[HN Gopher] A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots orient...
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A naked skydive inspired a way to keep pilots oriented in flight
Author : gscott
Score : 147 points
Date : 2022-04-08 16:24 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.military.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.military.com)
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| xwdv wrote:
| This is also why nudists who spend most of their time naked with
| air flowing over their bodies as they move have better
| proprioception than clothed individuals.
| nvahalik wrote:
| This makes me wonder.
|
| I get car-sick when I'm a passenger in a car. Sometimes it takes
| an hour. Sometimes 10 minutes.
|
| However, if I'm riding in a convertible with the top down... I
| haven't gotten car-sick yet.
|
| Is the wind "fixing" the problem with my brain?
| sankalp_sans wrote:
| It is hard to keep your vision limited on the interiors of a
| car when driving a convertible, because no roof. Looking
| outside gives your vision sensory alignment with the
| orientation fluid in your inner ear.
|
| In a non convertible, your vision senses betray what your
| balance sense perceives (motion instead of stillness) and the
| body decides it's time to throw up whatever poisonous stuff
| made you
| loraxclient wrote:
| Tangential but maybe corroborating point:
|
| Disney World has a ride ( I think called Mission Space ? ) that
| spins you in an enclosed space to imitate acceleration in space
| flight
|
| Lots of motion sickness warnings on that ride and there are two
| key mitigations in each seat:
|
| 1. A "cockpit window" lcd screen showing a POV video that
| tracks with the acceleration
|
| 2. A powerful fan impelling air at your face
|
| Looking away from the screen, even for a moment, can cause
| immense nausea and iirc is advised against on the ride
|
| Neat!
| tintor wrote:
| Motion sickness is body's way to protect itself against eating
| hallucinogens by mistake. Large mismatch between what your
| inner ear is feeling about your motion, and what your eyes
| perceive as your motion, imply possible hallucinogens, so your
| body is trying to make you throw them up. Humans haven't
| evolved riding in vehicles. Interior of car is not moving much
| relative to you, but your inner ear feels movement.
| pugworthy wrote:
| You've defined it via the general mismatch in a good way. Sea
| sickness is your eyes saying, "I'm not moving", but your
| inner ear saying, "Oh yes we are". VR sickness is your eyes
| saying, "We are moving" and your inner ear saying, "No we're
| not"
| skykooler wrote:
| I wonder whether having something to blow air on you in
| particular directions as you move in VR might help with
| that, then?
| nvahalik wrote:
| That would be really, really nifty.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This seems very odd as by the time you start feeling the
| effects of an hallucinogen, your body has already absorbed
| them past the point of expelling them being effective.
| xenadu02 wrote:
| Apparently dosing was enough of a difference at some point
| that this mechanism evolved (assuming the stated reason is
| accurate).
|
| Perhaps our distant ancestors also tended to eat a small
| bite first, then proceed with other foods, before consuming
| the remainder? For that matter the drug wouldn't be
| absorbed all at once. If it is toxic better to eject
| whatever hasn't been digested than continue absorbing it.
| There's a bonus psychological side-effect: vomiting is not
| pleasant and the individual (if they survive) will be more
| likely to remember what they ate and how sick it made them
| to avoid it in the future.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Is that always the case? I suspect the hallucinogens that
| people have selected to intentionally trip on are a bit
| unusual (intentional dose sizes, presumably they are
| selected to get the person tripping in some particular
| timeframe, right? I'm obviously showing some ignorance on
| this topic).
| ncmncm wrote:
| This would have evolved in our rodent ancestors. They
| would have nibbled a bit of anything they came across
| that seemed like it might possibly be food.
|
| Oddly, I gather rats cannot barf, which is why coumarin
| works as rat killer.
| ordu wrote:
| Wind blowing into a face is something special. Watch dogs, they
| are crazy about it. Like cats can't resist hiding in a box, so
| dogs can't resist heading against the wind. :)
|
| Though, seriously speaking, I don't know really. I think wind
| helps against car-sickness, and maybe more than in one way:
| sickness can be triggered by too much of CO2 in a bloodstream.
| It normally doesn't but I believe effects of disorientation and
| increased levels of CO2 are additive. So it is possible to be
| slightly disoriented (but not enough for a sickness), slightly
| deprived of fresh air (but not enough for a sickness), but to
| feel sickness because of a combined effect.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| For me it helps to have as much of a view of the outside as
| possible. Feeling the wind helps also. If I'm in the back seat
| looking mostly at the interior of the car, my inner ear senses
| motion but my eyes tell me I'm stationary. I think those
| conflicting inputs are the cause of most motion sickness.
|
| Much less of an issue for me when I'm in front looking out the
| front window.
| ordu wrote:
| _> Much less of an issue for me when I 'm in front looking
| out the front window._
|
| And it never an issue when your are behind the wheel. In this
| case nothing can surprise you, because any acceleration or
| rotation not just predicted by your brain, but directly
| caused by it.
| baybal2 wrote:
| beambot wrote:
| This is called a "vibrotactile display", and they've been around
| for a good, long time.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| One of the surprises I got after being locally anesthetized for a
| surgery, was that I could no longer localize my arm in space
| without looking at it. Proprioception is heavily based on the
| flow of air against our skin and hair.
|
| Some flowmeters are based on that principle, using a tiny
| mechanical hair that vibrates as air flows over it, and I've
| always felt robotics should just dump a whole bunch of them on
| their moving parts rather than rely on a few gyroscopes and
| servomotors to estimate their position in space.
| teachrdan wrote:
| Is that really true? Anecdotally, I have no trouble keeping
| track of where my arm is when I have a coat and gloves on :)
|
| I wonder if there's a side effect of anesthesia that inhibits
| the body's kinesthetic sense.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprioception#Proprioception_...
| kayodelycaon wrote:
| My antipsychotic causes this problem severely enough I have
| difficulty placing my feet correctly the first few hours
| after I take it. (Meaning I fall really easily.) I take
| additional medication (Benadryl, surprisingly) to counteract
| a lot of neurological side effects like this.
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| A quick google search says muscles are the primary receptors
| in humans, before it was believed the joints played that
| role. From my experience with anesthesia I reckon it's a
| little bit of everything, with the sensation of different
| organs being weighed differently in the final estimation.
|
| Unless you're in a vacuum as suggested in another comment I
| don't think you could draw definitive conclusions on the role
| of the skin from wearing a coat, the air flow might be mostly
| prevented but the weight and friction of your coat over the
| top of your arm as you move would be essentially the same
| input.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| I've always learned that proprioception is a standalone thing,
| not based on the air moving over the skin etc, but really just
| your own nervous system telling you the position of your
| joints. Which together tells you where your arm is.
|
| As far as I know it would theoretically still work in a vacuum
| with your eyes closed.
| jameshart wrote:
| Proprioception is the overall sense of knowing where your
| body parts are.
|
| You don't just have a bunch of 'proprioceptor' nerves
| dedicated solely to that task, you have a whole wealth of
| signals coming into your brain that it aggregates into that
| overall sense.
|
| Similar to how vision isn't just the raw signals on your
| optic nerve, but a whole machinery around filling in the
| details and blanks and saccades from memory and inference to
| constitute a full visual sense.
| t0mas88 wrote:
| Jup, that's what I meant. Your nerve cells sensing where
| things are as opposed to other external senses like skin
| touch being used to figure it out.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| > You don't just have a bunch of 'proprioceptor' nerves
| dedicated solely to that task,
|
| Actually you do. Most animals have capsule joint receptors
| which are dedicated to sensing stretching/relaxing of the
| joint capsule tissue.
|
| This signal is then sent through dedicated nerve paths on
| the dorsal part of your spine.
| jameshart wrote:
| And... they aren't just used for proprioception. They
| also tell you how heavy things are when you pick them up,
| and sense vibrations, and help you sense changes in
| acceleration, which are distinct sensations from 'where
| in space are my hands right now.'
| [deleted]
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Proprioception is heavily based on the flow of air against
| our skin and hair._
|
| feeling sensations on the skin doesn't tell you where the skin
| is...?
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| It does, the air flow going downward on your skin tells you
| your arm went up.
|
| I recall my arm being very numb, I had to poke myself
| strongly to feel it, I could move it but I had no idea where
| it went without looking at it, multiple times I was surprised
| to find it in a spot I didn't know it was. As I recovered
| sensation in my skin I regained proprioception gradually.
| Really trippy experience.
| samstave wrote:
| Good article.
|
| I can't help but wonder why way-finding / path-finding
| vibrational orienteering vests aren't a thing yet.
|
| You could vibratory signal a path in complete darkness, indicate
| obstacles and threats or directions to supply caches etc.
| krisoft wrote:
| > You could vibratory signal a path in complete darkness,
| indicate obstacles and threats or directions to supply caches
| etc.
|
| What sensors would this vest use to figure out where you are
| and where the obstacles and threats around you are?
| ncmncm wrote:
| It could get regular situation updates from base, and rely on
| GPS and compass to relate local position and orientation to
| interesting points. Just knowing at all times, without need
| to look at anything, the directions to mission objective and
| back to base would be useful.
| Someone wrote:
| In general: battery life, difficulty of fitting, limited
| usefulness for the costs.
|
| Also, for your task, you'd need the precise location of your
| subject, or highly reliable obstacle detection (including
| "there's nothing, not even a good path" obstacles), probably
| both. The latter sort-of works for self-driving cars, but their
| computers are rather big to carry around, and they can declare
| anything "clearly not a road" as "obstacle". They don't have to
| recognize a small footpath across a mountain ridge, or
| alongside a river.
| raisedbyninjas wrote:
| I read about a hobby project a while back that used vibrating
| motors to keep the wearer aware of magnetic north. It
| supposedly made quite a difference. Here's a project that could
| be the same thing. https://newatlas.com/north-paw-vibrating-
| ankle-compass-kit/2...
| ncmncm wrote:
| That was a good idea, but a very stupid execution. All you
| need is an ear bud that clicks as your head turns past each
| cardinal point. (The click can vary by which point it is.)
| You can implement this with 10 grams of microcontroller and a
| magnetic sensor.
|
| Add a couple of grams more for GPS, and you can have it click
| when your head points to where you parked your jeep or tent.
| To maintain battery life, you turn on the GPS only once every
| 5 minutes, and rely on the compass for real-time orientation.
|
| (This might not be so useful for soldiers, because they have
| mostly long since wrecked their hearing. Maybe use barely
| perceptible electric shocks, for mil application.)
|
| After a very short time, the clicks etc. fade from conscious
| perception, and you just know your directions at all times.
| skykooler wrote:
| To have it be useful for those with hearing loss, it could
| use a little haptic motor instead to provide a virtual
| click you feel instead of hear.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Electric shock would be more hard-core though. Soldiers
| who complained about a barely perceptible electric shock
| would be laughed at.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| That's not going to save as much power as you think--
| civilian GPS has to download a message from the satellites
| that repeats on a 30 second interval before it can give a
| good answer.
| open-paren wrote:
| There was a Youtuber that made a device like this with the
| lidar from an iPad and a 3x3 grid of dots to detect obstacles.
| The problem he ran into was sensory resolution vs. ability to
| perceive that resolution. (Unsurpisingly) your eyes are
| unparalleled for picking up visual resolution.
|
| https://youtu.be/8Au47gnXs0w
| shuntress wrote:
| The market for people who need a non-visual device to help them
| detect obstacles, threats, or supply caches is too small to
| justify the expense (both per-unit and of development) of such
| devices.
| robocat wrote:
| One person might be all the market you need, if that one
| person is wealthy enough. Aside: I think stating opinions as
| facts is poor form.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Just list military applications of whatever you want
| developed. They are not concerned with how big of a market it
| might be. If can give their troops advantages, they are
| interested.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| I can't really see this having use in a high-tech military.
| The main differentiator of contemporary technologized
| militaries is their incredible logistics and coordination
| capacities, which have a very hard dependency on knowing
| your own location. They know this obviously and so those
| systems are robust and redundant already.
|
| When those systems _and_ their backups fail you 're into
| like, "hide and wait for help" or even straight up sere
| training shit, because the entire thing that makes you a
| powerful force rather than just a guy with a gun is gone.
| Knowing which way is north is not gonna solve your problem
| at that point. Knowing "which way to the supply cache"
| _might_ but if that piece of tech is still working probably
| so is your normal radio and gps.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Anything they have to look at to get informed is a huge
| burden.
|
| Anything that burns up batteries driving a display is a
| huge burden.
|
| Anything that destroys night vision is a huge burden.
|
| So, anything that provides them the most essential bits
| of combat information (e.g. that is the direction back to
| base) without need to look at it, and using only
| microwatts, is a huge benefit.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Hunters complain bitterly about GPS ruining their night
| vision, and all those gadgets using up heavy batteries.
|
| Soldiers have it even worse, carrying, literally, pounds of
| batteries, sometimes tens of. Anything that works without
| needing to produce power-burning, night-vision destroying
| light they have to look at, and weighing them down, is a huge
| benefit.
| clort wrote:
| I remember reading about an experiment where they gave somebody
| a belt which would vibrate at the north side and the subjects
| became very spatially aware would never get lost. Even when
| they were taken at night, blindfolded and driven around for
| like half an hour they could point to the way home without
| really thinking about it.
|
| ah seems to be a product now: https://point-iot.eu/success-
| story/navibelt/
| oh_sigh wrote:
| This is a skill you can teach yourself through mindfulness
| alone. I've never been driven around blindfolded, but I can
| enter a building, go through a big maze of hallways, and be
| able to tell you which direction north is.
| ncmncm wrote:
| We probably have a magnetic sense that we lose conscious
| awareness of through not paying attention.
|
| There are cultures whose language grammar depends on all
| directions being relative to cardinal points. Even three-
| year-olds never get it wrong.
| mprovost wrote:
| (Spoiler) Disappointed that they didn't end up with naked pilots.
| But it reminded me how Polynesian navigators in the Pacific would
| use their testicles to detect subtle ocean swells. We're used to
| relying on our eyes but our other senses can be just as useful.
| jpalomaki wrote:
| For more: https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/testicular-
| navigation
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| toss1 wrote:
| A similar striking phenomena happened when I shaved my head
| instead of haircuts.
|
| I was immediately very aware of every slight motion of air even
| in what seemed like still rooms, or generated by my motion, not
| even walking. It was like I had a new sensor upgrade. Almost
| more interesting is that it did not fade or degrade over the
| months that I kept that (non-)hairstyle.
|
| The tactile sense can be a very high-bandwidth information
| feed.
| [deleted]
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Swimmers and cyclists also shave part or all (public) parts
| of their body. For swimmers, "shaved and tapered"
| performances are classed apart from the rest. (Tapering
| refers to reduced workout intensity, shaving to removal of
| body hair.)
| dmoy wrote:
| So I actually buzz my hair really short for high power rifle
| season so I can feel the wind better. I'm also balding, so
| that helps.
|
| It mostly boils down to using it as a "don't pull the
| trigger, the wind just did something funky" sensor.
|
| Granted about half the time I end up throwing a baseball cap
| on it because not getting sunburn/skin cancer is more
| important to me than a few points at 600 yards, but it does
| help.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Sunscreen?
| omnicognate wrote:
| Sunscreen above eye level + sweat = stinging eyes.
| dmoy wrote:
| Yup pretty much this. I do use sunscreen on ears, neck,
| right hand, or basically anywhere that can't drip down
| into my eyes
| Tyr42 wrote:
| Sounds like the first step to being an airbender
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| Similar experience, I mostly noticed that I could feel
| certain sources of radiation, like hot kitchen equipment and
| bright lights.
|
| I also found myself bumping my head a lot when working in
| semi-cramped spaces which I was doing a lot at the time. Hair
| normally acts as a small proximity sensor around your dome in
| a way I was completely unaware of before that.
| emilecantin wrote:
| Yeah, doing some home renovation work with my dad in
| confined spaces, I noticed he bumps his head A LOT (way
| more than me). The main difference between us is amount of
| hair on our domes (he's got practically none).
| bstela wrote:
| I just can say thank you for this priceless piece of human
| knowledge
| [deleted]
| amelius wrote:
| That's nice, but aren't military combat pilots about to be
| replaced by AI, anyway?
| ncmncm wrote:
| VR, anyway. VR pilots will have even greater need for haptic
| clues.
| rcurry wrote:
| I used to be an avid skydiver, this article reminds me of the
| time my buddy Todd and his friend Jason jumped out of a jet,
| naked, at the World Freefall Convention in Illinois. They
| underestimated how bad the spot was going to be and ended up
| having to walk back like four miles wrapped in nothing but their
| parachutes. Ha ha. RIP Todd Jacobsen, he died after a bad landing
| back in 2008.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| > The estimated damages caused by spatial disorientation cost the
| U.S. military an estimated $300 million every year, along with
| the lives of around 30 pilots.
|
| I find it surprising that 30 pilots die every year because of
| this. I would think every time US loses a military plane there
| are some news about it on TV. But now 30 pilots dies per year
| only because of this? What about other causes of death? How many?
| US is not at war currently.
|
| How many US pilots died during Iraq war? I seem to remember
| (based on TV news) it was about or close to 0.
| peeters wrote:
| They are misquoting their own source:
|
| > The spatial disorientation, or vertigo, suffered by the pilot
| is very common and causes accidents that cost the U.S. military
| more than $300 million and about 30 lives every year [1]
|
| Lives, not pilots. It could be 2 pilots and 28 other service
| members on the same one aircraft.
|
| [1]
| https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19990606&slug...
| Stevvo wrote:
| About 30 US military pilots a year are killed in all accidents.
|
| That propaganda you might have heard on TV nearly 20 years ago
| is bullshit.
| adewinter wrote:
| "Military aviation accidents have killed 224 pilots or aircrew,
| destroyed 186 aircraft, and cost more than $11.6 billion since
| 2013"[1]
|
| "Combined with information from the Federal Aviation
| Administration, an average of 383 pilots die every year in the
| US." [2]
|
| [1] https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-aviation-mishaps-
| de...
|
| [2] https://www.skytough.com/post/how-many-pilots-die-a-year
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| So in this case, they are trying to say that this costs the
| U.S. military an estimated $300 million every year, and also
| kills 30 (non-military and military combined) pilots?
| trutannus wrote:
| I think they're two separate ideas maybe. The "per year" in
| that sentence is ambiguous. It's unclear if it applies to
| the $300 million, or both that and the 30 lives.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| That is 32 pilots or aircrew killed in military aviation
| accidents total per year from 2013-2020. The article claims
| 30 pilot die every year from spatial disorientation alone. I
| find it unlikely that 30 out of 32 deaths of "pilots and
| crew" are pilots, and also unlikely that all of these
| accidents are due to spatial disorientation.
|
| (Edit- just read the source article- https://archive.seattlet
| imes.com/archive/?date=19990606&slug... it says 30 lives, not
| 30 pilots... the posted article got it wrong. Even then, I
| have some doubts as to the number, but its definitely closer
| to the truth).
| rvba wrote:
| It costs a lot of money to train a military pilot. All thr
| trainig, all the simulators, even salary.
|
| Then fuel for hours of flight every year. Aircraft
| mainenance.
|
| That's why everyone tries to save them when shot down (also
| they know secrets).
| trutannus wrote:
| I think the sentence is just poorly worded. I see this "it
| costs $300 per year" and "30 lives" as two separate ideas.
| I think we might just be assuming that its also 30 lives
| per year, when it might just have been $300 million _and_
| 30 lives in recent years. I struggled with that sentence
| too, so I could also be totally wrong.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Accidents dominate this, you hear about quite a lot of them,
| not all fatal.
|
| https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2018/04/08/...
| tqi wrote:
| > The estimated damages caused by spatial disorientation cost the
| U.S. military an estimated $300 million every year, along with
| the lives of around 30 pilots.
|
| Can that be right? 30 pilots a year sounds really high.
| CardenB wrote:
| I read this as 30 pilots over all time, $300 million a year.
| f0e4c2f7 wrote:
| I thought the same thing. I wondered if perhaps they meant $300
| Million per year annualized and also a total of 30 pilots over
| some number of years.
| eadmund wrote:
| https://taskandpurpose.com/news/military-aviation-mishaps-de...
| indicates that the U.S. have had 224 deaths and lost 186
| aircraft over seven years, so roughly thirty airmen a year
| sounds about right.
|
| I suppose one could be pedantic about pilots rather than
| aircrew at large, since those 186 aircraft would have had one
| pilot each, but the larger point still stands. Someone probably
| just saw the 224 number and thought each indicated a plane
| manned by a single pilot.
| goodcanadian wrote:
| Not to mention that it is perfectly possible to lose an
| aircraft without losing the pilot.
| tqi wrote:
| Hm that would attribute all accidents to orientation issues,
| which I guess is possible? It also state the cost as over
| 11.6B between 2013 and 2020, which would make the cost more
| like 1.5B per year?
|
| Either way though, 224 deaths from accidents in 8ish years is
| way higher than I had expected. Hopefully with the withdrawal
| from Afghanistan we will see this number decline.
| wespiser_2018 wrote:
| There's as similar vibro-tactile device, which is a belt you wear
| and always vibrates strongest in the direction of north, and over
| time the user would learn or improve their internal navigation.
|
| A quick search reveals a company, feelSpace, tried to bring this
| idea market for the purposes of navigation:
| https://newatlas.com/feelspace-navigation-belt/43571/ If I knew,
| I probably would have bought the belt for learning better
| navigation just as a fun little project!
|
| Cool stuff! As we start to have more devices constantly around
| us, it will be interesting to see how haptic feedback can provide
| a more intuitive to our devices as we move through space.
| incanus77 wrote:
| > Rupert's first prototype used a 69-cent toy to provide the
| necessary tactile stimulation to reorient a pilot. More than 30
| years later, vibrations are the main indicators.
|
| _Nice._
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> It can take pilots up to 30 seconds to reorient themselves, a
| long time while behind the stick of a jet aircraft.
|
| Their is an old chopper pilot saying: the faster the aircraft the
| slower the pilot. You think 30 seconds is a long time in a
| fighter jet at 30,000 feet? Try 30 seconds when trying to land
| helicopter on the deck of a pitching ship. A 747 flies at
| basically the same speed as a fighter (~mach 0.8), in many cases
| actually faster. Nobody talks about those pilots having to think
| quickly. The time to make decisions is a function of how close
| you are to the ground, not how fast you are moving.
| [deleted]
| dylan604 wrote:
| By design, a 747 pilot is a glorified bus driver that flys in a
| fairly straight path. Nobody talks about quick thinking until
| they do. Captain Sully ring any bells? That wasn't a 30k feet
| either. When an airliner has something go wrong, it's hundreds
| of people that are affected and will always make the news.
|
| By design, a fighter pilot does a heck of a lot more than a
| airline pilot. When a pilot does something wrong, we rarely
| hear about it.
|
| Comparing them in this manner is just disenginuous.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Sully is spoken about, but not always in the best light.
| There is a line of though that an automated system could well
| have landed that aircraft. Other lines of thought blame
| reliance on checklists, that a quick abandonment of
| checklists might have been more effective. But imho the
| unsung hero of that incident remains the airliner, designed
| by human engineers, that was able to survive landing on water
| and remain afloat long enough for an evacuation. The design
| and regulatory decisions that created that ability happened
| long before the bird strike.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Isn't throwing out the checklist exactly how Sully was able
| to make his decision? He realized from experience that he
| was too low to make it through the checklist in time, and
| jumped ahead knowing things needed to have a hurry-up
| applied.
| tempestn wrote:
| Those checklists exist for a reason. Far, far more
| incidents and accidents are caused by ignoring them than by
| relying on them. These planes are sufficiently complex that
| pilots can't come close to holding all possible
| contingencies in their heads; the checklists are designed
| specifically to allow them to react appropriately in any
| foreseeable situation.
|
| I'm not saying it's impossible that if they'd ignored the
| checklists and immediately made the perfect decision they
| could have turned back and landed the plane - just that
| it's far from certain, and if pilots get in the habit of
| doing this, it will harm more than it helps.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| You are correct, but the captain is ultimately the final
| authority how to handle anything that happens in-flight.
| If he or she feels that the checklist will not help, or
| will take too long, the decision can be made to do
| something else. If they survive, the captain can expect a
| lot of questions if standard procedures were not
| followed, but as they say, any landing you can walk away
| from is a good landing.
| tempestn wrote:
| That's true, and as the other reply mentions, one obvious
| scenario for that would be if there literally isn't
| enough time to execute the checklist. I just didn't like
| the implication that checklists are bad and if they'd
| just been ignored things would've been better. Like,
| maybe, but it depends on how the pilot reacts absent a
| checklist. Sometimes that will be correctly, but there
| are just so many incidents caused (in part) by pilots
| just doing one thing they remember while skipping over
| other checklist items that would have helped.
| danielEM wrote:
| Not yet a bus driver, but we're heading that way. Slowly.
| mrtksn wrote:
| I disagree, I think the destination is "elevator operator"
| and we are half way there.
|
| Automating flight has quite a bit of low hanging fruits and
| Airbus has become the first harvester out there. The rest
| opposed at first, but the only logical path forward is
| automating people out of the systems. Yes, we had the
| 737MAX thingy but even then arguments for re-humanisation
| of aircraft controls didn't catch much traction.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| 737MAX would not have crashed if it were being flown
| autonomously, as the entire MCAS system would have been
| unnecessary. It was there to meet regulations regarding
| control feel for human pilots.
| smokey_circles wrote:
| MCAS only exists as a bandaid to a terrible idea. They
| should've built a new aircraft, not strap bigger engines
| into a 40ish year old frame.
|
| If MCAS _actually_ worked, you and I wouldn't even know
| about it. But as tribute to how poorly it was designed
| and delivered, we know about MCAS because it killed over
| 300 people.
|
| Just an absurd point you're making.
|
| Airbus are an engineering firm, so they are doing clever
| engineering things. Boeing was an engineering firm that
| has been run by bean counters the past few decades.
|
| It wasn't "opposition to automation" it was opposition to
| innovation for the sake of short term profit.
|
| Boeing's executives should all be hanged :) hundreds of
| people dead for no reason whatsoever.
| trelane wrote:
| Also because full automation means pilots, so no
| certifications for any aircraft types, let alone the same
| one. So there would be no need to force the plane to be a
| "737".
| kzrdude wrote:
| Why not? Full certification of automatic piloting of a
| new plane type might have run into the same kind of
| situation - that you want to "preserve the plane type" to
| get to market quicker with the product. This is
| conjecture since we're nowhere near this yet?
| oefnak wrote:
| Yes, but fighter jets often fly closer to the ground and change
| direction more often (than airliners).
| trelane wrote:
| Fighter jets are also unstable, by design. Commercial
| aircraft are required to be stable, as they don't need to
| change direction quickly, but rather be as safe as possible.
|
| https://www.boldmethod.com/learn-to-
| fly/aerodynamics/3-types...
| LilDioBrando wrote:
| So that's why I can't properly trim my fighter jet in DCS
| to fly in a straight line with no altitude change. I still
| think I'm bad at it tho.
| jameshart wrote:
| At the point of closest approach, airliners fly just as close
| to the ground as fighter aircraft.
|
| Usually twice per flight.
| dspillett wrote:
| In a very straight, guided, line, down an uncluttered path.
|
| [usually, weather conditions may make things more difficult
| of course, and some city airports are dubiously enough
| placed to put the willies up your average pilot]
| dqpb wrote:
| Are vibrators really the best option? I would think small
| actuators that apply pressure, with a dull point perhaps, would
| be more energy efficient and could provide higher resolution.
| andylynch wrote:
| Looks like the kit discussed here is geared towards emergency
| use, so vibration makes sense as clear & hard to miss. Power to
| the haptics is probably insignificant. For more regular uses
| different concerns would apply!
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Airplanes have big jet engines. The available power isn't
| going to be of concern.
| ncmncm wrote:
| Electric shocks FTW.
| cdot2 wrote:
| "In 1974, the future Dr. Rupert was skydiving naked while he was
| a student at the University of Illinois. He noticed that the rush
| of air on so much bare skin kept him oriented, even as he spun
| and twirled in midair."
|
| Where do you sign up for naked skydiving?
| h2odragon wrote:
| At the risk of being pedantic, I assume the parachute and
| harness are still necessary clothing.
| dtgriscom wrote:
| You start naked, and then put on the parachute on the way
| down.
| blakesmith wrote:
| It's usually tradition that your 100th jump is supposed to be
| naked, at least amongst the skydiving communities I was a part
| of.
| astuyvenberg wrote:
| At basically any local skydiving club.
| ars wrote:
| I thought of this idea years ago, and I never sky dived naked.
|
| My idea was to use the soles of the feet instead, since there are
| a lot of nerves there, enabling very high resolution information.
|
| But ideas without execution are useless......
| Graffur wrote:
| The naked sky dive part is a hook to get people who are not
| interested in planes or military. If the military needed that
| particular experience to come up with this idea.. well .. that
| does not suggest good things.
| Errorcod3 wrote:
| I had a co-worker lose his life to spatial disorientation during
| a night-training flight in Italy: "Maj. Lucas "Gaza" Gruenther, a
| pilot assigned 31st Fighter Wing, went missing during a nighttime
| training mission over the Adriatic Sea Jan. 28. In the days that
| followed, Italian and U.S. authorities collaborated as part of in
| an immense search effort to locate Gruenther. The search ended
| Jan. 31 when Gruenther's body was recovered by an Italian
| vessel... Gruenther completed more than 2,640 hours of flying
| time to include 400 combat hours."
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