Pleasant journeys can become horrible or devastating just for a slight mistake. And the real heroes are they, who can handle and control this type of uncontrolled situation smoothly and become safe. If you are in air and suddenly one of its wings disappear or become fail to work properly, can you land safely? Yes, might be in dream but it’s possible to land one winged plane safely. Let’s find it out… How?
We know the terms of ‘autopilot’ and ‘black-box’ in a plane. The black-box is such a thing that can’t be destroyed by anything like water, fire etc. It is made beyond everything proof. Auto-pilot is basically an Adaptive Control system. Whenever the pilot wants to relax or do something else, he can press the Autopilot button and the plane will automatically move it self in a safe way. Adaptive Control is widely known as Intelligent Avionics at NASA Ames. Adaptive Control system performs like a super computer (except some rare case or malfunction) which can identify a problem and solve it in a matter of milliseconds before the pilot even guess’ or knows about the problem or malfunction. In fact, Adaptive Control is designed to replace any failure in an emergency situation. To know more and see the video, click here
At the training period, pilots learn flying airplane or helicopter through Flight Simulator which helps them to experience the real flight environment and experience. The above video shows a demo of flight simulator where a plane is still flyable even the piece of its tail is broken off. Again, when a pilot has to compensate non-stop for a smashed up or total broken tail, landing becomes quite impossible. But both the time, it is possible when the Adaptive Control is switched on. In fact, switched on Adaptive Control makes the plane to keep in level and steady very easily.
But imagine, at the time of flying, the plane has 2 wings but later in air, anyhow the plane turned into one winged plane. What will happen? It will become extremely dangerous and will go out of control. Goes beyond saying, it will tumble in air. Definitely it is a pilot’s worst nightmare. Check out the video below. Can’t say surely, whether it is a real one or fake or animated cause lots of contradictions are there.
It’s not miracle but must say, all credit goes to pilot undoubtedly who defeats the failures and returns to base safely. At least the true story says so. In 1983, pilot Zevi Nedavi lost an entire wing while flying his F-15 in a training exercise. He was miraculously able to regain stability and land the plane safely. The F-15 had a wide body and a ton of thrust, which helped the plane to compensate. One wing lost means one plane or/and pilot lost. A very slight chance left that adaptive control might help raise the percentage of survival. Check out the real life video below
Right now, NASA Ames is working on to materialize it in a safe way. Hope so the will become success.
Source : Gizmodo
Special Thanks To : Mark Rober, Jessica Culler, Dan Goods, Val Bunnell, and all at NASA JPL and NASA Ames for making this happen.
