NASA Scientists Jubilant After Successful Helicopter Crash 110
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Elizabeth Barber reports in the Christian Science Monitor that when a CH-46E Sea Knight helicopter plummeted into the ground at more than 30 miles per hour, there was jubilation from the scientists on the ground at the culmination of some two years of preparation to test a helicopter's crashworthiness. 'We designed this test to simulate a severe but survivable crash under both civilian and military requirements,' says NASA lead test engineer Martin Annett. 'It was amazingly complicated with all the planning, dummies, cameras, instrumentation and collaborators, but it went off without any major hitches.' During the crash, high-speed cameras filming at 500 images per second tracked the black dots painted on the helicopter, allowing scientists to assess the exact deformation of each part of the craft, in a photographic technique called full field photogrammetry. Thirteen instrumented crash test dummies and two un-instrumented manikins stood, sat or reclined for a potentially rough ride. The goal of the drop was to test improved seat belts and seats, to collect crashworthiness data and to check out some new test methods but it was also to serve as a baseline for another scheduled test in 2014. 'It's extraordinarily useful information. I will use this information for the next 20 years,' says Lindley Bark, a crash safety engineer at Naval Air Systems Command on hand for the test. 'Even the passenger airplane seats in there were important to us because we fly large aircraft that have the same type of seating."'
Re:I love scientists. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you knew anything about helicopters you'd know that 30mph is VERY relevant.
Indeed. In 1981, I was a young Marine grunt on an exercise in Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. We were riding CH-46s into an LZ and the bird right behind mine lost power and auto-gyrated into the ground. I reached the treeline, and turned just in time to see it hit the ground. The helicopter was badly damaged, and the Marines on board were shaken up, but no one was hurt.
Re:Maybe this will help helos get mainstream (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder how much of my fare was to cover insurance premiums?
Given 5 passengers, I'll assume it to be a turbine helicopter. The absolute cheapest turbine (for operating costs) is about $600 per hour, or about $10 per minute. A mid-cost one will run you twice that, or more. So I'd say that half of the cost was aircraft maintenance. The pilot was likely nearly free. Many starting commercial pilots would pay to fly that trip. Insurance isn't that much, as flight-seeing trips are about as much in areas where insurance is essentially free.
The problem with flight actuaries is that there are so few crashes, and no easy way to differentiate between them. Almost all small craft crashes are pilot error, the most common being loading/power issues (just about all celebrities that went down were a pilot making an error to fly with an overloaded craft or into unacceptable weather.
Re:NASA Scientists Perplexed After Unsuccessful Cr (Score:5, Interesting)
In other news, NASA scientists announced confusion after attempting to crash a helicopter and failing despite repeated tries.
You joke...but this is the sort of thing that never gets funding.
Adam savage tells a tale of how a guy called him after they did the firing bullets inside aircraft episode. He said they'd been trying to get funding to do that experiment for decades.
It also took discovery channel to crash a 'plane and see what happens. There's no way a government could do this...right? (somebody might lose their campaign funding if the results made Boeing look bad!) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Boeing_727_crash_experiment [wikipedia.org]