Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And it's vault time.
Speaker 1: We're going to climb into the vault, but actually it
Speaker 1: appears to the vault is ceiling behind us and taking
Speaker 1: off into space. Yes, because this is the escape Pod, Joe. Uh,
Speaker 1: this episode from November is to the escape Pod. I
Speaker 1: think we recorded this a week that you and I
Speaker 1: were both kind of feeling like stopped the planet of
Speaker 1: the Apes. I want to get off. Yeah. And plus
Speaker 1: this one published on on on Thanksgiving, which I think
Speaker 1: a lot of times, you know, it's holiday holiday travels,
Speaker 1: the pressures of the American holidays. Uh, the call of
Speaker 1: the escape Pod is often, um, you know, siren like
Speaker 1: and its power. But we also got to talk about
Speaker 1: escape from New York and this one. So anytime you
Speaker 1: get to anytime we get to talk about Escape from
Speaker 1: New York, it's a good time. Yeah. The Donald pleasant
Speaker 1: S egg I'm sure comes up. Well. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoy this classic episode about escape pods. Welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind from how Stuff Works dot Com.
Speaker 1: I'll follow, Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My 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, often worse. But one of any animal's deepest
Speaker 1: instincts is the escape instinct. It's right down there with
Speaker 1: the desire for food, water reproduction, but I would say
Speaker 1: maybe even more immediate. And you can definitely see how
Speaker 1: powerful it is by the way that escape instincts, even
Speaker 1: in rational, really high functioning primates like human beings, can
Speaker 1: totally short circuit rational thinking and lead to mass panics
Speaker 1: that kill people. This happens all the time. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so the escape rive, you know, the fight or flight impulse,
Speaker 1: has been associated in neuroscience with the amygdala and the
Speaker 1: autonomic nervous system, deep deep, primitive old parts of the brain,
Speaker 1: the rat like hind brain, the reptile brain. Right, though
Speaker 1: I have heard people disputing the term reptile brain, I
Speaker 1: do not refer to it as such, and from a
Speaker 1: scientific standpoint, right, But but the idea of the the earlier,
Speaker 1: more primitive parts of the brain that go way back
Speaker 1: in evolutionary history, that is there and so escape is
Speaker 1: is rooted down in those really primitive parts of the brain.
Speaker 1: Is this fundamental, intractable part of human psychology, because think
Speaker 1: about it. When you go into a room, even if
Speaker 1: there's no cause of danger whatsoever, just say it's an
Speaker 1: office Christmas party or something like that. Oh yeah, you
Speaker 1: better believe I'm gonna have an escape planet an office.
Speaker 1: Exactly what's the first thing you do in your mind?
Speaker 1: If you're like me, it's probably unconscious. You're not consciously
Speaker 1: thinking about it, but you do just sort of take
Speaker 1: note of where all the eggs it's are ye in
Speaker 1: the room? Do you do the same thing, Robert? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I would say, like the physical exits, it's almost like
Speaker 1: a subconscious thing. But I also will kind of have
Speaker 1: like social exit strategies in mind as well, right right,
Speaker 1: If this gets uncomfortable for any number of reasons, and
Speaker 1: I'm not saying like office Christmas parties in particular are uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: but like any social situation that I'm not like one
Speaker 1: comfortable with, I'll have that escape hatch in the back
Speaker 1: of my mind. You know, that's a really good point
Speaker 1: because that kind of shows how our obsession with physical
Speaker 1: escape extends even to our metaphors and our abstract thinking.
Speaker 1: You know, you're in an awkward social situation, how do
Speaker 1: I get out? You're in a bad relationship, and you think,
Speaker 1: how do I find a way out of this? You're
Speaker 1: not physically finding a way out, but that that's the
Speaker 1: way your brain goes. It's like the hatch in the
Speaker 1: top of an elevator or the roof of a school bus.
Speaker 1: You're probably not gonna shinny up any any elevator shaft
Speaker 1: cable today, but there's something comfortable about knowing that hatches there.
Speaker 1: Though 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: his 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 Manhattan. I believe it was kind of strange. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so Donald pleasants gets into this big egg and he
Speaker 1: gets shot out the back of his airplane to safety.
Speaker 1: I think he says something to his doomed staff like main,
Speaker 1: god watch over you all. But yeah, that's a great one.
Speaker 1: But there are tons of great fictional escape pods there
Speaker 1: in all kinds of James Bond movies. Always when Raker
Speaker 1: had a great one that was kind of like a
Speaker 1: like a sexy um bachelor pad, they're always like that.
Speaker 1: There's some aquatics escape pods in James Bond movies too.
Speaker 1: Why do the escape pods in these movies always have
Speaker 1: like satin sheets and champagne coolers and curtains on the windows.
Speaker 1: It's weird because they're kind of it's kind of there's
Speaker 1: a sense of it being a a comfy little abode
Speaker 1: and like a little bed, but also kind of like
Speaker 1: a little casket. You know, it gets complicated, I guess
Speaker 1: when you start teasing apart how we design our our
Speaker 1: escape pods and how we design our our our coffins.
Speaker 1: You're totally right. It is like a coffin. It's like
Speaker 1: a sexy, sexy coffin. But of course, so we don't
Speaker 1: have to look entirely to fiction for examples of escape pods,
Speaker 1: because sometimes we really do build escape capsules of some
Speaker 1: kind into our technologies, especially our vehicles. Um, but why
Speaker 1: would you build escape capsules into real vehicles? Why not
Speaker 1: just have a door? Well, that's kind of an obvious question.
Speaker 1: It's a great question. Um. I think one of the
Speaker 1: main area to look for an answer here is in
Speaker 1: the room of aviation and a lot of We're gonna
Speaker 1: go through several examples that are related to aviation or
Speaker 1: or space exploration because we've all seen like the or
Speaker 1: I don't know about we've all, but I've certainly seen
Speaker 1: my fair share, and I know you've seen your fair
Speaker 1: share of like old serial adventures from the thirties and forties,
Speaker 1: where you have individuals trying to get off of a
Speaker 1: crashing airplane and they're using an obvious set with just
Speaker 1: in abnormally large fuselage, and they're walking with relative ease
Speaker 1: down the aisle of this airplane to go jump out
Speaker 1: of a door out of the the the portal with
Speaker 1: their parachute. And of course, a crashing airplane or an
Speaker 1: out of controlled airplane or airplane in peril is not
Speaker 1: going to be that straightforward a situation generally, right, well,
Speaker 1: I mean a passenger aircraft also are just not made
Speaker 1: to be jumped out of. You can read the whole
Speaker 1: dB Cooper story for yeah, for some more details on this.
Speaker 1: So there's a basic need for an escape system be at,
Speaker 1: and be at an ejection seat, which we're not really
Speaker 1: going to get into ejection seats much here that we
Speaker 1: should mention we're all familiar with ejector seats, right, Like
Speaker 1: in top Gun, the ejector seat will propel you up
Speaker 1: the pilot out of the failing aircraft. You deploy a parachute,
Speaker 1: you get the pilot safely to the ground. But generally
Speaker 1: the canopy comes off, though some there are models of
Speaker 1: ejection seats where the canopy did not come off and
Speaker 1: you just blast through the glass. But today we're talking
Speaker 1: about escape pods. So when you need this enclosed space,
Speaker 1: when does that come in? Well, it's gonna come when
Speaker 1: you need added protection, certainly when you're dealing with higher altitude,
Speaker 1: higher speed aircraft. And and of course this is just
Speaker 1: on top of we we talked about, you know the
Speaker 1: need for the individual, for the pilot, for the crew
Speaker 1: member to have an escape plan. But of course, just
Speaker 1: to boil down, like the basic economic idea here is
Speaker 1: that human lives are more valuable than machines. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: not in like a moral sense, because most of these
Speaker 1: are war machines designed to like drop nuclear payloads on
Speaker 1: the whole cities. Know what means they cost more to train,
Speaker 1: right right? You need you need highly trained specialist individuals
Speaker 1: who are piloting these aircraft. And even though the aircraft
Speaker 1: costs millions and millions of dollars if it goes down
Speaker 1: in flames, at least you can say in since you're
Speaker 1: saving the brain of the aircraft, you're saving the pilots
Speaker 1: that fluid exactly. So let's look at some examples from
Speaker 1: aviation history of these great Uh, what would you call
Speaker 1: it if? If the pilot being saved from a failing
Speaker 1: aircraft is like saving the brain, the escape pod is
Speaker 1: like the jar that you put the brain in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So let's look at some of these jars. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: so the first one we're gonna bring up, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna try and make sure that we have
Speaker 1: images related to these on the landing page for this
Speaker 1: episode of Stuff to Blow your mind, Dot com because
Speaker 1: you're gonna we're gonna try and to describe everything, but
Speaker 1: you know you're gonna you're gonna probably want some visuals.
Speaker 1: So the first one we want to mention here is
Speaker 1: the B fifty eight Hustler, the convey B fifty eight Hustler.
Speaker 1: So this was a bomber that saw service nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: through nineteen seventy. About hundred and sixteen were built. It
Speaker 1: was a three man crew. This was a U s
Speaker 1: Air Force US Air Force debuted nineteen fifty six, and
Speaker 1: it was the US Air force Is first operational supersonic bomber.
Speaker 1: It was visually notable because it had these awesome delta wings,
Speaker 1: so it looked like an arrow um and it also
Speaker 1: had a wasp waist fuselage. It was so thin that
Speaker 1: it had to use external bomb pods. Gleaming chrome appearance
Speaker 1: in most of the images you see of it, so yeah,
Speaker 1: it looked like an arrowhead, though maybe an arrowhead either
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 the
Speaker 1: in these straight, completely angular wings cutting through it, it's
Speaker 1: cool to look at. Yeah, and I wanna I mention
Speaker 1: this real quick quickly here if it sounds like if
Speaker 1: some people might be thinking, oh, you're awfuly 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 aviation history. So
Speaker 1: I grew up like with a lot of books about
Speaker 1: these airplanes around, and it seems like there were always
Speaker 1: documentaries on TV about these aircraft. So I have a
Speaker 1: certain fondness for their designs. But back to the so yeah,
Speaker 1: sexually looking aircraft. Uh. It initially boasted typical ejection seats,
Speaker 1: so just blast the individual crew members out of the
Speaker 1: imperiled aircraft. But ejection at supersonic speeds proved dangerous. So
Speaker 1: Stanley Aircraft Corporation developed a retrofitted ejection capsule and in
Speaker 1: late nineteen six two and this allowed aircrew to eject
Speaker 1: safely it twice the speed of sound and from as
Speaker 1: high as altitudes of seventy feet or roughly twenty one kilometers.
Speaker 1: That does not sound like a condition in which you
Speaker 1: would want to be ejected naked out of your right,
Speaker 1: have your brain ejective naked or even in a flight
Speaker 1: suit and in a chair. Right, So they came up
Speaker 1: with this capsule. The capsule was essentially a clamshell hood
Speaker 1: that closed over the ejection seat and it was I
Speaker 1: found some some Gatty images on this, and the Getty
Speaker 1: images a database, so some some work that went and
Speaker 1: went into designing this, and it was apparently referred to
Speaker 1: as the torture chamber during development because it I guess,
Speaker 1: because it kind of looks like an Iron Maiden. It
Speaker 1: really does. Yeah, So this capsule, you have the seat,
Speaker 1: it's like a right angle kind of thing, which is
Speaker 1: where the crew member would be I guess, but folded
Speaker 1: over the top of it, it looks kind of like
Speaker 1: a It's just this cascading series of metal bands coming down,
Speaker 1: So it looks like a mask that a cinebyte would
Speaker 1: where in one of the Hell raisor sequels, and the
Speaker 1: cinembyte would be called like shutter face or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's reminiscent a little bit too of of a rolltop desk.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, like that, but metal. Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: this that once it's over you, this thing was air tight,
Speaker 1: had an independent oxygen supply supply system that ensured pressurization.
Speaker 1: And this was but one of the things that was
Speaker 1: it was far from fully automated, because I know, when
Speaker 1: you're when you're hearing this, you're reading about it, you're
Speaker 1: imagining like, oh, it shuts over you and then you
Speaker 1: blast out like you're in a science fiction movie. But
Speaker 1: it wasn't. The user still had a number of choices
Speaker 1: after the clamshell shut. You could continue on to ejection,
Speaker 1: or you could hold off until the plane made it
Speaker 1: to a lower altitude that didn't demand the pressurization. UM.
Speaker 1: The idea here being, you know that is still incredibly dangerous,
Speaker 1: UM ejecting from the aircraft at high altitudes, even in
Speaker 1: the capsule. So if the plane is not in just
Speaker 1: complete peril, then maybe it makes sense to wait just
Speaker 1: a minute, right um. And this is the thing we
Speaker 1: should keep in mind throughout the episode. I mean, ejecting
Speaker 1: from an aircraft, uh always comes with risks. You know,
Speaker 1: when you eject from an aircraft to bail out, there
Speaker 1: is a certain percent chance that you will be killed
Speaker 1: by the ejection process. That's why it is a last resort,
Speaker 1: is a violent last resort in a in a in
Speaker 1: a terrible dangerous situation. Now, additionally, the pilot's capsule in
Speaker 1: the Hustler contained the control stick and other necessary controls
Speaker 1: to pilot the aircraft to that lower altitude, and then
Speaker 1: 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 immediate um, immediately exercised from the craft. They're
Speaker 1: kind of a part of the craft in peril. So
Speaker 1: what kind of test pilot would volunteer to be the
Speaker 1: first test subject of the torture chamber. Well, it's interesting
Speaker 1: and reading about these different tests because the thing you
Speaker 1: had have you have a fair amount of testing. They
Speaker 1: went 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 uh, 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 U S
Speaker 1: Air Force used Himalayan and American black bears to test
Speaker 1: the 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 tests. They only 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 six,
Speaker 1: um that's we know, or and also at altitudes of
Speaker 1: forty five thousand feet. So yeah, the bears helped us
Speaker 1: out in that regard. It's well hard to argue that
Speaker 1: they volunteered, but I'm glad to hear that no bears
Speaker 1: were killed in the making of this escape pod. Yeah,
Speaker 1: at least we can say that, right. Um So after injection,
Speaker 1: the capsule here featured a parachute, of course, as well
Speaker 1: as shock absorbers and inflatable bladders to turn the thing
Speaker 1: into a life raft if it fell in the water.
Speaker 1: Uh So, in short, it was it was a pretty
Speaker 1: pretty cool escape capsule. I think. I think it's one
Speaker 1: of the better like just pure examples of of a
Speaker 1: of an escape capsule in aviation history. There are actually
Speaker 1: videos online of the tests of this escape capsule, of
Speaker 1: it coming up out of the plane. You can see
Speaker 1: it just rocketing up into the sky and shooting up
Speaker 1: over the top of the plane as the plane passes underneath.
Speaker 1: It's worth looking up. Yeah, there's also a fabulous periscope
Speaker 1: films documentary that's freely available on YouTube now that that
Speaker 1: shows you exactly how it worked, and it had had
Speaker 1: like some wonderful animations. They quoted Shakespeare and showed like
Speaker 1: sort of a Disney documentary, hand paid but leafing through
Speaker 1: a book of the works of Shakespeare just impeccably. You know,
Speaker 1: nineteen five these pr project here, So do we know
Speaker 1: how often people in the real world ejected from one
Speaker 1: of these planes? And how well it worked? This was
Speaker 1: a real revelation to me. There is a wonderful website,
Speaker 1: and I say wonderful. It's it's a little long in
Speaker 1: the tooth now it could it could benefit from redesign,
Speaker 1: but this but the work that's gone into it is
Speaker 1: pretty pretty awesome. It's ejection history dot org dot UK
Speaker 1: and it's an attempt by the author and contributors to
Speaker 1: catalog every ejection from from key aircraft and and and
Speaker 1: and also rank like how how survivable each incident was,
Speaker 1: So all in all, like some some aircraft have better
Speaker 1: databases and others on this site, but it's it's a
Speaker 1: real sobering look at the effectiveness of ejection seats and
Speaker 1: ejection capsules, uh to determine, like to what center they
Speaker 1: able to save live 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 a
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 and count them. Um. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: Hustler an interesting plane, a great escape capsule. Get in
Speaker 1: that cinebyte head. Okay, let's look at another one. How
Speaker 1: about the XP seventy Valkyrie. Oh yeah, so this this
Speaker 1: one's really cool too. So this was a prototype for
Speaker 1: the B seventy. 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 air plant, it's uh, it's probably because it has
Speaker 1: these two large canards which acted control surfaces. Essentially imagine
Speaker 1: the so imagine the airplane is a bird. It has
Speaker 1: two little wings right behind its ears. Um, those are
Speaker 1: just you know, control surfaces essentially located behind the cockpit.
Speaker 1: Performance Wise, however, the really crazy thing about the XP
Speaker 1: seventy was that it was designed to fold its wings
Speaker 1: down hearing supersonic flight and ride its own shock wave
Speaker 1: quote much as a surfer rides in ocean wave. That's
Speaker 1: a according to the NASA dot gov fact sheet on
Speaker 1: this aircraft. Wow. So if you look at pictures of
Speaker 1: this aircraft, it also is very visually striking. As you say,
Speaker 1: I thought this one looks kind of like a paper plane.
Speaker 1: It does. Like it's very white and very thin, extremely
Speaker 1: thin as far as the wings go, has a paper
Speaker 1: like kind of quality to it, except that the the
Speaker 1: of course, the middle fuselage is kind of circular, but
Speaker 1: otherwise it's it's dead ringer for paper plane. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks it looks like a paper plane or a piece
Speaker 1: of oregony, almost like an oregony crane. Yeah, I see
Speaker 1: that too. So this airplane design came about in a
Speaker 1: time of uncertain future for traditional bombers, and the Kennedy
Speaker 1: administration ended up scrapping it, so it became a research aircraft,
Speaker 1: largely for supersonic transport research looking into the idea of
Speaker 1: using supersonic airline or supersonic sonic transport planes. In general,
Speaker 1: it was the right shape, it was the right size,
Speaker 1: and even though the program was scrapped, they had two prototypes,
Speaker 1: so you had two XP seventy Valkyries, So it was
Speaker 1: sort of a prototype concorde. Well it was like that.
Speaker 1: Well it was totally a bomber, but but it was
Speaker 1: the right size and it had enough in common with
Speaker 1: the designs that were being looked at for commercial use
Speaker 1: that it could be used to explore the possibilities there. So,
Speaker 1: despite some of the problems, the early flights provided data
Speaker 1: on a number of issues acing supersonic transport. These included
Speaker 1: aircraft noise, operational problems, control system design, uh comparison of
Speaker 1: winternal predictions with what actually happens during the course of flight,
Speaker 1: high ALTITA to clear air turbulence, all of these issues.
Speaker 1: I mean, this was there was still so much to
Speaker 1: learn at the time about supersonic flight. But this one
Speaker 1: did have an ejection capsule. Yes, back to the main point.
Speaker 1: The reason we're talking about is that it did feature
Speaker 1: an injection capsule and it had a clam clam shell
Speaker 1: design similar to that that we discussed in the Hustler.
Speaker 1: So they're bringing back shutter face, right, Yeah, shutter faces
Speaker 1: in action that the ideally the chair that you're in
Speaker 1: the cockpit seat, it kind of like folds back and
Speaker 1: then the clam shell snaps over. Uh, and it contains
Speaker 1: survival gear oxygen systems. It also contained the flight control
Speaker 1: stick for the pilot and um, you know, it's very
Speaker 1: much the same idea. We We only had two of these,
Speaker 1: so it's there's not a lot of ejection data on it.
Speaker 1: But there is one key incident that occurred with one
Speaker 1: of the XP seventies, and that was a tragedy involving
Speaker 1: one of them in nineteen sixty six. June eighth, nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six, the second of the two XP seventies crashed
Speaker 1: following a mid air collision with the NASA's F one
Speaker 1: 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 pretty
Speaker 1: pretty terrible accident because in the course of this, Joe Walker,
Speaker 1: the F one oh four in pilot, he died in
Speaker 1: the accident. Um Carl Cross, who was making his first
Speaker 1: flight in the XP seventy, was unable to eject and
Speaker 1: he died in the crash. North American test pilot Al White,
Speaker 1: who had been with the XP seventy project since the beginning,
Speaker 1: he act. He say he ejected in the capsule, but
Speaker 1: he received serious injuries in the process because the clam
Speaker 1: shell crushed his arm. So his arm was outside of
Speaker 1: the clam shell and it was crushed. That is something
Speaker 1: I've read about and these, uh, these aviation eject capsules,
Speaker 1: is that they tend to if they close over you,
Speaker 1: they have to close with extreme force. Uh, And so
Speaker 1: you're always at risk of having injury from the actual
Speaker 1: closing process of the capsule. Yeah, and certainly, you know,
Speaker 1: going through that A that A that ejection website that
Speaker 1: I mentioned earlier. You see this with with countless ejections.
Speaker 1: Capsules are not where Sometimes individuals survive, sometimes they don't.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they are minor, sometimes they are severe injuries that
Speaker 1: are entailed in 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
Speaker 1: US Air Force. Of course, five hundred and sixty three
Speaker 1: were produced, and uh it was. It was always a
Speaker 1: favorite airplane of mind growing up because in probably in
Speaker 1: part because I did have a toy version of it.
Speaker 1: There you go, if you have that physical manifestation of
Speaker 1: the thing as a kid, you can't help it be
Speaker 1: a little more into it. But it was also just
Speaker 1: like a little bit like a like it was just
Speaker 1: a weird plane. It stood out from the other jets.
Speaker 1: It effectively came off like a larger bomber version of
Speaker 1: the F four Team Tomcat. The of course, you know
Speaker 1: the top gun plane for anyone out there is not
Speaker 1: not that familiar with with your jets, variable sweep wings
Speaker 1: and coolest of all, kandem seating for the two man crew. Okay,
Speaker 1: so if you have if you have top gun in mind,
Speaker 1: of course you're going to imagine front and back seating
Speaker 1: for the pilot and what the gunner? What are the
Speaker 1: two people? I don't know my top gun, but yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll have one in front and one directly behind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with multiple crews, you know you're off and talking about
Speaker 1: the pilot, UM a navigator, pilot, co pilot, bombity or
Speaker 1: you know, there are all these different roles depending on
Speaker 1: what the airplane is, and in your your sleeker faster
Speaker 1: designs such as fighter planes and interceptors and fighter bombers,
Speaker 1: in some cases you're gonna have you know, one in front,
Speaker 1: one behind. UM. Also with trainers. Trainer aircraft are often
Speaker 1: like that. But this one had pilot co pilot pilot
Speaker 1: setting right next to each other, just like a love seat,
Speaker 1: just like a love seat. And uh, the cool part
Speaker 1: here was the crew didn't have ejection seats or an
Speaker 1: escape pod. Even the entire cabin of the F one
Speaker 1: eleven ard Vark was an escape capsule, the McDonald escaped capsule,
Speaker 1: and it looks something like a star treks uh shuttlecraft. Wow.
Speaker 1: So we will see this idea repeated in a few minutes.
Speaker 1: So when talking about some proposals for passenger aircraft, it
Speaker 1: was so, yeah, think of think of a shuttlecraft. It
Speaker 1: was self righting, it was water tight, it could be
Speaker 1: used as a flow tation device. Um. So sorry you
Speaker 1: said self righting. Not that's not riding with a d
Speaker 1: but self righting, as in it would bob right side up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it's a pretty cool little capsule. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was the it was it was the entire crew cabin
Speaker 1: really and so so how did it work? Well, if
Speaker 1: we look to ejection history dot org dot UK, which
Speaker 1: is the leading source of information on this sort of thing, um,
Speaker 1: looks like there were about over a hundred injections logged
Speaker 1: for the F one eleven during the course of its tenure,
Speaker 1: and the survival rate looks pretty good. But again, it's
Speaker 1: it's kind of sobering to look at a lot of
Speaker 1: this data, especially when you can see the pictures of
Speaker 1: the pilots that were involved. Sometimes the survivors sometimes um
Speaker 1: casualties because you can you can have this great ejection
Speaker 1: system in place, But you're still talking again about really
Speaker 1: dangerous situations, uh, really parallel situations with a malfunctioning or
Speaker 1: crashing aircraft. Sometimes it's in a war zone, and we're
Speaker 1: talking about everything from bird strike that's when an airplane
Speaker 1: strikes a bird, which can have just cataclysmic uh results
Speaker 1: on the aircraft. You wouldn't think so, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean the high speed bird a high speed plane, uh
Speaker 1: versus and that meets a you know, the canopy of
Speaker 1: the plane 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 Vark 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 twenty 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 uh then they ended up
Speaker 1: doing a hundred B one bs. The first three B
Speaker 1: one as 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 art, VARK was present here.
Speaker 1: But then 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 rollout, uh was was very much a
Speaker 1: mixed back. So one of the big takeaways from all
Speaker 1: these stories in military aviation history is yet again we
Speaker 1: said this earlier, but even if you make it into
Speaker 1: the escape pod, it's not a sure thing. It's still
Speaker 1: a dangerous world out there between you and the ground.
Speaker 1: I guess most of the dangers at the ground. But yeah,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, it's a dangerous environment. You're not really
Speaker 1: supposed to be up there, and the thing that got
Speaker 1: you there is malfunctioning or crashing. So Joe, I flew
Speaker 1: a few times this year. Uh where was my injection seat?
Speaker 1: It's a total bummer, isn't it that you do not
Speaker 1: get an escape pod in a regular passenger aircraft? I
Speaker 1: want my money back. No, actually I don't, because I
Speaker 1: arrived safely and so you know, it's fine. Uh So,
Speaker 1: there are a few patents that there. There is a
Speaker 1: reason that I'm going to get to in a minute
Speaker 1: why you don't usually see this in passenger aircraft. But
Speaker 1: first I just want to look at a couple of examples.
Speaker 1: One is a patent that I found filed January two
Speaker 1: eleven by Tatiana ivan Ivna dimon Chuk, who wrote this
Speaker 1: patent for quote method for the mass emergency evacuation of
Speaker 1: passengers from air transport and aeroplane with equipment for rescuing
Speaker 1: passengers in an emergency situation. I have to just comment
Speaker 1: reading a bunch of patents for this episode. Man, the
Speaker 1: writing style of most patents is so awful. It as
Speaker 1: if they're written explicitly to make it hard to picture
Speaker 1: what they're talking about. Yeah, thank goodness there there are
Speaker 1: often visuals to go with it, because otherwise it would
Speaker 1: be very difficult to get the idea from some of
Speaker 1: the writeups. Yeah, I don't mean to call this one
Speaker 1: out in particular, but it also the writing wasn't amazing
Speaker 1: on it. But yeah, that that's sort of across the board.
Speaker 1: But anyway, basically what is envisioned in this one is
Speaker 1: that the airplane would have rows of seats that are
Speaker 1: enclosable into smaller capsules, and then these capsules would sit
Speaker 1: on some kind of guide track inside the airplane fuselage,
Speaker 1: and when an emergency occurs, the hatches and the fuselage
Speaker 1: pop open and these seat containing capsules would be ejected.
Speaker 1: According to one diagram I saw, it looks like they
Speaker 1: would sort of blast out to the bottom of the
Speaker 1: plane and an angle diagonal to the plane's movement. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I have not seen anyone claiming that they're going to
Speaker 1: make a passenger plane incorporating these designs. Yeah, this particular
Speaker 1: design it it basically think of there being a tiny
Speaker 1: train inside the airplane, like little train cars, little subway
Speaker 1: cars that have your your seats in them right, and
Speaker 1: then if if, if, if necessary, if the situation gets dire,
Speaker 1: each of those train cars may be pooped out of
Speaker 1: the airplane. Oh it's a good one, okay, So I
Speaker 1: found another one also that there were some reports about
Speaker 1: another supposed design for a passenger plane escape system, this
Speaker 1: one by a Ukrainian engineer named Vladimir Nikolayevitch Tatarenko, and
Speaker 1: there are some YouTube videos demonstrating the concept, complete with
Speaker 1: inspiring quotes by Confucius and Einstein and uh so. The
Speaker 1: demonstration in the videos shows that under this design, what
Speaker 1: would happen is that the lower part of the fuselage
Speaker 1: 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's like you get into the cabin of
Speaker 1: the plane, and that is a detachable section of the
Speaker 1: plane that attaches to the wings and the pilot's area
Speaker 1: through through a connector, and so an emergency happens, the
Speaker 1: cabin of the plane essentially just detaches from the fuselage
Speaker 1: and comes off. Parachutes extend from containers on the top
Speaker 1: of the escape capsule, and the cabin comes down for
Speaker 1: 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 might help sometimes,
Speaker 1: but the vast majority of airplane accidents happened during takeoff, ascent,
Speaker 1: decent and landing, when you are nearer to the ground,
Speaker 1: and parachute supported capsules are just going to be less
Speaker 1: likely to me to happy end, we mentioned earlier problems
Speaker 1: about like trying to deploy a parachute when you're very
Speaker 1: close to the ground, it doesn't usually work. Right, And
Speaker 1: think back to all these the capsules we discussed so far.
Speaker 1: In military aviation, these are rejection capsules. These are essentially
Speaker 1: fancy ejection seats, in 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, but 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 in in the world since while
Speaker 1: it was between two thousand and six and and this
Speaker 1: only includes things that you would actually consider accidents, not
Speaker 1: things like terrorists, bombs or missile strikes. But during this period,
Speaker 1: only twelve percent of their fatal accident and two percent
Speaker 1: of onboard fatalities occurred during the cruise portion of the flight,
Speaker 1: which is what this is when the plane is that
Speaker 1: it's regular flying altitude. Most of the time you're in
Speaker 1: the air, is the cruise section. Yeah, this isn't the
Speaker 1: part where you can get up, walk around, go to
Speaker 1: the bathroom, and become increasingly annoyed at the other people
Speaker 1: on the plane. Right, so this is going to be
Speaker 1: the majority of your flight time, but the minority of
Speaker 1: where accidents occur, the vast minority, About eighteen percent of
Speaker 1: fatal accidents and fourteen percent of onboard fatalities occurred during
Speaker 1: takeoff and climb, and about fifty nine percent of fatal
Speaker 1: accidents and sixty one percent of onboard fatalities happened during
Speaker 1: descent and landing. And so one thing you know is
Speaker 1: from these stats is that if you do happen to
Speaker 1: be in the rare midflight accident, it is more likely
Speaker 1: to be a fatal one. That's kind of intuitive, right
Speaker 1: since it's twelve percent of the accidents, but a kind
Speaker 1: of percent 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. Uh,
Speaker 1: And the closer y ared of the ground, the more
Speaker 1: useless a proposition like these escape pods becomes. Overall, flying
Speaker 1: in airplanes is incredibly safe. I know you've probably heard
Speaker 1: stats about this before, how it's more dangerous to be
Speaker 1: in a car than an aircraft by pretty much every
Speaker 1: measure you can look at. I think this is true.
Speaker 1: So there are different ways to estimate the difference. But
Speaker 1: here's one thing I found that puts it in terms
Speaker 1: of lifetime risks. So the US National Safety Council used
Speaker 1: its yearly injury statistics. They do this every year to
Speaker 1: compile and odds of dying chart, which is a good idea, right.
Speaker 1: It ranks your lifetime chances of being killed by particular things.
Speaker 1: So in they claim that your odds of dying in
Speaker 1: a plane crash are one in ninety six thousand, five
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty six. And according to their data, you
Speaker 1: are much more likely to be killed by electricution that's
Speaker 1: one in twelve thousand, two hundred, by a b wasp
Speaker 1: or hornet sting that's one in fifty five thousand or so,
Speaker 1: or in a motor vehicle crash, which is about one
Speaker 1: in a hundred and twelve. And I might add that
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eight, the same organization rated your
Speaker 1: lifetime chances of dying in a space or air travel
Speaker 1: accident at one in seven thousand, one seventy eight. So
Speaker 1: things seem to be vastly improving. So your odds of
Speaker 1: dying in an air travel accident are already exceedingly low.
Speaker 1: And if you are in a fatal plane accident, it's
Speaker 1: most 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 pay load
Speaker 1: capacity increases fuel costs. If you want an airplane with
Speaker 1: an escape pod, I think you're going to need to
Speaker 1: be prepared to pay the nine thousand dollars per ticket
Speaker 1: or whatever it ends up costing. One more thing I
Speaker 1: wanted to consider. I found an article in a publication
Speaker 1: called Defense One, which is from Atlantic Media, called why
Speaker 1: your plane can't have an escape pod? And this offered
Speaker 1: one thing I hadn't thought of that The author of
Speaker 1: this spoke to somebody named David Aiken who's director of
Speaker 1: Space Systems, the Space System's Laboratory at the University of Maryland,
Speaker 1: and Aikin said, quote, you have to be careful you
Speaker 1: don't cause an accident because of an inadvertent actuation of
Speaker 1: the safety system. It's an accident that wouldn't happen without
Speaker 1: the safety system. That didn't even cross my mind. But
Speaker 1: of course that's the case, right. You could have lots
Speaker 1: because every time you activate an ejector system, you are
Speaker 1: increasing your likelihood of death in an ejection incident. And uh,
Speaker 1: and the chance of you dying in a passenger plane
Speaker 1: is already so low. It just does not seem like
Speaker 1: a good cost benefit trade off. Yeah. I mean, an
Speaker 1: ejection seat or an ejection capsule is an incredibly dangerous
Speaker 1: device to have. Um. I believe if you go to
Speaker 1: a you go to an air show and somebody say
Speaker 1: flies in a MiG or or some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: older Now, a non military craft, if it had an
Speaker 1: ejection seat in its previous life, it probably does not
Speaker 1: have one today because it's just not the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that a non military craft should have. One last
Speaker 1: thing about passenger planes. All those movies that show Air
Speaker 1: Force one with an escape pod, the best of course
Speaker 1: being as we mentioned earlier, Escape from New York. Donald
Speaker 1: Pleasants gets in the egg and it's it's wonderful. Are
Speaker 1: there others? Air Force one has an escape pod? Here's one?
Speaker 1: How about the movie Air Force One? I never saw it?
Speaker 1: Is this? Where is this Harrison Ford versus uh, Gary
Speaker 1: Oldman and Gariel Or is it Gary? Okay? I can't remember.
Speaker 1: I want to say it's Gary Oldman has president? Harrison
Speaker 1: Ford is the president. Okay, he's the president. He's on
Speaker 1: Air Force One. Some terrorists get on his plane. I
Speaker 1: think they're led by Gary Oldman from what I remember.
Speaker 1: They attack him. He says, get off my plane and
Speaker 1: he fights them. And so this came out in July,
Speaker 1: and I found a Time CNN article from that summer
Speaker 1: reacting to the movie Air Force One and comparing its
Speaker 1: Air Force one set to the real Air Force one. Now,
Speaker 1: in the movie, actually the plane has an escape pod.
Speaker 1: The article speaks to a White House aid confirms there
Speaker 1: is no escape pod in the real Air Force one,
Speaker 1: but apparently Bill Clinton wanted one. Well you come in.
Speaker 1: I think they were joking, that's what they said. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean you come back to the economic model. This
Speaker 1: is one of the cases where it would make sense
Speaker 1: right to have an ejection capsule for the most powerful
Speaker 1: individual in the United States. I don't know how much
Speaker 1: does the president cost um. I think there are there
Speaker 1: are price tag evaluations available now on that topic. But
Speaker 1: it makes sense that they might have one in that scenario,
Speaker 1: But apparently they don't. However, would they let us know
Speaker 1: if there was one? Uh, that's a good quition. Maybe
Speaker 1: they're just psyching us out. I have heard of certain
Speaker 1: situations with informational websites with information about Air Force One
Speaker 1: being asked to, you know, cut down on the detail.
Speaker 1: Really yeah, wow, interest to the great fun Uh so
Speaker 1: I don't know. You can you can run with the
Speaker 1: conspiracy theories there, maybe there's a secret escape pod. Alright, Well,
Speaker 1: on that note, we're going to take a break, a
Speaker 1: quick break for you. We're actually going to take a
Speaker 1: break for several days, and they come back in and
Speaker 1: finish this. So if we sound a little different, if
Speaker 1: we sound better, healthier, if we sound worse, if you
Speaker 1: sound a little sicker, well it's because a few days past.
Speaker 1: But when we come back few days contemplating the torture chamber. Yes,
Speaker 1: when we come back, though, we were going to get
Speaker 1: into escape pods in space exploration, both actual and the
Speaker 1: merely host. All right, we're back. So we've been talking
Speaker 1: about aviation, escape pods, escape capsules, But what about outer space,
Speaker 1: Like that's the next most dangerous environment. Like if if
Speaker 1: the air, if the the upper atmosphere is not dangerous enough,
Speaker 1: let's go beyond the upper atmosphere, let's go into orbit
Speaker 1: and possibly rooms beyond. What do we do about escaping
Speaker 1: those situations? Well, space is the natural home of the
Speaker 1: escape pod, isn't it, Because if we if we see
Speaker 1: it in sci fi most often, like that's where you
Speaker 1: get in the capsule, you blast down to tattooing or
Speaker 1: wherever that that. That's where we really see escape pods
Speaker 1: come to fruition. And it is quite true that humans
Speaker 1: have designed escape pods for spacecraft. Now, they're kind of
Speaker 1: different than they are in the movies, because what happens
Speaker 1: in a movie like oh, I don't know, aliens or
Speaker 1: something like that, where there there are capsules that you're
Speaker 1: you're in deep space and you get into a capsule
Speaker 1: to blast away from a ship that is exploding or
Speaker 1: infested with aliens or some thing like that, and then
Speaker 1: what do you do? You just drift off into space.
Speaker 1: So well, there's no I mean, that's not very useful
Speaker 1: as far as things go right now, because we do
Speaker 1: not have deep rescue vehicles in deep space operating between
Speaker 1: planets and star systems. This is one of the ideas
Speaker 1: that came up in Pandora, is that is that everyone
Speaker 1: would would go mad on the ship and you'd go
Speaker 1: into your escape pods and you blast off in the
Speaker 1: escape pods, and then you just die out there because
Speaker 1: nobody's coming to pick you up exactly. I mean, what's
Speaker 1: the point. But there may be a point if you're
Speaker 1: talking about stuff that stays really close to Earth, which
Speaker 1: almost all well all of our all of our crewed
Speaker 1: spacecraft so far have So in the early days of
Speaker 1: crewed space flight, there were a lot of proposals for
Speaker 1: various types of escape pods, and I actually found I
Speaker 1: couldn't believe this. I found an issue of Popular Science
Speaker 1: from September nineteen sixty six with an article called quote
Speaker 1: lifeboats in Space by none other than Dr Werner von Braun,
Speaker 1: all about the all about the subject of rescue from
Speaker 1: orbital vehicles. Vernon von Broun, of course, the famed former
Speaker 1: German rocket scientists who came to the US after the
Speaker 1: war with I think you've mostly stationed out of Huntsville, Alabama,
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, contributed a great deal to our space program. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so von Braun says, so far, and this is nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six. Remember, space missions have been very safe. But
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to expect that at some point a
Speaker 1: crewed spacecraft will signal distress. What then, I mean, imagine
Speaker 1: it's the nineteen sixties. What happens if there's a problem, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, you have no recourse yet. So what he's
Speaker 1: proposing is we need a space rescue program. So he says,
Speaker 1: imagine a crew is stuck in a spacecraft in lower
Speaker 1: th orbit caused by a malfunctioning retro rocket. Von Braun
Speaker 1: essentially compares this to the situation of like a fishing
Speaker 1: boat that gets stuck off shore at sea and starts sinking.
Speaker 1: If you call for help and evacuate the crew into
Speaker 1: a lifeboat, you can probably be saved. But we need
Speaker 1: to develop the equivalent structures for rescue within space. You
Speaker 1: need to develop lifeboats and rescue vehicles for space and
Speaker 1: orbital flight the same way you'd have them for for
Speaker 1: the ocean, right off the coast. So you would have
Speaker 1: to send the orbital equivalent of a coastguard cutter essentially
Speaker 1: to rescue a spacecraft in trouble. But that's difficult because
Speaker 1: you have to wait for an appropriate launch window to
Speaker 1: allow a rendezvous between the two ships. As we know
Speaker 1: from rocket launches, you can't just fly up there, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. It's not like getting in a
Speaker 1: helicopter and heading off. That you're dealing with with massively
Speaker 1: powerful velocities and great mass, so you essentially have to
Speaker 1: aim your gun the right way to start with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's an enormous undertaking. Yeah, and so, so you've got
Speaker 1: to get this rendezvous between the two ships. And if
Speaker 1: the ship in distress is suffering a real emergency, it
Speaker 1: might be too long for them to wait for somebody
Speaker 1: on Earth to line up the trajectory of the launch
Speaker 1: 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. Yeah, exactly, and it led to disasters
Speaker 1: in the history of the space program. Or another thing
Speaker 1: might be penetration of the spacecraft by a heavy, heavy meteoroid.
Speaker 1: You know, you get pelted with something, it breaks through
Speaker 1: the hull. You've got to escape immediately. You can't wait
Speaker 1: for rescue vehicle obviously, can collision with another spacecraft would
Speaker 1: be a problem, or toxic fumes in the cabin or
Speaker 1: maybe radiation contamination from He gives the example of an
Speaker 1: onboard nuclear power source. Wow, that sounds pretty awful, but anyway,
Speaker 1: So von Broun concludes that we need to think about
Speaker 1: the concept of lifeboats that allow spacecraft crews to escape
Speaker 1: immediately on their own terms. So he's what he's proposing
Speaker 1: is escape pods. And so I'm going to mention a
Speaker 1: few that are illustrated alongside this article from sixty six.
Speaker 1: And these illustrations are great, by the way. So one
Speaker 1: example that he gives is the emergency cocoon, and he says,
Speaker 1: this is under test by General Electric quote shelters shipwrecked
Speaker 1: spaceman in an inflated fabric ball, heat insulated by outer
Speaker 1: later outer layers of aluminiumized plastic thin silicon rubber lining
Speaker 1: retains oxygen carried for breathing, but let's unwanted carbon dioxide
Speaker 1: and water vapor escape. So they're putting you in a
Speaker 1: beach ball. Yeah, it's like a survival bubble kind of
Speaker 1: the situation. You climb into a beach ball, you blast
Speaker 1: off from your ship, and you just float around in
Speaker 1: orbit in your beach ball until the rescue vehicle can
Speaker 1: come up and get to you, you know, when you
Speaker 1: can't remain in your ship. The other one would be
Speaker 1: the separable shelter and This looks more like a huge
Speaker 1: thermus that everybody gets in. Right. It also reminds like
Speaker 1: both of these remind me of like toys you can
Speaker 1: buy it ikea. The first one of ball. This second
Speaker 1: one is like one of these little tunnels that you get.
Speaker 1: Who It's like a like a fabric tunnel that you
Speaker 1: stretch out and then children can crawl through. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: von Brand says that the separable shelter it holds five
Speaker 1: to fifteen men and can serve as a life raft
Speaker 1: for large space vehicles of the future. Uh, And it
Speaker 1: has rocket self propulsion that can boost it to higher,
Speaker 1: longer lived orbit that allows more time for rescue. So
Speaker 1: these are more like the sort of roomy escape shuttles
Speaker 1: of sci fi movies. But they still require ultimate rendezvous
Speaker 1: with the rescue vehicle that's going to gather the crew
Speaker 1: and return to Earth under its own specifications. Right, These
Speaker 1: things are not going to re enter the Earth's atmosphere
Speaker 1: in their current form. Right. What if you want to
Speaker 1: make an escape pod that will get you all the
Speaker 1: way home on your own, Well, that's gonna be a
Speaker 1: different undertake altogether, exactly. So it makes no sense to
Speaker 1: have a full on re entry capable space ship inside
Speaker 1: your regular spaceship, at least on the scale that we
Speaker 1: create spaceships right now. Because spacecraft were then and are
Speaker 1: 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 understanding of this, if you've
Speaker 1: never thought about it before, just look at the size
Speaker 1: of the orbiter vehicle itself compared to the size of
Speaker 1: the rockets used to get it in orbit with any
Speaker 1: given launch. It's hilarious. There's usually there's way more fuel
Speaker 1: than there is spaceship um, and so it's not feasible
Speaker 1: to make a spaceship within your spaceship to get you home.
Speaker 1: So how could you make a self contained re entry
Speaker 1: vehicle that would be very light and fit in storage
Speaker 1: on the already cramped crew vehicles of the nineteen sixties. Well,
Speaker 1: some geniuses in space design and aeronautics in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties had a solution to this, and it was inflatable options.
Speaker 1: So we already mentioned the beach ball floating in space,
Speaker 1: but this would be the beach ball that you re
Speaker 1: enter the burning atmosphere through or I guess the atmosphere
Speaker 1: is not burning, but once you're re entering the atmosphere
Speaker 1: high velocity, you will be burning. So the space historian
Speaker 1: James Oberg has a good article about this from two
Speaker 1: thousand three called the Pod People Nice Reference, published in
Speaker 1: Air and Space magazine, and he talks about how in
Speaker 1: the early days of the space program, researchers were experimenting
Speaker 1: with inflatable re entry vehicles called things like the inflatable
Speaker 1: micro meteoroid paraglider. And this wasn't originally meant as an
Speaker 1: escape pod, but as a research probe to fly up
Speaker 1: in space and get pelted by micro medieroids, essentially to
Speaker 1: try to figure out, you know, what's the density of
Speaker 1: solid objects in Earth or but if you go up
Speaker 1: in space, how often can you expect to get hit
Speaker 1: by hard stuff? And so there were research vehicles like this,
Speaker 1: but they also actually it end up designing inflatable re
Speaker 1: entry vehicles, uh with with the designs essentially resembling as
Speaker 1: I already said, paragliders, but they would have a heat
Speaker 1: shield of some kind so that when you re enter
Speaker 1: the atmosphere you don't catch on fire and burn up
Speaker 1: and explode. One of the designs he mentions is a
Speaker 1: modified rog Gallo wing, which is basically a hang glider,
Speaker 1: but imagine sort of a hang glider with struts that,
Speaker 1: instead of being made of metal, are a fabric tube
Speaker 1: that gets inflated with gas to such a high pressure
Speaker 1: that it becomes rigid. And so that's what we're dealing with.
Speaker 1: But back to von Braun in nine in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty six because he's going to point out, uh, some
Speaker 1: of these crazy personal reentry vehicles that were under development
Speaker 1: at the time he was writing. The first is the
Speaker 1: space parachute, which he says is a is a concept
Speaker 1: from Douglas and essentially it's an ejector seat sort of
Speaker 1: like you would see in like a like a five
Speaker 1: or jet, you know, if you have to eject, so
Speaker 1: you're in your seat, and then you've got a retro
Speaker 1: rocket that you used to orient yourself to de orbit
Speaker 1: to come down back into the atmosphere. Um. And then
Speaker 1: you've got this what what he calls a conical drag
Speaker 1: skirt that deploys for self stabilizing reentry, so sort of
Speaker 1: like a bowl extends around the seat. Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: were to take like a very small baby doll, like
Speaker 1: one about the size of you know, uh, 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 drop 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 in research for this episode. And so this
Speaker 1: thing was called moose and it was developed by General
Speaker 1: Electric 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 is not an actual moose because no, okay,
Speaker 1: but because we have had actual bears in escape pops
Speaker 1: capsules already in this episode. Thank you for reminding me, Robert.
Speaker 1: But no, they did as far as I know, they
Speaker 1: did not test it on any ungulates. Is a moose
Speaker 1: and ungulate I think it is? Yeah, okay, okay, um,
Speaker 1: I should know my ungulates. But but no, no, no,
Speaker 1: So the name was changed to stand for it like
Speaker 1: they back renimmed 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, yeah, I mean you
Speaker 1: really don't want to tell an astronaut that he or
Speaker 1: she must climb into a device that's got the word
Speaker 1: easiest in the title. Yeah. Well, but but I like
Speaker 1: the idea 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 a you know, a stubborn,
Speaker 1: willful creature, much like the astronauts. Uh 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 fort NASA discovered
Speaker 1: the rich pantheon of say Egyptian deities. Why we'll just
Speaker 1: start we'll just plunder this, uh, this mythology and then
Speaker 1: we don't have two things called moose. But okay, here's
Speaker 1: 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 inferls
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 break and bake style of escape
Speaker 1: pod creation. It's on the fly. Uh. So then you're
Speaker 1: out of the ship and Major Tom's floating in space
Speaker 1: in this bag on a bed of foam, and Major
Speaker 1: Tom fires a small canister of gas propellant to orient
Speaker 1: himself with the heat shield facing the proper direction for
Speaker 1: re entry, and then he discards the gas propellant and
Speaker 1: he uses a hand operated solid rocket engine to enter
Speaker 1: the atmosphere. So Tom Tom's in a bag on some foam,
Speaker 1: rocketing himself back to Earth by hand. There's a fabulous
Speaker 1: mcgever kind of yeah. So, once in free fall in
Speaker 1: the atmosphere, he opens a chest mounted parachute and then
Speaker 1: comes down to the surface for a landing. And according
Speaker 1: to the Encyclopedia Astronautica, General Electric, General Electric conducted a
Speaker 1: bunch of tests and showed that the basic design of
Speaker 1: moose worked, and they eventually tested it out on a
Speaker 1: falling scenario by dropping a test pilot in a moose
Speaker 1: six meters off of a bridge in Massachusetts, and they
Speaker 1: say that the test pilot survived the impact. Congratulations falling
Speaker 1: off a bridge in this thing. But anyway, Von Braun
Speaker 1: writes of this and quote the space parachute that both
Speaker 1: fold up for storage and a spacecraft both combine the
Speaker 1: characteristics of a life raft, a space suit, overcoat and
Speaker 1: a cocoon, which is just putting it in such a
Speaker 1: soothing way. But then he goes on to point out
Speaker 1: that while self rescue devices like these they will get
Speaker 1: you back down to Earth, maybe not every time, but
Speaker 1: you know, at least in theory they work, but they
Speaker 1: won't guarantee that you will survive once you land. I
Speaker 1: like that he points that out. This is a good
Speaker 1: point because this is supposedly why the Russians and the
Speaker 1: say used vehicle carried a survival pack up up and
Speaker 1: back to space containing guns and ammunition. There was at
Speaker 1: least one crash where there were there were wolves on
Speaker 1: the prow. Yeah, this gun, if you ever get a
Speaker 1: chance to read about it, is pretty interesting. So this,
Speaker 1: the say used survival packet had a gun with three
Speaker 1: barrels and a folding stock, and they said it also
Speaker 1: worked as a shovel and had a swing out machete
Speaker 1: in it. And then it also fired three types of ammunition,
Speaker 1: which was rifle bullets, flares, and shotgun shells, which that
Speaker 1: sounds 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 and machete battles in space on the space station. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, 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. Uh.
Speaker 1: And the moose actually came with some gear oriented towards
Speaker 1: on the ground survival as well, So it had a
Speaker 1: survival kit, food and water, plus things to help the
Speaker 1: astronaut be found. So it had a thing called us
Speaker 1: so far bomb that's so far as an acurnym, which
Speaker 1: is a device that uses an underwater explosion to allow
Speaker 1: precise signaling of your location to people who are listening
Speaker 1: for underwater sounds. It also had radar chaff and some
Speaker 1: flares and that The Popular Science article has this awesome
Speaker 1: illustration of the moose that Robert, I think you enjoyed
Speaker 1: it as much as I did. But the astronaut has
Speaker 1: a very placid face in this picture where he's laying
Speaker 1: in this bed of foam that looks like it's just
Speaker 1: a blob that's gonna envelop him and digest him. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and the um and and the rockets that he's going
Speaker 1: to use to maneuver. It has the look kind of
Speaker 1: like a cross between a Hoover vacuum and like a
Speaker 1: divining rod. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, he's holding this big
Speaker 1: wishbone full of fire. But yeah, but this is great.
Speaker 1: I would love to see this utilized in some sort
Speaker 1: of an action sequence, you know, the sort of do
Speaker 1: it yourself re entry where our action hero just has
Speaker 1: to grab these two canisters, jump out of the of
Speaker 1: the spacecraft and just make their way back down to
Speaker 1: the here. Well, there are some great scenes in movies.
Speaker 1: I don't want to spoil anything about movies that exist
Speaker 1: because this usually is like the very end of the
Speaker 1: sci fi movie. But they involved things like this, like
Speaker 1: basically outside of vehicle maneuvering. That's very scary when you
Speaker 1: think about it. I mean, to be lost in space
Speaker 1: without any means of propulsion and safe reentry is is
Speaker 1: just a death sentence. Can we name any of those
Speaker 1: movies or it would be it would just be too
Speaker 1: much of a spoiler. Well, I know, I know. One
Speaker 1: of course is like gravity and Mues have some some
Speaker 1: cool re entry stuff at the end. Yeah. There there's
Speaker 1: also some stuff. And in the Martian did you see them? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right, and there's some outside vehicle maneuvering. Okay, I
Speaker 1: think maybe in both those films. I was falling asleep
Speaker 1: towards the end. Uh you know, and it's but hey,
Speaker 1: we're not going to spoil and say whether the individual
Speaker 1: survived or not, because that, of course is the big,
Speaker 1: big deal. It's one thing to initiate re entry. It's
Speaker 1: another thing to actually make it all the way to
Speaker 1: the Earth surface again and still be alive. Oh and
Speaker 1: I guess that does give away that I did finally
Speaker 1: see The Martian. People were asking after we did that
Speaker 1: how to Die on Mars episode, people were like, hey,
Speaker 1: have you read The Martian? I don't know if the
Speaker 1: movie was out yet, but when people were asking if
Speaker 1: I read the book because it covered a lot of
Speaker 1: the same stuff we talked about. Yeah, it had not then,
Speaker 1: but I have now. In keeping with that beach ball
Speaker 1: design we had we talked about earlier, there's actually a
Speaker 1: pre Challenger Shuttle era idea for a personal rescue enclosure
Speaker 1: or pre rescue ball. This was in like eight success
Speaker 1: centimeter diameter high tech beach ball for transport of astronauts
Speaker 1: from space from from a spacecraft in distress to the
Speaker 1: space shuttle. Uh So crew members would climb into the ball,
Speaker 1: they'd assume a fetal position and they'd be zipped inside
Speaker 1: by a space suited crew member. Huh, so this is
Speaker 1: this is like what we were talking about towards the
Speaker 1: beginning of of Von Bronze article, where you you'd get
Speaker 1: into a some kind of survival capsule and just wait
Speaker 1: for rescue. Yeah and uh and again this was a
Speaker 1: pre Challenger project from a time during which Shuttle crews
Speaker 1: wore no space suits on board the Shuttle afterwards. Afterwards, however,
Speaker 1: they wore pressure suits during liftoff. Again. Yeah, well that
Speaker 1: seems like a smart idea. But okay, So Moose and
Speaker 1: its contemporaries were basically shelved, but other space escape pod
Speaker 1: concepts came to the four and some of them were
Speaker 1: actually realized. Yeah. Yeah. For instance, there's the Jim and
Speaker 1: I l s r S. So you know, obviously no
Speaker 1: one wanted to go wind up stranded on the Moon,
Speaker 1: yet the risk of this happening were rather high during
Speaker 1: the Apollo Moon missions. As such, NASA designed the Gemini
Speaker 1: Lunar Surface Rescue Spacecraft l s r S. And the
Speaker 1: idea here is that in the event of the crew
Speaker 1: wound up stranded on the Moon, NASA could send this
Speaker 1: unmanned craft to their landing site that would be a
Speaker 1: thirty day trip, and then the two crew members could
Speaker 1: then board the craft to make a direct return to Earth.
Speaker 1: NASA also developed an orbital variant aimed at rescuing three
Speaker 1: individuals marooned in lunar orbit, as well as a lunar
Speaker 1: surface survival survival shelter model aimed at giving astronauts on
Speaker 1: the surface a little more time to await like a
Speaker 1: full blown, uh, you know, manned rescue, and they eventually
Speaker 1: planned to produce a universal lunar rescue vehicle to perform
Speaker 1: all three tasks for a trio of astronauts. But this
Speaker 1: was one of this one of those sort of later
Speaker 1: day Apollo ideas that really came about too late. Like
Speaker 1: our our interest in the Moon was was going away
Speaker 1: at that point. Can you imagine and though actually being
Speaker 1: stuck on the surface of the Moon for thirty days
Speaker 1: waiting for you it's crazy. It's like I was trying
Speaker 1: to sort of put it in terms of thinking about
Speaker 1: like my own household. So at our house, we we
Speaker 1: currently have two cars, new car and old car. And
Speaker 1: if I go, if I drive to the grocery store,
Speaker 1: if the car breaks down, a I can walk back
Speaker 1: from the grocery store, or my wife can come and
Speaker 1: pick me up in the car in the other car,
Speaker 1: or something to that effect. You know. But this is
Speaker 1: a kind of situation where there's there's only one car,
Speaker 1: or it's gonna take or it's gonna take a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of effort to get a second car available, and
Speaker 1: then to gas it up and send it on its
Speaker 1: journey to pick you up at this impossible store and
Speaker 1: you're driving to the middle of the desert in Arizona. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's um yeah. So I kept trying to put it
Speaker 1: in in sort of like logistical, real life surface world terms,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, some some models work, but some
Speaker 1: just ultimately fall short of capturing the just severe isolation.
Speaker 1: Like the closest thing I guess would be to just
Speaker 1: to set out to the middle of the Arctic Ocean,
Speaker 1: you know. Uh. Well, hey, so I've got a question. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what happens if you have to escape the International Space Station? Well,
Speaker 1: luckily there there is a way, so um yeah, So
Speaker 1: let's say are in the International Space Station and uh,
Speaker 1: something catastrophic happens, maybe there's space shrapnel or more problems
Speaker 1: with the station's toilets, and those just get out of hand.
Speaker 1: What some of the ammunition for the soy Use survival
Speaker 1: kit just explodes, yeah, or you know, maybe just run
Speaker 1: out of vodka. Whatever to the dilemma. There is an
Speaker 1: escape craft on a hand, and it's one of those
Speaker 1: Russian so use the space capsules. So we first flew
Speaker 1: one to the I S. S in two thousand and
Speaker 1: it's been it's been a fixture ever since. It can
Speaker 1: survive re entry as what as with the two thousand
Speaker 1: nine Space Junks scare, it can also provide just a
Speaker 1: safe refuge daring of the scare um. And following the
Speaker 1: two thousand three Columbia Shuttle disaster, the soy Use served
Speaker 1: as the primary means of transport to and from the
Speaker 1: I S. S U. The trip took up to two days,
Speaker 1: and the trip back was a mere three point five hours.
Speaker 1: So this is the idea here with the so us
Speaker 1: is that it's kind of like, all right, I'm terrified
Speaker 1: of my car breaking down on my way to the store.
Speaker 1: Why don't I just keep a car at the store, ye, permanently,
Speaker 1: and then I can always drive that pack if something
Speaker 1: goes wrong. Um, that's kind of the the idea here.
Speaker 1: So the only thing is that up to so only
Speaker 1: up to three crew members can return to Earth from
Speaker 1: the I S S a board of so US t
Speaker 1: M A spacecraft. The vehicle lands on the flat steep
Speaker 1: of Kazakhstan in Central Asia. There again, the return takes
Speaker 1: about three and a half hours. And this is why
Speaker 1: you can you can only have three people on the
Speaker 1: I S S at any given time unless there's another
Speaker 1: craft present, because you can only get three people out
Speaker 1: in an emergency. Right. If you have a fourth person
Speaker 1: there and you've got to evacuate, one of them is
Speaker 1: going to be taken the moose, right And it's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's I'm sorry, I'm just kidding. They don't actually have
Speaker 1: as far as far as we know, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, you can't clown card this thing. You can't
Speaker 1: just pack a bunch of people in there and have
Speaker 1: them sort of hold on to the sides of the capsule.
Speaker 1: You mean, you have to there has you have to
Speaker 1: strap yourself in there. There's their oxygen logistics in place,
Speaker 1: so three people are less no more. Now, that's not
Speaker 1: to say we haven't looked into other possibilities. More I
Speaker 1: guess you could say refined possibilities than just having a
Speaker 1: three person spaceship on hand up there. Um. At one
Speaker 1: point NASA was looking into the X thirty eight. This
Speaker 1: was the I S S Crew return vehicle, and this
Speaker 1: is a really cool design. It basically looked like a
Speaker 1: mini like stubby Space Shuttle, UM and and this would
Speaker 1: have this would have allowed them, you know, more individuals
Speaker 1: to return from I S S to Earth. But it
Speaker 1: was a pretty pre costly program. According to a Wired
Speaker 1: magazine article from the time, the program had cost around
Speaker 1: five million dollars so far, and then it was just
Speaker 1: fifty million shy of completing its flight test. When basically
Speaker 1: under the Georgia W. Bush administration, UH space and the
Speaker 1: and re visiting the Moon became devalued as an objective,
Speaker 1: so the X thirty eight went away as a possibility. Now.
Speaker 1: It's also worth noting that one of the more dangerous
Speaker 1: things about rocket propulsion into space is just taking off.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like with with aviation. Of course, that's
Speaker 1: the dangerous stent. That's that's when you have this enormous
Speaker 1: explosion strapped to the bottom of the craft propelling you
Speaker 1: up out of the atmosphere. So as as has become
Speaker 1: important in the past, having a means of ejecting the
Speaker 1: capsule from the top of that massive explosive rocket is
Speaker 1: often highly advisable. And as we're going more and more
Speaker 1: into into that launch style, we're seeing more and more
Speaker 1: of a earned to that UM. So in a way,
Speaker 1: we're going back to technology that we used with Mercury
Speaker 1: and Apollo spacecraft. We see this in the form of
Speaker 1: a basic launch escape system. So you have a talk
Speaker 1: mounted rocket on the capsule that in the event of
Speaker 1: a mishap during takeoff, can blast the man capsule clear
Speaker 1: of the rocket and allow it to parachute back to
Speaker 1: the surface. That seems very useful. Yeah, the sell Us
Speaker 1: uses this, UH, this technology, and there are a number
Speaker 1: of man spacecraft that are currently in development, UH, several
Speaker 1: of which are capsule based and you know would also
Speaker 1: employ this. So we're talking about like UH, NASA's Ryan
Speaker 1: Multi Purpose Crew Vehicle SpaceX. UH they're Dragon V two.
Speaker 1: There's also the the U S Bowing CST one hundred. UM.
Speaker 1: There's a there's a quote here that I found from
Speaker 1: SpaceX officials and they said it's similar to an injection
Speaker 1: seat for a fighter pilot, but instead of ejecting the
Speaker 1: pilot out of the spacecraft, the entire spacecraft is ejected
Speaker 1: away from the launch vehicle. And that is something that
Speaker 1: I guess you can think of as as somewhat practical
Speaker 1: to do cause of this inherent separation between the spacecraft
Speaker 1: capsule and the launch vehicle itself. This is a natural division,
Speaker 1: because they're going to be separating anyway at some point
Speaker 1: during the ascent. Correct, Yeah, they're they're they're separate entities anyway. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, we're gonna take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we are going to look at a
Speaker 1: few more escape pods for some stranger scenarios involving natural disasters. So, Joe,
Speaker 1: you grew up in like Middle Tennessee, didn't you? Or
Speaker 1: you or not? A lot of tornadoes in Chattanooga. We
Speaker 1: got tornadoes. Yeah, we actually tornadoes have been right through
Speaker 1: 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 I haven't grown up in Middle Tennessee.
Speaker 1: We 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. You know, the tornado could common.
Speaker 1: What can you do? What can you do against the tornado?
Speaker 1: It this titanic force of nature that's just going to
Speaker 1: destroy everything in its path. Let's see, can we look
Speaker 1: to movies for inspiration? What do they do in that
Speaker 1: movie Twister? I believe they throw a candy bar in
Speaker 1: one direction and then run in the other, and then
Speaker 1: so that they distract the tornado with the candy blocks. Right,
Speaker 1: I think that's how that went down. Uh No, generally
Speaker 1: in uh in tornado movies and in tornado reality, like,
Speaker 1: all you can do is find shelter. Right, if you
Speaker 1: have a if you have a storm shelter, if you
Speaker 1: have a a fortified storm basement, Um, you can run
Speaker 1: in there, blatch the door, and just ride it out.
Speaker 1: But it is very important, very important that your shelter
Speaker 1: be a high quality shelter, like a building with a foundation.
Speaker 1: Uh not necessarily something like a trailer. In fact, I
Speaker 1: have often heard the advice given to people who are
Speaker 1: living in mobile homes and trailers, anything that's not solidly
Speaker 1: anchored to the ground or built on a foundation that
Speaker 1: you're better off not in the trailer than in it,
Speaker 1: because it essentially just turns into a death machine if
Speaker 1: a tornado comes through and you're inside a mobile home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think we've all consumed images'd be they mental images,
Speaker 1: cinematic or otherwise, of trailers and mobile homes just sucked
Speaker 1: up into the sky by deadly twisters, or certainly trailer
Speaker 1: parks that have been devastated by actual tornadoes. But what
Speaker 1: have you what have you actually had an escape pode
Speaker 1: for your trailer? Uh? Now, before you envision a rocket
Speaker 1: propelled trailer bathroom that blasts you away from the crumbling,
Speaker 1: wind gripped trailer as it's you know, sucked into the
Speaker 1: sky amid all the debris. Um, remember this as as
Speaker 1: as a twister sucks the trailer up into the air,
Speaker 1: what you want to do is stay firmly fixed to
Speaker 1: the ground. Sure, I mean that's ultimately the design of
Speaker 1: any escape capsule is getting me back to the surface
Speaker 1: of the earth. But in this case, you're already on
Speaker 1: the surface, so you just need to remain there at
Speaker 1: all costs. So I'm following you so far, So where
Speaker 1: do escape pods come in. Well, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: this does not. This has has not been built yet.
Speaker 1: Maybe some individuals have have taken it upon themselves to
Speaker 1: build it. I hope so, and if they did, I
Speaker 1: would love to see the photos. But no, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about We're going into the wildest corners of
Speaker 1: the patent internet. Yeah, particularly a patent for a tornado
Speaker 1: escope escape capsule for trailer homes. Yeah, it's it is.
Speaker 1: It's pretty ingenious. It's essentially a little safe room in
Speaker 1: your trailer, anchored to the ground, and it consists of
Speaker 1: the following. This is from the patent. First, an opening
Speaker 1: formed in the floor of the house trailer and positioned
Speaker 1: directly below said internal compartment, So if you're in your
Speaker 1: compartment and underneath it there's like a hole in the floor.
Speaker 1: An escape capsule dimensioned to be received and releasably supported
Speaker 1: within set internal compartment. And then you have a ground
Speaker 1: engaging anchor position beneath set internal compartment in the house trailer,
Speaker 1: and then a tether that's connected between the escape capsule
Speaker 1: and the grounding anchor. So it's it is like this
Speaker 1: fancy little capsule in your trailer. There's a hole in
Speaker 1: the trailer underneath it, and it's anchored to the ground firmly. Okay,
Speaker 1: so I said, this is kind of ingenious. But I mean,
Speaker 1: if 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 can. You can make that argument, and maybe that's
Speaker 1: why this wasn't built. But but the I guess the
Speaker 1: the the argument here is this way, you don't have
Speaker 1: to anchor the entire trailer to the ground. You just
Speaker 1: anchor this one little safe him. 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 Seinfeldt 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 storm proof living option. But but
Speaker 1: what it Probably they probably don't do that because the
Speaker 1: airplane couldn't get off the ground, right, But but what
Speaker 1: if you could just have this one little capsule in
Speaker 1: the house. But then I'd also that The thing is,
Speaker 1: anyone who's ever been in a trailer before, and I
Speaker 1: certainly have you, you don't have a lot of room
Speaker 1: in there anyway. So the other thing is, how do
Speaker 1: you sacrifice the room for this compartment unless you end
Speaker 1: up utilizing it for something else, like I guess you
Speaker 1: have to. You could use it as a closet, But
Speaker 1: then I can well imagine the scenario where someone looks
Speaker 1: out the window or they turn on the radio, Oh
Speaker 1: my goodness, there's a twister coming. I've got to clean
Speaker 1: out the closet because that is my only chance to
Speaker 1: survive evil. And so you're frantically trying to move everything
Speaker 1: out of the board. Games. We never even play these, yeah,
Speaker 1: or you know, because other options, what you could have
Speaker 1: it be the bathroom. How would that work to have
Speaker 1: your your bathroom be the escape capsule? The showers? What
Speaker 1: I was thinking. You get into the shower and it's
Speaker 1: like a I don't know why the shower I guess
Speaker 1: I don't know, because it's like a it's like a
Speaker 1: sealed off little box in a certain way. Yeah, Like, okay,
Speaker 1: I could see that working, and and you would You
Speaker 1: would probably not fill the shower up with just a
Speaker 1: bunch of junk in the meantime, and the fact that
Speaker 1: you would use the shower would make it remain an
Speaker 1: open option for escape capsule. Right. Then again, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: want to be flying around inside the shower and bashing
Speaker 1: your head against the faucet, right, So you'd have to
Speaker 1: have like a shower like at padding and straps on
Speaker 1: the walls, strap yourself in man a padded shower. They'll
Speaker 1: probably get a little mildewy, wouldn't it if the material
Speaker 1: was right? I don't know. I think we're updating the
Speaker 1: patent here. I think we have some great ideas. Uh 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
Speaker 1: Power almost ten years ago. I got some press in
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven, I assume related to the March two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven earthquake and tsunami that hit Japan. But basically
Speaker 1: it looks like a giant yellow ball with a hatch
Speaker 1: and a little porthole window near the top. And the
Speaker 1: yellow color is strategic because it hopefully makes the escape
Speaker 1: capsule 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 of 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 could 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 thousand 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: skate a capsule more than anything, much like you know,
Speaker 1: much like a storm shelter or a bomb shelter. It's
Speaker 1: the idea that there is an escape. It's an idea
Speaker 1: that 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 so there's an escape capsule
Speaker 1: for this scenario that my my primitive parts of my
Speaker 1: brain can can feel good about. Yeah. Obviously I claim
Speaker 1: no expertise in how to survive high energy events, but
Speaker 1: I looking at these things, I do have to wonder.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, so they float, that's good. You're you're
Speaker 1: not gonna get trapped underwater hopefully, you know, so you're
Speaker 1: in this thing, you'll float up to the top eventually
Speaker 1: and be rescued. But also, you know, a tsunami is
Speaker 1: an incredibly high energy event, and so it's gonna have
Speaker 1: you bashing around at things. Now they can probably I guess,
Speaker 1: pad the inside of this thing, but you're also going
Speaker 1: to be in there with other people, and there's this
Speaker 1: metal pole for you to hold onto. I just wonder
Speaker 1: if when you open this thing up at the end,
Speaker 1: is it is going to be like a big bloody
Speaker 1: mess inside unless you pack enough. Sorry for the horrible image,
Speaker 1: but unless you do, you do go complete clown car
Speaker 1: in this and you just make sure that you fill
Speaker 1: it up completely, and then some individuals survives, some don't.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like there's like not enough room for
Speaker 1: you 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 that 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 efficient 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 restraints 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. Okay.
Speaker 1: First of all, ambient music has a tremendous soothing qualities.
Speaker 1: Music for airports, bran, you know, and that's what will
Speaker 1: get you through, you know. And maybe he would have
Speaker 1: he would he would create a custom composition, 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: you know, I'm guessing a fairly ridiculous sum for this
Speaker 1: upscale survival capsule, you might want to spend some time
Speaker 1: in it, like I would want to. I would if
Speaker 1: I had a stressful day. I don't want to go
Speaker 1: home and just climb into my survival capsule and maybe
Speaker 1: crank some tunes. I'm with you, I can see it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it can be your safe place. Okay, what are my
Speaker 1: other options? I'm already on board for the music. You
Speaker 1: can pay up for dry powder, seat toilet, Okay. So
Speaker 1: I don't know, because on one hand, we we all
Speaker 1: who have access to modern plumbing or very grateful for
Speaker 1: that that luxury. Many people throughout human history have not
Speaker 1: had such luxuries. But do you really want I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, on one hand, I guess it might be
Speaker 1: better than the alternative, But I'm just thinking about the
Speaker 1: idea of human waste slashing around in a survival capsule.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess maybe it's going to be coming
Speaker 1: out either way, and it's just a question do you
Speaker 1: have a toilet or not? Yeah, And I'm wondering what
Speaker 1: this consists of, because it instantly makes me think of
Speaker 1: overnight canoe trip, the trips that I've been on where
Speaker 1: you were required by the park to have a toilet
Speaker 1: option on the canoe, and what what we had was,
Speaker 1: and instance, it's kind of an escape capsule. It was
Speaker 1: a folder's coffee can with kitty letter in it. In
Speaker 1: the event that you needed to use the restroom in there,
Speaker 1: you certainly could. It would not be fun, but it
Speaker 1: could be done. And just having it there, you know,
Speaker 1: made you feel a little easier and made the park
Speaker 1: rangers feel a little easier. I guess. So maybe it's
Speaker 1: all psychological, Yeah, I think, I mean, that's that's a
Speaker 1: large part of any escape system. That's true. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: got to manage your mind. But then there's additional internal lighting.
Speaker 1: You can pay up for solar panel array that would
Speaker 1: that survive a tsunami external solar panel array and you're
Speaker 1: getting hit by a giant wave. I mean maybe if
Speaker 1: it was properly shielded with some sort of you know,
Speaker 1: like a like a really firm plexiglass of situation. I'm
Speaker 1: wondering about that. But then additional internal insulation acoustic and thermal.
Speaker 1: And then finally they've got color options. And I thought
Speaker 1: the whole point was we wanted to be visible though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: well it's this red orange color. I mean, the other
Speaker 1: one's a yellow color. I'd imagine either one could be visible,
Speaker 1: so maybe you can also be yellow. It would be
Speaker 1: horrible if you wanted to pick a survival capsule that
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know, seawater gray. Yeah, yeah, surely
Speaker 1: they wouldn't allow that. But maybe like zebra stripes, I
Speaker 1: could see where there might be some sort of custom
Speaker 1: I catching color. You'd go for a racing stripe, yea
Speaker 1: NASCAR number, though, I do want to say, I mean,
Speaker 1: while the concept of these capsules is kind of funny
Speaker 1: to me, obviously I mean, if you reckon it all
Speaker 1: with the real outcome of a tsunami, I mean, these
Speaker 1: are some of the most devastating natural disasters in all
Speaker 1: the world and all of world history and uh and
Speaker 1: and it can be truly horrifying. And it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where you think, while there really is no
Speaker 1: great escape from this if you don't have for warning.
Speaker 1: Um and so, anybody who could design a viable tsunami
Speaker 1: survival capsule that people could really use to survive could
Speaker 1: be affordable too many. I mean, I think that would
Speaker 1: be a worthwhile thing to pursue. So I don't want to.
Speaker 1: I don't want to just make jokes about what these
Speaker 1: people are doing. I don't know, the toilet seems a
Speaker 1: little funny to me, but but yeah, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you can actually make a capsule and you can get
Speaker 1: it to the people who are most vulnerable to tsunamis,
Speaker 1: I think that's a noble thing to do. Plus, let's
Speaker 1: face it, if if you can't laugh about pooping in
Speaker 1: a coffee canister right on the on the on the
Speaker 1: escape barge, on the in the survival capsule, then what's
Speaker 1: the purpose of surviving? You know, because our humanity has
Speaker 1: to survive, and that entails being able to laugh at
Speaker 1: the prospect of pooping in a folder's canister. That humorous
Speaker 1: gesture would be the true presence of a happy spirit
Speaker 1: on board. Alright, So I have one more example of
Speaker 1: an escape capsule to discuss here. So many of the
Speaker 1: capsules we've mentioned share the same mission, right to return
Speaker 1: adventurous humans to the Earth's surface from a malfunctioning aircraft
Speaker 1: to the surface, etcetera. But what about when things go
Speaker 1: hey wire beneath the surface of the Earth. Are you
Speaker 1: talking about underground core drilling vehicles like in the Core? Um, well,
Speaker 1: we're not quite there yet. Did they have an escape capsule,
Speaker 1: like some sort of thing that came up. I'm sorry
Speaker 1: to say this. I've never seen the Core. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: well it makes me this idea makes me think of
Speaker 1: the the terror dome on a teenage muntant Ninja turtles, right,
Speaker 1: because it would it would drill down, and I think
Speaker 1: they had they had the equivalent of like a a
Speaker 1: little drill vehicle that would come up that was kind
Speaker 1: of like an escape capsule that the foot soldiers would
Speaker 1: jump out of in the video game. Right, I don't
Speaker 1: remember anything about that, but I believe you well it was.
Speaker 1: It was fantastic and uh, you know, could probably not
Speaker 1: exist in real life, but here's an example of something
Speaker 1: that did. So you can find various mining escape capsule
Speaker 1: patents out there, but the most notable deployment it real
Speaker 1: life deployment of so of one of these systems came
Speaker 1: in the wake of the two thousand ten Chilean mining acts.
Speaker 1: And do you remember when this occurred. I don't. I mean,
Speaker 1: I remember various mining accidents, but this one, the particulars
Speaker 1: of it don't stand out to me. So what happened here,
Speaker 1: So this was thirty three miners trapped seven hundred meters
Speaker 1: that's feet underground and uh and about five kilometers or
Speaker 1: three miles from the mind's interests entrants. So this was
Speaker 1: a pretty big deal. They made a movie about it recently,
Speaker 1: like I think they caught 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: Busch 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 is 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 this subterranean environment. If we can get a shaft
Speaker 1: down there to you and we can potentially get you
Speaker 1: back up or or if there's an adjacent shaft and
Speaker 1: we can somehow get you to that shaft, etcetera. So this,
Speaker 1: this Phoenix capsule consisted of again look kind of like
Speaker 1: this torpedo looking device. Each one had retractable wheels to
Speaker 1: allow for a smoother ride to the surface, so the
Speaker 1: wheels would skit along the sides of the vertical shaft
Speaker 1: that you're you're being pulled back up. Each one have
Speaker 1: an oxygen supply, lighting, video and voice communications, reinforce roof
Speaker 1: to protect against a 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 up. God, that would be scary. Yeah. So these
Speaker 1: were these were pretty These were pretty amazing little devices. Um,
Speaker 1: and they've I think they were they were making the
Speaker 1: rounds for a little bit, like 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. I don't usually experience
Speaker 1: strong clustrophobia. But just now contemplating this, I'm overwhelmed. Well
Speaker 1: you should. You should definitely check out more about the story.
Speaker 1: There was a wonderful I want to say, was an
Speaker 1: episode of the Ideas podcast out of Canada that into
Speaker 1: it that I think the interviewed an author had written
Speaker 1: a book about it. I think it's the same book
Speaker 1: that the movie was based on, and they went into
Speaker 1: detail just talking about just how bad the situation was,
Speaker 1: and like the attitudes among the survivors and and what
Speaker 1: was going on top side as well. So it's a
Speaker 1: it's a really interesting human drama. I haven't seen the
Speaker 1: movie yet, but it kind of makes me want to
Speaker 1: see it. Interesting all right, So we've talked about aviation
Speaker 1: escape pods, we've talked about space escapes pods, we've talked
Speaker 1: about whether related escape pods, mining escape pods. What we
Speaker 1: have possibly left out here, Um, you know, what they
Speaker 1: 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. No,
Speaker 1: essentially is right the brain you get to maybe the
Speaker 1: brain upper nervous system is encased in a survival eject capsule. Okay,
Speaker 1: something bad happens to the body, your brain kind of
Speaker 1: shoots out and waits for rescue. Huh. Well, I guess
Speaker 1: the A more slightly more believable version of this would
Speaker 1: be just the idea that that we would have our consciousness,
Speaker 1: our memories backed up somewhere digitally, so that every you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know how how often would you want to
Speaker 1: be backed up? How much time are you willing to
Speaker 1: lose in your life? Oh? You know every week? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's fine. So something happens, you just eject the SD card. Yeah,
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, don'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 gate 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, why aren't you
Speaker 1: talking about this? You should let us know. Yeah, let
Speaker 1: us know about the fictional ones. Let us know about
Speaker 1: the real life escape capsules. Let us know about some
Speaker 1: of the proposed ones that just haven't come to fruition yet.
Speaker 1: We would love to hear about them. And hey, let
Speaker 1: us know you want to hear. Do you want to
Speaker 1: 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 as 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.
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