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Your forgetting the countless times that a test pilot has saved the aircraft/spacecraft from destruction. If it was unmanned and flown by computer, it would hav
by neurotech1 12y ago
Your forgetting the countless times that a test pilot has saved the aircraft/spacecraft from destruction. If it was unmanned and flown by computer, it would have been a fireball.
At least one shuttle flight would have been lost if the crew didn't fly manually to correct for a malfunction. STS-4 PIO'd on landing and would have crashed if auto-stabilization wasn't overridden by the pilot.
- codewritinfool 12y agoThe last of the ALT drops did this (with Fred Haise as PIC, IIRC), as did STS-3 back in 1982 at White Sands. I'm not familiar with the STS-4 incident at all. Do you have any links?
- robryk 12y agoAccording to wikipedia, it was STS-3 that had (autoopilot-induced) oscillations during landing. The description on Wikipedia seems to imply that they were expected (the autopilot was being tested) and that the dangerous condition was due to the autopilot being left partially engaged after the test.
- neurotech1 12y agoCorrect. There was also an pitch stabilization system that malfunctioned due to the misconfigured (partially engaged) autopilot. Point remains that the pilots flying skills in the cockpit saved the orbiter.
- sitkack 12y agoAnd in this case the craft killed the pilot. Shouldn't we be designing pilotless craft?
- seanflyon 12y agoPilots can make manual correction remotely. It might not be optimal, but that is better than risking lives on the first flight of a new engine design.
- neurotech1 12y agoIt was STS-3 at White Sands, not STS-4, my mistake.
- kashkhan 12y agonot in this case. They should have more than one rocket craft for testing. it's ok to fly reciprocating and jet prototypes because Scaled has experience with hundreds if not thousands of those kinds of aircraft, and it's easy to bail out at 200mph. It's much harder to bail out at Mach 3 and 100k ft.