A certain American Airlines 757 pilot gave me and a couple of hundred others a very hard landing this week.
So my jaw finally began to cease chattering when I discovered NASA is beginning to work on dropping flying things from the sky to see if perhaps the impact can be absorbed.
NASA's Web site told me that it dropped a helicopter from 35 feet in order to see whether an expandable honeycomb cushion that NASA calls a "deployable energy absorber" could minimize damage to life, limb, and even nervous systems.
The MD-500's landing gear did bend a little, NASA said, but the agency seemed most pleased that "four crash test dummies along for the ride appeared only a little worse for the wear."
Perhaps you will be most heartened by the words of Karen Jackson, an aerospace engineer who was one of the brains behind the test, which was conducted at NASA's Langley Research Center: "I'd like to think the research we're doing is going to end up in airframes and will potentially save lives."
I know we're only talking about helicopters right now. But given that commercial pilots do enjoy the occasional drink and have even drifted past Minneapolis and headed out to Wisconsin, surely one can dream that one day someone will create an extraordinary cushion for your average 757.
The JHL-40 is an uncommon mix of blimp and helicopter.
(Credit: Boeing image by Joe Naujokas)What do you get when you cross a blimp and a helicopter? One potential answer is the Skyhook JHL-40.
The JHL-40, mind you, is still essentially in the blueprints-and-artist's-renderings stage. It's an aircraft that Boeing and its partner Skyhook International are pitching as a short-haul commercial transport rig.
Boeing says that the neutral buoyancy of the JHL-40 would let it hoist and move far greater payloads than can be handled by existing rotorcraft. The aircraft, the companies say, should be able to lift a 40-ton sling load and then transport it 200 miles without refueling, a capacity that would come in handy in harsh, undeveloped regions like the Canadian Arctic where "conventional land and water transportation methods...are inadequate, unreliable and costly."
Here's how it would work: The helium-filled envelope would support the weight of the aircraft itself (fuel included). Four rotors sticking out from the sides of the envelope would provide the lift for the external payload.
The venerable twin-rotor CH-47 Chinook helicoptor, by comparison, has a range of about 200 miles, but lifts only on the order of about 10 tons.
One industry ripe for the JHL-40 is logging, Boeing says.
(Credit: Boeing image by Joe Naujokas)This being the era in which no product, potential or tangible, can be promoted without a greenish tinge, Boeing also proclaims that the JHL-40 will be "environmentally acceptable" because there would be less of a need to build roads in remote regions and because it would lessen the carbon footprint of target industries like logging, mining, and energy.
The patent on the aircraft belongs to Calgary, Alberta-based Skyhook, and it will be developed and built by Boeing's Advanced Rotorcraft Systems unit. (JHL is short for Jess Heavy Lifter; the patent lists Skyhook's Peter Jess as the inventor.)
Two production prototypes are set to be built at a Boeing facility in Ridley Park, Pa., and the aerospace giant says the aircraft will enter commercial service as soon as it gets the OK from the Federal Aviation Administration and Transport Canada.
As unusual as the JHL-40 appears, this isn't the first such blimp/rotorcraft combination. The pioneering helicopter company Piasecki Aircraft in the 1980s experimented with a very similar demonstration vehicle called the PA-97 Helistat. It was built on a U.S. Navy contract for the U.S. Forest Service, according to Piasecki.
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