NYC helicopter that plunged into Hudson River had mechanical issue months before fatal wreck

New York Post ^ | April 12, 2025 | Anna Young

[RaceBannon]

I worked at an airplane museum as a kid, was an air controller in the USMC, was assigned to HMM-165 for 2 floats, got to do some hands on stuff in Avionics, then worked at KAMAN aerospace for 11 years in Connecticut, worked in static test, we built test fixtures to do lifetime vibration/load testing. Had to build up all parts into the rigs.

[chaosagent]

The solid rocket engineers at NASA and Thiokol knew what happened before the pieces hit the ocean. They wished that they didn’t, but the newscast had “launching on the coldest day of the program” on the tape.

And the only reason the SRB's were segmented to start with was politics. Martin-Thiokol wanted to build them at the Cape in one piece, but politics meant NASA had to get the support of politicians in Utah, so they were built there. But they were too big to transport in one piece, either by water or rail, so they were segmented.

[chaosagent]

Complete transmission lockup is rare (especially without the chip detector light going off) , but does give you a rotor head and transmission flying away from fuselage, the inertia in the tail rotor and the shaft rip off the tail boom.

Back in '67 had a brand new Huey (first operational flight) get about 50 feet up and then the transmission locked up. We whirled around and smashed into the ground on the starboard side. Five of us survived.The pilot didn't.

[chaosagent]

“The loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger took a high amount of time, investigation, and diligence.”

The solid rocket engineers at NASA and Thiokol knew what happened before the pieces hit the ocean. They wished that they didn’t, but the newscast had “launching on the coldest day of the program” on the tape.

Here's the sequence of what happened:

They had had burn-thrus before, but the gasket melted and flowed into the gap, sealing the leak, as it had previously, and as it was designed to do.

Here is the sequence:

1. It was an extremely cold, wet winter in Florida.

2. Technical problems kept the Shuttle on pad longer than usual, letting moisture build up in the SRB joints.

3. Freezing weather at launch time.

4. There was an SRB burn-thru on Ignition as had happened before.

5. After a second, the gasket flowed and resealed as it had numerous times before.

6. No more problems until throttle-up after Max-Q.

7. Then just as they throttled back up to 104% power, the highest upper air wind shear ever recorded buffeted the Shuttle and rocked the entire stack.

8. SSMEs gimbaled over to correct

9. But rocking the stack reopened the previous burn-thru.

First Bad Luck:

Extreme High Winds at Throttle Up

Second Bad Luck and Primary Cause:

Burn-thru was located on the minority portion of the arc opposite the ET (External Tank). If the burn-thru had occurred on the ~ 300 degree arc, not opposite the ET, the shuttle would have achieved orbit with no problem.

The slight loss of thrust from the SRB burn-thru would not have been a problem.

It was only sheer bad luck that the burn-thru occurred where it did, no other reason.

And don't even start about how the SRB's were segmented to start with. NASA wanted to build the SRB's at the Cape, but politics dictated that the Shuttle project largess be spread around to other states, including Utah where the SRB's were built.

Unfortunately, due to a non-segmented SRB being too large to be transported, due to tunnels and overpasses, they were segmented.

Otherwise, no segments, no burn-thru, no explosion.

[Yossarian]

DEI hitting even back then...

No, the reason NASA pushed for launch was because of
- an old stubborn white male SOB,
- William Lucas, Director of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center,
- who perpetually violated safety regulations...
- ...by ordering his managers not to raise any Marshall-related issue during the "Flight Readiness Review" process that could cause a delay in the launch.

The scum bucket finally kicked the bucket this February at the age of 102.

[mowowie]

“My one and only helicopter ride was Nov 30, 2019 Life Flight from Newport, WA to Sacred Heart in Spokane. I was only vaguely aware of what was going on.”

Same here, My one and only helicopter ride and i didn’t even get to consciously experience it, i was unconscious..

[SunkenCiv]

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