The Discovery Channel staged a test to find out how to design a plane that's better equipped to handle a crash. NBC's Brian Williams reports.
http://overheadbin.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/30/11471765-filmmakers-crash-boeing-727-for-scientific-experiment?lite
16 comments:
It is intriguing that people would purposely crash a plane. Although, the information they gathered must be valuable to air-travel safety. Everybody is most likely wondering two things; first, 'how is that even remotely legal,' and the second would be, 'what was going through their minds?'
This is a really good way of testing crash safety. Safety testers are always saying "if the ____ of ____ is bigger than the _____ of _____ than the plane will survive." Well, even if they are extremely smart, what better way to test the safety of a plane when it crashes than crashing it? It might cost a lot of money to make these planes, but these companies are extremely wealthy and can probably afford to make one test plane. Also, if your plane does crash and there are many casualties, you will have to pay fines from the FAA, pay the families of the deceased, and many other things. It's cheaper to crash a plane and waste it, than have your plane crash and have a big fuss around it.
This was very interesting, although I don't know if I would have crashed the plane. I wonder if there are more safe and more-efficient ways to find out how people react in crashes. But, also it is better than the other option of crashing a plane with actual passengers. I also think maybe they could have used a smaller plane, because that plane seemed pretty big. Yet, it does seem cool that they would crash a whole plane just in the name of science.
It's interesting that they crashed the plane. I agree with Will on "how could they possibly do that without any form of government bribery?" Hopefully, the crash" will provide good data.
This seems kind of wasteful. Imagine working on this for years and then scientist take and crash, no not crash it, destroy it. Good can come out of this though. It will improve safety in planes with real passengers. Still, it seems very wasteful.
I think the decision that they made to crash the plane was very bad, and I also agree with Will and Nick that: Why doesn't the government stop them? I feel a better idea, rather than wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars, is simply to run a simulation. Perhaps that wouldn't be as accurate, but at least you wouldn't literally be throwing money away.
I thought that this method of testing plane safety had goods and bads to it. One the good side, there is almost no better way to test safety: some estimates are off, but if we crash the planes, we can be almost always accurate. On the other hand, it costs a lot of money to make those planes, so it seems like a big waste to have built these planes. But, I agree with Joe. There are other fines that you will have to pay if people die. Hopefully this will help with safety though. I say that you should crash the planes because if you get a lot of people to ride your really, really safe plane, then you could make almost all of that money back and it wouldn't be a waste at all, you would have a better plane.
This seems like an odd, but effective way of testing planes. I mean, the whole goal of normal flying is not crashing, but here, that's all they want to do. Like Joe and Amanda said, it would cost a lot of money to make the planes, and there would be many fines if the planes did crash and people died. There are two ways to think about it (in my opinion.) You can't make a plane safer if you don't know what happens to it when it crashes, but also, why would you spend all the time making a plane just so that it could crash? I am conflicted about my opinion on this whole topic. In my opinion, there is not really a money problem because so many people will love watching the plane actually crash on television, and that will make the Discovery Channel the money back. I think in the future they should expand the footage that they shot into making it a documentary, as that would create a lot more profit then just a little special on Discovery Channel. Also, it will get the information to more people if it is theaters rather then just on TV, because, for all I know, not many people watch the Discovery Channel.
This is very interesting that someone would intentionally crash a plane. Like other people have said the cost of making a plane just to have it crash is extremely expensive! The idea behind the crash was a good one though, in my opinion. This could show scientists what happens to passengers when a plane crashes. So then in the very sad event that this happens, they would know what happened to the passengers inside the plane. I agree with Cami that this clip on The Discovery Channel will intrigue many people and people of all ages. I am pretty sure nothing like this has ever been done so it will bring the channel much more business which is a good strategy for creating more profit. I hope this will strengthen plane safety so there are not as many plane crashes (even though they are pretty rare).
I think that they wasted a lot of money to purposely crash a plane, but I also think that the information that the scientists find from this experiment might help improve safety on many planes. However this experiment might not help as much as many people hope because this was a controlled crash, and it might help improve safety on planes if they crash like this experimental plane, but there are also many different ways that a plane can crash, not to mention that fires might start as a result of the crash. So the experiment might not help with all plane crashes, but it might still help with some plane crashes, especially if they are similar to the way that the experimental plane crashed. This might only help with some plane crashes, but this still means that ____ people were saved, and each life counts.
I don't think crashing a real plane was the best choice. I know they have excessive amounts of money, but using it up for one crash? And not all planes crash the same way. Some might crash nose-first, some tail-first, etc. There are many possibilities, and all of them can't be tested with one crash. They should make a smaller scale model, and run various tests on that. That way, they could go by trial and error. If one part doesn't seem safe, just build another one with a new safety addition. It would be much more cost-efficient. Also, with a smaller model, you could definitely test many possible ways of crashing a plane. So, to sum it up, using a scale model is more cost efficient, and makes testing relatively more productive. However, the tests might not be as accurate as using a real plane.
I think this is a great idea! If you needed to use passegenrs though, use people who have nothing to live for, such as people who will never find love. Ashton might do well.
I think that this was a fairly worthless experiment for several reasons. First, every plane crashes in a different way, so it is impossible for experts use this data to help further incidents. Second, It probably costs a lot of money to build a plane. In one plane, there is enough wire to go around the world once, and it takes a lot of time to make a plane. Third, in this crash there was no fire or explosion. Fires and explosions are two large hazards for when a plane crashes. This experiment also raises an important moral question. What would happen if there was a malfunction with the system and the pilot was not able to be released?
Jordan -- You really don't like your brother, don't you.
I think that this was a fairly worthless experiment for several reasons. First, every plane crashes in a different way, so it is impossible for experts use this data to help further incidents. Second, It probably costs a lot of money to build a plane. In one plane, there is enough wire to go around the world once, and it takes a lot of time to make a plane. Third, in this crash there was no fire or explosion. Fires and explosions are two large hazards for when a plane crashes. This experiment also raises an important moral question. What would happen if there was a malfunction with the system and the pilot was not able to be released?
Jordan -- You really don't like your brother, don't you.
Oops, I posted my comment twice.
I think that this plane crash was very good and informative. It might have been affected by the surroundings though. What if it didn't crash on a nice bed of sand, but in a forest, or on some pointy things, what would happen to the plane then? Most of the time when you are in a plane you are flying either over the ocean of over cities and towns, not nice Mexican sand dunes. I think these surroundings could definitely change the outcome on the plane and it's passengers. On a different note, this reminds me of what they do to cars before they are mass produced, they drive them into a wall. They put a high tech dummy in the drivers seat and have the car run into a wall to see what would happen if there was an accident. They then take the dummy out and check for any signs of injury, if there are very few then the cars can be mass produced.
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