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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?
it was the Mythbusters doing the crashing?
Fucking awesome!
I had a similar thought as well. That had to cost them a pretty penny or 800,000,000 million. As long as they use it for a good old fashioned "lets learn something" kind of show like they used to do, then I'm cool with it.
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.
800,000,000 million
That's a lot of millions
It's not a 747, it's a 727. A quick search of www.aviatorsale.com shows you can get one for ~$5M, not $800M. Some prices are less than a million, but I figure those are for non-operational planes. Production stopped in 1984, so you know they didn't bust up a new one. I figure they used a plane equivalent to the junker cars mythbusters and such destroy regularly.
Then you turn around and contact various agencies to get them to 'sponsor' the crash, allowing them to place scientific experiments(like the crash test dummies) on board for a share of the overall cost.
Done right, Discover could have gotten it's cost of the documentary down to the cost of the film crews.
I don't read AC A human right
I assumed the same. And they're not new to this. If they were going to lose big money on it, they wouldn't have done it.
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
What I said was "a pretty penny or 800,000,000", as in 800m pennies.
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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."
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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
I wouldn't be surprised if Boeing themselves didn't invest a bunch of money in the crash. Car companies test-crash automobiles on a regular basis, Boeing probably got some VERY valuable information that can help them make planes safer in the future.
Technically you said 800,000,000 million. Or 800 Trillion. Even in pennies that's rather high. ;)
I don't read AC A human right
Discover could have gotten it's cost of the documentary down to the cost of the film crews.
If you're suggesting that the Discovery Channel exec used her Discover card to drive her costs down to the break-even point, I think you're overestimating the value of the rewards program. They only give you one percent back, and the purchase protection only covers domestic airline crashes (this one was in Mexico). When you factor in the annual fee, she probably lost money!
Or perhaps you just confused the financial company with the media company.
Hmm, so I did. Another case of my brain getting ahead of my hands. It's funny how I read my original comment multiple times and I did't pick up on that. I always miss stuff like that on a screen, but not on paper.
I don't know about you, but I'm kind of excited about the thought of a small third world nation having a nuclear bomb dropped on it, so that I can be entertained. I'm not heartless. The people would be evacuated first, of course. All of this would be captured by an award-winning director (I'm gunning for James Cameron), who would be free to add some drama and story to the action. If we find a poor enough nation, we should be able to pull this off for around a billion US dollars. Seeing as how Cameron has proved that he can pull in a billion dollars already, this should be doable.
I say, if we're going to be decadent, it's time to go all the way.
Or as simple as a single letter typo. I consider myself lucky to have only one per post.
I don't read AC A human right
Yes I'm sure both your brain cells were taxed to oblivion.
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?
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We've already done that. The US, USSR, French and British have all exploded nuclear bombs, and the footage is available on YouTube. The USA even seriously irradiated a Japanese fishing vessel in one of these explosions, and some of the crew died from radiation sickness.
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I don't know about you, but I'm kind of excited about the thought of a small third world nation having a nuclear bomb dropped on it, so that I can be entertained. I'm not heartless. The people would be evacuated first, of course.
You're a bit late, we already did that. But you can still watch the footage if that's what floats your boat.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Add to that it just needs to fly once. This massively lowers the cost and requirements of being able to do this. Discovery probably even got given one, and they probably didn't bank roll the entire thing on their own either, there's a lot of interest parties that would front up cash for such an opportunity to gather data.
I understand that relatively "good condition" planes get scrapped because it would be too expensive to refurbish them (fatigued metal to the point it can't be repaired). A junkyard car that runs but is dangerous/illegal on the road is different to a junkyard plane that flies and is danerous/illegal in the air.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
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.
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.
I really should have thought about that before I made my post, because you've definitely got a point. However, as disturbing as that scenario is, it hasn't been done explicitly for entertainment purposes. It also lacks the crass commercialization of a Hollywood movie, with the requisite viral marketing and merchandising tie-ins. Just think: little toy mushroom clouds for the kids! There's some real potential here for a producer with vision.
Did any of the dummies survive?
well, the fishing boat thing was a miscalculation... they weren't to know that lithium 7 could be just as good as lithium 6.
well, they might have had a hunch.
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.
We've already done that. The US, USSR, French and British have all exploded nuclear bombs, and the footage is available on YouTube. The USA even seriously irradiated a Japanese fishing vessel in one of these explosions, and some of the crew died from radiation sickness.
But we haven't done it in 3D yet.
Oh yeah, and at least my Discover card doesn't come with an annual fee.
I don't read AC A human right
Add to that it just needs to fly once. This massively lowers the cost and requirements of being able to do this. Discovery probably even got given one, and they probably didn't bank roll the entire thing on their own either, there's a lot of interest parties that would front up cash for such an opportunity to gather data.
I figure they probably ended up paying somewhere between one and five million for the plane, but recovered at least 90% of the cost between grants, sponsorships, and selling research space. There's good odds they made a little money, even before you figure in the profits from the show.
Even a non-flight worthy plane is worth almost a million. And as you say, there's a big difference between a plane with a useful amount of service life left, one that can still take passengers, and one that only needs to make a couple flights with limited flight crews. I figure 1 flight to the airport where the modifications are made, and 1 to the crash. They probably kept it ready to make a landing 'just in case' something went wrong and it wasn't a good day for the crash.
I don't read AC A human right
But what if you crash the plane?! Just a little bit!?
120 characters ought to be enough for anyone
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
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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?
Chernobyl is the largest reason the cold war ended.
I'm not sure that's true, but the fact that the Americans immediately said "what can we do to help, just let us know" and not "suck it, commies," didn't hurt.
800,000,000 million
That's a lot of millions
But ... my ATM machine will hand out that much cash money after I enter my PIN number ;-)
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.
But this is an old plane, using old materials, old technology, and old construction techniques. I doubt they'd learn much from this that they haven't already learned from other crash experiments.
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.
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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!!!
Discovery Channel = Reality shows targeting men. The Learning Channel = Reality shows targeting women
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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.
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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.
But we're still missing the first person view a la Doctor Strangelove ... in IMAX.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Please tell me the Myth Busters were in on this!
If not, WHY NOT!
That depends, it seems like this might be one of the best instrumented /documented air crashes of all time. Could still provide some valuable insight, even with the older aircraft.
As for money, how expensive is it to buy one that's just reached end of life? If you have a plane that can't fly anymore anyway (not through mechanical failure, but simply reached the end of it's hour rating), and you're going to have to get rid of it one way or another...
They should have just used it for homeless housing.
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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!
I wonder if their children have hunches? Maybe webbed feet? Probably all they got is a statistically higher chance of cancer.
It gripped her hand gently. 'Regret is for humans,' it said.
first of all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g
Second of all, there's still a lot that HASN'T changed. The overall shape and layout of the inside of the cockpit, cabin, seats, bathrooms, cooking area, etc probably haven't changed a whole lot. For instance, how accurately do you think a computer can REALLY simulate a lunch cart being hurled down an isle with a few people standing in it?