------------ 15
Ben Stiller ---------------- 10.5
Tom Hanks -------------- 9
Adam Sandler ---------- 8
Leonardo Di Caprio --- 5.5
Daniel Radcliffe -------- 5
Robert Downey Jr ----- 4.5
This seems like it might provide them will valuable data that they could use in design considerations.
On the other hand, if they did do this, they would probably not make it public and broadcast it to the general public. Who wants to ride in an airplane that you have seen in detail in a disastrous crash?
The documentary will probably start with a disclaimer, "This crash was caused on purpose. This do not happen to real planes made by Boeing. Please keep flying Boeing. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtains."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Hey! Shark week is a national treasure
Indeed.
Let's say the cost getting the plane and refurbishing it for this cost $6M. A 727-100C could carry 94 passengers, and/or ~17k kg of cargo. So you charge $64k per 'seat' for experiment space or $353 per kg of experiment, which ever is greater. The actual research could be extremely wide - testing new airline seat's crash-worthiness, validating the current crash models, crash dummies in general, cabin air samples during/after a crash, etc...
You get a grant from various governments for the environmental study involving the clean up of the crash site, have the ejection seat installed by one of the companies that do such things for research/advertising purposes, etc...
Being interested in 'just' making the documentary, they're providing a rare opportunity for research at a good discount without stepping on the toes of various research organizations that couldn't cooperate on their own to get this done.
I don't read AC A human right
1) Do not crash the plane in the first place.
2)Do not crash the plane in the first place.
Better prevent than cure.
With all the risks associated with ejecting, and the long-established tech to fly/land aircraft remotely (or via autopilot) why even put a human on board?
"BECAUSE WE CAN: Doing Cool Shit Just Fucking Because."
http://rocknerd.co.uk
You mean to tell me that the Discovery Channel is producing a new show that is something other than watching fisherman, lumberjacks, gunsmiths, gold miners, auctioneers, motorcycle builders, or used car salesmen as they go about their daily jobs and argue with one another??? I'll believe it when I see it.
Rather than worrying about how to survive a crash retire planes after their projected life has been reached. A disturbing number are still in the air years and in some cases decades after their operational life has been reached. They do receive major overhauls but the airframe is the same and they do get stress fractures. Weakening structure has caused some dramatic failures including large sections of the fuselages tearing out mid flight. A large number of planes still in the air are older than most people on this web site. The fact some of these planes haven't been built in decades should be your first clue.
What, did they run out of fishermen and choper manufacturers to follow around with cameras?
Non-destructive testing has been done on airframes for a very long time and points where expected overloads or fatigue are likely have been identified fairly well since the 1950s.
There's a movie out there called "The Thing From Outer Space" filmed in 1951 which heavily features a ski equipt DC3, and today (2012) there are two DC3's that are very similar to that one which fly from South Africa to Antarctica each year. A section in front of the wings which is prone to fatigue has been removed and replaced with a longer section, and they have turboprops, but the airframe is out of the 1940s.
Remaining life assessment of aircraft is something that has been going on for a long time, and it's hours of flight instead of physical age that is the important thing anyway. A lot of factors determine whether an airframe gets retired at a certain age or not instead of them all having the same use by date.
Did any of the dummies survive?
Get more valuable data from a design standpoint doing that. Like every plane gets its wings bent way beyond normal tolerances to see what they can survive. There's a cool video of the 777 being tested (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRf395ioJRY) where they push its wings to 154% of their designed load capacity (they are bent way up) before they shatter. Since it is being subjected to kinds of stresses almost impossible in the real world (the 100% number is set by the maximum expected real world stress).
The problem with an actual crash is that things are highly unpredictable. So maybe you go and crash a plane, and you probably only do one they are hundreds of millions of dollars, and everything looks fine. No major damage, people inside are good, etc. Wonderful... Except you later discover that the crash was just lucky, or unlucky depending on your view. It just happened that nothing got subject to very severe stress and that only because of that precise kind of crash was everything so tame. In another crash everything goes to hell because shit was slightly different.
Better to spend time and money doing specific stress tests.
I call bullshit on the word "ejected". Installing a seat would be a massive amount of hassle - cutting a hatch in the roof of the cockpit would be a major modification of the airframe. I'm no airplane geek but I bet the airframe would need FAA recertification after that kind of modification, plus a massive amount of testing to make sure it all worked correctly (you really don't want the situation where the seat fires but the hatch remains locked in place). I admit I'm pulling a number out of the air, but I'd be unsurprised if there was little change from ten million.
Forget the ejection seat. I bet the reason they used a 727 is that it's fitted with an Airstair, a combined hatch/stairway at the very rear of the aircraft. The Airstair makes the 727 one of the few airliners that it's possible to parachute from without the risk of being hit by the engines, wing or tailplane - a person known as "Mr Cooper" proved this was possible in 1971. The only modification needed to do it again is the removal of the Cooper vane, a small aerodynamic device fitted to 727s after the DB Cooper hikack, intended to stop the Airstair being opened in flight.
I figure that the ejection was due to the regulations and cost making a pure remote flight impractical.
As for the ejection from the 727, assuming it was from an actual ejection seat I'd assume that it was installed custom, commercial planes don't come with ejection equipment by default. As such, it'd be 'however the engineers decided to install this one-off system'.
I'd probably go with a custom installed hatch in top with explosive bolts, with a fairly standard ejection chair installed on appropriate rails.
On the other hand, going down, like how B52 ejection works, might actually make more sense - with a 727 you have engines mounted high and to the back; you really, really want to avoid being anywhere near those when you eject. Remember, they're sucking air during operation. There's also the big tail to consider.
Still, you're looking at a lot more length than a fighter and a nice big rocket engine should give you plenty of clearance.
I don't read AC A human right
Until it jumped the human
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
A video of the 727 crash can be seen here: http://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/video-boeing-727-deliberately-crashed-in-desert-for-tv-371267/
Some company years ago was trying to sell the airlines on a new fuel formulation designed to not vaporise and erupt into a conflagration after a crash. They set up a deliberate crash landing by remote control onto a paved runway surface spiked with iron stakes designed to shred the plane's wings and fuel tanks. It was very cool and video has to be out there somewhere.
Even cooler: how the revolutionary fuel concoction disappeared overnight after the plane burst into s hellish inferno of flames after touching down as planned! Priceless.
A plane crash has got to have the huge potential to leak all kinds of harmful substances into the local ecosystem. Jet fuel, oil, hydraulic fluid, and the combustion remnants of the plastics, fiberglass, aluminum, and other things... none of it could have been good for the local plant and wild life.
Did Discovery do their due diligence to study such potential impacts, and perform a proper cleanup after the crash? What are they doing now to ensure there are no long-term adverse effects?
They purchased carbon credits to offset all this.
No FAA there.
if only I had a job where I got paid to crash airplanes, and eject from the cockpit.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
This was done bofore, by NASA & the FAA in 1984: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controlled_Impact_Demonstration
The photo accompanying the article link is NOT the actual aircraft that Discovery crashed.
It has a tail mounted engine, 727 have two on the wings.
The Discovery Channel will now be known as "The Explosions and Aliens Channel".
... that thought the Mythbusters *MUST* be involved somehow?
I call it 'The Aristocrats'
Captain Sullenburg is the pilot who successfully ditched his Airbus in the Hudson river in 2009. I found a copy of his book, Highest Duty, in a discount book bin a few months ago.
The interesting thing about "Sully" is that he'd spent his entire career studying aviation accidents, and thinking about what he, as a pilot, could have done to make the accident turn out better.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
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I propose that this be used as in-flight viewing for long flights.
"And now , we can see just how intense the shear forces applied to the..."
"OH GOD LAND NOW OH GOD"
This is the first of many scheduled flights as part of a new Eric Holder sponsored program to return illegal immigrants to their home of record (I know...bad taste, but I couldn't help myself).
So you can crash a 727, but WILL IT BLEND?
WAAAALLLLLTTTTT!!!
Are you sure, after all a definition of expert is of someone who knows more and more about less and less...
Discovery Channel = Reality shows targeting men. The Learning Channel = Reality shows targeting women
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
No, it's not: The cake is a lie, and the 727 crash is just a variation of victory candescence.
I am officially gone from
This was done already. A passenger Plane was crashed and it was set up to have the wings sheared off so it would catch fire/explode. Just don't remember what show it was on and I'm pretty sure there was crash test dummy's but not a place full. And it was flown remotely which was pretty cool in itself.
Jack of all trades,master of none
Aw man... I just bought that!
The cake is a lie!
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
Please tell me the Myth Busters were in on this!
If not, WHY NOT!
They should have just used it for homeless housing.
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im sure it was for a show "redneck pilots". Barry tried to get the gatr' before it got to the cockpit; he was too late.
How soon before the 9/11 conspiracy people comment on this?
(despite the fact that no 727s were used in those attacks).
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
Reality meets reality?
I wonder who the really crash dummies are that were aboard the 727? Better than being retired to some place in the desert?