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Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff Works dot com.
Speaker 1: Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick and Robert.
Speaker 1: A lot of times on this podcast we end up
Speaker 1: talking about instincts. Yes, we use our instincts to talk
Speaker 1: about instincts for better or worse, often worse. But one
Speaker 1: of any animal's deepest instincts is the escape instinct. It's
Speaker 1: right down there with the desire for food, water, reproduction,
Speaker 1: but I would say maybe even more immediate. And you
Speaker 1: can definitely see how powerful it is by the way
Speaker 1: that escape instincts, even in rational, really high functioning primates
Speaker 1: like human beings, can totally short circuit rational thinking and
Speaker 1: lead to mass panics that kill people. This happens all
Speaker 1: the time. Uh. And so the escape drive, you know,
Speaker 1: the fight or flight impulse, has been associated in neuroscience
Speaker 1: with the amygdala and the autonomic nervous system, deep deep,
Speaker 1: primitive old parts of the brain, the rat like hind brain,
Speaker 1: the reptile brain. Right though I have heard people disputing
Speaker 1: the term reptile brain, I do not refer to it
Speaker 1: as such, and from a scientific standpoint, right, But but
Speaker 1: the idea of the the earlier, more primitive parts of
Speaker 1: the brain that go way back in evolutionary history, that
Speaker 1: is there, and so escape is is rooted down in
Speaker 1: those really primitive parts of the brain. Is this fundamental,
Speaker 1: intractable part of human psychology, because think about it. When
Speaker 1: you go into a room, even if there's no cause
Speaker 1: of danger whatsoever, just say it's an office Christmas party
Speaker 1: something like that. Oh yeah, you better believe I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have an escape plane at an office. Exactly what's the
Speaker 1: first thing you do in your mind? If you're like me,
Speaker 1: it's probably unconscious. You're not consciously thinking about it, but
Speaker 1: you do just sort of take note of where all
Speaker 1: the exits are in the room. Do you do the
Speaker 1: same thing, Robert, Yeah, Well, I I would say, like
Speaker 1: the physical exits, it's almost like a subconscious thing. But
Speaker 1: I also will kind of have like social exit strategies
Speaker 1: in mind as well. Right, right, If this gets uncomfortable
Speaker 1: for any number of reasons, and I'm not saying like
Speaker 1: office Christmas parties in particular are uncomfortable, but like any
Speaker 1: social situation that I'm not like one comfortable with, I'll
Speaker 1: have that escape hatch in the back of my mind.
Speaker 1: You know, that's a really good point because that kind
Speaker 1: of shows how our obsession with physical escape extends even
Speaker 1: to our metaphors and our abstract thinking. You know, you're
Speaker 1: in an awkward social situation, how do I get out?
Speaker 1: You're in a bad relationship, and you think, how do
Speaker 1: I find a way out of this? You're not physically
Speaker 1: finding a way out, but that that's the way your
Speaker 1: brain goes. It's like the hatch in the top of
Speaker 1: an elevator on the roof of a school bus. You're
Speaker 1: probably not gonna shinny up any any elevator shaft cables today,
Speaker 1: but there's something comforting about knowing that hatches there. So
Speaker 1: I have always kind of wanted to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but it's true. I think always somewhere deep in
Speaker 1: your mind, there is a part of you, mostly unconscious,
Speaker 1: that is obsessed with escape, And it's always doing the
Speaker 1: pre calculations for an escape trajectory. How would I get
Speaker 1: out of here? How how could I get out if
Speaker 1: I had to? So, of course our obsession with escape,
Speaker 1: escape routes, flight from danger, it extends to our technology.
Speaker 1: Our technology always reflects our psychology. So when we imagine
Speaker 1: a rebel spaceship fleeing from the galactic empire, we also
Speaker 1: imagine escape pods fleeing from the larger rebel ship. And
Speaker 1: uh no, of course, no science fiction vessel is complete
Speaker 1: without an escape pod. And I think at some point
Speaker 1: this year, I bet, when times were rough and the
Speaker 1: world seemed full of despair, you thought about an escape pod,
Speaker 1: didn't you. Sometime this year many of us have found
Speaker 1: ourselves idly wishing you could just get into the capsule
Speaker 1: and blast away and leave everything behind. The one I
Speaker 1: always come back to in in fiction is the escape
Speaker 1: pod that that that president ideal President Donald Pleasants uses
Speaker 1: um to escape from Air Force one in Escape from
Speaker 1: New York. It's also my favorite, yeah, because it's it's
Speaker 1: so comfy. It's an egg, yeah, and and Pleasants is
Speaker 1: kind of egg like himself, so and it it's just
Speaker 1: this perfect egg that he's able to get into an
Speaker 1: escape from immediate danger into of course more immediate danger. Right, So,
Speaker 1: if you haven't seen the movie President US President Donald Pleasants,
Speaker 1: which is kind of strange because he has a British accent.
Speaker 1: He gets his plane, gets captured by terrorists who are
Speaker 1: going to kill him, and they're gonna crash the plane
Speaker 1: into Manhat and I believe it was kind of strange.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so Donald Pleasants gets into this big egg
Speaker 1: and he gets shot out the back of his airplane
Speaker 1: to safety. I think he says something to his doomed
Speaker 1: staff like mang god, watch over argue all. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a great one. But there are tons of great
Speaker 1: fictional escape pods there in all kinds of James Bond movies.
Speaker 1: Always when Raker had a great one that was kind
Speaker 1: of like a like a sexy um bachelor pad, they're
Speaker 1: always like that. There's some aquatics escape pods in James
Speaker 1: Bond movies too. Why did the escape pods in these
Speaker 1: movies always have like satin sheets and champagne coolers and
Speaker 1: curtains on the windows. It's weird because they're kind of
Speaker 1: it's kind of there's a sense of it being a
Speaker 1: a comfy little abode and like a little bed, but
Speaker 1: also kind of like a little casket. You know, it
Speaker 1: gets complicated, I guess when you start teasing apart how
Speaker 1: we design our our escape pods and how we design
Speaker 1: our our our coffins. You're totally right. It is like
Speaker 1: a coffin. It's like a sexy, sexy coffin. But of course,
Speaker 1: so we don't have to look entirely to fiction for
Speaker 1: examples of escape pods, because sometimes we really do build
Speaker 1: escape capsules of some kind into our technologies, especially our vehicles. Um,
Speaker 1: but why would you build escape capsules into real vehicles?
Speaker 1: Why not just have a door? Well, that's kind of
Speaker 1: an obvious question. It's a great question. Um, I think
Speaker 1: what one of the main area to look for an
Speaker 1: answer here is in the room of aviation and a
Speaker 1: lot of We're gonna go through several examples that are
Speaker 1: related to aviation or or space exploration, because we've all
Speaker 1: seen like or I don't know about we've all, but
Speaker 1: I've certainly seen my fair share, and I know you've
Speaker 1: seen your fair share of like old serial adventures from
Speaker 1: the thirties and forties, where you have individuals trying to
Speaker 1: get off of a crashing airplane. They're using an obvious
Speaker 1: set with just in abnormally large fuselage, and they're walking
Speaker 1: with relative of ease down the aisle of this airplane
Speaker 1: to go jump out of a door, out of the
Speaker 1: the the portal with their parachute. And of course a
Speaker 1: crashing airplane or an out of controlled airplane or airplane
Speaker 1: imperil is not going to be that straightforward a situation generally,
Speaker 1: right well, I mean a passenger aircraft also are just
Speaker 1: not made to be jumped out of. You can read
Speaker 1: the whole dB Cooper story for for some more details
Speaker 1: on this. So there's a basic need for an escape
Speaker 1: system be a and be at an ejection seat, which
Speaker 1: we're not really gonna get into ejection seats much here
Speaker 1: that we should mention we're all familiar with ejector seats
Speaker 1: right like in top GA, and the ejector seat will
Speaker 1: propel you up the pilot out of the failing aircraft.
Speaker 1: You deploy a parachute, you get the pilot safely to
Speaker 1: the ground, but generally the canopy comes off, though some
Speaker 1: there are models of ejection seats where the canopy did
Speaker 1: not come off and you just blast through the glass.
Speaker 1: But today we're talking about escape pods. So when you
Speaker 1: need this enclosed space, when does that come in. Well,
Speaker 1: it's gonna come when you need added protection, certainly when
Speaker 1: you're dealing with higher altitude, higher speed aircraft. And and
Speaker 1: of course this is just on top of we we
Speaker 1: talked about, you know, the need for the individual, for
Speaker 1: the pilot, for the crew member to have an escape plan.
Speaker 1: But of course just to boil down, like the basic
Speaker 1: economic idea here is that human lines are more valuable
Speaker 1: than machines. Yeah, but not in like a moral sense,
Speaker 1: because most of these are war machines designed to like
Speaker 1: drop nuclear payloads on the whole cities. Right know what
Speaker 1: means they cost more to train, right right? You need
Speaker 1: you need highly trained specialist individuals who are piloting these aircraft.
Speaker 1: And even though the aircraft costs millions and millions of dollars,
Speaker 1: if it goes down in flames, at least you can say,
Speaker 1: in a sence, you're saving the brain of the aircraft,
Speaker 1: you're saving the pilots that fluid exactly. So let's look
Speaker 1: at some examples from aviation history of these great Uh,
Speaker 1: what would you call it if if the pilot being
Speaker 1: saved from a failing aircraft is like saving the brain,
Speaker 1: the escape pod is like the jar that you put
Speaker 1: the brain in. Yeah, So let's look at some of
Speaker 1: these jars, all right, Well, so the first one we're
Speaker 1: gonna bring up, and we're gonna I'm gonna try and
Speaker 1: make sure that we have images related to these on
Speaker 1: the landing page for this episode of Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot Com, because you're gonna we're gonna try
Speaker 1: and describe everything, but you know you're gonna you're gonna
Speaker 1: probably want some visuals. So the first one we want
Speaker 1: to mention here is the B fifty eight Hustler, the
Speaker 1: convert B fifty eight Hustler. So this was a bomber
Speaker 1: that saw service nineteen sixty through nineteen seventy. About hundred
Speaker 1: and sixteen were built. It was a three man crew.
Speaker 1: This was a U. S. Air Force US Air Force
Speaker 1: debuted nineteen fifty six, and it was the U. S.
Speaker 1: Air force is first operational supersonic bomber. It was visually
Speaker 1: notable because it had these awesome delta wings, so it
Speaker 1: looked like an arrow um and it also had a
Speaker 1: wasp waist fuselage. It was so thin that it had
Speaker 1: to use external bomb pods, gleaming chrome appearance, and most
Speaker 1: of the images you see of it, so yeah, it
Speaker 1: looked like an arrowhead. They'll maybe an arrowhead either you know,
Speaker 1: pregnant with death or infected with explosive parasites. However you
Speaker 1: want to frame it. It is a very weird and
Speaker 1: very sexy looking aircraft. It's got this this tapered fuselage
Speaker 1: like you're talking about, is kind of thin, and uh,
Speaker 1: the in these straight, completely angular wings cutting through it.
Speaker 1: It's cool to look at. Yeah, and I wanna I
Speaker 1: mention this real quick quickly here. Uh it sounds like
Speaker 1: some people might be thinking, oh, you're graffly enthusiastic about
Speaker 1: all these awful war machines, Robert. Uh I do have
Speaker 1: to say that I grew up in a household where
Speaker 1: my my dad was a big aviation enthusiast, and uh
Speaker 1: I was really into aviation history, military avation history. So
Speaker 1: I grew up like with a lot of books about
Speaker 1: these airplanes around, and it seems like they were always
Speaker 1: documentaries on TV about these aircraft. So I have a
Speaker 1: certain fondness for their designs. The back of the BF.
Speaker 1: So yeah, sexy looking aircraft, uh, and initially boasted typical
Speaker 1: ejection seats, so just blast the individual crew members out
Speaker 1: of the imperiled aircraft. But ejection at supersonic speeds proved dangerous,
Speaker 1: so Stanley Aircraft Corporation developed a retrofitted ejection capsule and
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen sixty two, and this allowed aircrew
Speaker 1: to eject safely at twice the speed of sound and
Speaker 1: from as high as altitudes of seventy tho feet or
Speaker 1: roughly twenty one kilometers. That does not sound like a
Speaker 1: condition in which you would want to be ejected naked
Speaker 1: out of your right, have your brain ejected naked, or
Speaker 1: even in a flight suit and in a chair, right,
Speaker 1: So they came up with this capsule. The capsule was
Speaker 1: essentially a clam shell hood that closed over the ejection seat,
Speaker 1: and it was I found some some gay images on
Speaker 1: this and the Getty images a database of some some
Speaker 1: work that wented and went into designing this, and it
Speaker 1: was apparently referred to as the torture chamber during development
Speaker 1: because it I guess because it kind of looks like
Speaker 1: an iron maiden. It really does. Yeah, So this capsule
Speaker 1: you have the seed. It's like a right ang goal
Speaker 1: kind of thing, which is where the crew member would be,
Speaker 1: I guess, but folded over the top of it, it
Speaker 1: looks kind of like a It's just this cascading series
Speaker 1: of metal bands coming down. So it looks like a
Speaker 1: mask that a Cinabyte would wear in one of the
Speaker 1: hell raisor sequels, and the Cinabyte would be called like
Speaker 1: shutter Face or something. Yeah, it's reminiscent a little bit
Speaker 1: too of a roll top desk. Yeah yeah, yeah, like that,
Speaker 1: but metal. Yeah. So this this that once it's over you.
Speaker 1: This thing was air tight, had an independent oxygen supply
Speaker 1: supply system that ensured pressurization, and this was but one
Speaker 1: of the things was it was far from fully automated,
Speaker 1: because I know when you're when you're hearing this or
Speaker 1: reading about it, you're imagining like, oh, it shuts over
Speaker 1: you and then you blast out like you're in a
Speaker 1: science fiction movie. But it wasn't. The user still had
Speaker 1: a number of choices. After the clamshell shut you could
Speaker 1: continue onto ejection, or you could hold off until the
Speaker 1: plane made it to a lower altitude that didn't demand
Speaker 1: the pressurization. Um. The idea here being you know, that
Speaker 1: is still incredibly dangerous, UM, ejecting from the aircraft at
Speaker 1: high altitudes, even in the capsule, So if the plane
Speaker 1: is not in just complete peril, then maybe it makes
Speaker 1: sense to wait just a minute. Um. And this is
Speaker 1: the thing we should keep in mind throughout the episode.
Speaker 1: I mean, ejecting from an aircraft, Uh always comes with risks.
Speaker 1: You know, when you eject from an aircraft to bail out,
Speaker 1: there is a certain percent chance that you will be
Speaker 1: killed by the ejection process. That's why it is a
Speaker 1: last result, is a violent last resort in a in
Speaker 1: a in a terrible dangerous situation. Now, additionally, the pilot's
Speaker 1: capsule in the hustler contained the control stick and other
Speaker 1: necessary controls to pilot the aircraft to that lower altitude,
Speaker 1: and then communication was maintained capsule to capsule in the airplane. Uh.
Speaker 1: So it's this interesting, UM. I love how these capsules
Speaker 1: are not you know, immediate um, immediately exercides from the craft.
Speaker 1: They're kind of a part of the craft in peril.
Speaker 1: So what kind of test pilot would volunteer to be
Speaker 1: the first test subject of the torture chamber. Well, it's
Speaker 1: interesting and reading about these different tests, because the thing
Speaker 1: you have you have a fair amount of testing the
Speaker 1: win into any of these extensive testing even uh, you
Speaker 1: would have test pilots that are you know, trying them
Speaker 1: out in some cases on the ground. Um, they're loading
Speaker 1: them onto um, you know, under propelled carts to just
Speaker 1: see how they how the impact affects them. And in
Speaker 1: the case of the Hustlers ejection capsules, the US Air
Speaker 1: Force used Himalayan and American black bears to test the
Speaker 1: ejection seats. Well, how did I hear you? Right? Yes,
Speaker 1: say that again, Himalayan and American black bears. Uh, none
Speaker 1: of them were killed during the test. They always suffered
Speaker 1: broken bones for what it's worth, and they were drugged.
Speaker 1: But we're talking ejections at speeds of mock one point
Speaker 1: six um, that's ween or and also at altitudes of
Speaker 1: forty five thousand feet. So yeah, the bears helped us
Speaker 1: out in that regardless. Well, hard to argue that they volunteered,
Speaker 1: but I'm glad to hear that no bears were killed
Speaker 1: in the making of this escape pod. Yeah, at least
Speaker 1: we can say that, right. Um, So after injection, the
Speaker 1: capsule here featured a parachute of course, as well as
Speaker 1: shock absorbers and inflatable bladders to turn the thing into
Speaker 1: a life raft if it fell in the water. Uh So,
Speaker 1: in short, it was it was a pretty pretty cool
Speaker 1: escape capsule. I think. I think it's one of the better,
Speaker 1: like just pure examples of of a of an escape
Speaker 1: capsule in aviation history. There are actually videos online of
Speaker 1: the tests of this escape capsule, of it coming up
Speaker 1: out of the plane. You can see it just rocketing
Speaker 1: up into the sky and shooting up over the top
Speaker 1: of the plane as the plane passes underneath. It's worth
Speaker 1: looking up. Yeah, there's also a fabulous periscope films documentary
Speaker 1: that's freely available on YouTube now that that shows the
Speaker 1: ex actually how it worked, and it had had like
Speaker 1: some wonderful animations. They quoted Shakespeare and showed like sort
Speaker 1: of a Disney documentary hand paid the leafing through a
Speaker 1: book of the works of Shakespeare just impeccably, you know,
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties pr project here, So do we know how
Speaker 1: often people in the real world ejected from one of
Speaker 1: these planes and how well it worked? This was a
Speaker 1: real revelation to me. There is a wonderful website and
Speaker 1: I say wonderful. It's it's a little long in the
Speaker 1: tooth now it could it could benefit from redesign, but
Speaker 1: this but the work that's gone into it is pretty
Speaker 1: pretty awesome. It's ejection history dot org dot UK and
Speaker 1: it's an attempt by the author and contributors to catalog
Speaker 1: every ejection from from key aircraft and and and and
Speaker 1: also rank like how how survivable each incident was so
Speaker 1: all in all, like some some aircraft have better databases
Speaker 1: and others on this site, but it's it's a real
Speaker 1: sobering look at the effectiveness of ejection seats and ejection capsules,
Speaker 1: UH to determine, like to what sooner are they able
Speaker 1: to save lives in the event of, you know, catastrophe.
Speaker 1: In the case of the Hustler, it looked like there's
Speaker 1: something like thirty ejections total, with the majority of them
Speaker 1: being survivals, so the torture chamber by and large worked,
Speaker 1: it would seem too. I don't I don't have to
Speaker 1: have a particular stat on it because the database doesn't
Speaker 1: really present the information that that. Clearly it's not it's
Speaker 1: not a modern spreadsheets sort of format, but certainly if
Speaker 1: you really have to have an answer to that, you
Speaker 1: can go and count them. Um, but yeah, the Hustler
Speaker 1: an interesting plane, a great escape capsule. Get in that
Speaker 1: centerbyte head. Okay, let's look at another one. How about
Speaker 1: the XP seventy Valkyrie. Oh yeah, so this this one's
Speaker 1: really cool too. So this was a prototype for the
Speaker 1: B set D And this was another beautiful delta wing
Speaker 1: bomber of the sixties, designed to be a high altitude
Speaker 1: mock three bomber. It never actually entered service, so visually
Speaker 1: it's most striking feature and the one that that if
Speaker 1: you've looked at aviation pictures in the past, you might go, oh,
Speaker 1: that airplane, it's uh, it's probably because it has these
Speaker 1: two large canards, which active surfaces essentially imagine the So
Speaker 1: imagine the airplane is a bird. It has two little
Speaker 1: wings right behind its ears. Um, those are just you know,
Speaker 1: control surfaces essentially located behind the cockpit. Performance was However,
Speaker 1: the really crazy thing about the XP seventy was that
Speaker 1: it was designed to fold its wings down during supersonic
Speaker 1: flight and ride its own shock wave quote much as
Speaker 1: a surfer rides in ocean wave. That's a according to
Speaker 1: the NASA DOT Gov fact sheet on this aircraft. So
Speaker 1: if you look at pictures of this aircraft, it also
Speaker 1: is very visually striking. As you say, I thought, this
Speaker 1: one looks kind of like a paper plane. It it's
Speaker 1: like it's very white and very thin, extremely thin as
Speaker 1: far as the wings go. Has a paper like kind
Speaker 1: of quality to it, except that the the of course,
Speaker 1: the middle fuselage is kind of circular, but otherwise it's
Speaker 1: it's dead ringer for paper plane. Yeah, it looks it
Speaker 1: looks like a paper plane or piece of oregony, almost
Speaker 1: like an oregony crane. Yeah, I see that too. So
Speaker 1: this airplane design came about in a time of uncertain
Speaker 1: future for traditional bombers, and the Kennedy administration ended up
Speaker 1: scrapping it, so it became a research aircraft, largely for
Speaker 1: supersonic transport research, looking into the idea of using supersonic
Speaker 1: airline or supersonic sonic transport planes. In general, it was
Speaker 1: the right shape, it was the right size, and even
Speaker 1: though the program was scrapped, they had two prototypes, so
Speaker 1: you had two XP seventy Valkyries, so it was sort
Speaker 1: of a prototype Concorde. Well it was like that, Well,
Speaker 1: it was totally a bomber, but but it was the
Speaker 1: right size and it had enough in common with the
Speaker 1: designs that were being looked at for commercial use that
Speaker 1: it could be used to explore the possibilities there. So,
Speaker 1: despite some of the problems the the early flight provided
Speaker 1: data on a number of issues facing supersonic transport. These
Speaker 1: included aircraft noise, operational problems, control system design, UH, comparison
Speaker 1: of winternal predictions with what actually happens during the course
Speaker 1: of flight, high altita to clear air turbulence, all of
Speaker 1: these issues. I mean, this was there. There was still
Speaker 1: so much to learn at the time about supersonic flight.
Speaker 1: But this one did have an injection capsule. Yes, back
Speaker 1: to the main point. The reason we're talking about is
Speaker 1: that it did feature an injection capsule and it had
Speaker 1: a clam clam shell design similar to that that we
Speaker 1: discussed in the Hustler. So they're bringing back shutter face, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: shutter faces in action that the ideally the chair that
Speaker 1: you're in the cockpit seat, it kind of like folds
Speaker 1: back and then the clam shell snap over uh. And
Speaker 1: it contains survival gear oxygen systems. It also contained the
Speaker 1: flight control stick for the pilot and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: it's very much the same idea. We we only had
Speaker 1: two of these, so it's there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: ejection data on it. But there is one key incident
Speaker 1: that occurred with one of the XP seventies, and that
Speaker 1: was the tragedy involving one of them in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 1: June eighth, nineteen sixty six, the second of the two
Speaker 1: XP seventies crashed following a mid air collision with NASA's
Speaker 1: F one oh four in Chase plane. How did that happen? Um,
Speaker 1: they were essentially, they were they were doing photographs of
Speaker 1: the research that was being conducted, and one plane got
Speaker 1: too close to the other. And yeah, it was a
Speaker 1: pretty pretty terrible accident because in the course of this,
Speaker 1: Joe Walker, the F one oh four in pilot, he
Speaker 1: died in the accident. Um Carl Cross, who was making
Speaker 1: his first flight in the XP seventy, was unable to
Speaker 1: eject and he died in the crash. North American test
Speaker 1: pilot Al White, who had been with the XP seventy
Speaker 1: projects since the beginning, he ejected. He said, he ejected,
Speaker 1: uh in the capsule, but he received serious injuries in
Speaker 1: the process because the clamshell crushed his arm. So his
Speaker 1: arm was outside of the the clamshell and it was crushed.
Speaker 1: That is something I've read about and these, uh, these
Speaker 1: aviation eject capsules, is that they tend to if they
Speaker 1: close over you, they have to close with extreme force. Uh,
Speaker 1: and so you're always at risk of having injury from
Speaker 1: the actual closing process of the capsule. Yeah, and certainly
Speaker 1: you know going through that A that A that ejection
Speaker 1: website that I mentioned earlier, you see this with with
Speaker 1: countless ejections. Capsules are not where Sometimes individuals survived, sometimes
Speaker 1: they don't. Sometimes they are minor. Sometimes there are severe
Speaker 1: injuries that are entailed the course of escaping that aircraft. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's look at another one. How about the General Dynamics
Speaker 1: F one eleven ard Vark name, yes, the ard Vark,
Speaker 1: this one. This one is a great, great aircraft. This
Speaker 1: was one was one of always one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: So this one was in service seven through for the U. S.
Speaker 1: Air Force. Of course, five hundred and sixty three were produced,
Speaker 1: and uh, it was. It was always a favorite airplane
Speaker 1: of mind growing up because in probably in part because
Speaker 1: I did have a toy version of it. There you go.
Speaker 1: If you have that physical manifestation of the thing as
Speaker 1: a kid, you can't help it be a little more
Speaker 1: into it. But it was also just like a little
Speaker 1: bit like a like it was just a weird plane.
Speaker 1: It stood out from the other jets. It effectively came
Speaker 1: off like a larger bomber version of the F fourteen Tomcat.
Speaker 1: The of course, you know, the top gun plane for
Speaker 1: anyone out there is not not that familiar with with
Speaker 1: your jets, variable sweep wings and coolest of all, kandem
Speaker 1: seating for the two man crew. Okay, so if you
Speaker 1: have if you have top gun in mind, of course
Speaker 1: you're going to imagine front and back seating for the
Speaker 1: pilot and what the gunner? What are the two people?
Speaker 1: I don't know my top gun, but yeah, you'll have
Speaker 1: one in front and one directly behind. Yeah, with multiple crews,
Speaker 1: you know you're often talking about the pilot, um a navigator, pilot,
Speaker 1: co pilot, bombity or you know, there are all these
Speaker 1: different roles depending on what the airplane is. And in
Speaker 1: your your sleeker faster designs such as fighter planes and
Speaker 1: interceptors and fighter bombers in some cases you're gonna have,
Speaker 1: you know, one in front, one behind. Um also with trainers.
Speaker 1: Trainer aircraft are often like that. But this one had
Speaker 1: pilot co pilot pilot sitting right next to each other,
Speaker 1: just like a love seat, just like a love seat.
Speaker 1: And uh, the cool part here is the crew didn't
Speaker 1: have ejection seats or an escape pod. Even the entire
Speaker 1: cabin of the F one eleven ard Vark was an
Speaker 1: escape capsule, the McDonald escaped capsule. And it looks something
Speaker 1: like a Star Treks shuttlecraft. So we will see this
Speaker 1: idea repeated in a few minutes when talking about some
Speaker 1: proposals for passenger aircraft. It was so yeah, think of
Speaker 1: think of a shuttle craft. It was self righting, it
Speaker 1: was water tight, it could be used as a flotation device.
Speaker 1: Um so sorry you said self righting. Not that's not
Speaker 1: riding with a d but self righting, as in it
Speaker 1: would bob right side up. Yeah. So it's a pretty
Speaker 1: cool little capsule. I mean it was the it was
Speaker 1: it was the entire crew cabin really and so so
Speaker 1: how did it work. Well, if we look to ejection
Speaker 1: history dot org dot UK, which is the leading source
Speaker 1: of information on this sort of thing. Um looks like
Speaker 1: there were about over a hundred injections logged for the
Speaker 1: F one eleven during the course of its tenure, and
Speaker 1: the survival rate looks pretty good. But again, it's it's
Speaker 1: kind of sobering to look at a lot of this data,
Speaker 1: especially when you can see the pictures of the pilots
Speaker 1: that were involved. Sometimes the survivors sometimes m f casualties
Speaker 1: because you can you can have this great ejection system
Speaker 1: in place. But you're still talking again about really dangerous situations, uh,
Speaker 1: really parallel situations with a malfunctioning or crashing aircraft. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's in a war zone, and we're talking about everything
Speaker 1: from bird strike that's when an airplane strikes a bird,
Speaker 1: which can have just cataclysmic um results on the aircraft.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't think so, but yeah, I mean the high
Speaker 1: speed bird a high speed plane, uh versus and that
Speaker 1: meets a you know, the the canopy of the plane
Speaker 1: or the engine. So you have a bird strike, crashes, collisions,
Speaker 1: engine problems. All these things happen in the course of
Speaker 1: a plane's tenure of it, you know, is actually utilized
Speaker 1: over the course of a decade or longer um and
Speaker 1: sometimes the Sometimes the stories are just like fatally short.
Speaker 1: You know. It's just like the plane had a malfunction
Speaker 1: and it crashed and there's no sign that even an
Speaker 1: ejection was even attempted. It just happened so fast that
Speaker 1: other times they're pretty remarkable. There's a listing for a
Speaker 1: in an October seven, nineteen seventy six ejection with the
Speaker 1: ard Arc uh and it says, quote capsule was fired
Speaker 1: with the airplane about sixty degrees nose down at a
Speaker 1: hundred feet or less. Uh So, like the it seems
Speaker 1: like if this is in the last second, this may
Speaker 1: even be past the last second. Yeah, and they but
Speaker 1: they actually both crew members survived. There were no senti
Speaker 1: for serious injuries. So this one was one that sort
Speaker 1: of stood out as an anomaly of like a it
Speaker 1: really seemed like it was going to go the other way,
Speaker 1: but they survived thanks to the escape capsule. Okay, how
Speaker 1: about one more? What about the Rockwell B one a Lancer? Yeah,
Speaker 1: this one is this is another beautiful plane. I guess
Speaker 1: kind of there's kind of an evolution here and this
Speaker 1: is the form that we still find in service today.
Speaker 1: Uh and uh, it's it's likely going to remain in
Speaker 1: service tool around. I think of the current estimates here
Speaker 1: the U. S Air Force uh B one Lancer, So
Speaker 1: the Air Force had four B one a's built. This
Speaker 1: was the first model and h then they ended up
Speaker 1: doing a hundred B one be The first three B
Speaker 1: one a's featured an escape capsule that ejected the cockpit
Speaker 1: with all four crew members inside it, much like we
Speaker 1: saw with the ard Vark. So just you know that
Speaker 1: the next evolution of the Ardvark was present here. But
Speaker 1: then the B one a was equipped with a conventional
Speaker 1: ejectian seat for for each crew member, so they ended
Speaker 1: up scrapping the the full escape capsule design in favor
Speaker 1: of more traditional ejection seats. So that was kind of
Speaker 1: like the end of the the golden age of the
Speaker 1: ejection capsule, I guess you would say, at least from
Speaker 1: a military aviation standpoint. And apparently it was only used once.
Speaker 1: I mean you only had what three aircraft that featured it.
Speaker 1: But there was an August incident escape pod parachutes didn't
Speaker 1: deploy fully in the module impacted in a right nose
Speaker 1: a low altitude. One crew member was killed, two others
Speaker 1: were severely injured. So the one use of it again
Speaker 1: during its limited roll out, uh was it was very
Speaker 1: much a mixed back. So one of the big takeaways
Speaker 1: from all these stories in military aviation history is yet
Speaker 1: again we said this earlier, but even if you make
Speaker 1: it into the escape pod, it's not a sure thing.
Speaker 1: It's still a dangerous world out there between you and
Speaker 1: the ground. I guess most of the dangers at the ground,
Speaker 1: but yeah, but but yeah, it's a dangerous environment. You're
Speaker 1: not really supposed to be up there, and the thing
Speaker 1: that got you there is not functioning or crashing. So Joe,
Speaker 1: I flew a few times this year. Uh where was
Speaker 1: my injection seat? It's a total bummer, isn't it that
Speaker 1: you do not get an escape pod in a regular
Speaker 1: passenger aircraft? I want my money back. No, actually I don't,
Speaker 1: because I arrived safely and so you know it's fine.
Speaker 1: Uh So, there are a few patents that there. There
Speaker 1: is a reason that I'm going to get to in
Speaker 1: a minute why you don't usually see this in passenger aircraft.
Speaker 1: But first I just want to look at a couple
Speaker 1: of examples. One is a patent that I found filed
Speaker 1: January two eleven by Tatiana ivan Evna dimon Chuk, who
Speaker 1: wrote this patent for quote method for the mass Emergency
Speaker 1: Evacuation of passengers from air Transport and Aeroplane with equipment
Speaker 1: for rescuing passengers in an emergency situation. I have to
Speaker 1: just comment reading a bunch of patents for this episode. Man,
Speaker 1: the writing style of most patents is so awful. It
Speaker 1: as if they're written explicitly to make it hard to
Speaker 1: picture what they're talking about. Yeah, thank goodness there there
Speaker 1: are often visuals to go with it, because otherwise it
Speaker 1: would be very difficult to get the idea from some
Speaker 1: of the writeups. Yeah. I don't mean to call this
Speaker 1: one out in particular, but it also the writing wasn't
Speaker 1: amazing on it. But yeah, that that's sort of across
Speaker 1: the board. But anyway, basically, what is envisioned in this
Speaker 1: one is that the airplane would have rows of seats
Speaker 1: that are enclosable into smaller capsules, and then these capsules
Speaker 1: would sit on some kind of guide track in inside
Speaker 1: the airplane fuselage, and when an emergency occurs, the hatches
Speaker 1: and the fuselage pop open and the seat containing capsules
Speaker 1: would be ejected. According to one diagram, I saw. It
Speaker 1: looks like they would sort of blast out of the
Speaker 1: bottom of the plane and an angle diagonal to the
Speaker 1: plan's movement. But yeah, I have not seen anyone claiming
Speaker 1: that they're going to make a passenger plane incorporating these designs. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this particular design it it basically think of there being
Speaker 1: a tiny train inside the airplane, like little train cars,
Speaker 1: little subway cars that have your your seats in them, right,
Speaker 1: and then if, if, if, if necessary, if the situation
Speaker 1: gets dire, each of those train cars may be pooped
Speaker 1: out of the airplane. Oh it's a good one, Okay.
Speaker 1: So I found another one also that there were some
Speaker 1: reports about another supposed design for a passenger plane escape system,
Speaker 1: this one by a Ukrainian engineer named Vladimir Nikolayevich Tatarenko,
Speaker 1: And there are some YouTube videos demonstrating the concept, complete
Speaker 1: with inspiring quotes by Confucius and Einstein and uh so,
Speaker 1: the demonstration in the videos shows that under this design,
Speaker 1: what would happen is that the lower part of the
Speaker 1: fuselage detaches from the engine and pilot section of the plane,
Speaker 1: including the entire passenger cabin and luggage storage. So if
Speaker 1: you imagine it. It's like you get into the cabin
Speaker 1: of the plane, and that is a detachable section of
Speaker 1: the plane that attaches to the wings and the pilot's
Speaker 1: area through through a connector, and so an emergency happens,
Speaker 1: the cabin of the plane essentially just detaches from the
Speaker 1: fuselage and comes off. Parachutes extend from containers on the
Speaker 1: top of the escape capsule, and the cabin comes down
Speaker 1: for a soft landing on inflatable cushions. I have to say,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a little iffy about this one because I've
Speaker 1: mostly seen it covered on like viral news type sites.
Speaker 1: You know about these inventions, Robert. Sometimes you see inventions
Speaker 1: that are covered in trade press for whatever field the
Speaker 1: inventions in, and they're covered in mainstream news, and then
Speaker 1: there are the other ones that get picked up on
Speaker 1: like ain't that cool dot com? Or something. This one's
Speaker 1: more of the latter type and uh, and so I
Speaker 1: haven't seen it in serious sources covering aviation technology. What
Speaker 1: little coverage it has gotten in mainstream press appears to
Speaker 1: be pretty skeptical of the practicality of the model. So
Speaker 1: I wouldn't expect to be seeing this implemented in any
Speaker 1: real airplanes. But there's a larger problem here, which is
Speaker 1: that even if you could make escape pods on passenger
Speaker 1: aircraft work, which with enough motivation and investment, I'm sure
Speaker 1: you probably could, I don't think that any of these
Speaker 1: are ever going to become a real thing. One of
Speaker 1: the first problems is that when you picture the capsules
Speaker 1: coming off, coming out of the plane and then deploying
Speaker 1: parachutes to parachute down to safety, that helps sometimes, but
Speaker 1: the vast majority of airplane accidents happened during takeoff, ascent, descent,
Speaker 1: and landing when you are nearer to the ground, and
Speaker 1: parachute supported capsules are just going to be less likely
Speaker 1: to meet a happy end. We mentioned earlier problems about
Speaker 1: like trying to deploy a parachute when you're very close
Speaker 1: to the ground, it doesn't usually work right, And think
Speaker 1: back to all these the capsules we discussed so far
Speaker 1: in military aviation, these are ejection capsules. These are essentially
Speaker 1: fancy ejection seats and versions of the ejection seat, which
Speaker 1: of course launches the individual away from the plane generally
Speaker 1: upward um And that I mean like, for instance, that
Speaker 1: F one eleven example we saw where there is exceedingly
Speaker 1: low altitude that the reason they survived is probably because
Speaker 1: it launched the capsule up far enough for the parachute
Speaker 1: to come into play for them. Right. Uh So I
Speaker 1: found a twenty sixteen Boeing statistical summary compiling all the
Speaker 1: fatal commercial aircraft accidents and in the world send while
Speaker 1: it was between two thousand and six and twenty and
Speaker 1: this only includes things that you would actually consider accidents,
Speaker 1: not things like terrorists, bombs, or missile strikes. But during
Speaker 1: this period, only twelve percent of their fatal accidents and
Speaker 1: twenty four percent of onboard fatalities occurred during the cruise
Speaker 1: portion of the flight, which is what this is when
Speaker 1: the plane is that it's regular flying altitude. Most of
Speaker 1: the time you're in the air is the cruise section. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the part where you can get up, walk around,
Speaker 1: go to the bathroom, and become increasingly annoyed at the
Speaker 1: other people on the plane. Right, So this is going
Speaker 1: to be the majority of your flight time, but the
Speaker 1: minority of where accidents occur, the vast minority, About eighteen
Speaker 1: percent of fatal accidents and fourteen percent of onboard fatalities
Speaker 1: occurred during takeoff and climb, and about fifty nine percent
Speaker 1: of fatal accidents and sixty one percent of onboard fatalities
Speaker 1: happened during descent and landing. And so one thing you
Speaker 1: know is from these stats is that if you do
Speaker 1: happen to be in the rare midflight acts it in,
Speaker 1: it is more likely to be a fatal one. That's
Speaker 1: kind of intuitive, right, since it's twelve percent of the accidents,
Speaker 1: but accounting of the fatalities, but they just happen a
Speaker 1: lot less often. Most of the bad stuff happens near
Speaker 1: or on the ground. Sometimes that you haven't even left
Speaker 1: the ground. You're on the runway when something bad happens.
Speaker 1: Uh And the closer yard of the ground, the more
Speaker 1: useless a proposition like these escape pods becomes. Overall, flying
Speaker 1: in airplanes is incredibly safe. You I know you've probably
Speaker 1: heard stats about this before, how it's more dangerous to
Speaker 1: be in a car than an aircraft by pretty much
Speaker 1: every measure you can look at. I think this is true.
Speaker 1: Uh So there are different ways to estimate the difference,
Speaker 1: but here's one thing I found that puts it in
Speaker 1: terms of lifetime risks. So the U s. National Safety
Speaker 1: Council used its yearly injury statistics. They do this every
Speaker 1: year to compile and odds of Dying chart, which is
Speaker 1: a good idea, right. It ranks your lifetime chances of
Speaker 1: being killed by particular things. So in fifteen they claim
Speaker 1: that your odds of dying in a plane crash are
Speaker 1: one in ninety six thousand, five hundred and sixty six.
Speaker 1: And according to their data, you are much more likely
Speaker 1: to be killed by electriccution that's one in twelve thousand,
Speaker 1: two hundred, by a b wasp or hornet sting that's
Speaker 1: one in fifty five thousand or so, or in a
Speaker 1: motor vehicle crash, which is about one in a hundred
Speaker 1: and twelve. And I might add that in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, the same organization rated your lifetime chances of
Speaker 1: dying in a space or air travel accident at one
Speaker 1: in seven thousand, one hundred and seventy eight. So things
Speaker 1: seem to be vastly improving. So your odds of dying
Speaker 1: in an air travel accident are already exceedingly low. And
Speaker 1: if you are in a fatal plane accident, it's most
Speaker 1: likely to happen on the runway or at low altitude,
Speaker 1: where an escape pod attached to parachutes is much less
Speaker 1: likely to help you. UH. The parachutes just probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: have time to unfold and decelerate you before you crash
Speaker 1: into the ground or catch on fire. But of course,
Speaker 1: another thing to consider is economics. We mentioned at the
Speaker 1: beginning the economics of the military considerations. UH. Adding escape
Speaker 1: pods to passenger planes means building new planes and making
Speaker 1: them much heavier and bulkier, which decreases passenger payload capacity
Speaker 1: increases fuel costs. If you want an airplane with an
Speaker 1: escape pod, I think you're gonna need to be prepared
Speaker 1: to pay the nine thousand dollars per ticket or whatever
Speaker 1: it ends up costing. One more thing I wanted to consider.
Speaker 1: I found an article in a publication called Defense One
Speaker 1: which is from Atlantic Media, called why your plane can't
Speaker 1: have an escape pod? And this offered one thing I
Speaker 1: hadn't thought of that they author of this spoke to
Speaker 1: somebody named David aiken whose director of Space systems the
Speaker 1: Space Systems Laboratory at the University of Maryland, and Aikin said, quote,
Speaker 1: you have to be careful you don't cause an accident
Speaker 1: because of an inadvertent actuation of the safety system. It's
Speaker 1: an accident that wouldn't happen without the safety system. That
Speaker 1: didn't even cross my mind. But of course that's the case, right,
Speaker 1: You could have lots because every time you activate an
Speaker 1: injector system, you are increasing your likelihood of death in
Speaker 1: an ejection incident. And uh, and the chance of you
Speaker 1: dying in a passenger plane is already so low. It
Speaker 1: just does not seem like a good cost benefit trade off. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, an ejection seat or an ejection capsule is
Speaker 1: an incredibly dangerous device to have. Um. I believe if
Speaker 1: you go to a you go to an air show
Speaker 1: and somebody say, flies in a MiG or or some
Speaker 1: sort of you know, older Now, a non military craft,
Speaker 1: if it had an ejection seat in its previous life,
Speaker 1: it probably does not have one today because it's just
Speaker 1: not the kind of thing that a non military craft
Speaker 1: should have. One last thing about passenger planes. All those
Speaker 1: movies that show Air Force One with an escape pod,
Speaker 1: the best of course, being as we mentioned earlier Escape
Speaker 1: from New York, Donald Pleasants gets in the again. It's
Speaker 1: it's wonderful. Are there others? Air Force one has an
Speaker 1: escape pod? Here's one how about the movie Air Force One?
Speaker 1: I never saw it? Is this where is this Harrison
Speaker 1: Ford versus uh, Gary Oldman and Gary? Or is it Gary? Okay,
Speaker 1: I can't remember. I want to say it's Gary Oldman
Speaker 1: has president and Harrison Ford is the president. Okay, he's
Speaker 1: the president. He's on Air Force one. Some terrorists get
Speaker 1: on his plane. I think they're led by Gary Oldman
Speaker 1: from what I remember. They attack him. He says, get
Speaker 1: off my plane, and he fights them. And so this
Speaker 1: came out in July n and I found a Time
Speaker 1: CNN article from that summer reacting to the movie Air
Speaker 1: Force One and comparing its Air Force one set to
Speaker 1: the real Air Force one. Now and in the movie,
Speaker 1: actually the plane has an escape pod. The article speaks
Speaker 1: to a White House aid confirms there is no escape
Speaker 1: pod in the real Air Force one, but apparently Bill
Speaker 1: Clinton wanted one. Well you come in. I think they
Speaker 1: were joking, that's what they said. Well, I mean he
Speaker 1: come back to the economic model is one of the
Speaker 1: cases where it would make sense right to have an
Speaker 1: ejection capsule for the most powerful individual in the United States.
Speaker 1: But I don't know how much does the president cost um.
Speaker 1: I think there are there are price tag evaluations available
Speaker 1: now on that topic, But it makes sense that they
Speaker 1: might have one in that scenario, but apparently they don't. However,
Speaker 1: would they let us know if there was one? Uh,
Speaker 1: that's a good question. Maybe they're just psyching us out.
Speaker 1: I have heard of certain situations with informational websites with
Speaker 1: information about Air Force one being asked to, you know,
Speaker 1: cut down on the detail. Yeah, wow, interest to the
Speaker 1: great fun. Uh So, I don't know. You can you
Speaker 1: can run with the conspiracy theories there. Maybe there's a
Speaker 1: secret escape pot alright, Well, on that note, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a break, a quick break for you. We're actually
Speaker 1: going to take a break for several days and then
Speaker 1: come back in and finish this. So if we sound
Speaker 1: a little different, if we sound better, healthier, if we
Speaker 1: sound worse, of you sound a little sicker, well it's
Speaker 1: because a few days past. But when we come back
Speaker 1: few days contemplating the torture chamber. Yes, when we come back, though,
Speaker 1: we are going to get into escape pods in space exploration,
Speaker 1: both actual and the merely proposed. I'm at, I'm null,
Speaker 1: I'm ben, and we are stuff they don't want you
Speaker 1: to know. Each week we cover the latest and strangest
Speaker 1: in fringe science, government cover ups, allegations at the paranormal,
Speaker 1: and more. New episodes come out every Friday on iTunes, Spotify,
Speaker 1: Google Play, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. So we've been talking about aviation, escape pods,
Speaker 1: escape capsules. But what about outer space? Like that's the
Speaker 1: next most dangerous environment. Like if if the air, if
Speaker 1: the the upper atmosphere is not dangerous enough, let's go
Speaker 1: beyond the upper atmosphere, let's go into orbit and possibly
Speaker 1: rooms beyond. What do we do about escaping those situations? Well,
Speaker 1: space is the natural home of the escape pod, isn't
Speaker 1: it Because if we if we see it in sci
Speaker 1: fi most often, like that's where you get in the capsule,
Speaker 1: you blast down to tattooing or wherever that that that's
Speaker 1: where we really see escape pods come to fruition. And
Speaker 1: it is quite true that humans have designed escape pods
Speaker 1: for spacecraft. Now, they're kind of different than they are
Speaker 1: in the movies, because what happens in a movie like Oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, Aliens or something like that, where there
Speaker 1: there are capsules that you're you're in deep space and
Speaker 1: you get into a capsule to blast away from a
Speaker 1: ship that is exploding or infested with aliens or something
Speaker 1: like that, and then what do you do. You just
Speaker 1: drift off into space. Well, there's no I mean, that's
Speaker 1: not very useful as far as things go right now,
Speaker 1: because we do not have deep rescue vehicles in deep
Speaker 1: space operating between planets and star systems. This is one
Speaker 1: of the ideas that came up in Pandora, is that
Speaker 1: it's that everyone would would go mad on the ship,
Speaker 1: and you'd go into your escape pods, and you blast
Speaker 1: off in the escape pods, and then you just die
Speaker 1: out there because nobody's coming to pick up exactly. I mean,
Speaker 1: what's the point. But there may be a point if
Speaker 1: you're talking about stuff that stays really close to Earth,
Speaker 1: which almost all well all of our all of our
Speaker 1: crewed spacecraft so far have So in the early days
Speaker 1: of crewed space flight, there were a lot of proposals
Speaker 1: for various types of escape pods, and I actually found
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe this. I found an issue of Popular
Speaker 1: Science from September nineteen sixty six with an article called
Speaker 1: quote Lifeboats in Space, by none other than Dr Verner
Speaker 1: von Braun all about the all about the subject of
Speaker 1: rescue from orbital vehicles. Vernon von Braun, of course, the
Speaker 1: famed former German rocket scientists who came to the US
Speaker 1: after the War with I think you mostly stationed out
Speaker 1: of Huntsville, Alabama, and uh yeah, contributed a great deal
Speaker 1: to our space program. Yeah, so, von Braun says, so far,
Speaker 1: and this is nineteen sixty six. Remember, space missions have
Speaker 1: been very safe, but we're gonna have to expect that
Speaker 1: at some point a crewed spacecraft will signal distress. What then,
Speaker 1: I mean, imagine it's the nineteen sixties. What happens if
Speaker 1: there's a problem, right, I mean, you have no recourse yet.
Speaker 1: So what he's proposing is we need a space rescue program.
Speaker 1: So he says, imagine a crew is stuck in a
Speaker 1: spacecraft in lower th orbit caused by a malfunctioning retro rocket.
Speaker 1: Von Braun essentially compares this to the situation of like
Speaker 1: a fishing boat that gets stuck off shore at sea
Speaker 1: and starts sinking. If you call for help, then evacuate
Speaker 1: the crew into a lifeboat. You can probably be saved.
Speaker 1: But we need to develop the equivalent structures for rescue
Speaker 1: within space. You need to develop lifeboats and rescue vehicles
Speaker 1: for space and orbital flight the same way you'd have
Speaker 1: them for for the ocean, right off the coast. So
Speaker 1: you would have to send the orbital equivalent of a
Speaker 1: coastguard cutter essentially to rescue a spacecraft in trouble. But
Speaker 1: that's difficult because you have to wait for an appropriate
Speaker 1: launch window to allow a rendezvous between the two ships.
Speaker 1: As we know from rocket launches, you can't just fly
Speaker 1: up there, you know what I mean. It's not like
Speaker 1: getting in a helicopter and heading off. That you're dealing
Speaker 1: with with massively powerful velocities and great mass, So you
Speaker 1: essentially have to aim your gun the right way to
Speaker 1: start with. Yeah, it's an enormous undertaking. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: so you've got to get this rendezvous between the two ships.
Speaker 1: And if the ship in distress is suffering a real emergency,
Speaker 1: it might be too long for them to wait for
Speaker 1: somebody on Earth to line up the trajectory of the
Speaker 1: launch and wait for the correct launch window. Um. So, uh,
Speaker 1: For example, a substantial number of spacecraft and emergencies we
Speaker 1: just know are going to demand immediate rescue, they're going
Speaker 1: to be very urgent. For example of Von Braun, it
Speaker 1: gives the example of fire. This was back when NASA
Speaker 1: was using oxygen environments and in its spacecraft. That don't
Speaker 1: do that anymore, but yeah, exactly, and it led to
Speaker 1: disasters in the history of the space program. Or another
Speaker 1: thing might be penetration of the spacecraft by a heavy,
Speaker 1: heavy meteoroid. You know, you get pelted with something, it
Speaker 1: breaks through the hull, You've got to escape immediately. You
Speaker 1: can't wait for rescue vehicle obviously, can collision with another
Speaker 1: spacecraft would be a problem, or toxic fumes in the
Speaker 1: cabin or maybe radiation contamination from he he gives the
Speaker 1: example of an onboard nuclear power source. Wow, that sounds
Speaker 1: pretty awful, but anyway, So von Bron concludes that we
Speaker 1: need to think about the concept of lifeboats that allow
Speaker 1: spacecraft crews to escape immediately on their own terms. So
Speaker 1: he's what he's proposing is escape pods. And so I'm
Speaker 1: going to mention a few that are illustrated alongside this
Speaker 1: article from sixty six. And these illustrations are great, by
Speaker 1: the way. So one example that he gives is, uh,
Speaker 1: the emergency cocoon, and he says this is under test
Speaker 1: by general electric quote shelter. He's shipwrecked spaceman in an
Speaker 1: inflated fabric ball. Heat insulated by outer later outer layers
Speaker 1: of aluminiumized plastic, thin silicon rubber lining retains oxygen carried
Speaker 1: for breathing, but let's unwanted carbon dioxide and water vapor escape.
Speaker 1: So they're putting you in a beach ball. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like a survival bubble kind of the situation. You climb
Speaker 1: into a beach ball, you blast off from your ship,
Speaker 1: and you just float around in orbit in your beach
Speaker 1: ball until the rescue vehicle can come up and get
Speaker 1: to you, you know, when you can't remain in your ship.
Speaker 1: The other one would be the quote separable shelter, and
Speaker 1: this looks more like a huge thermus that everybody gets in. Right.
Speaker 1: It also reminds like both of these remind me of
Speaker 1: of like toys you can buy it ikea. The first one,
Speaker 1: the ball. The second one is like one of these
Speaker 1: little tunnels that you get where it's like a like
Speaker 1: a fabric tunnel that you stretch out and then children
Speaker 1: can crawl through. Yeah. So von Bron says that the
Speaker 1: separable shelter. It holds five to fifteen men and can
Speaker 1: serve as a life for large space vehicles of the future. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it has rocket self propulsion that can boost it
Speaker 1: to higher, longer lived orbit that allows more time for rescue.
Speaker 1: So these are more like the sort of roomy escape
Speaker 1: shuttles of sci fi movies, but they still require ultimate
Speaker 1: rendezvous with the rescue vehicle that's going to gather the
Speaker 1: crew and return to Earth under its own specifications. Right,
Speaker 1: these things are not going to re enter the Earth's
Speaker 1: atmosphere in their current form, right. What if you want
Speaker 1: to make an escape pod that will get you all
Speaker 1: the way home on your own, Well, that's gonna be
Speaker 1: a different undertaking altogether, exactly. So it makes no sense
Speaker 1: to have a full on re entry capable space ship
Speaker 1: inside your regular spaceship, at least on the scale that
Speaker 1: we create spaceships right now. Because spacecraft were then and
Speaker 1: are still now totally optimized for weight and volume like that,
Speaker 1: they tend to be very small, pack tight, and to
Speaker 1: have as light as possible a design to make launch
Speaker 1: economically feasible. For really crude under standing of this, if
Speaker 1: you've never thought about it before. Just look at the
Speaker 1: size of the orbiter vehicle itself compared to the size
Speaker 1: of the rockets used to get it in orbit with
Speaker 1: any given launch. It's hilarious. There's usually there's way more
Speaker 1: fuel than there is spaceship um, and so it's not
Speaker 1: feasible to make a spaceship within your spaceship to get
Speaker 1: you home. So how could you make a self contained
Speaker 1: re entry vehicle that would be very light and fit
Speaker 1: in storage on the already cramped crew vehicles of the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties. Well, some geniuses in space design and aeronautics
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties had a solution to this, and
Speaker 1: it was inflatable options. So we already mentioned the beach
Speaker 1: ball floating in space, but this would be the beach
Speaker 1: ball that you re enter the burning atmosphere through or
Speaker 1: I guess the atmosphere is not burning, but once you're
Speaker 1: re entering the atmosphere high velocity, uh, you will be burning.
Speaker 1: So the space historian James Oberg has a good article
Speaker 1: about this from two thousand three called The po People
Speaker 1: Nice Reference, published in Air and Space Magazine, and he
Speaker 1: talks about how in the early days of the space
Speaker 1: program researchers were experimenting with inflatable re entry vehicles, called
Speaker 1: things like the inflatable micro meteoroid paraglider, And this wasn't
Speaker 1: originally meant as an escape pod, but as a research
Speaker 1: probe to fly up in space and get pelted by
Speaker 1: micro medioroids, essentially to try to figure out, you know,
Speaker 1: what's the density of solid objects in Earth, or but
Speaker 1: if you go up in space, how often can you
Speaker 1: expect to get hit by hard stuff? And so there
Speaker 1: were research vehicles like this, but they also actually did
Speaker 1: end up designing inflatable reentry vehicles, uh with with the
Speaker 1: designs essentially resembling, as I already said, paragliders, but they
Speaker 1: would have a heat shield of some kind so that
Speaker 1: when you re enter the atmosphere you don't catch on
Speaker 1: fire and burn up and explode. One of the designs
Speaker 1: he mentioned is a modified ro Gallo wing, which is
Speaker 1: basically a hang glider, but imagine sort of a hang
Speaker 1: glider with struts. It instead of being made of metal,
Speaker 1: are a fabric tube that gets inflated with gas to
Speaker 1: such a high pressure that it becomes rigid. And so
Speaker 1: that's what we're dealing with. But back to von Braun
Speaker 1: in ninety in the nineteen sixty six because he's going
Speaker 1: to point out, uh, some of these crazy personal reentry
Speaker 1: vehicles that were under development at the time he was writing.
Speaker 1: The first is the space parachute, which he says is
Speaker 1: a is a concept from Douglas and essentially it's an
Speaker 1: objector seat sort of like you would see in like
Speaker 1: a like a fighter jet, you know, if you have
Speaker 1: to eject, so you're in your seat, and then you've
Speaker 1: got a retro rocket that you used to orient yourself
Speaker 1: to de orbit to come down back into the atmosphere. Um,
Speaker 1: and then you've got this what what he calls a
Speaker 1: conical drags skirt that deploys for self self stabilizing reentry,
Speaker 1: so sort of like a bowl extends around the seat. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if you were to take like a very small baby doll,
Speaker 1: like one about the size of you know, you know,
Speaker 1: about half the size of your index finger, put it
Speaker 1: in a large metal bowl or like a tinfoil boil bowl,
Speaker 1: and dropped that bowl through a planetary atmosphere, that would
Speaker 1: be what you'd be talking about here. Yeah, So that's
Speaker 1: scary enough, But I want to get to the most
Speaker 1: epically horrifying space escape capsule concept that I've come across
Speaker 1: in the research for this episode. And so this thing
Speaker 1: was called moose and it was developed by General Electric
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties. And according to James Oberg again,
Speaker 1: the acronym moose originally stood for he says, man out
Speaker 1: of space easiest, But he's not an actual moose because no, okay,
Speaker 1: but because we have had actual bears in a scape
Speaker 1: escape pops capsules already in this episode. Thank you for
Speaker 1: reminding me, Robert. But no, they did. As far as
Speaker 1: I know, they did not test it on any ungulates.
Speaker 1: Is a moose and ungulate? I think it is? Yeah, okay, okay, um,
Speaker 1: I should know my ungulates better. But no, no, no,
Speaker 1: So the name was changed to stand for it, like
Speaker 1: they back renemmed it. You know, they said, No, what
Speaker 1: actually stands for is manned orbital operations safety equipment, which
Speaker 1: is a little tortured. But okay, I mean, you really
Speaker 1: don't want to tell an astronaut that he or she
Speaker 1: must climb into a device that's got the word easiest
Speaker 1: in the title. Yeah. Well, but but I like the
Speaker 1: idea of of summoning the idea of the moose for
Speaker 1: your entry because the moose is rugged, the moose is tough.
Speaker 1: The moose the moose is of you know, a stubborn,
Speaker 1: willful creature, much like the astronauts zeal for life. Right,
Speaker 1: So uh, and I do want to warn you you
Speaker 1: should look up the moose to get some some of
Speaker 1: the illustrations of this thing. But also you might have
Speaker 1: some trouble if you're if you're trying to look it up,
Speaker 1: because there is another NASA project called Moose that stands
Speaker 1: for something totally different and appears to me to be
Speaker 1: a completely different thing. So space program really as Moose
Speaker 1: is coming out both this is a Ford nast that
Speaker 1: discovered the rich pantheon of say Egyptian deities, so they
Speaker 1: go to the are we'll just plunder this, uh, this mythology,
Speaker 1: and then we don't have two things called moose. But okay,
Speaker 1: here's the whole nightmare as described by by von Bronze article.
Speaker 1: So it says quote self rescue moose a general electric
Speaker 1: idea in cases astronaut in a plastic bag that fills
Speaker 1: with polyurethane foam to assume re entry shape. He uses
Speaker 1: retrorocket to de orbit, then discards it. Bag has foldable
Speaker 1: heat shield for re entry, and parachute that automatically unferrels
Speaker 1: itself for landing. So if you're having trouble picturing that,
Speaker 1: let me try to narrativise this a little bit. So
Speaker 1: here's the way it works. Major Tom realizes, Oh no,
Speaker 1: my spacecraft is on fire and my pure oxygen environment
Speaker 1: is raging out of control. Why did we do this? Well,
Speaker 1: no time for recriminations. I must climb into the escape pod.
Speaker 1: But really, the escape pod is a plastic bag with
Speaker 1: a foldable sheet of elastomeric ablative heat shielding material. And
Speaker 1: so he folds this thing out and the heat shield
Speaker 1: folds out to about one point eight meters in diameter.
Speaker 1: And then uh with him, He's got a canister of polyurethane.
Speaker 1: So he gets into the folded heat shield and he
Speaker 1: pulls a rip chord and this opens up the canister
Speaker 1: of polyurethane, which which fills it up, fills up the
Speaker 1: shield with polyurethane foam. So at this point the astronaut
Speaker 1: has entombed themselves within a lump of polyurethane. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's sort of the breaking bake style of escape pod creation.
Speaker 1: It's on the fly. Uh. So then you're out of
Speaker 1: the ship and Major Tom's floating in space in this
Speaker 1: bag on a bed of foam, and Major Tom fires
Speaker 1: a small canister of gas propellant to orient himself with
Speaker 1: the heat shield facing the proper direction for re entry,
Speaker 1: and then he discards the gas propellant and he uses
Speaker 1: a hand operated solid rocket engine to enter the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: So Tom Tom's in a bag on some foam, rocketing
Speaker 1: himself back to Earth by hand. There's a fabulous mcgever
Speaker 1: kind of yeah. So once in free fall in the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: he opens a chest mounted parachute and then comes down
Speaker 1: to the surface for a landing. And according to the
Speaker 1: Encyclopedia Astronautica, General Electric, General Electric conducted a bunch of
Speaker 1: tests and showed that the basic design of Moose worked,
Speaker 1: and they eventually tested it out on a falling scenario
Speaker 1: by dropping a test pilot in a moose six meters
Speaker 1: off of a bridge in Massachusetts, and they say that
Speaker 1: the test pilot survived the impact. Congratulations falling off a
Speaker 1: bridge in this thing. But anyway, Von Braun writes of
Speaker 1: this and quote the space parachute that both fold up
Speaker 1: for storage and a spacecraft both combine the characteristics of
Speaker 1: a life raft, a space suit, overcoat, and a cocoon,
Speaker 1: which is just putting it in such a soothing way.
Speaker 1: But then he goes on to point out that while
Speaker 1: self rescue device is like these, they will get you
Speaker 1: back down to Earth, maybe not every time, but you know,
Speaker 1: at least in theory they work, but they won't guarantee
Speaker 1: that you will survive once you land. I like that
Speaker 1: he points that out. This is a good point because
Speaker 1: this is supposedly why the Russians and the say used
Speaker 1: vehicle carried a survival pack up up and back to
Speaker 1: space containing guns and ammunition. There was at least one
Speaker 1: crash where there were there were wolves on the prow.
Speaker 1: So yeah, this gun, if you ever get a chance
Speaker 1: to read about it, is pretty interesting. So this the
Speaker 1: say used survival packet had a gun with three barrels
Speaker 1: and a folding stock, and they said it also worked
Speaker 1: as a shovel and had a swing out machete in it.
Speaker 1: And then it also fired three types of ammunition, which
Speaker 1: was rifle bullets, flares, and shotgun shells, which that sounds
Speaker 1: like a gun you'd have in a video game. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and again it's important to stress just the immense cost
Speaker 1: of taking anything into orbit. So the fact that this
Speaker 1: gun came on the journey and came back just in
Speaker 1: the event that it would be helpful, Um, you know,
Speaker 1: it says a lot. I'm so glad this never led
Speaker 1: to shotgun in machete battles in space on the space station. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I I actually would love to do an episode,
Speaker 1: maybe a short episode, on this very topic, because there's
Speaker 1: some wonderful material out there about actual uh incidents of
Speaker 1: guns in space, but also some proposed ideas that never
Speaker 1: really took off. UH guns in space. Wow, that sounds
Speaker 1: like such a horrible idea. But but then again, I
Speaker 1: don't think this is stupid because, like we said, you
Speaker 1: can understand if you land way off course in the wilderness,
Speaker 1: it probably helps to have some survival equipment. Yeah indeed,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, these things are gonna come down in
Speaker 1: the in the wilderness. Who might need some survival equipment
Speaker 1: of uh. And the moose actually came with some gear
Speaker 1: oriented towards on the ground survival as well, so it
Speaker 1: had a survival kit, food and water, plus things to
Speaker 1: help the astronaut be found. So it had a thing
Speaker 1: called us so far bomb that's so far as an
Speaker 1: acuronym uh, which is a device that uses an underwater
Speaker 1: explosion to allow precise signaling of your location to people
Speaker 1: who are listening for underwater sounds. It also had radar
Speaker 1: chaff and some flares and that The Popular Science article
Speaker 1: has this awesome illustration of the moose that Robert, I
Speaker 1: think you enjoyed it as much as I did. But oh,
Speaker 1: the astronaut has a very placid face in this picture
Speaker 1: where he's laying in this bed of foam that looks
Speaker 1: like it's just a blob that's gonna envelop him and
Speaker 1: digest him. Yeah, and the and and the the rockets
Speaker 1: that he's going to use to maneuver. It has the
Speaker 1: look kind of like a cross between a Hoover vacuum
Speaker 1: and like a divining ride. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. He's
Speaker 1: holding this big wishbone full of fire. But yeah, but
Speaker 1: this is great. I would love to see this utilized
Speaker 1: in um some sort of an action sequence, you know,
Speaker 1: the sort of do it yourself re entry where our
Speaker 1: action hero just has to grab these two canisters jump
Speaker 1: out of the of the spacecraft and just make their
Speaker 1: way back down to the here. Well, there are some
Speaker 1: great scenes in movies. I don't want to spoil anything
Speaker 1: about movies that exist because this usually is like the
Speaker 1: very end of the sci fi movie. But they involved
Speaker 1: things like this, like basically outside of vehicle maneuvering. That's
Speaker 1: very scary when you think about it. I mean, to
Speaker 1: be lost in space without any means of propulsion and
Speaker 1: safe reentry is is just a death sentence. Can we
Speaker 1: name any of those movies or it would be it
Speaker 1: would just be too much of a spoiler. Well, I know,
Speaker 1: I know, one of course is like gravity and oh yeah,
Speaker 1: they does have some some cool re entry stuff at
Speaker 1: the end. Yeah. There there's also some stuff. And in
Speaker 1: the Martian did you see them? Yeah, that's right, and
Speaker 1: there's some outside vehicle maneuvering. Okay, I think maybe in
Speaker 1: both those films, I was falling asleep towards the end
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, and it's but hey, we're not
Speaker 1: going to spoil and say whether the individual survived or not,
Speaker 1: because that, of course is the big big deal. It's
Speaker 1: one thing to initiate re entry, it's another thing to
Speaker 1: actually make it all the way to the Earth surface
Speaker 1: again and still be alive. Oh and I guess that
Speaker 1: does give away that I did finally see the Martian.
Speaker 1: People were asking after we did that how to Die
Speaker 1: on Mars episode, people were like, hey, have you read
Speaker 1: The Martian? I don't know if the movie was out yet,
Speaker 1: but when people were asking if I read the book
Speaker 1: because it covered a lot of the same stuff we
Speaker 1: talked about, it had not then that I have now,
Speaker 1: in keeping with that beach ball design we had we
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, there's actually a pre Challenger Shuttle era
Speaker 1: idea for a personal rescue enclosure or pre rescue ball.
Speaker 1: This is in like eighty six centimeter diameter high tech
Speaker 1: beach ball for transport of astronauts from space from from
Speaker 1: a spacecraft in distress to the space shuttle. Uh So
Speaker 1: crew members would climb into the ball, they'd assume a
Speaker 1: fetal position and maybe zipped inside by a space suited
Speaker 1: crew member. Huh So this is this is like what
Speaker 1: we were talking about towards the beginning of of Von
Speaker 1: Bronze article, where you you'd get into a some kind
Speaker 1: of survival capsule and just wait for rescue. Yeah and
Speaker 1: uh and again this was a pre Challenger project from
Speaker 1: a time during which Shuttle crews wore no space suits
Speaker 1: on board the Shuttle. Afterwards afterwards, however, they wore pressure
Speaker 1: suits during liftoff. Again, yeah, well that seems like a
Speaker 1: smart idea, but okay, So Moose and its contemporaries were
Speaker 1: basically shelved. But other space escape pod concepts came to
Speaker 1: the four and some of them were actually realized. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: For instance, there's the Jimini l s r S. So
Speaker 1: you know, obviously no one wanted to wind up stranded
Speaker 1: on the Moon, yet the risk of this happening were
Speaker 1: rather high during the Apollo Moon missions. As such, NASA
Speaker 1: designed the Gemini Lunar Surface Rescue Spacecraft l s r S,
Speaker 1: and the idea here is that in the event of
Speaker 1: the crew wound up stranded on the Moon, NASA could
Speaker 1: send this unmanned craft to their landing site that would
Speaker 1: be a thirty day trip, and then the two crew
Speaker 1: members could then board the craft to make a direct
Speaker 1: return to Earth. NASA also developed an of it all
Speaker 1: variant aimed at rescuing three individuals marooned in lunar orbit,
Speaker 1: as well as a lunar surface survival survival shelter model
Speaker 1: aimed at giving astronauts on the surface a little more
Speaker 1: time to await like a full blown, uh you know,
Speaker 1: manned rescue, and they eventually planned to produce a universal
Speaker 1: lunar rescue vehicle to perform all three tasks for a
Speaker 1: trio of astronauts. But this was one of this is
Speaker 1: one of those sort of later day Apollo ideas that
Speaker 1: really came about too late. Like our our interest in
Speaker 1: the moon was was going away at that point. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine though, actually being stuck on the surface of
Speaker 1: the Moon for thirty days waiting for It's crazy. It's
Speaker 1: like I was trying to sort of put it in
Speaker 1: terms of thinking about like my own household. So at
Speaker 1: our house, we we currently have two cars, new car
Speaker 1: and old car. And if I go, if I drive
Speaker 1: to the grocery store, if the car breaks down, a
Speaker 1: I can walk back from the grocery store, or my
Speaker 1: wife can come and pick me up in the car
Speaker 1: in the other car, or something to that effect, you know.
Speaker 1: But the this is a kind of situation where there's
Speaker 1: there's only one car, or it's gonna take or it's
Speaker 1: gonna take a tremendous amount of effort to get a
Speaker 1: second car available and then to gas it up and
Speaker 1: send it on its journey to pick you up at
Speaker 1: this impossible store and you're driving to the middle of
Speaker 1: the desert in Arizona. Yeah, yeah, it's um yeah. So
Speaker 1: I kept trying to put it in a sort of
Speaker 1: like logistical real life surface world terms, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: some some models work that some just ultimately fall short
Speaker 1: of capturing the just severe isolation. Uh, Like the closest
Speaker 1: thing I guess would be to just uh to just
Speaker 1: set out to the middle of the Arctic Ocean, you know. Uh. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: so I've got a question. Yeah, what happens if you
Speaker 1: have to escape the International Space Station? Well, luckily there
Speaker 1: there is a way, so um yeah. So let's say
Speaker 1: you're in the International Space Station and uh, something catastrophic happens.
Speaker 1: Maybe there's space shrapnel or more problems with the station's toilets,
Speaker 1: and let's just get out of hand. What some of
Speaker 1: the ammunition for the so use uh survival kit just explodes, yeah,
Speaker 1: or you know, maybe just run out of vodka. Whatever
Speaker 1: to the dilemma, there is an escape craft on a hand,
Speaker 1: and it's one of those Russian soil us space capsules.
Speaker 1: So we first flew one to the I S S
Speaker 1: in two thousand and it's been it's been a fixture
Speaker 1: ever since. It can survive re entry as what as
Speaker 1: with the two thousand nine Space Junk scare. It can
Speaker 1: also provide just a safe refuge daring of the scare um.
Speaker 1: And following the two thousand three Columbia Shuttle disaster, the
Speaker 1: say us served as the primary means of transport to
Speaker 1: and from the I S S. Uh trip took up
Speaker 1: to two days and the trip back was a mere
Speaker 1: three point five hours. So this is the idea here
Speaker 1: with the SOUS is that it's kind of like, all right,
Speaker 1: I'm terrified of my car breaking down on my way
Speaker 1: to the store. Why don't I just keep a car
Speaker 1: at the store, ye, permanently, and then I can always
Speaker 1: drive that pack if something goes wrong. Um, that's kind
Speaker 1: of the the idea here. So the only thing is
Speaker 1: that up to so only up to three crew members
Speaker 1: can return to Earth from the I S S A
Speaker 1: board and so use t M A spacecraft. The vehicle
Speaker 1: lands on the flat steep of Kazakhstan in Central Asia.
Speaker 1: There again, the return takes about three and a half hours.
Speaker 1: And this is why you can you can only have
Speaker 1: three people on the I S. S at any given
Speaker 1: time unless there's another craft present, because you can only
Speaker 1: get three people out in an emergency. Right. If you
Speaker 1: have a fourth person there and you've got to evacuate,
Speaker 1: one of them is going to be taken the moose,
Speaker 1: right And it's yeah, it's I'm sorry, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: They don't actually have as far as far as we know,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, I mean, you can't clown card this thing.
Speaker 1: You can't just pack a bunch of people in there
Speaker 1: and have them sort of hold on to the sides
Speaker 1: of the capsule. You mean you have to there has
Speaker 1: you have to strap yourself in there. There's their oxygen
Speaker 1: logistics in place, So three people are less no more. Now,
Speaker 1: that's not to say we haven't looked in to other
Speaker 1: possibilities more I guess you could say refined possibilities than
Speaker 1: just having a three person spaceship on hand up there. Um.
Speaker 1: At one point NASA was looking into the X thirty eight.
Speaker 1: This was the I S. S Crew return vehicle. And
Speaker 1: this is a really cool design. It basically looked like
Speaker 1: a mini like Stubby Space Shuttle UM and and this
Speaker 1: would have this would have allowed them, you know, more
Speaker 1: individuals to U to return from I S S to Earth.
Speaker 1: But it was a pretty um, pretty costly program. According
Speaker 1: to a Wired magazine article from the time, the program
Speaker 1: had cost around five and ten million dollars so far,
Speaker 1: and then it was just fifty million shy of completing
Speaker 1: its flight test when basically under the Georgia W. Bush administration,
Speaker 1: UH Space and the and re visiting the Moon became
Speaker 1: devalued as an objective, so the X thirty eight went
Speaker 1: away as a possibility. Now. It's also worth noting that
Speaker 1: one of the more dangerous things about rocket propulsion into
Speaker 1: space is just taking off. It's kind of like with
Speaker 1: with aviation. Of course, that's the dangerous that that's that's
Speaker 1: when you have this enormous explosion strapped to the bottom
Speaker 1: of the craft propelling you up out of the atmosphere.
Speaker 1: So as as has become important in the past, having
Speaker 1: a means of ejecting the capsule from the top of
Speaker 1: that massive explosive rocket is often highly advisable. And as
Speaker 1: we're going more and more into into that launch style,
Speaker 1: we're seeing more and more of a return to that. UM,
Speaker 1: So in a way, we're going back to technology that
Speaker 1: we used with Mercury and Apollo spacecraft. We see this
Speaker 1: in the form of a basic launch escape system. So
Speaker 1: you have a top mounted rocket on the capsule that
Speaker 1: in the event of a mishap during takeoff can blast
Speaker 1: the man capsule clear of the rocket and allow it
Speaker 1: to parachute back to the surface. That seems very useful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the sell Us uses this, uh, this technology, and there
Speaker 1: are a number of man's face craft that are currently
Speaker 1: in development, UH, several of which are capsule based and
Speaker 1: you know would also employ this. So we're talking about
Speaker 1: like UH, NASA's Ryan multi Purpose crew vehicle SpaceX. UH
Speaker 1: they're Dragon V two. There's also the the U S
Speaker 1: Bowing CST one hundred. UM. There's a there's a quote
Speaker 1: here that I found from SpaceX officials, and they said
Speaker 1: that it's similar to an ejection seat for a fighter pilot,
Speaker 1: but instead of ejecting the pilot out of the spacecraft,
Speaker 1: the entire spacecraft is ejected away from the launch vehicle.
Speaker 1: And that is something that I guess you can think
Speaker 1: of as as somewhat practical to do because of this
Speaker 1: inherent separation between the spacecraft capsule and the launch vehicle
Speaker 1: r itself. This is a natural division because they're going
Speaker 1: to be separating anyway at some point during the ascent. Correct. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're there, their separate entities anyway. Yeah, all right, we're
Speaker 1: gonna take a quick break and when we come back,
Speaker 1: we are going to look at a few more escape
Speaker 1: pods for some stranger scenarios involving natural disasters. Want to
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Speaker 1: com slash how stuff Works. So Joe YouTube, you grew
Speaker 1: up in like, uh, Middle Tennessee, didn't you? Or you
Speaker 1: or you didn't get a lot of tornadoes. In Chattanooga,
Speaker 1: we got tornadoes. Yeah. We actually tornadoes have been right
Speaker 1: through my parents neighborhood before, like right through the backyard. Okay,
Speaker 1: I wasn't there at the time, but it's it's definitely
Speaker 1: it can be scary when they whip through. Yeah. Indeed,
Speaker 1: I mean I haven't grown up in mill Tennessee. We
Speaker 1: had we had a lot of tornado scares as well,
Speaker 1: and so that that possibility was always in the back
Speaker 1: of my mind growing up, that you know, the tornado
Speaker 1: could come and what can you do? What can you
Speaker 1: do against the tornado? It's this titanic force of nature
Speaker 1: that's just gonna destroy everything in its path. Let's see,
Speaker 1: can we look to movies for inspiration? What do they
Speaker 1: do in that movie Twister? I believe they throw a
Speaker 1: candy bar in one direction and then run in the
Speaker 1: other and then so that they distract the tornado with
Speaker 1: the candy bar. I think that's how that went down.
Speaker 1: Uh No, generally in uh in tornado movies and in
Speaker 1: tornado reality, like, all you can do is find shelter,
Speaker 1: right if you have a if you have a storm shelter,
Speaker 1: if you have a a fortified storm basement. Um, you
Speaker 1: can run in there, flatch the door, and just ride
Speaker 1: it out. But it is very important, very important that
Speaker 1: your shelter be a high quality shelter, like a building
Speaker 1: with a foundation. Uh, not necessarily something like a trailer.
Speaker 1: In fact, I have often heard the advice given to
Speaker 1: people who are living in mobile homes and trailers anything
Speaker 1: that's not solidly anchored to the ground or built on
Speaker 1: a foundation, that you're better off not in the trailer
Speaker 1: than in it, because it essentially just turns into a
Speaker 1: death machine if a tornado comes through and you're inside
Speaker 1: a mobile home. Yes, so, I think we've all consumed images,
Speaker 1: be they mental images, cinematic or otherwise, of trailers and
Speaker 1: mobile homes just sucked up into the sky by deadly twisters,
Speaker 1: or certainly trailer parts that have been devastated by actual tornadoes.
Speaker 1: But what if you what if you actually had an
Speaker 1: escape pide for your trailer. Uh now, before you envision
Speaker 1: a rocket propelled trailer bathroom that blasts you away from
Speaker 1: the crumbling, wind griped trailer as it's you know, sucked
Speaker 1: into the sky and at all the debris. Um remember
Speaker 1: this as as as the twister sucks the trailer up
Speaker 1: into the air, what you want to do is stay
Speaker 1: firmly fixed to the ground. Sure, I mean that's ultimately
Speaker 1: the design of of any escape capsule is getting back
Speaker 1: to the surface of the Earth. But in this case,
Speaker 1: you're already on the surface, so you just need to
Speaker 1: remain there at all costs. So I'm following you so far.
Speaker 1: So where do escape pods come in? Well, as far
Speaker 1: as I know, this does not. This has has not
Speaker 1: been built yet. Maybe some individuals have have taken it
Speaker 1: upon themselves to build it. I hope so, and if
Speaker 1: they did, I would love to see the photos. But no,
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about We're going into the wildest
Speaker 1: corners of the patent internet. Yeah, particularly a patent for
Speaker 1: a tornado escope escape capsule for trailer homes. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it is, It's pretty ingenious. It's essentially a little safe
Speaker 1: room in your trailer, anchored to the ground, and it
Speaker 1: consists of the following. This is from the patent. First,
Speaker 1: an opening formed in the floor of the house trailer
Speaker 1: and position and directly below said internal compartment. So if
Speaker 1: you're in your compartment and underneath it there's like a
Speaker 1: hole on the floor, an escape capsule dimensioned it to
Speaker 1: be received and releasably supported within set internal compartment. And
Speaker 1: then you have a ground engaging anchor position beneath set
Speaker 1: internal compartment in the house trailer, and then a tether
Speaker 1: that's connected between the escape capsule and the grounding anchor.
Speaker 1: So it's it is like this fancy little capsule in
Speaker 1: your trailer, there's a hole in the trailer underneath it,
Speaker 1: and it's anchored to the ground firmly. Okay, so I
Speaker 1: said this is kind of ingenious, But I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're gonna go to the trouble to build this thing,
Speaker 1: why not just anchor your trailer to the ground. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: you could. You could make that argument, and maybe that's
Speaker 1: why this wasn't built. But but the I guess the
Speaker 1: the argument here is this way you don't have to
Speaker 1: anchor the entire trailer to the ground. You used to
Speaker 1: anchor this one little safe room. Okay, Well maybe in fact,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I I assume most of
Speaker 1: the danger of being in a trailer or a mobile
Speaker 1: home when a tornado comes through comes from the fact
Speaker 1: that it's not anchored and can be tossed around. But
Speaker 1: maybe there is additional danger, uh from being in the trailer,
Speaker 1: like if the if essentially, if the building materials are
Speaker 1: not sturdy enough, does it does it get shredded and
Speaker 1: turned into a bunch of knives flying at you that
Speaker 1: were formerly the walls and ceiling. Yeah, I don't know,
Speaker 1: but but maybe maybe this would avert that. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you know, and I guess also it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: comes back to that old seinfeld about why don't they
Speaker 1: just make the airplane out of whatever they made the
Speaker 1: black box out of? Right? Like some maybe it's just
Speaker 1: not it's not economically feasible to offer the trailer as
Speaker 1: a fully anchored, fully stormproof living option. But but what
Speaker 1: it Probably they probably don't do that because the airplane
Speaker 1: couldn't get off the ground, right, But but what if
Speaker 1: you could just have this warm, little capsule in the house.
Speaker 1: But then i'd also the thing is, anyone who's ever
Speaker 1: been in a trailer before, and I certainly have you,
Speaker 1: you don't have a lot of room in there anyway, right,
Speaker 1: So the other thing is, how do you sacrifice the
Speaker 1: room for this compartment unless you end up utilizing it
Speaker 1: for something else, like I guess you have to. You
Speaker 1: could use it as a closet, but then I can
Speaker 1: well imagine the scenario where someone looks out the window
Speaker 1: or they turn on the radio. Oh my goodness, there's
Speaker 1: a twister coming. I've got to clean out the closet
Speaker 1: because that is my only chance to survival. And so
Speaker 1: you're frantically trying to move everything out of the board
Speaker 1: games we never even played these, yeah, or you know,
Speaker 1: because other options, what you could have it be the bathroom.
Speaker 1: How would that work to have your your bathroom be
Speaker 1: the escape capsule. The showers? What I was thinking. You
Speaker 1: get into the shower and it's like a I don't
Speaker 1: know why the shower. I guess I don't know that
Speaker 1: because it's like a it's like a sealed off little
Speaker 1: box in a certain way. Yeah, Like okay, I could
Speaker 1: see that working and and you would you would probably
Speaker 1: not fill the shower up with just a bunch of
Speaker 1: junk in the meantime, and the fact that you would
Speaker 1: use the shower would make it remain an open option
Speaker 1: for a skate capsule. Then again, and you wouldn't want
Speaker 1: to be flying around inside the shower and bashing your
Speaker 1: head against the faucet, right, so you'd have to have
Speaker 1: like a shower like a padded padding and straps on
Speaker 1: the walls. In man a padded shower, they'll probably get
Speaker 1: a little mildewy, wouldn't it if the material was right.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I think we're up. We're updating the
Speaker 1: patent here. I think we have some great ideas. Okay, well,
Speaker 1: I've got another escape pod for a sort of escape
Speaker 1: pod for natural disasters, and these are tsunami survival capsules.
Speaker 1: There are multiple designs have come across for this. Yes,
Speaker 1: it sounds crazy, but I could find evidence of at
Speaker 1: least a couple of real companies that have created and
Speaker 1: manufactured tsunami escape pod. So. The first one is a
Speaker 1: product that was known as the Noah or Noah's Arc
Speaker 1: and it was created by a Japanese company called Cosmo Power.
Speaker 1: Almost ten years ago. I got some press in two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, I assume related to the March two thousand
Speaker 1: eleven earthquake tsunami that hit Japan. But basically it looks
Speaker 1: like a giant yellow ball with a hatch and a
Speaker 1: little port hole window near the top. And the yellow
Speaker 1: color is strategic because it hopefully makes the escape capsule
Speaker 1: easier for rescuers to find once the devastation is over.
Speaker 1: Uh And the structure is made of enhanced fiberglass and
Speaker 1: the company claims it is strong enough to withstand earthquakes, hurricanes,
Speaker 1: and tsunamis. But so the obvious ideas a tsunami is coming,
Speaker 1: you've got one of these things. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: guess you would have it sitting out in your backyard
Speaker 1: or something. You'd want to have it a place where
Speaker 1: you can float free, wherever it is on the roof
Speaker 1: of the house maybe maybe, yeah, But everybody, you realize
Speaker 1: the tsunami is coming, you climb into this thing, and
Speaker 1: it has enough room inside to hold four adults. Inside
Speaker 1: there is a floor and a pole, just a metal
Speaker 1: pole going straight through the center of the sphere. And
Speaker 1: I guess that is to cling to while you're hoping
Speaker 1: this thing works. But anyway, according to an ABC News report,
Speaker 1: the shelters were selling for about four and dollars apiece
Speaker 1: in two thousand eleven. I don't know if this company
Speaker 1: still exists in any form, or if these things are
Speaker 1: still made, or if anybody has ever used one successfully,
Speaker 1: but there is one product. I'd make of it what
Speaker 1: you will the product, and they would. That's the thing too.
Speaker 1: There selling the product. They're selling the idea of the
Speaker 1: escape capsule more than anything, much like you know, much
Speaker 1: like a storm shelter or a bomb shelter. It's the
Speaker 1: idea that there is an escape. It's an idea that
Speaker 1: if the tsunami occurs, if the tornado occurs, if yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, nuclear armageddon occurs, there is some sort of
Speaker 1: an escape. There is some there's an escape capsule for
Speaker 1: this scenario that my my primitive parts of my brain
Speaker 1: can can feel good about. Yeah. Obviously I claim no
Speaker 1: expertise in how to survive high energy events, but looking
Speaker 1: at these things, I do have to wonder. It's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: so they float, that's good. You're you're not gonna get
Speaker 1: trapped underwater, hopefully, you know, So you're in this thing,
Speaker 1: you float up to the top eventually and be rescued.
Speaker 1: But also, you know, a tsunami is an incredibly high
Speaker 1: energy event, and so it's gonna have you bashing around
Speaker 1: at things. Now they can probably I guess, pad the
Speaker 1: inside of this thing, but you're also going to be
Speaker 1: in there with other people, and there's this metal pole
Speaker 1: for you to hold onto. I just wonder if when
Speaker 1: you open this thing up at the end, is it
Speaker 1: just going to be like a big bloody mess inside
Speaker 1: unless you pack a nut. Sorry for the horrible image,
Speaker 1: but unless you you do go complete clown car in
Speaker 1: this and you just make sure that you fill it
Speaker 1: up completely, and then some individuals survives, some don't. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like there's like not enough room for you
Speaker 1: to knock around. Yeah, yeah, you kind of you do,
Speaker 1: like the different species of ants that make barges out
Speaker 1: of themselves, you know. Well, anyway, there is another tsunami
Speaker 1: survival capsule. I came across a similar device created by
Speaker 1: aircraft engineers Julian Sharp and Scott Hill, And this one
Speaker 1: it's got its own website, And instead of being yellow,
Speaker 1: this is a red orange color. And instead of the
Speaker 1: minimalist floor and poll interior layout. The Survival Capsule has
Speaker 1: fitted seats with seat belts that look kind of like
Speaker 1: pilot's chairs, and it seats to to ten adults depending
Speaker 1: on the model. I just want to read off some
Speaker 1: of the standard features. UH. Safety seating with four point
Speaker 1: harness straps, storage space with sufficient for they say sufficient
Speaker 1: for five days, supply per person, supply of what I'm
Speaker 1: not quite sure, water storage, internal light, GPS, air ventilation
Speaker 1: vents uh that they say it's high visibility unit, color
Speaker 1: air supply tanks, hard restraint support, uh, watertight marine door
Speaker 1: and a marine standard window, little porthole. But then this
Speaker 1: was the thing that got me. They said, Okay, so
Speaker 1: all that stuff, Okay, you can see why you'd have
Speaker 1: all those things. But they've also got optional features they advertise,
Speaker 1: including surround sound music system. This would be a must,
Speaker 1: I think. And I've got to to two reasons here.
Speaker 1: First of all, ambient music has tremendous soothing qualities. Music
Speaker 1: for airports, Brian, you know, that's what we'll get you
Speaker 1: through time too, you know. And maybe he would have
Speaker 1: he would he would create a custom composition U you know,
Speaker 1: music for yeah, but yeah, you'll be able to calm
Speaker 1: yourself down. But the other thing is if you pay
Speaker 1: all you know, I'm guessing a fairly ridiculous sum for
Speaker 1: this upscale survival capsule. You might want to spend some
Speaker 1: time in it, like I would want to. I would
Speaker 1: if I had a stressful day, I'd want to go
Speaker 1: home and just climb into my survival capsule and maybe
Speaker 1: crank some tunes. I'm with you, Yeah, I can see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it can be your safe place. Okay, are what are
Speaker 1: my other options? I'm already on board for the music.
Speaker 1: You can pay up for dry powder, seat, toilet, Okay.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, because on one hand, we we
Speaker 1: all who have access to modern plumbing are very grateful
Speaker 1: for that that luxury. Many people throughout human history have
Speaker 1: not had such luxuries. But do you really want I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, on one hand, I guess it
Speaker 1: might be better than the alternative. But I'm just thinking
Speaker 1: about the idea of human waste slashing around in a
Speaker 1: survival capsule. I mean, I guess maybe it's going to
Speaker 1: be coming out either way, and it's just a question
Speaker 1: do you have a toilet or not? Yeah, when I'm
Speaker 1: wondering what this consists of, because it instantly makes me
Speaker 1: think of overnight canoe trip, the trips that I've been
Speaker 1: on where you were required by the park to have
Speaker 1: a toilet option on the canoe, and what what we
Speaker 1: had was, and instance, it's kind of an escape capsule.
Speaker 1: It was a folder's coffee can with kitty letter in it.
Speaker 1: In the event that you needed to use the restroom
Speaker 1: in there, you certainly could. It would not be fun,
Speaker 1: but it could be done. And just having it there,
Speaker 1: you know, made you feel a little easier and made
Speaker 1: the park rangers feel a little easier. I guess. So
Speaker 1: maybe it's all psychological, Yeah, I think. I mean that's
Speaker 1: that's a large part of any cape system. That's true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you got to manage your mind. But then there's additional
Speaker 1: internal lighting. You can pay up for solar panel array
Speaker 1: that would that survive a tsunami external solar panel array
Speaker 1: and you're getting hit by a giant wave. I mean
Speaker 1: maybe if it was properly shielded with some sort of
Speaker 1: you know, like a like a really firm plexic glass
Speaker 1: kind of situation. I'm wondering about that. But then additional
Speaker 1: internal insulation acoustic and thermal. And then finally they've got
Speaker 1: color options. I I thought the whole point was we
Speaker 1: wanted to be visible, though, Yeah, well it's this red
Speaker 1: orange color. I mean the other one's a yellow color.
Speaker 1: I'd imagine either one could be visible, so maybe you
Speaker 1: can also be yellow. It would be horrible if you
Speaker 1: wanted to pick a survival capsule that was like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, seawater gray. Yeah, yeah, surely they wouldn't allow that.
Speaker 1: But maybe like zebra stripes. I could see where there
Speaker 1: might be some sort of custom eye catching color. You'd
Speaker 1: go for a racing stripe, yeah, NASCAR number. Though I
Speaker 1: do want to say, I mean, while the concept of
Speaker 1: these capsules is kind of funny to me, obviously, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you reckon it all with the real outcome of tsunami,
Speaker 1: I mean, these are some of the most devastating natural
Speaker 1: disasters in all the world and all of world history
Speaker 1: and uh and and it can be truly horrifying. And
Speaker 1: it's one of those things where you think, while there
Speaker 1: really is no great escape from this if you don't
Speaker 1: have fore warning. Um and so anybody who could design
Speaker 1: a viable tsunami survival capsule that people could really use
Speaker 1: to survive could be affordable to many. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think that would be a worthwhile thing to pursue. So
Speaker 1: I don't want to I don't want to just make
Speaker 1: jokes about what these people are doing. I don't know
Speaker 1: that the toilet seems a little funny to me. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, I mean, if you can actually make a
Speaker 1: capsule and you can get it to the people who
Speaker 1: are most vulnerable to tsunamis, I think that's a noble
Speaker 1: thing to do. Plus, let's face it, if you can't
Speaker 1: laugh about pooping in a coffee canister right on the
Speaker 1: on the on the escape barge, on the in the
Speaker 1: survival capsule, then what's the purpose of surviving? You know,
Speaker 1: because our humanity has to survive, and that entails being
Speaker 1: able to laugh at the prospect of pooping in a
Speaker 1: folder's canister. That humorous gesture would be the true presence
Speaker 1: of a happy spirit on board. Yes, alright, So one
Speaker 1: more example of an escape capsule to discuss here. So
Speaker 1: many of the capsules we've mentioned share the same mission
Speaker 1: right to return adventurous humans to the Earth's surface from
Speaker 1: a malfunctioning aircraft to the surface, etcetera. But what about
Speaker 1: when things go hey wire beneath the surface of the earth.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about underground core drilling vehicles like in
Speaker 1: the Core? Um, well, we're not quite there yet. Did
Speaker 1: they have an escape capsule, like some sort of I
Speaker 1: don't thing that came up. I'm sorry to say this.
Speaker 1: I've never seen the Core. Oh yeah, well it makes
Speaker 1: me this idea makes me think of the the terror
Speaker 1: dome on a teenage muntant Ninja turtles, right, because it
Speaker 1: would it would drill down, and I think they had
Speaker 1: they had the equivalent of like a little drill the
Speaker 1: vehicle that would come up that was kind of like
Speaker 1: an escape capsule that the foot soldiers would jump out
Speaker 1: of in the video game. Right. I don't remember anything
Speaker 1: about that, but I believe you well it was. It
Speaker 1: was fantastic and uh, you know, could probably not exist
Speaker 1: in real life, but here's an example of something that did. So.
Speaker 1: You can find various mining escape capsule patents out there,
Speaker 1: but the most notable deployment, real life deployment of so
Speaker 1: of one of these systems came in the wake of
Speaker 1: the two thousand ten Chilean mining acts. And do you
Speaker 1: remember when this occurred? I don't. I mean, I remember
Speaker 1: various mining accidents, but this one, the particulars of it
Speaker 1: don't stand out to me. So what happened here? So
Speaker 1: this was thirty three miners trapped seven hundred meters that's
Speaker 1: feet underground and uh and about five kilometers or three
Speaker 1: miles from the mind's interests entrants. So this was a
Speaker 1: pretty big deal. They made a movie about it recently,
Speaker 1: like I think they called it thirty three or the
Speaker 1: thirty three. Um. So they're they're trapped in this hostile environment. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's hot down there, it's dark. Uh, it's cramped,
Speaker 1: and they've got to get out right. So to rescue them,
Speaker 1: what they did is they utilize steel rescue capsules. And
Speaker 1: these these were updated takes on the torpedo like doll
Speaker 1: bush bomb that have been employed since the mid nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: Developed in Germany. Doll bush bomb, Yeah, that's what they
Speaker 1: called it because I guess it kind of looks like
Speaker 1: a bomb, kind of looks like a torpedo. And this
Speaker 1: was used. This was employed again in the mid nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties in a German mine. So they updated this. They
Speaker 1: dubbed it the Phoenix, and they were constructed by the
Speaker 1: Chilean Navy with design input from NASA, and they implemented
Speaker 1: most of NASA's changes. Uh So, when the when the
Speaker 1: mining accident occurred, this was you know, this was a
Speaker 1: big this was big news. It was captivating all the headlines.
Speaker 1: Everyone's really concerned. There's a lot of international attention and
Speaker 1: thus NASA's involvement as well. But I'm trying to imagine,
Speaker 1: like what does a mine a mine escape pod look like, Like,
Speaker 1: how does that work? It basically looks like a torpedo.
Speaker 1: And the idea is, all right, you're down there in
Speaker 1: this uh this subterranean environment, if we can get a
Speaker 1: shaft down there to you can we can potentially get
Speaker 1: you back up, or or if there's an adjacent shaft
Speaker 1: when we can somehow get you to that shaft, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So this, this Phoenix capsule consisted of again kind of
Speaker 1: like this torpedo looking device. Each one had retractable wheels
Speaker 1: to allow for a smoother ride to the surface, so
Speaker 1: the wheels would skit along the sides of the vertical
Speaker 1: shaft that you're you're being pulled back up. Each one
Speaker 1: have an oxygen supply, lighting, video, and voice communications reinforce
Speaker 1: roof to protect against foot rocks that are falling, because
Speaker 1: rocks could fall uh down the tunnel that you're ascending,
Speaker 1: and you need protection against those. Um. And also an
Speaker 1: escape hatch with a safety device to allow the passenger
Speaker 1: to lower themselves back down if the capsule became stuck
Speaker 1: on the way up, that would Yeah. So these were
Speaker 1: these were pretty These were pretty amazing devices. Um, and
Speaker 1: they've I think they were They were making the rounds
Speaker 1: for a little bit late, but a little bit because
Speaker 1: they were showing them off because they were able to
Speaker 1: successfully get everyone out of the mind using the Phoenix capsules. Really, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is weird. I'm feeling this field. I don't usually
Speaker 1: experience strong claustrophobia, but just now contemplating this, I'm overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: Well you should. You should definitely check out more about
Speaker 1: the story. There was a wonderful I want to say.
Speaker 1: It was an episode of the Ideas podcast out of
Speaker 1: Canada that into it. The I think they interviewed an
Speaker 1: author had written a book about it. I think it's
Speaker 1: the same book that the movie was based on, and
Speaker 1: they went into detail just talking about just how bad
Speaker 1: the situation was and like the attitudes among the the
Speaker 1: survivors and and what was going on top side as well.
Speaker 1: So it's a it's a really interesting human drama. I
Speaker 1: haven't seen the movie yet, but it kind of makes
Speaker 1: me want to see it. Interesting Alright, So we've talked
Speaker 1: about aviation escape pods, we've talked about space escapes pods,
Speaker 1: we've talked about whether related escape pods, mining escape pods. Uh,
Speaker 1: what we've possibly left out here, Um, you know, what
Speaker 1: they need is a human body escape pod for the brain.
Speaker 1: That's one of the cybernetic upgrades I'm hoping for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or it sounds more like a spiritual upgrade as well.
Speaker 1: The brain. You get to maybe the brain upper nervous
Speaker 1: system is encased in a survival eject capsule. Something bad
Speaker 1: happens to the body, your brain kind of shoots out
Speaker 1: and waits for rescue. Huh. Well, I guess the a
Speaker 1: more slightly more believable version of this would be just
Speaker 1: the idea that that we would have our consciousness, our
Speaker 1: memories backed up somewhere digitally, so that every you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know how how how often would you want
Speaker 1: to be backed up? How much time are you willing
Speaker 1: to lose? In your life. Oh you know every week. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fine. So something happens, you just eject the SD card.
Speaker 1: Remember to save after every important life event, because you'd
Speaker 1: hate to be like, Oh, I just the birth of
Speaker 1: my first child and I forgot to save and then
Speaker 1: I got I got hit by a car and do
Speaker 1: you know, do't worry. It's not the biggest tragedy in
Speaker 1: the world because I now I have my body back,
Speaker 1: but I have no memory of the birth because I
Speaker 1: did not save immediately after. Or you could look at
Speaker 1: it the other way and say, if you don't save
Speaker 1: after every great event, you get to relive and rediscover
Speaker 1: the greatness of this great event over and over again.
Speaker 1: I guess if you can pull it off a second time.
Speaker 1: And isn't that the goal of any escape pod to
Speaker 1: give you the chance to have a second go at
Speaker 1: all of life's experiences. Well, we know we've not covered
Speaker 1: all of the great escape capsules, pods, survival vehicles that
Speaker 1: have ever been created. So if you've been thinking of
Speaker 1: one out there and you're like, oh, oh, oh, why
Speaker 1: aren't you talking about this, you should let us know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let us know about the fictional ones. Let us know
Speaker 1: about the real life escape capsules. Let us know about
Speaker 1: some of the proposed ones that just haven't come to
Speaker 1: fruition yet. We would love to hear about them. And hey,
Speaker 1: let us know you want to hear. Do you want
Speaker 1: to hear an episode about fallout shelters? We could do it. Uh?
Speaker 1: Does that? Does that episode about the guns and under
Speaker 1: space interest you? Let us know we could do that
Speaker 1: episode as well. Really, it's it's all. It's all on
Speaker 1: the table, And if you want to get in touch
Speaker 1: with us, reach out to us at stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind dot com. That's our mothership. That's we find
Speaker 1: links out to our social media accounts, as well as
Speaker 1: various podcast episodes, blog post videos, you name it. And
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with this directly,
Speaker 1: you can do so. As always, that Blow the Mind
Speaker 1: and how stuff works dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works
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