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Mass death

Watched a video about that fateful Air France Concorde flight. It took 121 seconds from the point they lit the afterburners to start rolling to the point everyone died. For most of that it was probably profoundly obvious to the flight crew that they were going to die: the plane had two engines out, their wing was on fire, they were on the verge of a stall, their landing gear was fucked, they could not gain speed or height, and the aircraft was becoming uncontrollable.

They HAD to know they were going to die, and yet right to the point their short flight ended impacting a hotel at 200 knots, inverted, with the plane yelling, “pull up, pull up, pull up”, they acted utterly professionally.

So impressive. So tragic.

in reply to Sarah Brown

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
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Mass death
Also learned that the aircraft was over max takeoff weight, and carrying too much fuel. If this had not been true, there is a good chance they would have lived.
in reply to Sarah Brown

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
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Mass death

Basically, when the exploding tyre debris hit the wing, it caused a shockwave. The wing fuel tank was full. Jet fuel is not compressible. That shockwave had nowhere to go beyond causing a hole in the wing.

If it hasn’t done that, then sure, engine number 1 would still have ingested FOD and the undercarriage would still have been fucked, but engine 2 wouldn’t have died (it incorrectly reported an engine fire and was shut down), and engine 1 was starting to recover from breathing FOD. They’d have had power to climb, go round, dump fuel, and return to the runway.

It would have been a VERY dangerous landing: the port gear was screwed, but they’d have had a chance.

in reply to Sarah Brown

alastair87
alastair87
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re: Mass death
I think they have to spend hours and hours in simulators practising disaster scenarios they can't practice live and to try and desensitise them. Astronauts do the same (and it's much more likely to actually happen for them). I would guess the best chance they had of surviving was to suppress their emotions, even in that situation.
in reply to alastair87

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
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re: Mass death

@Alastair Cooper If the port landing gear hydraulics still worked, they might have lived. It was their only chance.

But the FOD from the exploding tyre had shredded it.

@alastair87
in reply to Sarah Brown

alastair87
alastair87
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re: Mass death
I remember the Hudson river crash in 2008 where everyone survived, because the flight crew managed to improvise a landing on water. I think that's one of very few times it's been done successfully, despite the pre-flight briefings. If the plane hits the water past a certain speed it will just break apart as if it had hit a hard surface.
in reply to alastair87

Kincaid
Kincaid
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re: Mass death

@alastair many years ago I knew the son of a commercial pilot. He said one of tests is "touch the dot on the screen to test your reflexes" as it speeds up. It's actually a test of if they stop trying

Pro crew keep trying right up unt

@alastair87
in reply to alastair87

Katie Fenn
Katie Fenn
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re: Mass death

@alastair One of my favourite facts about the Shuttle is the Return to Launch Site abort mode. Literally “spin ‘er around and blast back to base”.

The Shuttle would spin around, with the external tank still attached, and execute a burn until it has nullified its down range velocity and can start to head back to Kennedy Space Center. It would then jettison the ET and try to land.

@alastair87
in reply to Katie Fenn

Katie Fenn
Katie Fenn
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re: Mass death

@alastair There was once a plan to test this abort scenario for real, but the astronaut office vetoed it. They thought it was so dangerous it wasn’t worth testing even once.

This is how the Shuttle stack ended up being tested, “in production”, on STS-1.

The astronauts would rather fly an untested stack than try the ridiculously risky abort mode.

@alastair87
in reply to Katie Fenn

Katie Fenn
Katie Fenn
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re: Mass death
@alastair (I know they did the launch tests with the Enterprise orbiter, so it wasn’t completely untested, but it was still one of the most risky flights ever flown)
@alastair87
in reply to Sarah Brown

Katie Fenn
Katie Fenn
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re: Mass death
@alastair Yeah, it’s not as difficult as it sounds to spin it around when you’re above the dense atmosphere, but part of me would love to see 1970s technology, with a human being at the controls, slam it into reverse.
@alastair87
in reply to Sarah Brown

alastair87
alastair87
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re: Mass death
I have no idea if it's justified or not but I feel instinctively more confident in the system they had for ejecting the Saturn V command module, then it would parachute back down. I don't think that was ever deployed in an emergency though. In fact the Saturn V is among a minority of rockets that never exploded during launch or testing.
in reply to alastair87

Sarah Brown
Sarah Brown
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re: Mass death
@Alastair Cooper @Katie Fenn Apollo 13 had a second stage engine die on ascent, but it was long enough into the flight that they didn’t have to abort.
@Katie Fenn @alastair87
in reply to Sarah Brown

Katie Fenn
Katie Fenn
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re: Mass death

@alastair Apollo 12 was also struck by lightning, which wiped out the guidance and the telemetry. A single flight controller was able to figure out what had happened, and instructed the crew to flip a single switch that saved the mission.

If they hadn’t have fixed it, they would’ve had to abort.

@alastair87
in reply to Katie Fenn

alastair87
alastair87
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re: Mass death
I've tended to rank Apollo 13 as NASA's most impressive crewed mission, even more so than the ones that landed on the Moon, because so much of it was improvised.
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