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The first production aircraft with an escape crew capsule was the Mach 2 B-58 Hustler. It was developed by the Stanley Aviation Company for Convair. The capsule was pressurized, sheltered the pilot from the airstream, and contained food and survival supplies.
Crewmember escape capsule from a B-58 Hustler. Encapsulated Seat egress systems were developed for use in the B-58 Hustler and B-70 Valkyrie supersonic bombers. These seats were enclosed in an air-operated clamshell, which permitted the aircrew to escape at airspeeds and altitudes high enough to otherwise cause bodily harm.
An escape pod, escape capsule, life capsule, or lifepod is a capsule or craft, usually only big enough for one person, used to escape from a vessel in an emergency. An escape ship is a larger, more complete craft also used for the same purpose. Escape pods are ubiquitous in science fiction but are only used in a few real vehicles.
The capsule was buoyant; the crewmember could open the clamshell and use it as a life raft. [15] [26] Unusually, the ejection system was tested with live bears and chimpanzees; [27] it was qualified for use during 1963 and a bear became the first living being to survive a supersonic ejection. [15] A B-58 crewmember escape capsule
The Air Force F-111A and Navy F-111B variants used the same airframe structural components and TF30-P-1 turbofan engines. They featured side by side crew seating in an escape capsule as required by the Navy, versus individual ejection seats. The F-111B's nose was 8.5 feet (2.59 m) shorter due to its need to fit on existing carrier elevator ...
The Crew Return Vehicle (CRV), sometimes referred to as the Assured Crew Return Vehicle (ACRV), was a proposed dedicated lifeboat or escape module for the International Space Station (ISS). A number of different vehicles and designs were considered over two decades – with several flying as developmental test prototypes – but none became ...
On 2 July 1951, three of the designs were selected for further development, Convair's scaled-up XF-92 that evolved into the F-102, a Lockheed design that led to the F-104, and Republic's AP-57. AP-57 was an advanced concept to be built almost entirely of titanium and capable of Mach 3 at altitudes of at least 60,000 feet (18 km).
At Edwards Air Force Base in 1962, bears were used for a series of escape capsule ejection tests of the Convair B-58 Hustler. The first supersonic ejection test occurred on 21 March 1962 at the speed of Mach 1.3 at 35,000 ft (11,000 m) and the bear survived the nearly eight-minute parachute descent.