Only one was ever used. One half-failure out of one try might not look good, but it’s poor statistical methodology.
The thing to do would be to put the B-70 into series production. Stamp out a few hundred of them, and fly the hell out of them. *Eventually* a number of them will suffer failures bad enough that the crew will need to punch out, and *then* we can get some good statistics.
There’s a world of British cockpit-builders. Every year, they meet the at the Newark airport and show off their newly-constructed (or re-constructed, or repaired) cockpits and cockpit simulators. (One chap built a Hurricane cockpit and then decided to add an airplane to it. No one’s sure whether he’ll be allowed to display the entire airplane.) Escape capsules would appear to be a natural addition to that sort of hobby. Maybe that’ll happen after someone builds a replica of the monkey seat from Mercury (I think the monkey seat would a wonderful baby carrier for space geeks’ children).
Where I work one of the supervisors ( not mine ) had been in the Air Force as a rescue man. He was one of the first responders to the XB-70 crash.
He told me Al White’s capsule was pretty badly torn up inside but Mr White was only somewhat injured, mostly his arm from getting it caught in the capsule clamshell door.
He also told me that Major Cross’ capsule separated from the aircraft after the XB-70 broke up but didn’t say anything beyond that.
Apparently the XB-70 was not a boring aircraft to fly; being on standby for crash rescue meant you could listen to the air to ground communications and there were no end of in flight malfunctions.
Due to White’s capsule failing to deploy its impact limiting airbag (the occupant was supposed to do this manually during descent if coming down over land), it hit so hard (33-44 G’s) that his feet left two dents in the bottom of the escape capsule. This injured him internally and it took him some time to fully recover.
Too bad they didn’t work very well.
-g.
Only one was ever used. One half-failure out of one try might not look good, but it’s poor statistical methodology.
The thing to do would be to put the B-70 into series production. Stamp out a few hundred of them, and fly the hell out of them. *Eventually* a number of them will suffer failures bad enough that the crew will need to punch out, and *then* we can get some good statistics.
More data on those here:
http://www.ejectionsite.com/xb70caps.htm
http://img352.imageshack.us/img352/3213/95493948pk1.jpg
Ran into this escape capsule design for the F8U Crusader while looking around for stuff on the B-70:
http://www.chinalakealumni.org/IMAGES/1961/Oscar%20F8U%20ddOCT61%20CLK%20NAN.jpg
…looks like a little rocketship of some kind. 🙂
There’s a world of British cockpit-builders. Every year, they meet the at the Newark airport and show off their newly-constructed (or re-constructed, or repaired) cockpits and cockpit simulators. (One chap built a Hurricane cockpit and then decided to add an airplane to it. No one’s sure whether he’ll be allowed to display the entire airplane.) Escape capsules would appear to be a natural addition to that sort of hobby. Maybe that’ll happen after someone builds a replica of the monkey seat from Mercury (I think the monkey seat would a wonderful baby carrier for space geeks’ children).
Where I work one of the supervisors ( not mine ) had been in the Air Force as a rescue man. He was one of the first responders to the XB-70 crash.
He told me Al White’s capsule was pretty badly torn up inside but Mr White was only somewhat injured, mostly his arm from getting it caught in the capsule clamshell door.
He also told me that Major Cross’ capsule separated from the aircraft after the XB-70 broke up but didn’t say anything beyond that.
Apparently the XB-70 was not a boring aircraft to fly; being on standby for crash rescue meant you could listen to the air to ground communications and there were no end of in flight malfunctions.
Oh, I should have mentioned this gentleman retired some years back and I’ve lost track of him.
Due to White’s capsule failing to deploy its impact limiting airbag (the occupant was supposed to do this manually during descent if coming down over land), it hit so hard (33-44 G’s) that his feet left two dents in the bottom of the escape capsule. This injured him internally and it took him some time to fully recover.