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CIA: Flying Skyhook Wasn't Just For James Bond, It Actually Rescued Agents
coondoggie writes "This had to be one hell of a ride. The CIA today said it added a pretty cool item to its museum archives — the instruction card for officers being plucked off the ground by a contraption that would allow a person to be snatched off the ground by a flying aircraft without the plane actually landing."
Teleporter's most likely. Always wondered what you could come up with with an unlimited budget, now we know.
They showed this extraction method on The Unit. Season 2, episode 1 "Change of Station".
They practiced this, pretty regularly at Hurlburt Field, Florida... within view of the general public. Several of the MC-130's were fitted with the catch arms. (It's even had a wikipedia page for awhile now.)
So, yeah, it's cool... but it's hardly new or a secret.
prop plane flying in special circles could keep a weight at end of winchable cable relatively stationary to ground. this method was used to take and deliver mail at remote locations, and at stunt shows to pick up and leave a stuntman.
Why would I believe it existed just because I saw it in a movie? i can't say I gave it a lot of thought, but I generally don't go "Gosh, I saw it in a james Bond movie, it must exist in real lifte."
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
You can see a display about this in the Evergreen Avation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon. They have an airplane on display with the "catcher" appratus mounted on the nose, and I think they have the other hardware too. (It's been a few years since I went there, and I mostly remember my tour of the Spruce Goose.)
http://www.evergreenmuseum.org/
They had some other intriguing stuff. I remember a short-range VTOL device that was basically an airplane engine mounted vertically; it sucked air in from the top, blew it out the bottom, and the operator would stand on a ring that circled the outside of the engine. I remember wondering how difficult that might be to fly, since it was too old to have a computer-controlled active stabilisation system. Also, I think I would want to wear hearing and eye protection if I was riding that thing.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Many more details here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fulton_surface-to-air_recovery_system
In WWII we were recovering entire gliders this way, not just people: http://www.silentwingsmuseum.com/pdf/RetrievalSystem.pdf -- a history of airplane/ground retrieval systems specifically relating to the effort to pull Waco CG4A gliders big enough to hold 15 people, from the fields where they'd landed back into the air and tow them back to the launch airbase without the tow plane landing. It was dangerous work and pretty often it ended up just tearing the glider into pieces but it was successful a fair amount of the time.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
In fact, there's also stupid people in television stations, because the amount of broadcasts with the wrong aspect ratio is rather astounding.
A little off topic, but I've seen SD PBS analog "basic" cable channels with black bars holding a HD aspect video, that HD aspect video is holding a SD video, inside that SD video is a HD signal. Yes, double blackbar'd. Impressive fail there.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
the mail wagon got its mail from small cities by having a snatch hook grab it from a hanging hook at the edge of the platform, and the snatch hook was then pulled back into the mail car. so the CIA technology is derivative.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
This was my bet on the most effective way to get him out of London. Too bad Ecuador doesn't have the equipment.