Discovery Channel Crashes a Boeing 727 For Science Documentary (latimes.com) 281
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."
Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
First cool thing Discovery Channel has done in like... 10 years?
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
H2?! The Ancient Aliens Bull Shit network? All of History channel, RIP.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, don't knock it, Ancient Aliens is one of the funniest comedy shows on TV. Is the presenter's -- that sports scientist's -- hairstyle, and orange skin, evidence of ancient alien visitors? Some ancient alien researchers believe they are.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Funny)
I don't ever remember seeing the Nat Geo special when they found the dinosaur bones with phaser fire marks.
Re: (Score:3)
I'm not really sure.. THEREFORE ALIENS!!!
no no no, it was definitely a 'squatch. lol
Re:Well... (Score:4, Funny)
UFOs shooting dinosaurs
The worst part is picking the laser shrapnel out of the dinosaur meat.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
I happen to be expert in one particular area of history (Ph.D. in New Testament and Early Christian Studies), and when I watch programs related to that area on the History Channel, I'm astounded at how uniformly awful they are. They seem determined to present any and every wacky theory, and to distort every recognized fact. While I'm not expert on other areas (e.g. American history), I also find their reporting in these areas to be... idiosyncratic?
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
I know. I've been watching Discovery and other channels like it since before it was cool to watch that kind of stuff, but now the main channels are mostly full of stupid reality crap. You have to go to .. BBC ... to find good stuff, and not all cable or satellite providers offer all of those newer networks, much less offer them on the lower packages.
Dunno what country you're in, but the BBC is broadcast OTA in my country, and it's full of stupid reality crap. There's the occasional gem, but you can say the same about any channel.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
They have at least managed to resist the temptation of the pseudo-doc.
They do plenty of "docu-drama" stuff, which tries to both educate and entertain but manages to do neither well, and some of the proper documentary output has falling in quality over they years. Their overall output is significantly better then the commercial channels though, IMO.
The other channels all chased each other to the bottom seeking higher ratings (That reality crap is very popular, as are pseudo-docs like Ancient Aliens and Most Haunted) to keep the cash coming in.
Most of it isn't as popular as it seems, it is just rammed down your throat so much that you assume everyone is watching otherwise it would not justify the advertising budget. But with parts of the advertising industry suffering (and it not mattering on the BBC anyway as they are just plugging their own content and not competing against commercial interests for the air time used) that air time comes dirt cheap. But the shows don't have to be massively popular: they are incredibly cheap to make compared to just about every other variety of TV content so they pay their way with only a mediocre following. There are a few examples that draw in many many viewers of course, but the rest just potter along in the "meh" ratings category, using airtime that they'd otherwise have to make/license something more expensive to fill.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd say panorama counts as a pseudo-doc
Try "the daily politics". That is often no better than panto and they have the cheek to call it "in depth". Actually, I take that back, while panto has similar song and dance numbers I've known them be significantly more enlightening!
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
The BBC's Horizon programme used to be the gold standard for documentaries. Go download some episodes from the 70s and 80s. The presenting, the clear and deep explanations and the lack of gimmickry is incredibly refreshing.
It all started to go wrong in the 90s. Instead of a documentary it became a drama, setting up artificial rivalries between scientists and going for a sense of bemused wonder at the pretty graphics and throaty voice-over instead of pleasurable enlightenment.
Brian Cox said words to the effect of "people don't want the science, they want a story, they want the journey". Call yourself a scientist and educator?
Re:Well... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'd call him a realist.
Re: (Score:2)
H2 and NatGeo? Wtf are you smoking?
I'm not even sure you can get real educational programming in the US, but when I compare the channels you listed against something like EQhd or OasisHD, they're not even in the same category.
Re: (Score:3)
Really?
NatGeo is all Locked Up Abroad and Taboo and stuff like that now. Very little of it is science-content-oriented.
H2 is just like History, but with their less-popular, less-intelligent shows. OMG! A Biggest Loser marathon!
Green might as well be Trading Spaces 22/7 with a couple hours of infomercials, and Bio is almost all courtroom drama and COPS or reenactments of crimes.
BBC has a few awesome shows, but a majority of their network is directed at teenage to middle-aged women. It's like soap operas with
Shark week (Score:5, Funny)
Hey! Shark week is a national treasure
I loved Shark week (Score:5, Funny)
Until it jumped the human
Re:I loved Shark week (Score:4, Funny)
You're already at 5, so instead of modding you up I'll have to settle for sitting here and clapping.
Re: (Score:2)
(thi is not a snarky way to say it was not funny, I really suppose it must be but I don't get the reference(s) at all) care to explain ?
thanks
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumping_the_shark
Re: (Score:3)
Well aren't you just a treasure.
Re: (Score:2)
Crash landed != crashed
Just sayin'
Re:Well... (Score:4, Informative)
United Flight 232 is proof of that. While 111 were killed, 185 people survived the crash (including the cockpit crew), including 125 people who had only minor injuries and 13 people who survived without injury. From the Wikipedia article [wikipedia.org]:
The article also notes that "[m]any passengers were able to walk out through the ruptures to the structure."
It's not quite what you were looking for--no cartwheeling of the fuselage--but it's proof that an airplane crash that results in the effective destruction of an aircraft can be survivable.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Informative)
According to the accident report, this was for National Geographic's Seconds from Disaster. http://aviation-safety.net/wikibase/wiki.php?id=145323 [aviation-safety.net]
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Well... (Score:4, Funny)
Did a fat lady sing just before the end?
Re: (Score:2)
I'd wait until we see the show that comes out.
Given Discovery's last year or three, they'll probably blame it on Hitler or use it to prove the existence of Bigfoot.
Re:Well... (Score:5, Insightful)
I know this will be unpopular, but I actually rather like the Discovery Channel. It also doesn't hurt that when I watch the shows, they are 20% shorter and have no commercials, so that makes me happier about them (watching TV online FTW).
Mythbusters is by far one of the most fun-without-thinking shows I have seen. It explores critical thinking, which is more than I can say about pretty well any other show on television. There are always a couple times I'm shouting at the screen "You did it wrong! Your science is bad!" but more often than not I'm just entertained by how far they will go for a fan's forum question.
Shark Week is also another favorite of mine. Sure, it has become pretty binaural with "here's what to do if a shark attacks you" and "sharks won't attack you, look, I can swim with them!" but there are still a lot of cool programs about specific species of sharks interspersed. I have to say, every time I watch Shark Week I want to fly to Florida and hop in the ocean for a quick dive.
Shows that present less-well-known aspects of North American life such as Flying Wild showing the bush pilots in Alaska. Sure, there is a lot of unnecessary drama, but it still shows me an aspect of America I may never get to see. I'm not watching it to follow the characters (even if Ariel Tweto is hot...), I'm watching it to see what it's like to fly a plane in the Arctic in some of the worst weather in the world.
Anything with Michio Kaku is awesome. That guy is like the pop-scientist of our generation (sorry Bill, sorry Niel). He may be less science and more speculation, but he makes it seriously entertaining, and puts it in terms that my whole family can follow. I'd rather they watch even a dumbed-down science show than Jersey Shore or 16 and Pregnant.
I know a lot of people who love Deadliest Catch, but I personally hate the shit out of that show. Eight seasons? For fucking real? They're pulling cages full of crab out of the ocean. That is all that happens. Oh no, someone got clocked by a piece of ice. Why don't you put the cameras on a coast guard ship so at least you can see something besides dudes on a boat hanging out and hauling rope around?
Our whole society is becoming VERY dumb. The popularity of functionally-retarded-oriented shows like ____ Housewives of ______, underage pregnancy shows, moronic frat-tards running into walls and getting drunk, catty women fighting over men who don't deserve it: please, leave the Discovery Channel alone. If you need to attack a network, aim at History. Toddlers and Tiaras? Little People in a Big World? Ancient Aliens? Hunting for Sasquatch? Give me a fucking break. Shut that shit down.
Sorry to be crude and all but all I can think is,. (Score:2)
Fucking awesome!
Re:Sorry to be crude and all but all I can think i (Score:4, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Cake will be served on board.
So it's a Church of England flight then?
(Cake or death? [youtube.com] for those wondering).
Piloted plane? (Score:5, Interesting)
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!
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Piloted plane? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Virtually anything can be flown remotely. It takes little additional gear to get the job done.
Re:Piloted plane? (Score:5, Informative)
The actual stick manipulation for basic flying doesn't take much additional equipment, but running all of the systems does. Remember, the 727 is a relatively old design, requiring a three-person crew. The third person is a flight engineer, whose job is to monitor and run the hydraulic (flight controls, brakes, landing gear), pneumatic (pressurization and deicing), electrical power, and powerplant (engine) systems. These functions are much more automated on newer aircraft (compare a modern computer-controlled car engine to one from the 60s), but older ones like the 727 require a human to monitor the analog gauges, control the systems, and prevent them from exceeding limits.
Trying to automate all of those things for a one-time flight would be simply cost-prohibitive. I know some of them wouldn't be necessary for the flight in question, but you couldn't just wave them all away, either.
Re: (Score:3)
We've been converting planes into remote controlled drones since around WWII. It's a bit more complicated than converting a car to remote control, like what mythbusters does in a couple days all the time, but it's fairly straightforward with the right people today.
On the other hand, maybe the pilot was because operating a drone over occupied land requires permits, inspections, and certifications that were more hassle than having a pilot take it up until it was over the target area before bailing.
Re:Piloted plane? (Score:4, Insightful)
Not at all. We used remotely-controlled BQ-7 Aphrodite drones (converted B-17s) packed with explosives to crash into U-boat pens during World War II, albeit unsuccessfully.
Re: (Score:2)
That sort of thing has been looked at before as a way of controlling aircraft where the pilot has become incapacitated. Unfortunately it was considered just too complex and unreliable to proceed with.
Re:Piloted plane? (Score:4, Interesting)
WAY too much money.
If you have a (plentiful at Davis-Monthan etc) surplus ejection seat whose pyrotechnics are current all you need is to bolt the rails to the cockpit floor with a simple mount of your choice and cut a hole in the roof covered with a light panel. No electronics to connect and the seat is self-contained.
OV-10 Broncos had a very fast seat because it used a canopy breaker and punched through the light upper transparency.
Neat site with lots of interesting ejection info:
http://www.ejectionsite.com/seatgalnf.htm [ejectionsite.com]
Number Perspective (Score:4, Interesting)
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
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I had no idea the price of wood was so high!
Do Boeing or Airbus also do this . . . ? (Score:2)
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
No they do more in shop kinds of testing (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:No they do more in shop kinds of testing (Score:4, Insightful)
Better to spend time and money doing specific stress tests.
When it comes to planes, it's more along the lines of doing specific stress tests to make sure that component failures don't cause a crash in the first place. Cars barely make crashes at 65mph survivable. Survivable crashes at around 10 times that speed just aren't achievable.
Re: (Score:2)
Plenty of crash test footage for cars out there.
Re: (Score:2)
NASA has [wikipedia.org]
Why risk a pilot? (Score:2)
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?
Re:Why risk a pilot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
How does this ejecting work from a 727? Does the roof above the cockpit open and the chair jumps out, or how?
Re: (Score:2)
I'd guess "ejected" was probably the wrong term to use. More likely, the pilot bailed out (jumped) from the tail airstairs like D. B. Cooper, or went out through a specially-rigged baggage door hatch (an installation common on airliner test aircraft).
Re: (Score:2)
I hope for him he didn't have to walk all the way from the front to the back though...
Re:Ejections from a 727 (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ejections from a 727 (Score:4, Informative)
Do you happen to have a quote on the weight? The closest I could find is 496 pounds for an ACES, 450lb(205kg) for an ancient Russian K-36 [ejectorseats.co.uk] which should be within the design tolernances of a cockpit originally designed for three, at least for limited use. (Note: the K-36D may have gained weight, it was listed as 'noticeably heavier than the ACES II')
Heck, that site says that a lightweight model suitable for trainers was developed - don't need to deal with significant slip-stream or ejection speeds over 510kts(727 cruise is 521kt)? 110lb with the K-36LT-3-5. Need that extra bit of speed capability? The K-36D-3.5 only ups that to 156lb giving you safe ejection up to 595 kt.
As for the rockets disfiguring the hole, that's why I said 'appropriately sized'. He's not going to be mangled if he's already OUT of the plane by the time the rockets mangle the exit with their exhaust.
Per the RAF and 'limited number of ejections' comment, well, my research shows that ejection seats have drastically improved from the '80s. I was thinking something modern, like an ACES II, would be used. The ACES II seat keeps maximum ejection forces between 12 and 14 G, a far cry from the 25+ seen with early seats which often seriously injured the one using it, sometimes even killing them.
After all that, I'll note that in retrospect I'll agree with most of the other posters-an actual ejection seat was unlikely to have been used. At this point the logistics of fitting a 727 with an actual functioning ejection seat is more an interesting mental exercise.
Series name (Score:5, Insightful)
"BECAUSE WE CAN: Doing Cool Shit Just Fucking Because."
are you sure this is the Discovery Channel? (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's a thought (Score:5, Insightful)
They are expensive things and last (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I expect (but don't know) that the 727 they used for the show had exceeded its "safe" pressurization cycles and was destined for the scrapyard anyway--so it only had scrap value anyway.
However, the DC3 that dblll mentioned is NOT a pressurized aircraft--so it need not worry about cycles at all. It's only about flight hours and wear and tear.
Re: (Score:2)
The 737s are still being built. And it's fuselage is heavily based on the 727. Here's a recent article about it, and the problems. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/03/19/is-boeing-s-737-an-airplane-prone-to-problems.html [thedailybeast.com]
Of course, that's not the same as deliberately crashing a 727 into the ground, but I'm sure Boeing would be interested in the effects.
Poor dummies (Score:2)
Did any of the dummies survive?
Re:Poor dummies (Score:5, Funny)
Yes. Remarkably, many of the surviving dummies have been elected to congress and others work for the TSA.
Forget the ejection seat. (Score:5, Informative)
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 [wikipedia.org], 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" [wikipedia.org] proved this was possible in 1971. The only modification needed to do it again is the removal of the Cooper vane [wikipedia.org], a small aerodynamic device fitted to 727s after the DB Cooper hikack, intended to stop the Airstair being opened in flight.
Re:Forget the ejection seat. (Score:5, Interesting)
The 727 has also been used as a skydiving jumpship. A friend of mine has jumped from the 727, and she said it was somewhat painful hitting the air at that speed (they are actually above terminal velocity when they jump, and can climb a little until they are higher than the actual jumpship before starting their fall)
Re: (Score:3)
It might be this plane she jumped from, a DC 9 not a 727 - similar but a bit smaller.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/eigjb/4035916870/ [flickr.com]
I wouldn't be surprised if it featured on the documentary. Assuming the 727 pilot is an experienced skydiver, it would still make sense for them to take a few practice jumps from the DC 9 to familiarise themselves with jumping out the back of a jet airliner.
Re: (Score:3)
Forget the ejection seat. I bet the reason they used a 727 is that it's fitted with an Airstair [wikipedia.org], 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" [wikipedia.org] proved this was possible in 1971.
I done a few jumps from a 727 during World FreeFall Convention in 1990s, Quincy, IL. They brought in a 727, a cargo plane, for one of the jumpships at the convention. Removed the airstair door, lined the wall, ceiling, stairs with plywood to avoid having skydivers snag on something on the way out. As it is a cargo, no seats, they loaded the aircraft with 200 skydivers, and it took forever,very hot and humid (IL in August) and sitting our butts waiting for last to load (hint, don't be the first in line). Ai
Video of the 727 crash (Score:5, Informative)
Reminds me of another test (Score:2)
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
Re:I wonder if... (Score:5, Funny)
No no, this was deliberate.
Re:Decadence (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Decadence (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
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 [youtube.com] if that's what floats your boat.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
Re:Decadence (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Decadence (Score:5, Insightful)
Distributed costs (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Distributed costs (Score:5, Informative)
have the ejection seat installed by one of the companies that do such things for research/advertising purposes, etc...
I feel like "eject" was the wrong word for this article (which was probably poorly transcribed from a press release).
727s don't have ejection seats.
Commercial airliners in general don't have ejection seats for a host of reasons,
some of the structural, but mostly to keep them from abandoning the passengers.
The likeliest scenario is that the pilot cracked open a door and jumped out.
And it's no trouble at all to open the doors on an unpressurized airplane.
/The most (in)famous person to ever jump out of a 727 is D.B. Cooper [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
727s don't have ejection seats.
I know that. Why do you think that I specified installing one? Just because it's not standard equipment doesn't mean that there aren't companies out there perfectly capable of putting one in. Heck, they've installed ones in cars before.
I agree, he might not have actually ejected via an ejection seat, but then again, he might of. Something to watch the documentary for?
Re: (Score:2)
If my memory serves back to when I worked on the first A320 used for test flights in 1986, there was an exit chute about halfway down the aircraft in the floor, so pesky things like tailfins wouldn't interrupt egress from the aircraft.
It wouldn't surprise me if they inserted something similar into the plane they crashed.
Re:Distributed costs (Score:5, Informative)
I agree, he might not have actually ejected via an ejection seat, but then again, he might of.
"might 'ave" (to say it the way your wrote it) or "might have".
Re: (Score:3)
Let's check our Pepsi cam to see what happened to the State Farm Insurance crash test dummy
Check out what's left of engine #2, sponsored by Chevy. It's just to the right of the Doritos "Forever Crunchy" rudder and air flaps.
Re: (Score:3)
suck it up. it's not perfect, but at least it's being done.
if you let your cynicism slip for just a second, you'll realize that this was just a rather flamboyant but genuine opportunity to do some hard science. you gotta take it when it comes, not sit and bitch about how the world should be different. you can't push against the world forever - you have to realize you're just standing on it, not fighting it.
Re:Decadence (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Decadence (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re: (Score:2)
Or as simple as a single letter typo. I consider myself lucky to have only one per post.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh yeah, and at least my Discover card doesn't come with an annual fee.
Re: (Score:2)
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 t
Re: (Score:2)
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 mak
Re: (Score:2)
Technically you said 800,000,000 million. Or 800 Trillion. Even in pennies that's rather high. ;)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
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 ;-)
Carbon Credits (Score:4, Funny)
They purchased carbon credits to offset all this.