Vfrpilotpb,. .That film is of the Sikorsky/NASA Rotor System Research Aircraft (RSRA) an experimental flying wind tunnel that was built in the 1970's. It had an S-61 rotor system (5 blades) and the fuselage derived from the S-67 Blackhawk. The extraction seats used a nylon tethered rocket to pull the pilot from the seat and out the upper window, after the blades were severed with explosive (!!) charges. The film was made during a NASA rocket sled test.. .I saw the film in a safety meeting about 1975, and when we test pilots saw it, we sat there, stunned!
The KA-50 Werewolf counter-rotating gunship uses a blade separation system with ejection seats that seem to work very well. At a symposium once, I spoke right after Dr. Sergei Mekeyev described the system to the group. When I was asked if Comanche had such an ejection system, I told the group, "We did not chose to spend the 250KG of weight on an ejection system, we instead spent it on weapons and sensors to make sure the other guy used his."
Regarding the long tirade on "another way the FAA obfuscates the truth", Lu can speak his opinion, but I have always found the authorities quite open about all this. First, it is the NTSB who publish the data that Lu doesn't trust, so no wonder he finds the FAA a problem, he's looking in the wrong place! Here it is for all those who might want to see it:
<a href="http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Stats.htm" target="_blank">http://www.ntsb.gov/aviation/Stats.htm</a>
As you can see, there is no obfuscation at all!
Simply said, the airline carriers have a 20 year safety record of 2303 passengers dead in 9.4 billion passenger emplanements. That is a rate of 244 deaths per billion emplanements, or about 1 fatal airline accident per billion flights, if the average aircraft holds 244 people.
Not too shabby.
For 270 million Americans, with about 40000 dead each year in cars, it works out to 1 car death per 6750 citizens. That works out to 1.57 deaths per 100 million miles driven, or 15.7 per billion miles driven (see <a href="http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/local/html98/s1cars23m_20000723.html)" target="_blank">http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/news/local/html98/s1cars23m_20000723.html)</a>
For the Airlines, at 2303 deaths for 9.4 billion emplanements, it is 4 million emplanements per death. If we assume 500 mile average flight, it is 1 death per 2 billion miles of airline flight.
So the Airliner in the US is about 30 times safer than a car in the US.
[ 31 January 2002: Message edited by: Nick Lappos ]</p>