[HN Gopher] Martin-Baker Ejection Seat Made Its First of 7,722 S...
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       Martin-Baker Ejection Seat Made Its First of 7,722 Saves 75 Years
       Ago Today
        
       Author : vinnyglennon
       Score  : 14 points
       Date   : 2024-06-12 22:04 UTC (55 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.twz.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.twz.com)
        
       | echelon wrote:
       | Over 100 successful ejections per year? That's wild! That sounds
       | like an awful lot of hull losses. And how many people weren't
       | saved?
       | 
       | What's the risk calculus look like for a plane with an ejection
       | seat vs. a plane without one? War obviously has one risk profile,
       | but military vehicles and their operation differ wildly from day
       | to day commercial operation.
        
         | taspeotis wrote:
         | Probably some years with much higher numbers due to wars that
         | would skew the average.
        
         | netsharc wrote:
         | I thought they have a monopoly on ejection seats, but I've
         | found at least 1 other manufacturer:
         | https://www.collinsaerospace.com/what-we-do/industries/milit...
         | 
         | Martin Baker's website is a bit wild, you can join their "tie
         | club", but to do so you need to have ejected using their seat:
         | https://martin-baker.com/tie-club/
         | 
         | And they list the ejections they know of https://martin-
         | baker.com/ejection-notices/ , but the records are a bit
         | jumbled, the latest entries include ejections in the past that
         | they've discovered, and they don't all have dates, even
         | "Someone successfully ejected today". Today when, man?!
        
           | fckgw wrote:
           | You can even buy a special watch with colored case that
           | signifies you ejected from an aircraft (using a Martin-Baker
           | Ejection Seat of course)
           | 
           | https://martin-baker.com/watches/mb-i/
        
           | netsharc wrote:
           | And since these companies probably don't sell to Russia,
           | Russia has their own manufacturer:
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NPP_Zvezda . Interestingly
           | Collins' origin seem to be seats designed by Zvezda: https://
           | archive.is/www.nytimes.com/1998/12/02/nyregion/metro...
        
         | Ichthypresbyter wrote:
         | >Over 100 successful ejections per year? That's wild! That
         | sounds like an awful lot of hull losses.
         | 
         | I remember calculating a few years ago that _more than 10% of
         | the ejector seats sold by Martin-Baker have been used to
         | eject_.
         | 
         | Military aircraft operations, even in peacetime, are much more
         | dangerous than the vast majority of civilian fixed-wing flight
         | (except airshows/racing and maybe cropdusting). I don't know
         | how much of that difference is the flight profile being
         | inherently more dangerous (closer to terrain), and how much is
         | it being harder on the aircraft.
        
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       (page generated 2024-06-12 23:00 UTC)