Speaker 1: Brought to you by the all New Toyota Corolla. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff, Work Stops
Speaker 1: dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
Speaker 1: That's Charles W. Chuck. Chucker's Bryant. This is stuff you
Speaker 1: should know. You can just call us MAV and Goose
Speaker 1: for this one. No you can't. Okay, okay, it depends
Speaker 1: who's MAV and who's Goose. Well, the the re email,
Speaker 1: I said that it's very appropriate for the show. Why
Speaker 1: because Goose died because his ejection seed malfunction. I know
Speaker 1: he hit his head on the canopy. I know I
Speaker 1: broke his neck. Is because he'd angered God earlier that day,
Speaker 1: I guess so, so I'll be Goose. Are you planning
Speaker 1: on dying? I'm just planning on you feeling guilt for
Speaker 1: the rest of your life. You caused the spin by
Speaker 1: being a guns blazing maverick. That is true, but I
Speaker 1: would be like, I didn't design the injection seat. That's
Speaker 1: the guy who should feel guilty for the rest of
Speaker 1: his life. I'm gonna go get a taco. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go ride my motorcycle around Miramar. It's funny.
Speaker 1: When I saw top Gun, and I may have talked
Speaker 1: about this before, I remember thinking at the time, like, people,
Speaker 1: you don't die in training exercises like that, that's so hollywood.
Speaker 1: It up as a matter of fact, that happened very
Speaker 1: well two years ago. It happens all the time. You
Speaker 1: never hear about it. Yeah, there's the guys that make
Speaker 1: the papers, my paper. It doesn't. It's sad that it doesn't,
Speaker 1: but uh, yeah, like it. It happens. Our military died
Speaker 1: during training and it's it's awful. My brother in law
Speaker 1: is a helicopter pilos, you know, and he's lost several
Speaker 1: friends through the years in training. Yeah. Is it in
Speaker 1: crashes or from ejection seats crashes? Yeah? Um, there was
Speaker 1: a guy in two thousand and eleven. You know the
Speaker 1: Blue Angels, the what there's also the Red Arrows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know the Blue Angels. Okay, Well the Red Arrows
Speaker 1: um are another formation flying team, like just basically some
Speaker 1: really great pilots, and one of them was killed when
Speaker 1: his ejection seat went off while his plane was motionless.
Speaker 1: The ejection seat just accidentally went off. That's a zero
Speaker 1: zero ejection and that what that's called. Yes, but that
Speaker 1: means you're on the ground and you're not flying at all. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: but I think the problem is the plane didn't realize
Speaker 1: where the ejection. Um, the sequencer didn't realize that it
Speaker 1: was a zero zero ejection because the paras you never deployed.
Speaker 1: So he died when he fell back down to earth
Speaker 1: from a couple hundred feet out. I guess, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: well this all makes sense in a second. Um. You
Speaker 1: know what I think as a primer before, if you're
Speaker 1: at home listening, you can go to the YouTube site
Speaker 1: and look up, look up like ejection seat and there's
Speaker 1: one like slow motion on the ground zero zero ejection
Speaker 1: from film from different angles that really shows how it
Speaker 1: all works. It's pretty cool and um, you really get
Speaker 1: a sense of like what they do, go up a
Speaker 1: couple hundred feet Yeah, and quick too, very quick. Um.
Speaker 1: This so this is this is not even my intro.
Speaker 1: I've got an intro, Chuck. There's a guy in World
Speaker 1: War Two who is a tail gunner on a B
Speaker 1: seventeen flying Fortress. And this man's name was Alan McGhee,
Speaker 1: who's staff sergeant. And if you were a tail gunner
Speaker 1: on the B seventeen, you were basically cramped into this
Speaker 1: little gun turret with your knees up to your chest,
Speaker 1: your heads poking out in a little clear canopy shell. Yes,
Speaker 1: and you had no room whatsoever to wear a parachute.
Speaker 1: You had to keep it in the cockpit with everybody else. Well.
Speaker 1: Alan McGee is on this B seventeen called the Snap
Speaker 1: Crackle Pop, and they're flying on a mission over France.
Speaker 1: Satan is there, which was also known as Flack City
Speaker 1: because of the anti aircraft guns down on the ground.
Speaker 1: And sure enough, the Snap Crackle Pop took some flak lost.
Speaker 1: A wing had a couple of holes in it, and
Speaker 1: these holes in turn put holes into McGee's parachute. So
Speaker 1: he needs to bail out. He finds a hole that's
Speaker 1: been blown into the side of the the Snap Crackle
Speaker 1: Pop and jumps out at twenty thousand feet with a
Speaker 1: parachute with holes in it, with no parachute whatsoever, because
Speaker 1: he was like why bother. He just knew he needed
Speaker 1: to get out of the plane quick and he later
Speaker 1: said that he thought he had a parachute. Yes, He
Speaker 1: fall twenty two thousand feet more than four miles to
Speaker 1: the ground, goes right through the skylight in the satan
Speaker 1: Asaire Trades train station and Lands and Lives. He had
Speaker 1: a um how does that happen? He had I'll tell
Speaker 1: you a second. He had a broken right leg, broken
Speaker 1: right ankle, nearly severed right arm, twenty eight shrapnel wounds
Speaker 1: from the shards of glass because he fell right through
Speaker 1: plate glass from again twenty two thousand ft four miles
Speaker 1: above the ground, and he lived to tell about it.
Speaker 1: A German doctor apparently took very good care of him,
Speaker 1: and he later on said, you know, publicly thanked the guy,
Speaker 1: even though he was a Nazi doctor, um for saving
Speaker 1: his life. And so I'm reading about this and this
Speaker 1: is just astounding. I'm looking into it more and more
Speaker 1: and more, and there's no trick. It's just physics. Um.
Speaker 1: This physicist Dr Seth Eisenberg, he's not a physicist, he's
Speaker 1: a trauma specialist. He said on Popular Mechanics that there's
Speaker 1: really no magic here. That he was going. McGee was
Speaker 1: going as fast as he would have been had he
Speaker 1: jumped off of something like a twelve story building. Once
Speaker 1: you reach terminal velocity, it's all the same, whether it's
Speaker 1: four miles or whether it's twenty feet. Um, it's still
Speaker 1: pretty spectacular that he fell four miles through the roof
Speaker 1: of a building and survived. The point of all this
Speaker 1: is so the point was though, that he could have
Speaker 1: fallen off a twelve story building through the plate glasses
Speaker 1: and everyone had been like, Wow, that's pretty awesome, but
Speaker 1: not miraculous. Yeah, compared to four miles it's not. Okay,
Speaker 1: I got you. It's still be pretty miraculous that he survived.
Speaker 1: Used to die, you know, twelve story building. He's pretty
Speaker 1: banged up. Yeah, So the point is him just jumping
Speaker 1: out of the the hole in the side of the
Speaker 1: snap crackle pop was not that different from how you
Speaker 1: would get out of a plane in World War Two.
Speaker 1: You just kind of opened up the canopy and jumped
Speaker 1: out and then you know, opened your parachute at the
Speaker 1: appropriate height right or altitude. When that's fine with planes,
Speaker 1: propeller planes, but once jets were introduced, you can't do
Speaker 1: that because they're going so much faster than a propeller
Speaker 1: plane does. You can't just jump out speed of sound, dude.
Speaker 1: So around the time the jet age began, a company
Speaker 1: named Martin Baxter, a British aviation company, started really looking
Speaker 1: into the idea of the ejection seat, and we have
Speaker 1: that today thanks in large part to them. Hats off, Yeah,
Speaker 1: real men of genius. Uh So. An ejection seat, if
Speaker 1: you don't know, just to put it very simply, is
Speaker 1: a seat that is ejected from the aircraft ob jet,
Speaker 1: can be a helicopter. Um. And it's a very much
Speaker 1: a last second maybe not last second, but it's the
Speaker 1: last ditch effort to save yourself when you know that
Speaker 1: that aircraft is going down, right, Yeah, it's the that's
Speaker 1: your last resort. You don't do that frivolously because number one,
Speaker 1: airplanes are expense Yeah, they're also very dangerous when they
Speaker 1: crash land. Yeah, and you really I think it's probably
Speaker 1: bad form to scuttle your plane when you still have
Speaker 1: control of it. Yeah, I think so. Like, hey, I
Speaker 1: wonder what this thing does. Um. And the article points
Speaker 1: out and it's once you really read this thing, it's
Speaker 1: really true. It's one of the most complex parts of
Speaker 1: an aircraft. Could be thousands of parts in some of these,
Speaker 1: and the object is to get the pilot out and
Speaker 1: then disattached from that seat without hitting any part of
Speaker 1: the aircraft. So like up and out in a way
Speaker 1: out of harm's way, at which point, um you become
Speaker 1: a parachuter. Yeah, that's that's exactly right. You want to
Speaker 1: get the pilot into the position to just parachute down
Speaker 1: into the ground, and it all happens and under four seconds,
Speaker 1: and about two to three of those seconds is the
Speaker 1: actual parachute aspect, Like the ejection part is all in
Speaker 1: about a second and a second and a half. It's
Speaker 1: pretty pretty amazing, and we're gonna tell you how it works.
Speaker 1: So the process of it is fairly simple. The procedure, right,
Speaker 1: it's like, just get the pilot out of the plane
Speaker 1: above it, out of the way of the plane crash, yeah,
Speaker 1: and let the parachute happen to its thing. Right. But
Speaker 1: when you look at the mechanisms involved in this, it's
Speaker 1: extremely detailed, especially since when you had the first microprocessor
Speaker 1: in charge of ejection seats. It's really neat. Yes, So
Speaker 1: let's talk about ejection seats. Let's talk about the basics.
Speaker 1: You've got. First of all, the seat, Yes, the seat
Speaker 1: is connected. It's in the cockpit obviously, and it's attached
Speaker 1: to rails um by by way of some rollers. So
Speaker 1: you might think like the seats just like bolted to
Speaker 1: the floor. It's not. It's on rollers on these rails
Speaker 1: because those rails and rollers are going to do the
Speaker 1: initial guidance of the chair at the proper angle out
Speaker 1: of the aircraft. Right. You can't just go up, you
Speaker 1: can't just go forward, you can't just go back right.
Speaker 1: And when you go up those rails, you actually have
Speaker 1: to go at a certain amount of speed, and that
Speaker 1: speed has to be slightly more than the aircraft is
Speaker 1: going or else you're not going to clear the cockpit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So to do that, you have what's called the catapult,
Speaker 1: which is usually a charge. Yeah, that's what gets you
Speaker 1: going up the rails and initially out. Um. Then there
Speaker 1: will be a secondary rocket that that shoots you up
Speaker 1: another couple of hundred feet and clear the tail of
Speaker 1: the plane and everything. Um. And it does it quick too,
Speaker 1: It does it really quick. And this is all This
Speaker 1: whole system is called an A E S and Assisted
Speaker 1: Egress system egress meaning exit or a way out. Um,
Speaker 1: little on the nose, but I get it. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: the military. Um. And Uh, the canopy is you know,
Speaker 1: if you've ever seen like a fighter jet, they've got
Speaker 1: the clear clear canopy above them where they like wave
Speaker 1: and like give the thumbs upside in the black Power
Speaker 1: sign and all that stuff. Yeah, where they shoot a
Speaker 1: bird at the Russian is in top Gun. Remember they
Speaker 1: flew right on the upside down right above them. That
Speaker 1: seemed almost incredible. It's very incredible. Yeah, and probably not real. Well,
Speaker 1: that's what I mean, Tony Scott r I p um.
Speaker 1: So you got the canopy, and the problem with the
Speaker 1: canopy is it shouldn't be there when you're trying to eject.
Speaker 1: It's right, So part of the assisted egre system is
Speaker 1: the canopy actually uh blowing and getting the heck out
Speaker 1: of the way. If you don't have a canopy, you
Speaker 1: might have an escape hatch built into the roof. And um.
Speaker 1: You do all this by pulling a lever either between
Speaker 1: your legs or by your side or in the case
Speaker 1: of Top Gun. I looked at the clip today. It's
Speaker 1: too two loops behind their head that they pulled. Or
Speaker 1: sometimes you might pull a face curtain down in front
Speaker 1: of your face, which serves two purposes. It gets the
Speaker 1: whole system moving and protects your face. And it's not
Speaker 1: like a veil, no, it's like it's sturdy. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: and I think of, like, you know what I think
Speaker 1: of when I think of curtain and planes, I think
Speaker 1: of like what they used to separate first class from
Speaker 1: from coach. We don't want this to bereta. So here's
Speaker 1: this black Lacey. He's like, I don't. I don't want
Speaker 1: to see having to bail out. So those are some
Speaker 1: of the ways. You know, there's all different kinds of systems,
Speaker 1: but that's generally how it works. Okay, so we got
Speaker 1: the general part before we go. Any let's do a
Speaker 1: message break and let's do that. Yeah. They's about to
Speaker 1: get really good though. Mm hm. Okay, So them's the basics.
Speaker 1: We're talking about the basics. Yeah, let's get into the
Speaker 1: nuts and bolts of this as it were. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: bolts will come into play actually specifics. Um. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about the seat. You've got your bucket, which is
Speaker 1: where you sit. Um it. Also the seat comes with
Speaker 1: survival equipment, which is kind of nice. Yeah, I licked
Speaker 1: it up. Some survival packs have like oxygen, so if
Speaker 1: you are bailing out and you're you're not attest to
Speaker 1: oxygen at a high altitude, you're gonna need it. Um.
Speaker 1: They have rifles in them. Which is just cool um blankets.
Speaker 1: What I don't get is the seat ejects from the person.
Speaker 1: So is the safety pack this stays attest Okay, so
Speaker 1: you're still in a sitting position with this thing attached
Speaker 1: to you or it's a test your back Okay, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I was confused by that too. I'm glad you took
Speaker 1: the time. Um, we cover the canopy. The catapult is
Speaker 1: obviously what initiates it, and it's operated with, like you said,
Speaker 1: ballistic cartridge. There's a lot of explosions going. You're riding
Speaker 1: a bullet right then, yeah, pretty much, then you're going
Speaker 1: to catapult the rails. You got your drug parachute, which
Speaker 1: is a small parachute five two to five ft in
Speaker 1: diameter that it initially pops out to uh, sort of
Speaker 1: balance you and make sure you're not just flying all
Speaker 1: over the place and slow you down a little bit,
Speaker 1: right because I mean, if you're going in at even
Speaker 1: a slight angle at the speed of sound, possibly, yes,
Speaker 1: you need to slow down kind of quick. And the
Speaker 1: drug parachute is just that little one like uh, then
Speaker 1: the drags that's exactly what it is. And sometimes you
Speaker 1: know how they'll have like a small one, and then
Speaker 1: a big one. They have that too on injection seats
Speaker 1: as well. And then the drug parachute also very commonly,
Speaker 1: um will trip the larger parachute too after a certain
Speaker 1: speed is reached. That's right. Um, what else, man, You've
Speaker 1: got your environmental sensor, which will get into how all
Speaker 1: this works. Um, But that is a device that tracks
Speaker 1: airspeed and altitude. Um, it doesn't just shoot you up
Speaker 1: and say I hope it's hope it's okay up there
Speaker 1: right exactly? And then it also depending on the readings
Speaker 1: it gets for your air speed and altitude, it'll it'll
Speaker 1: trip like a certain type of sequence. So like if
Speaker 1: you're at a very high altitude, there'll be a certain sequence.
Speaker 1: If you're at a low altitude but going a very
Speaker 1: fast speed, there will be a certain sequence, and so on.
Speaker 1: And there's a car called modes of ejection. Well we
Speaker 1: might as well go and cover that. It's Um, there's
Speaker 1: something called and I had to look this up. It
Speaker 1: was named for physicists Honree Peito, but um, everyone calls
Speaker 1: them uh pedd or pidot tubes when it really should
Speaker 1: be Peto tubes because he was French. But these are
Speaker 1: when the when the sequence begin, it travels up the
Speaker 1: rails and exposes these tubes and they measure air pressure
Speaker 1: and the differences in pressure to determine like how fast
Speaker 1: you're going and like which of these modes to enact
Speaker 1: that we're talking about. So that that's the that's part
Speaker 1: of the environmental center, and it sends that information of
Speaker 1: the recovery sequencer, which is basically the chip that controls
Speaker 1: the process. That's right. Um, So what are the three modes? Well,
Speaker 1: there's low altitude low speed, which is less than two
Speaker 1: fifty knots at less than fifteen thousand feet. No need
Speaker 1: for a drug parachute. You barely even need an injection
Speaker 1: seed at that point, you know. Um. There's mode too,
Speaker 1: which is low altitude high speed for when you're like,
Speaker 1: you know, Maverick or something like that, just going really
Speaker 1: fast but low UM. And then there's high altitude any speed,
Speaker 1: known as the scariest mode. Right. And so the modes
Speaker 1: are all based on you'll notice two things altitude and
Speaker 1: um speed velocity right. Um. And you put these things
Speaker 1: together and you create a graph and inside the graph,
Speaker 1: inside the the arc that's formed that's called the envelope,
Speaker 1: and anything inside the envelope is um safety. Like it's
Speaker 1: been proven, it's tested that if you follow this certain
Speaker 1: sense of certain sequence of events for this mode, within
Speaker 1: this altitude and this air speed, you're gonna most likely
Speaker 1: be fine. That's right. If you go outside of that,
Speaker 1: you are what's known as pushing the envelope. Is that
Speaker 1: where that came from? That's awesome? It is. I thought
Speaker 1: that was when you, like, we're super cool during negotiations
Speaker 1: and you would just write down what you wanted and
Speaker 1: push the envelope across the table. That's pushing your luck. Okay, wow,
Speaker 1: I love that. You know me and word origins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought you'd like that when I saw it, and
Speaker 1: I was like, Jack's gonna love it. So let's back
Speaker 1: up a bit and uh start with with the bailout.
Speaker 1: Your planes not doing well, you want to eject planes.
Speaker 1: Not your plane is sick. You want to eject and
Speaker 1: you pull the ejection handle. That sets off what we've
Speaker 1: already talked about, that first explosion to catapult you up
Speaker 1: the rails and into the air. And then there is
Speaker 1: an under seat rocket motor that actually propels you even further.
Speaker 1: And when you watch this thing in slow motion. It's
Speaker 1: you know, serious rocket propelled action going on under your butt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it's two stages, like the catapult and then
Speaker 1: the rocket, but it's all in the same source. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's basically shot shooting you. So you go off on
Speaker 1: a bullet and then a rocket. Yeah, that's what happens
Speaker 1: when you're ejecting in like you said, within the first
Speaker 1: half to one and a half seconds. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: all this happens in the canopy obviously has been jettisoned
Speaker 1: at this point, and that's a really cool thing to Like,
Speaker 1: these things are have to functions canopy, so they're bolted
Speaker 1: in there, and the way they're they're ejected as the
Speaker 1: bolts are blown by little tiny explosive charges, right, that's
Speaker 1: called lifting the canopy. Um, the bolts will blow and
Speaker 1: the cannon people start to fly off, but then there's
Speaker 1: another charge and another explosion towards the front that just
Speaker 1: shoots it off in another direction away from you as
Speaker 1: you're ejecting. All this is just so cool, man, how
Speaker 1: fast it happens, how complicated it all is. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: think about that, Like the computer sequencers still needs to
Speaker 1: know what mode to follow, so like when that canopy
Speaker 1: is starting to blow, it's taking the data readings and
Speaker 1: deciding all this is going on in like a second,
Speaker 1: a tenth of a seconded um. So lifting the canopy
Speaker 1: is one way you can still become injured. You can
Speaker 1: still run into the canopy, um I, just from blowing
Speaker 1: the bolts. So there's another mode, um or another means
Speaker 1: of getting rid of the canopy. And that's just shattering it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's when it basically explodes. And uh, it's like you've
Speaker 1: got chicken wire, but the chicken wire is explosive. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just just evaporate. Yeah, well done, evaporate the slipstream. Just
Speaker 1: makes it go by by really quickly. Um So for
Speaker 1: all intents and purposes. Uh. And then we also mentioned
Speaker 1: earlier if there is no canopy, there will be an
Speaker 1: explosive hatch that basically that's the same thing that seems
Speaker 1: the least safe to me, why because you can't see
Speaker 1: through it. An explosive hatch makes me think of like
Speaker 1: some really heavy thick steel that, yes, you can't see through,
Speaker 1: and that is just really a hole in another bit
Speaker 1: of heavy thick steel that you might bump into on
Speaker 1: your way out, like like an escape hatch from a submarine.
Speaker 1: That's what I think of when I think of a
Speaker 1: hatch like that on a plane. You know, give me
Speaker 1: a shattering canopy. You want it to dissolve above your head. Evaporate, evaporate. Alright,
Speaker 1: So then once you're out from the rails, uh, that
Speaker 1: secondary the rocket's gonna take you depends on your weight
Speaker 1: A hundred to two hundred feet up to safe safely
Speaker 1: clear you and um, I wish we had more recent
Speaker 1: stats than this, but we have one from that said
Speaker 1: that they had a success rate or I saw that
Speaker 1: four d and sixty three injections. I saw that that's
Speaker 1: a kind of standard for study from like I think
Speaker 1: two thousand six or something like that, and they found
Speaker 1: about eighty nine point four. And the bad news is
Speaker 1: the other ten percent means you've probably died. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: so it's either success or you die. Yes, I think
Speaker 1: that's pretty much the I think saving your life through
Speaker 1: the correct series is successful. Like if you're injured or whatever,
Speaker 1: I think they still generally count that as success. Um.
Speaker 1: So where are we man? So we're at the drug parachute.
Speaker 1: The drug gun fires a metal slug and it pulls
Speaker 1: out this little drug parachute. And then like we said,
Speaker 1: then there's the secondary shoot that I think the drug
Speaker 1: nnects that, right, yeah, the second they like the main shoot. UM,
Speaker 1: so you get the main shoot out before this happens. Though.
Speaker 1: Think about this when you are shot out on a
Speaker 1: bullet and then on a rocket and you're going up
Speaker 1: to I don't know, mark two, mark three, MAK one
Speaker 1: is seven. UM. That's speed of sound like supersonic travel. Um.
Speaker 1: And we have planes that can go a lot faster
Speaker 1: than that. When you exit the plane like that, UM,
Speaker 1: it's very easy for your seat to start to tumble
Speaker 1: and move around and spin or your limbs. Let's say,
Speaker 1: well we'll get to that. Just the seat itself. If
Speaker 1: everything's going encoding, the plant plant can still tumble and
Speaker 1: and this the wind resistance it meets can just push
Speaker 1: it around in all sorts of weird angles. So there's
Speaker 1: something called a Vernier rocket, right, and it's it is
Speaker 1: a rocket that just kind of fires like um, remember
Speaker 1: on Apollo thirteen when they were um like shooting off
Speaker 1: the little booster rockets like need correct the yaw and
Speaker 1: all that and pitch. That's what this rocket does. UM.
Speaker 1: Or these rockets, I should say. It stabilizes the seat
Speaker 1: and keeps it from spinning and tumbling and makes it
Speaker 1: stay up and down exactly so it knows what it's doing,
Speaker 1: just like your smartphone. Oh, yes, that what the compass
Speaker 1: thing is. Yeah really well, I mean yeah, plus when
Speaker 1: you tilted, it knows to go sideways. And yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I'm sure that or I hope the dejection seats
Speaker 1: have a little more advanced systems. But yeah, gyroscope. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: I never thought about that. Uh, maybe not a gyroscope,
Speaker 1: but something that functions in that way. People are like,
Speaker 1: that's not a gyroscope. We'll find out, Yeah, we sure,
Speaker 1: well many times over. Okay, so Chuck, let's talk about
Speaker 1: the physics of all this. Well, first we got to
Speaker 1: cover the seat man separator motor. And that's actually once
Speaker 1: you're in the air, you don't you're you don't want
Speaker 1: you can't land in the seat. They wanted to get
Speaker 1: you out of the seat, and that's accomplished by the
Speaker 1: seat man motor separator. Yeah. This motor dease basically goes
Speaker 1: we're and detaches the seat from you and you're you've
Speaker 1: got your parachute one, You've got your survival pack still,
Speaker 1: but the seat just kind of falls away to Earth
Speaker 1: and you just um slowly parachute down and land and
Speaker 1: if you're keptain scott O Grady, Yeah, then you spend
Speaker 1: the next five days evading serbs. That's right, successfully successfully.
Speaker 1: So physics my favorite topic. I know you love physics. Uh.
Speaker 1: Newton's second law of emotion comes into play here obviously
Speaker 1: because um force and acceleration of the crew member. Really,
Speaker 1: you know, that's how you're gonna live or die. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because when you exited plane, you get smacked by the wind,
Speaker 1: that's right. I mean, you're going faster than the speed
Speaker 1: of sound, and while you're normally operating the plane, the
Speaker 1: plane's taking it on the chin for you. You're not
Speaker 1: feeling this force of gravity nearly as much as you
Speaker 1: are when you're no longer surrounded by the plane and
Speaker 1: you're just exposed up there in the atmosphere. That's right.
Speaker 1: So Newton's second law of emotion states the acceleration of
Speaker 1: an object depends on the force acting upon it and
Speaker 1: the mass of the object. Force equals mass times acceleration.
Speaker 1: In this case, the mass is the mass of the
Speaker 1: human pilot and the chair, right, and uh, the force Uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Accelerations measured in gees right, So one
Speaker 1: G equals the the amount of one the the amount
Speaker 1: of the Earth's gravity right now, right. And so let's say, um,
Speaker 1: let's say we're a hundred and eighty pound pilot at
Speaker 1: sea level, we weigh a hundred and eighty pounds. That's
Speaker 1: one g um when we're going t gs and so
Speaker 1: on up to say twenty g s I believe, is
Speaker 1: what the an ejection seat is like the best are
Speaker 1: developed for At twenty g's hundred and eighty pounds, it
Speaker 1: feels like thirty pounds. That's the force that you encounter
Speaker 1: when you eject thirty pounds, All of a sudden of
Speaker 1: force is being exerted on your body. Yeah, and keeping
Speaker 1: in mind that one g of acceleration is equal to
Speaker 1: thirty two per scond. Yes, And it all depends on
Speaker 1: how much we weigh, like, that's how you figure out
Speaker 1: the mass you in the chair. That's the big one. Also,
Speaker 1: the the chair needs to know how fast to go
Speaker 1: because it has to go slightly faster than the plane,
Speaker 1: like I said, so it can clear it. That's amazing, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. But when So when you reject and you
Speaker 1: suddenly encounter twenty g s, which is the upper limits
Speaker 1: of human Um, what's the word I'm looking for? Tolerance? Um,
Speaker 1: A lot of really bad things can happen to you.
Speaker 1: That's right, and we know this thanks for our buddy
Speaker 1: Colonel step Yeah. Remember he used to have read outs
Speaker 1: from the rocket sled and man he had some crazy
Speaker 1: stuff happened to him. So what's the formula? UM speed
Speaker 1: equals acceleration times time plus initial speed or v F
Speaker 1: equals a T plus the I. Yes, So think about this. Okay,
Speaker 1: what we just said is that, UM, we understand the force,
Speaker 1: which is when you go up, you are suddenly exposed
Speaker 1: to that lateral force, hit in the face with that
Speaker 1: windy um, and you're also being pushed out and upward.
Speaker 1: So I think you said that in some cases, within
Speaker 1: the first second and a half you are up two feet,
Speaker 1: So I think you said earlier something like you within
Speaker 1: a second you are you go from sitting in the
Speaker 1: plane to being up about two feet, So that means
Speaker 1: you're traveling twot a second upward. So you're being pushed
Speaker 1: up like that while you're being exposed to speeds of
Speaker 1: upwards of seven twenty g's of force. UM. And all
Speaker 1: of this is happening to your poor little body, so
Speaker 1: a lot of really bad things can happen to it. Um,
Speaker 1: first of all, First and foremost, I think the number
Speaker 1: one injury from ejections is spine compression, oh man, Because
Speaker 1: you're you're being pushed upward at a two ft a
Speaker 1: second UM. That's a lot of force exerted on your
Speaker 1: spinal column. So modern um ejection seats have things like
Speaker 1: leg restraints, back restraints, restraints, and then that face curtain
Speaker 1: restrain your head, and you were forced into a completely
Speaker 1: up and down sitting position so that your vertebra are
Speaker 1: stacked perfectly on top of one another, because any kind
Speaker 1: of slip or any kind of angle leads to a
Speaker 1: slip disc very easily. UM. And there's a long standing legend.
Speaker 1: I couldn't verify that in the US Air Force, after
Speaker 1: two or three ejections you're grounded for life because the
Speaker 1: spinal compressions just basically used you up. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I didn't see that it was true anywhere, but it's
Speaker 1: an old legend. Well, at the very least, you're not
Speaker 1: very good pilot, so they're like, yeah, maybe we should
Speaker 1: around them. Or you're like three quarters your height that
Speaker 1: you were when you enlisted because the final compressions, you know,
Speaker 1: short now. So that's the number one I believe UM
Speaker 1: injury that comes from ejection. There's also something with the
Speaker 1: horrific name limb flail. So you're secured in your seat,
Speaker 1: your arms, your legs, your head, you're supposed to be
Speaker 1: totally immobile in that first couple of seconds, especially until
Speaker 1: your parachute opens and you slow down and everything. If
Speaker 1: your arm gets loose. Have you ever seen a dog
Speaker 1: with its head sticking out of a car window on
Speaker 1: a highway and it has real long, floppy ears, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is very dangerous. It's not something you should do
Speaker 1: to your dog. It's bad for your dog. Developed cauliflowerer.
Speaker 1: It's a bad thing to do. Get things in their eyes.
Speaker 1: That's going like thirty to sixty miles an hour. We're
Speaker 1: talking in arm a human r going more than seven
Speaker 1: fifty miles. When it gets loose, what you have is
Speaker 1: called limb flail, and what you have are completely shattered bones,
Speaker 1: dislocated shoulders. Um, that's a bad jam. Or just imagine
Speaker 1: going down the highway at like rolled on your window
Speaker 1: and then quickly to stick your arms. Yes, yes, and
Speaker 1: multiply that times you know whatever. Um, so that's another
Speaker 1: type of injury limb flail. Um. There's wind blast, which
Speaker 1: so they tested this on chimps of course, and um
Speaker 1: it turns out that you can get third degree burns,
Speaker 1: severe third degree burns just from the wind at um
Speaker 1: mock one point seven. Being exposed to that peak one
Speaker 1: point seven mack one point seven for one second can
Speaker 1: give you severe third degree burns. Uh. And then there's tumbling,
Speaker 1: which you might overlook, but think about this. Remember when
Speaker 1: um know, the real math, No, the real life guys. No, uh,
Speaker 1: the dude, oh man, No, the guy who jumped out
Speaker 1: of the space capsule recently. You know the guy, yeah,
Speaker 1: Felix bomb Gardener. Yeah, I can't believe I forgot that. Um.
Speaker 1: The the when he jumped out, he started to tumble,
Speaker 1: remember he started going in over end a first. No.
Speaker 1: And the reason that that is really really bad is
Speaker 1: because you can build up centrifugal force of your for
Speaker 1: your blood and it pushes it outward to your extremities,
Speaker 1: meaning your heart doesn't have any blood to pump any longer,
Speaker 1: so you can die very quickly. I've seen between two
Speaker 1: hundred and four hundred rotations per minute proves fatal to humans. Man,
Speaker 1: how did that bomb grown? Your guy pull that off?
Speaker 1: I don't know. That was pretty awesome. Yeah, and hey,
Speaker 1: our own Discovery channel covered that live. Remember, Yeah, that
Speaker 1: was huge. It was very cool. That first shot, Dude,
Speaker 1: I like, I can't look at that when it just
Speaker 1: falls out of it at his perspective shot when he
Speaker 1: was just like all right, I'm jumping out of something
Speaker 1: from space. Yeah, that was amazing. I remember, um, you,
Speaker 1: me and I were coming back from some trip or
Speaker 1: whatever and we just happened to be in the airport
Speaker 1: when I remembered it was going on. I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we should watch this, and ended up standing there watching
Speaker 1: like one of the most amazing things I've ever seen
Speaker 1: in my entire life. Yeah, I mean, that was just
Speaker 1: an amazing thing to see. Yeah, and I bet you
Speaker 1: he wants to top it. I'm sure he's like high
Speaker 1: or still. Yeah. And do you remember the guy who
Speaker 1: did that in like the like nineteen sixty or the
Speaker 1: late fifties. Oh, he did it like in this exposed
Speaker 1: weather balloon wearing like a high altitude a halo mask
Speaker 1: and air supply and everything, and you've seen footage of it, yes,
Speaker 1: but he ended up being like the whole program director
Speaker 1: for Felix baum Gardner's jump, Like he tapped him because
Speaker 1: he's the only other guy who's done anything like that,
Speaker 1: and this guy did it in like the eight fifties,
Speaker 1: I think, so he was literally the only person he
Speaker 1: could say, what's it? Like? Manly? He said, it sucks
Speaker 1: and it's awesome. Apparently he had like a hole in
Speaker 1: his glove or something like that that they had he
Speaker 1: told them back on the ground what was going on,
Speaker 1: they would have called off the mission. And no, the
Speaker 1: other guy and he just didn't tell him. So that's
Speaker 1: how Felix bond Gardner works. Alright, Ejection Seats, you've got
Speaker 1: anything else? I don't have anything else. Yeah, that one
Speaker 1: was really cool. I thought, Yeah, very complex thing going
Speaker 1: on very quickly, and watch that super slow mo and
Speaker 1: then it shows it in regular time. It's pretty neat. Okay,
Speaker 1: So since we don't have anything else, um, we would
Speaker 1: advise you to go onto the how Stuff Works website
Speaker 1: and check out ejection Seats. Type that into the search bar,
Speaker 1: and since I said search bar, it is time for
Speaker 1: listener mail. Yeah, I'm gonna call this b FF. Hey, guys,
Speaker 1: I've been listening for about six months and catching up
Speaker 1: on most of your old shows. In that time. I
Speaker 1: was introduced to your podcast by my best since sixth
Speaker 1: grade friend, who was also a serious fan. I admit
Speaker 1: that it took me a few episodes to warm to
Speaker 1: your podcast, and now I feel a bit cheapish for
Speaker 1: ever doubting my friends recommendation. Not only is she one
Speaker 1: of the smartest people I've ever met, She's one of
Speaker 1: my oldest friends. It knows me better than anyone. We
Speaker 1: have a long history of directing each other to many
Speaker 1: fabulous and geekye pursuits, but stuff you should know, maybe
Speaker 1: the best of them all. And I have to say,
Speaker 1: stiff competition. You're up against Tolkin, the X Files, Star Trek,
Speaker 1: epic rat battles of History, Dune. She says, we talk
Speaker 1: all of those. Wow, I mean I see the rat battles, sure,
Speaker 1: Dune maybe, but tolkan X Files Star Trek. Although I
Speaker 1: don't like Star Trek, you don't like Start check the movie,
Speaker 1: the TV shows, none of it. People are gonna be shocked.
Speaker 1: I've never seen a single Star Trek episode in my life.
Speaker 1: I think I did when I was a kid. Now,
Speaker 1: I'll bet I would like it as an adult now.
Speaker 1: And I saw the Wrath of con Yeah, I saw
Speaker 1: that finally. That was good. And then I saw the
Speaker 1: the first of the new ones, but not the one
Speaker 1: that just came out. I saw the one that just
Speaker 1: came out. It's pretty good. Yeah, I mean, I'll get
Speaker 1: into it. It's just not my universe. I'm Star Wars guy.
Speaker 1: Not that you can't be, you know, get over this
Speaker 1: this obstacle, this arbitrary and totally unnecessary wall between people
Speaker 1: who like Star Trek and Star Wars. Uh. It's it's
Speaker 1: not that I think there should be a wall. I
Speaker 1: just never got into Star Trek as long as it's
Speaker 1: you're not hating on Star trekah, No, of course, not
Speaker 1: ak trick. All right, this has been like kind of
Speaker 1: a geeky episode, have you noticed? Sure? Back to the
Speaker 1: email from Catherine. A couple of months ago, my friend
Speaker 1: came to visit for a weekend and we were discussing
Speaker 1: the podcast. Both made similar comments about why enjoyed it
Speaker 1: so much. I felt like we had two really great
Speaker 1: and interesting friends with us whenever we wanted them or
Speaker 1: needed them. We both worked long hours and jobs with
Speaker 1: significant pressure, and sometimes time with great and interesting friends
Speaker 1: it's hard to come by. Your podcast can be a
Speaker 1: great band aid in maintaining sanity when face to face
Speaker 1: interaction with real friends isn't possible. So thanks for being
Speaker 1: such wonderful imaginary stand in slash other appropriate adjective friends,
Speaker 1: and keep up a good work explaining like the universe
Speaker 1: and everything. Best Catherine with the k R y N, Well,
Speaker 1: thanks a lot. And she didn't say what her friend's
Speaker 1: name was with I thought it was quite sounds like
Speaker 1: a pretty bad friend, So Catherine's friend, hats off to
Speaker 1: you as well. Thanks for the support. Yeah, thanks for
Speaker 1: listening you guys. Um, if we have brought you closer
Speaker 1: together with a friend, we want to hear about that.
Speaker 1: That's always very nice to hear about. Um. You can
Speaker 1: let us know by tweeting to us on Twitter. Our
Speaker 1: handle is s y s K podcast. We're on face
Speaker 1: book dot com at Facebook dot com slash stuff. You
Speaker 1: should know. You can send us an email to just
Speaker 1: Stuff Podcast at Discovery dot com. That's close and then
Speaker 1: of course we have a little abode do web uh
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