But maybe this guy knows where it is.....
Posted on 08/03/2009 8:23:02 PM PDT by BenLurkin
EDWARDS AFB - A veteran Lockheed Martin test pilot died in an F-22A crash after nearly losing consciousness during a high-speed, high-g test maneuver, according to an Air Force accident investigation report released Friday.
The $140 million jet, assigned to Edward Air Force Base's 412th Flight Test Wing, crashed during a mission to test the effects of carrying weapons on the aircraft's performance. These tests involved a series of high-speed, high-performance maneuvers in which the pilot experienced several times the force of gravity.
The accident investigation concluded that Cooley experienced such disorientation brought on by the high g-forces, and recovered too late - a matter of seconds - to safely right the aircraft as it was headed down in an almost vertical dive, the report said.
The crash occurred after Cooley successfully completed the first two of the planned test maneuvers, which required inverting the airplane and flying the lower half of a loop, pulling up and righting the airplane.
On the third test maneuver, however, he failed to recover at the same point and continued in a 83-degree downward dive. According to the report, a "weak roll to wings level was started at (about 16,300 feet) but at this point, with the extreme nose down attitude, the roll was simply a pirouette around the vertical axis with little effect on arresting the descent rate."
By the time the aircraft was about 5,000 feet above the ground, Cooley had the wings level, but it was still heading down roughly at a 50 degree-angle.
Cooley ejected at approximately 3,900 feet above the ground and at Mach 1.3, or 880 mph, according to the report. This was about 170 mph above the maximum speed design limits for the ejection seat.
(Excerpt) Read more at avpress.com ...
The streets of Edwards AFB are named for deceased test pilots. There are a lot of streets there.
Start of maneuver to crash, less than 17 seconds, yet he still had the presence and fortitude to bring her around level...only to be killed by the blast of supersonic air on ejection.
Men like this have always amazed me.
Prayers for his family! Always hate hearing we have lost another one. God speed.
There’s old pilots and bold pilots............
Cools was my Test Pilot School instructor, a great pilot and a great man, he had a calming influence in an otherwise stressful field....
Pray for the family of test pilot Cooley as brave men die that our country may remain secure.
The F-22 and other modern fighters can do flying maneuvers that over stress the human body. The fighters of the future may be unmanned, artificial intelligence flown fighters that make instant decisions as to target or evasion and have minimal command supervision from the home base. Machines at war and Omama cutting defense budgets now may put the USA in second place sometime in the future.
ping
“experienced such disorientation brought on by the high g-forces,”
How do the creators explain accelerating to Warp Speed in a few seconds on Star Wars?
1. Where the hell was the Pilots G Suit Mandatory wear in supersonic aircraft?
2. How dare the manufacturer's install a rocket ejection seat not capable of speeds of the F22. That is a criminal offense.
3. I want the engineers name who made the decision to okay this ejection seat be installed in a 2 hundred million dollar aircraft. I want his ass on a pike pole.
3. Who is the idiot in aircraft acquisition who allowed this stupid installation to occur this had to get by at least 8 different engineers from the USAF and how many from Lockheed?????
This is a sin somebody needs to go to Jail??
Mark
1. A g-suit only buys you an extra G of tolerence. The pilot has to do the rest himself.
2. The seat probably performed like it was supposed to, but you can't build a seat wear a pilot in normal flight clothing will survive a supersonic ejection. Anything over 450 and you are looking at some severe injuries, even if you survive.
3. I'm sure the seat is the best seat money can buy.
It's a tough business flying an aircraft capable of the speeds and sustained g of the F-22. This will not be the last GLOC mishap in this aircraft. The guys that fly this thing need to stay in the gym and do a lot of squats.
That's my opinion, and I'm in my 17th year flying fighters.
Quit emoting.
Wasn’t the cause of the crash an AGL/MSL screwup? Any test point flown over Edwards needs to have 2500 feet added to recovery altitudes due to terrain. My guess (WAG) is if they had flown the point over the water (Vandenburg), that 2500 foot difference would have saved the pilot, aircraft, and the test point.
The Russians have a seat (K-36) that deploys a little pole in front of the pilot. The pole gives the shock wave something to stick to, and the pilot’s body is in a protected stagnation region behind the pole. Obviously, when the subcontracts for the F-22 were let, the Russians would not have been allowed to compete.
“How do the creators explain accelerating to Warp Speed in a few seconds on Star Wars?”
Trek. Star Trek. Warp Speed is Star Trek.
Sorry, couldn’t help it. :)
And I think it’s artificial gravity and inertial dampers.
Navy Bandit nailed it. There remain some things that are beyond our capabilities. Cools suffered from human frailty this time.
But yeah, the Russians do seem ahead of us in super-high speed ejection systems.
TC
The problem is not with the ejection seat. The problem is with the human body. Ejection at supersonic speeds exceeds the design limit of flesh and bone.
Theoretically speaking, “Warp Speed” is not actually acceleration, but rather a “fold” in space, created by taking advantage of the non-linear, non-local nature of motion in a “bubble” caused by the interaction of a matter/anti-matter collision in an environment carefully controlled by the modulating influence of dilithium crystals.
(Now, if you’ll pardon me, my trouser cuffs are a bit smelly. It’s getting rather deep in here.)
Don’t forget the flux capacitor.
Seats that can protect a pilot through super sonic ejection are never installed on fighters and never have been. If you want to see what one looks like google up the seats the XB-70 used. The are big and bulky. While you are at it look up how one nearly killed the one pilot that got out when the second XB-70 crashed.
You don’t arrest engineers for designing exactly what they are told to design.
Thank you!
They bend space-time?
Just curious ... how old was he? Is there an age factor involved, as in, when you get older is it more difficult to work through that kind of maneuver (said by a guy who has trouble on a merry-go-round)?
49
880mph is 1290 feet per second. At a 50 degree down angle he's looking at about 6 seconds to impact. Pretty much doomed. God speed. Prayers to his family.
/bkmark
Third place soon, if he and Sec. Gates keep to their plans to deconstruct, demilitarize, and unilaterly disarm the US.
artificial gravity.
I’m surprised you didn’t say they should build the plane the way they build the blackboxes, so it would survive.
Duh.
Or the oscillation overthruster.
SO what your saying is folks in the Falcon don’t move, but the matter universe moves, thus no G-forces.
And the interociter. Can’t forget the interociter.
But maybe this guy knows where it is.....
Actually I’m more inclined to believe the Frank Herbert version - that the physical universe is mutable and directly affected by the force of augmented human thought, thus enabling mutated humans to negate the physical space between objects, such as stars and planets.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion, the thoughts acquire speed, the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning, it is by will alone I set my mind in motion.....
Simple.
They had an infinite improbability drive....and a towel.
42.
Really? I use mine to make hot cocoa.
Wow. So many obvious errors, yet so little time to correct them.
Ejecting at 700+ knots is pretty much fatal, and it has nothing whatever to do with the design of the ejection system.
After Seafair, the Blue Angels left Boeing field in Seattle Monday about noon.
I didn’t know it was going to happen, but I was sitting on my porch about 12:15, when all hell broke loose.
Directly over my house heading SSW, elv 700-900 feet!
Beautiful!
Roger that. :-)
Sorry for your loss, for his family’s and all who knew him. Takes very special people to do that work.
That would take some pretty significant thought augmentation.
Ever read “Dune”?
No, what’s that about?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.