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   goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Thursday, 07-Sep-2023 00:57:32 JST goatsarah

   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.

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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Thursday, 07-Sep-2023 00:58:42 JST goatsarah

     in reply to
     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.
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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Thursday, 07-Sep-2023 01:03:07 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     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.

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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Thursday, 07-Sep-2023 01:25:33 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • alastair87

     @alastair 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.

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     alastair87 (alastair@social.alastair87.me)'s status on Thursday, 07-Sep-2023 01:25:34 JST alastair87

     in reply to

     @goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org 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.

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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Thursday, 07-Sep-2023 05:16:05 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Katie Fenn
     • alastair87
     @katiefenn @alastair That’s basically how a falcon 9 booster does return to launch site.
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     Katie Fenn (katiefenn@front-end.social)'s status on Thursday, 07-Sep-2023 05:16:07 JST Katie Fenn

     in reply to

     • alastair87

     @alastair @goatsarah 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.

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     Katie Fenn (katiefenn@front-end.social)'s status on Thursday, 07-Sep-2023 07:29:22 JST Katie Fenn

     in reply to

     • alastair87

     @goatsarah @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.

     goatsarah likes this.
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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Thursday, 07-Sep-2023 07:30:46 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Katie Fenn
     • alastair87
     @katiefenn @alastair Hell of a gimbal on those RS25s though.
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     goatsarah (goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org)'s status on Thursday, 07-Sep-2023 08:11:14 JST goatsarah

     in reply to

     • Katie Fenn
     • alastair87
     @alastair @katiefenn 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.
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     alastair87 (alastair@social.alastair87.me)'s status on Thursday, 07-Sep-2023 08:11:15 JST alastair87

     in reply to

     • Katie Fenn

     @goatsarah@thegoatery.dyndns.org @katiefenn@front-end.social 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.