I know this design was for safety, with a shit ton of parachutes on the passenger cabin, but modularity generally fucks the economics of a plane design. You have to have a self-contained module, a plane that is flyable (and landable) without it, and you need a way to securely connect one to the other. Things get chunky real quick, and chunky is expensive, and modern passengers are basically "walking mozzarella sticks who think that $300 and a photo I.D. gives them the right to fly through the air like one of the guardian owls of legend. (!30rock@dubvee.org) For cargo planes, a lot of older designs would drop capacity by 20-30%.
What does it achieve in the first place, ditching all the flying parts of the aircraft I mean. Like in what scenario does that help
The mechanical failure category of crashes happen when the flying parts of a plane become less good at flying than they used to be.
Things like rudder hardovers, hydraulic failure, uncontrolled engine fire, engine detachment and similar are all things which can make the plane unflyable, and if flying isn’t possible anymore then all the previously useful fly-parts become huge and unpredictable liabilities that get in the way and make your problem worse - the forces that once kept you in the air now spiralling your plane out of control.
I’m not saying this crazy idea is a good one, but the theory is that you can just throw away all the problem parts and become a dumb capsule, which in that scenario would be desirable because it returns things to a predictable state.
The mechanical failure category of crashes happen when the flying parts of a plane become less good at flying than they used to be.
I don’t care what anyone else says, this is fucking poetry.
Nothing quite so predictable as an uncontrolled plane collising with your dumb capsule
Why not just put a big plane size parachute on the whole plane?
Less good is better than missing entirely…
In theory, if something goes catastrophically wrong, it’s going to be with the “flying parts” of the airplane. Flight controls locked up or ripped off.
In practice, safely jettisoning the passenger compartment would require a degree of flight stability far in excess of that required to land safely.
Without giving it any specific thought, ditching over deep water assuming it has big chutes designed to slow it, you’ve now got a capsule that’ll hit the water at a reduced speed, falls vertically so an asymmetric touchdown won’t rip the aircraft apart and a built in life raft to keep the passengers safe until help arrives.
As an initial theory, it’s solid.
But then we start asking if this is the best way to do it. Are there alternative ways of achieving the same - or better - safety margins? Could we reduce the risk of deep-water ditching by avoiding flight over deepwater? Could we restrict the distance from shore that aircraft are allowed to fly? Could we require additional redundancy (third, fourth engines, larger fuel reserves) for aircraft flying beyond glide distance to land? (We do both of these. Single engine planes require passengers and crew to be prepared to ditch before leaving glide range to land. Twin engine planes are restricted by ETOPS. Both are strictly limited on how far they can fly from shore.)
Adding a third engine and 30 additional minutes of reserve fuel would achieve at least the same degree of safety against ditching, and vastly improve safety in all sorts of situation where a detachable cabin would not be beneficial. Do we improve a wide variety of safety measures, or do we have a reason to focus on this one particular type of incident?
modern passengers are basically "walking mozzarella sticks who think that $300 and a photo I.D. gives them the right to fly through the air like one of the guardian owls of legend.
What does that mean? Do you want only Pilots with 5k flying hours minimum on a plane that have a military survival training?
Public transportation needs to be boring, and for some reason airplanes are not there yet it seems.
I don’t think airplanes ever will be there. It’s just too expensive to fly a plane, there’s too much risk, it’s never going to be boring to the level of a bus or train.
It could definitely be way closer than it is, though.
Do you want only Pilots with 5k flying hours minimum on a plane that have a military survival training?
Unironically yes. Private air travel needs to die for the planet to survive.
Limit flying to emergencies, organ transport, the military, things like that.
I’ve seen the exact same design years ago sold as a way to quickly prepare the plane for takeoff. Passengers would board the detached module so the whole plane doesn’t have to sit there waiting. I imagine you would have more passenger modules than engine modules. The more expensive engine modules would fly non-stop: land, drop the passenger module, pick up another module and take off before even the first plane deboarded. No idea if this could actually work. It’s just strange to see the exact same design done for a dumber reason.
you know eventually someone will dump the passengers during the flight
Boeing is gonna build the emergency jettison system with one sensor prone to misfiring
Pretty sure there was an episode of Thunderbirds that did this back in the 60s
I’m a little surprised we don’t do it that way. It would make it a lot easier logistically, and it could be much more accessible. Time waiting on the tarmac for humans to shuffle single file is utility wasted.
I’m sure technically we could build a plane like that but I don’t think we’re at a developmental level that would allow us to make them cheap and secure enough and to handle the logistics involved. Boeing is struggling to make normal planes safe and the entire flight control system in US is close to a breaking point. Imagine adding more possible failure points to the planes and more complex logistics at the airports…
I mean yes, but those problems are there because we refuse to work together and rather have “competition create progress”. If all the aviation firms would agree to share knowledge and adopt common standards and thus work together more than compete, we could have nicer things everywhere.
But people are stupid and selfish so we can’t have that, fight is all we can.
And I’m not saying aviation firms specifically are about that, rather all humans everywhere.
That time is used by the ground crew to prepare the plane for the flight and go over safety systems. Planes can’t just land and takeoff again immediately. Things can go wrong, and you can’t pull over in the air. Sometimes those delays are mechanical, and some times those delays are shift changes, bad crew scheduling/staffing levels. Airports are pretty fucking efficient over all. From the planes flying people around perspective, not the human shuffling element. We are just cattle to them after all.
If you’re going to jettison 90% of the plane to let it fall with parachutes, why not avoid all the complications of modularity and instead just have a parachute system that could let the entire plane float down? Or if the wings are the issue with floating down via parachute, just ditch those? Surely better than letting the pilots go down with the failing plane.
Wings are strong as fuck. You don’t want them detachable.
As for why not parachute the whole thing: The wings are also where the fuel is, which can weigh a ton. And the engines weigh a ton. Much easier to design a parachute when you jettison those.
Not just a ton, and I’m only chiming in here because the numbers are staggering. In the case of e.g. a 747 it’s something like 190 tons. 63,000 some odd gallons of fuel.
The fuel is also flammable, and the engines work by at the end of the day being on fire in a controlled manner. Having the fuel and engines hit the ground elsewhere from the occupants sounds like a good plan to me if you can manage a way to do it somehow.
I would think the pilots move to the back and initiate detachment from there.
In which kind of emergencies would the pilots have enough controlled flight time to do that, while still being 100% sure the plane will crash?
Yeah, good point.
I’d guess the issue is fire. Probably the only situation where this would be necessary.
But like half of airline fires have been caused by things in the cargo hold.
The cargo hold is typically under the passenger compartment.
So in reality, there’s a 50ish percent chance that the pilots are just saving their own life.
Jettison the cargo hold!
WE GOTTA DROP THE LOAD!
If you ditch the fuselage even if the bottom of it on fire, it’s most likely on its way to a dunking in seawater in a couple of minutes while the tens of thousands of gallons of fuel carry on elsewhere. On paper it’s not a totally moronic idea, provided if and only if it can be carried out reliably somehow. (That’s the part I’m doubtful about.)
Whole airframe parachutes are a thing on small aircraft, and I’m certain this would be easier to do than a detachable cabin.
Whereupon, it deploys parachutes and drops to the ground… or ocean, or mountain top, or into the arctic circle. But, I’m sure it would be fine.
Or a cannibal island full of mutants.
Or a mutant island full of cannibals.
Or an uninhabited island that becomes full of cannibals.
Or a mutant cannibal full of islands.
If they’re all mutants they’d think I’m the one that looks messed up, so they’d avoid eating me like I was Blinky the fish
It might fall through a wormhole, and leap forward in time thousands of years, where Roddy McDowall clones dress up as apes and terrorize the populace. I mean nothing in physics disallows this, as far as I know.
Or fall out of sync with time itself, where they have to discover a way back to the present before the supernatural creatures who consume the timeline behind us eat them alive. This possibility hasn’t been definitively disproven, either!
Big red button that says yeet
Boeing machines already have this, just without the chutes. 👍
airlines will choose letting you die over giving you a slightly improved chance of surviving by spending money on any of this
Alternately, it’ll be sold as a premium feature.
"Normal ticket, on an old fashioned deathtrap plane: $299 NOTE: CRASHES HAVE AN ALMOST 0% SURVIVAL RATE. PLEASE CHECK THIS BOX TO ACKNOWLEDGE ACCEPTANCE OF YOUR IMPENDING DOOM. [ ] PLEASE SUBMIT NEXT-OF-KIN NOTIFICATION PHONE NUMBER ______
"Premium SafetyFirstTM plane ticket: $1999.
“ERROR: Please check the box indicating you give consent for next-of-kin notification numbers to be shared with selected third-party service providers to proceed.”
Don’t forget the $49.99 Personal Burial Fee you don’t see until checkout.
New fear unlocked.
Isn’t this how the kids in Lord of the Flies ended up on the island?
Let’s entertain this concept:
The chute for the passenger compartment (if there is one) would need to deploy before separation, and looking at this design it can not.
As soon as the compartment tips and catches airflow it will just rotate straight down uncontrollably.
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