Warbird Information Exchange

No matter what, if it was me in that vehicle I would want the option.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaWoLoP4hI0
Its a test so yes there are failures and successes.


At 1:28 or so a real life ground run ejection.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jvvrkfi3fws

At 1:16 an on the ground ejection
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swpUZ6D6rdw


Yeah I'm ignorant, but at least I have an open mind.
Maybe all those know nothing pilots in this video should have just rode it in, according to some here.

Of potential interest, the Bureau of Land Management final Environmental Assessment (EA), while full of usual legalese for endangered species consultations, has a few interesting tidbits on the track (page 14), the pit area and the plan. An EA is required for certain actions on federal lands.

Page 14, Course Description
The proposed race course would be approximately 15.6 miles long and 0.25 miles wide, or 2,487.1 acres. The length would allow for 5 miles of acceleration, 1 mile timed section, and 5 miles of deceleration. The remaining 2 miles on each end would provide a margin of safety...

Page 15, some pictures of how the vehicle impacted the soil (tire tracks)

https://eplanning.blm.gov/epl-front-off ... _FINAL.pdf

F104 seat at ground level. At around 20:00.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jprrRRq4rc

Joe Scheil wrote:http://martin-baker.com/products/new-seat-installations-retrofits/

Looks like they could have come up with some ideas. And since the car/ plane ran into the end of the track and was up right
and she had time to say what was happening, then the seat would have done just fine despite the nay sayers.

double post

Sorry for the out-of-scope comment : it looks like servicing an MB ejection seat for a 104 became more difficult: the Norwegian one is grounded until a solution was found for its cartridges. So I don't think considering all constrains to successfully use an ejection seat at ground level on a land speed record attempt, and considering the late driver was not at all a flying-pilot, a ejection seat was not an option.

Iclo wrote:Sorry for the out-of-scope comment : it looks like servicing an MB ejection seat for a 104 became more difficult: the Norwegian one is grounded until a solution was found for its cartridges. So I don't think considering all constrains to successfully use an ejection seat at ground level on a land speed record attempt, and considering the late driver was not at all a flying-pilot, a ejection seat was not an option.

Yeah so dying in a crash was the best option? Smart
The seat didn't have to be some old fashioned F104 seat that manufacture could have come up with something I'm sure.
And its not like that vehicle was over mach when the problem happened.

As I understand it there is more to installing a seat in an airframe than just buying one on Amazon.
I doubt if MB...or anyone else...would sell the team a seat for use in an airframe it wasn't rated for.

MB (or anyone else) wouldn't take the potential liability, since if someone tried to eject and it wasn't successful, some ambulance chaser would be filing suit before the wreckage cooled.

Those advocating for a ground level, high speed ejection seat really don't understand the complexities of them. It's not a magic carpet ride to the ground, it's a last ditch, dangerous, violent event with a high probability of failure and even under the best of circumstances with a seat designed for the aircraft/ejection envelope often leaves the occupant injured. The F-104 used by the NAE team, 60763/SN 56-6672, appeared to have the Lockheed C-2 ejection seat still installed. This was a 120 kt/zero altitude seat, but with it's age would have been extremely difficult-if not impossible-to maintain, the rocket motors usually have a designated life span, probably would have been impossible to find, and most likely extremely unreliable. I'm sure these were the reasons NAE elected not to make the seat "hot".

Could a 0-0 seat been fitted to NAE? Way beyond my engineering limits, but remember, NAE was always cash-limited and retrofitting a MB Mk Q7(A) seat to the older airframe was probably beyond their financial capabilities, IF they could have even acquired one. Then there was modifying the older airframe for the newer seat, etc...

Adding a roll/crash cage capable of handing a zero altitude 500+ mph mishap might have been possible, but is purely speculation best left to better engineering minds. It was a risk taken by the NAE team, and one that I'm sure will haunt them the rest of their lives.

http://www.916-starfighter.de/Large/Stars/wu763.htm
http://www.ejectionsite.com/f104seat.htm


Legitimate record or not, a person died, violently, in the NAE mishap. Godspeed.

I did find it odd that they did not add any kind of safety cage inside the cockpit. Cant say i'd want to travel at high speed on the ground in a tin can.

p51buff wrote

Adding a roll/crash cage capable of handing a zero altitude 500+ mph mishap might have been possible, but is purely speculation best left to better engineering minds. It was a risk taken by the NAE team, and one that I'm sure will haunt them the rest of their lives.

From what I understand, such a roll cage would not have protected Combs. An extra-heavy fire suit probably would not have protected her either. These things also add weight that can detract from the speed-mission of the vehicle. And an F-104 does not have all the room of a NASCAR Chevy. The NAE driver and team knew the risks; in my opinion there is nothing here to "haunt them."

https://www.powernationtv.com/post/land ... o-guinness

Phil

exhaustgases wrote:Yeah so dying in a crash was the best option? Smart

The way you argument is sorry to have to say that ... weird. All the explanation and facts demonstrate that having an ejection seat would have not reduced the global risk for the driver.

Finding solution to mitigate all the risks involving by a specific situation is done by
- Finding all the predicable risks,
- Evaluating for each of them the probability to see it occuring.
- Finding a set of solution to reduce the impact of the risk
- Prioritaries the actions / solution to be implemented based on the probabilies, technical possibilities and finance / ressources available.
After that you run again all the process, to insure that the solutions selected to be implemented is not increasing others risks in a way seeing the global risk increasing.

It's of course very easy to come after the accident, witch a specific situation having occured and saying that all the security decision would have done for reduce this risk without consideration for the others risks.

If this poor girl would have been killed in this car at zero speed by a cartridge explosion in a fire or killed in an ejection attempt where the crash would have be survivable staying inside the car, I guess you will have a different argumentation now.

After an accident, the way the investiguation is conducted is mainly checking that with the availables information BEFORE the accident, an other way of management and decision could have make a better outcome. Including the way the pilot, driver, etc was trained.

Iclo wrote:The way you argument is sorry to have to say that ... weird. All the explanation and facts demonstrate that having an ejection seat would have not reduced the global risk for the driver.

Finding solution to mitigate all the risks involving by a specific situation is done by
- Finding all the predicable risks,
- Evaluating for each of them the probability to see it occuring.
- Finding a set of solution to reduce the impact of the risk
- Prioritaries the actions / solution to be implemented based on the probabilies, technical possibilities and finance / ressources available.
After that you run again all the process, to insure that the solutions selected to be implemented is not increasing others risks in a way seeing the global risk increasing.

It's of course very easy to come after the accident, witch a specific situation having occured and saying that all the security decision would have done for reduce this risk without consideration for the others risks.

If this poor girl would have been killed in this car at zero speed by a cartridge explosion in a fire or killed in an ejection attempt where the crash would have be survivable staying inside the car, I guess you will have a different argumentation now.

After an accident, the way the investiguation is conducted is mainly checking that with the availables information BEFORE the accident, an other way of management and decision could have make a better outcome. Including the way the pilot, driver, etc was trained.

Very good points Iclo.

This is the way the US Military deals with safety risks:

https://www.system-safety.org/Documents ... D-882E.pdf

It is an entire profession! What risks had the team identified and what mitigation strategies were put into place? Look at Table III on page 12 of the MIL-STD. Could a roll cage have reduced a "High" risk to a "Medium" risk? Were the affects of likely failures considered? Did they mitigate risks to prevent future occurrences of the failures they had previously experienced?

People in the hobbies often just "go for it" and hope they will be "lucky" and not crash, so they fail to mitigate many risks. That is the advantage of sanctioning bodies, they maintain a minimum safety standard irrespective of participant cost and the rules are usually written in blood. The minimum may still not be enough though.