Parachutes for airplanes....

[Dr Mordrid]

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/12/22/airplane.parachutes.ap/index.html

Dr. Mordrid

[DGhost]

you know... I really don't ever want to see that in use...

[Elie]

Yeah, I heard about them researching such idea for years now, great to see it functioning.

[Wombat]

Originally posted by Elie
Yeah, I heard about them researching such idea for years now, great to see it functioning.

....sometimes.

The article makes it sound like it's not that reliable.

[Jessterw]

Nothing is fool-proof, that's for sure, but I'd definitely feel better about one being present.

[KvHagedorn]

Do they have one for a 747 though?

[Dr Mordrid]

For that mass and the speed at which they travel you'd need a staged 'cute the size of a football stadium.

Dr. Mordrid

[az]

ULVs have had that for quite a while now.

AZ

[VJ]

As mentioned in the articles, Cirrus (airplane manufacturer) has them as standard equipent. The technology exists (and is available for small planes) for quite some time, but IIRC, a few months ago the first emergency landing using such a parachute was performed (and it was a success). This was in essence the first real life situtation where such a parachute proved its usefullness.


Apart from the viability aspect for doing something like that for large jets, I wonder if it is desirable. The glide capabilities of these airplanes is remarkable. Bear in mind that when using a chute, you have absolutely no control where it is going to touch ground. For me, the only useful situation would be for ditching: landing a plane on water involves far too many risks. Dropping it with a chute would mean the plane wouldn't break up on impact (it would have less or even no horizontal speed), leaving more time for the passengers to get out.

In practice, I think for this to work in large planes, one should be thinking of seperating the passenger compartiment (it wheighs less than the entire aircraft) from the fueselage, wings, even luggage. In an era where fly-by-wire is common, this division is possible (it is far less obvious if the pilot controls were mechanical).

There have been experiments in Russia, where the idea was to put all the passenger seat on rails, and equip each seat with a parachute. In case of an emergency, the back of the plane could open, all all the seats could be expelled. However, the altitude and speed at which jets travel results in this ejection being fatal for most people. So this idea was abandoned.


Jörg

[az]

It's a nice last resort for when the wings fail etc. But that passenger cabin-separation idea is very good IMHO. Patent it

AZ

[Dr Mordrid]

Originally posted by VJ
[B]Apart from the viability aspect for doing something like that for large jets, I wonder if it is desirable. The glide capabilities of these airplanes is remarkable. Bear in mind that when using a chute, you have absolutely no control where it is going to touch ground.

Not as limited as it may look at first glance. Don't forget that NASA recently did a sucessful test of a very large steerable 'chute for use with the Crew Return Vehicle for the ISS. This isn't an emergency 'chute either; it's the primary landing system.

Scale that up with the fly-by-wire tech you mention in a later paragraph then mate it with the ability to split passenger cabins into segments and it just might work even for jumbos.

This would of course require auto-closing bulkheads and therefore losing a row or two of seats, but that's not too large a cost if you build it in during the design stage.

Not landing in an already occupied space is another issue, but another new tech could possibly take care of that. A small company is now testing with the US military a device that can direct a new generation of steerable cargo drop parachutes to a very narrow radius (<100 meters) using GPS technology similar to that used in the US smart bombs.

This tech is expected to control high altitude drops of very heavy loads such as military vehicles, so handling a hollow passenger cabin should be very easy. It was developed to reduce the risk to cargo planes that currently have to do low-altitude drops in combat zones.

If each modules "flight" computer were pre-programmed with open spaces available for emergency "landings" along its flight plan it could quickly determine where each cabin module could safely put down, updating its list of currently available options as the flight progressed.

Since most flight paths are over relatively low population areas once you leave the airport such open spaces should be easily identified, especially in the nations heartland where you often find farm fields etc. miles on each side.

This may be a bit tougher in Europe, but here in the US 85-90% of the population is on 10-15% fo the land mass.

Hell, we're just 20 miles outside of Detroit and <2 miles from its major airport: Detroit Metro. Not 1/2 mile from us are two sod farms that are probably 1 sq. mile each and immediately south and west of them it's farmland for at least 50 miles. Going west it's wide open most of the way to Chicago

Dr. Mordrid

[Jon P. Inghram]

One disadvantage to drastic safety devices like that is accidental activation. My dad saw someone "accidentally" drop the tail off an early model B-52 while it was parked at Boeing. The person was sitting in the tail gunner seat and apparently couldn't resist the urge to pull the escape handle which seperated the tail capsule.

[Dr Mordrid]

That's what triple redundant computers are for. They help idiot-proof things

Dr. Mordrtid

[Technoid]

See my Sig, it applies for "idiot proofing" also

[Dr Mordrid]

The answer is 42

Dr. Mordrid