2 ms·
That would be extremely expensive in terms of the rocket and cartridge usage and would subject the seat to a huge amount of stress, substantially reducing its l
by _djo_ 4y ago
That would be extremely expensive in terms of the rocket and cartridge usage and would subject the seat to a huge amount of stress, substantially reducing its lifespan. Even then, you can't be sure that the issue wouldn't only show up mid-flight for some reason, at different temperatures, or different vibration levels from wind resistance in a high speed ejection.
Ejection seats are not designed to be used again and again, they're designed to be used exactly once and work flawlessly when that one moment comes. Rigid process control and verification in the manufacturing, storage, and installation steps is the only way to be certain it'll work.
I get that you're just playing armchair engineer here, but you're ignoring nearly all the actual complexity and engineering challenges.
- mjevans 4y agoYou've clearly misunderstood, probably the common term 'dry run'. The test would be of the electronics _only_; not the explosives or any other single use component. Single use items are usually validated by randomly sampling from within the batch / production run.
- _djo_ 4y agoMy apologies, you mentioned the explosives being 'redirected', when I guess what you meant was that the explosive circuitry would be redirected. Even so, those checks aren't sufficient to handle counterfeit parts that might only fail under stress, rather than the safe conditions of a ground test. The best approach is what it has always been: Strict process control of the entire supply chain, rigorous component and subsystem testing under extreme conditions before delivery, deep analysis of failed components coming off the flight line, and regular inspections for anomalies.