*It’s raining man plays on the cabin speakers
- Oh shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiíit…
I know this design was for safety, with a shit ton of parachutes on the passenger cabin, but modularity generally fucks the economics of a plane design. You have to have a self-contained module, a plane that is flyable (and landable) without it, and you need a way to securely connect one to the other. Things get chunky real quick, and chunky is expensive, and modern passengers are basically "walking mozzarella sticks who think that $300 and a photo I.D. gives them the right to fly through the air like one of the guardian owls of legend. (!30rock@dubvee.org) For cargo planes, a lot of older designs would drop capacity by 20-30%.
What does it achieve in the first place, ditching all the flying parts of the aircraft I mean. Like in what scenario does that help
The mechanical failure category of crashes happen when the flying parts of a plane become less good at flying than they used to be.
Things like rudder hardovers, hydraulic failure, uncontrolled engine fire, engine detachment and similar are all things which can make the plane unflyable, and if flying isn’t possible anymore then all the previously useful fly-parts become huge and unpredictable liabilities that get in the way and make your problem worse - the forces that once kept you in the air now spiralling your plane out of control.
I’m not saying this crazy idea is a good one, but the theory is that you can just throw away all the problem parts and become a dumb capsule, which in that scenario would be desirable because it returns things to a predictable state.
The mechanical failure category of crashes happen when the flying parts of a plane become less good at flying than they used to be.
I don’t care what anyone else says, this is fucking poetry.
I’ve seen the exact same design years ago sold as a way to quickly prepare the plane for takeoff. Passengers would board the detached module so the whole plane doesn’t have to sit there waiting. I imagine you would have more passenger modules than engine modules. The more expensive engine modules would fly non-stop: land, drop the passenger module, pick up another module and take off before even the first plane deboarded. No idea if this could actually work. It’s just strange to see the exact same design done for a dumber reason.
you know eventually someone will dump the passengers during the flight
If you’re going to jettison 90% of the plane to let it fall with parachutes, why not avoid all the complications of modularity and instead just have a parachute system that could let the entire plane float down? Or if the wings are the issue with floating down via parachute, just ditch those? Surely better than letting the pilots go down with the failing plane.
Wings are strong as fuck. You don’t want them detachable.
As for why not parachute the whole thing: The wings are also where the fuel is, which can weigh a ton. And the engines weigh a ton. Much easier to design a parachute when you jettison those.
