Short History of The "Ejection Seat"

[rwbishUP]

Pretty neat vid about aircraft high speed escape systems.

Evolution of High-Speed Escape Systems

[SUBS17]

With Ejection Seats there is an AUTOMATIC-EJECTION SETTING BY DEFAULT and it cannot be turned off. The Ejection Seat uses FLY BY WIRE and has an advanced Navigation System in order to know its Orientation prior to firing. The latest Seats have a field which protects the pilot/crewman upon ejection from wind. They also can right themselves if inverted and know if a Ship is near in the event of a Carrier or Ship being nearby. The Seat will fire in a safe direction away from a Ship. The seat can be used in Supersonic and Hypersonic speed and can eject a crew prior to hitting the ground even if the pilot refuses to eject him or herself. If a pilot does not have a parachute then they remain with the seat and the seat has enough to cushion the landing safely. Some examples of automatic firing include 4 seats firing after an aircraft crashed into the sea . The seat fired because a ship was approaching and the seat travelled out of the way of the Ship. The seat also talks to the person being ejected and helps inform them of what is happening. Other times are at Air shows where aircraft have crashed. The seats have fired before the crash it is always automatic. Ejection Seats do not require maintenance except cleaning normally. 

 

AEROSPACE EJECTION

The future EJECTION SYSTEMS for Space Ships, Rockets and AEROSPACE-CRAFT will involve escape pods/capsules. The pilots and crew can travel safely to a Planet nearby that is survivable under its own propulsion. So there is the capability for people to travel to space safely and if things did go wrong there is a chance of survivability. 

 

[SUBS17]

All Future Ejection Seats will have the ability to return the Pilot to their Base under the Seats Propulsion Safely. With such capability you can pick your landing spot and go there and the next generation radios are built into the Helmet such as the SCORPION HELMET. The Pilot still has communications with their base anywhere so for SAR and E&E the pilot would keep their Helmet with them. They also have a built in heater/cooler which is called TEMPERATURE CONTROLLED. With this the pilot can maintain warmth or cooling in the environment even in extreme weather. Next Generation flight suits are Pressure Suits which are AEROSPACE CAPABLE. These flight suits are also TEMPERATURE CONTROLLED and can keep a pilot or crewmember warm in any environment. In the Ocean you would still be warm in the Arctic. The TEMPERATURE CONTROLLED SUITS use a new type of Battery which does not ever go flat. A similar Suit is going to be the uniform for Crew onboard ships.

[rwbishUP]

That's crazy, @SUBS17 ! 

I never would've thought an ejection seat was so complex. I didn't even know those are basically flight sensors on top of the seat, on either side of the pilots helmet. I watched a few of the videos in that series, and there have been some crazy weird escape systems.

[SUBS17]

In the video he states that Germany had Ejection Seats but they did not. They did not research Ejection Seats at all. Also someone has put a tool box on the seat in one of the pictures. No Seat releases CHAFF at all ever. No one does that! That F8 Ejection was AUTO EJECT not manual. No Seat fires DOWNWARDS, at all not even a B1B. In the F104 picture they are installing an ejection seat and someone decided to get a picture. The most Ejections from a single aircraft is the Delta Dagger, that is the most highest number of Ejections. 212 Ejections from just 1 test pilot! And everyone else is 439 Ejections total. Those are not sensors on the top of the seat on either side, those are thrusters for maneuvering the seat to an upright position for the parachute to deploy and to clear obstructions such as at low altitude while inverted. The Seat will fire automatically if it detects a crash is going to happen they also all including the first one have a USB port but it is inside the seat. The USB port is for the Computers and electronics involved during installation of the components for pre-manufacture testing including FLY BY WIRE. It is an interesting video but there are some myths there. For downwards the forces are negative and it is unsafe, it is easier to fire upwards and safer. The ACES II is a very good Seat, the Russian Seat is the same as the ACES II. And the Mig29 has always had it and they are both ZERO-ZERO EJECTION SEATS. Some Pilots have ejected from aircraft at high altitude and still survived as they remained with the Seat even though they did not have a parachute.  

[Mars Exulte]

On 7/25/2022 at 1:08 PM, rwbishUP said:

That's crazy, @SUBS17 ! 

  Yeah....

On 7/25/2022 at 1:08 PM, rwbishUP said:

I never would've thought an ejection seat was so complex. I didn't even know those are basically flight sensors on top of the seat, on either side of the pilots helmet. I watched a few of the videos in that series, and there have been some crazy weird escape systems.

  Take everything he says with a bag of salt.

[SUBS17]

13 hours ago, Mars Exulte said:

  Yeah....

  Take everything he says with a bag of salt.

It is more complex than people know, they can eject inverted and move upwards before deploying a parachute at low level. With AUTO-EJECT, the EJECTION SEAT informs the pilot/crew that they are about to eject. The latest escape system is for Airliners involves the entire crew and passenger compartment ejecting. Another thing about the EJECTION SEAT, if a missile or projectile were to be on a course to impact the pilot or crew then the Seat fires AUTOMATICALLY before impact. And if the pilot were to be unable to eject from a DEPARTURE like the flat spin in Topgun the EJECTION SEATS would fire AUTOMATICALLY. So it is more complex than what it appears to be and it has something that protects the pilot and crew from the wind at high speed.

Edited August 3, 2022 by SUBS17

[rwbishUP]

ROFL @SUBS17

[Mars Exulte]

On 8/3/2022 at 11:18 AM, SUBS17 said:

The latest escape system is for Airliners involves the entire crew and passenger compartment ejecting.

  Yeah, they tried that back in the 60s and it maimed/killed the test bear, shelving the entire project. I seriously doubt they decided to give that a try again just for old time's sake.

[SUBS17]

The latest one uses REPLUSOR and separates from the aircraft without any G-Forces by use of GRAVITY SHADOW. It will be safer for Airliners with this technology although technology is at a level now that it is known if there is going to be a problem prior to take off.

[dmatsch]

SUBS17:  The F-104 starfighter, designed by the legendary Kelly Johnson had a downward-firing ejection seat.  The tailplane was too large to have it fire upwards.  It's the only one that I know of that did this.

 

[MAXsenna]

1 hour ago, dmatsch said:

SUBS17:  The F-104 starfighter, designed by the legendary Kelly Johnson had a downward-firing ejection seat.  The tailplane was too large to have it fire upwards.  It's the only one that I know of that did this.

 

B-52, some crew stations. 

And they did change it in the F-104.

[dmatsch]

5 minutes ago, MAXsenna said:

B-52, some crew stations. 

And they did change it in the F-104.

Consider me clarified on the 104, and I thought we were talking about fighters only, not bombers.  Good catch.

"...Early Starfighters used a downward-firing ejection seat (the Stanley C-1), out of concern over the ability of an upward-firing seat to clear the "T-tail" empennage. This presented obvious problems in low-altitude escapes, and 21 USAF pilots, including test pilot Captain Iven Carl Kincheloe Jr., failed to escape from their stricken aircraft in low-level emergencies because of it. The downward-firing seat was replaced by the Lockheed C-2 upward-firing seat, which was capable of clearing the tail, but still had a minimum speed limitation of 90 kn (104 mph; 167 km/h).[59] Many export Starfighters were later retrofitted with Martin-Baker Mk.7 "zero-zero" (zero altitude and zero airspeed) ejection seats..."

[MAXsenna]

1 hour ago, dmatsch said:

Consider me clarified on the 104, and I thought we were talking about fighters only, not bombers.  Good catch.

Yeah, but he mentioned airliners, so I thought, what the heck.

[Dragon1-1]

Wow, he was talking out of his ass last time I saw his posts, but this is a whole new level. Star Wars level, to be exact, and not even of the SDI sort. Escape pods were a thing in a handful of aircraft, I think the B-1A, B-58 and the F-111 did have those (along some experimentals), but that was because they went really high and really fast. I don't think punching people out of airliners would really work, if only because the 200+ parachutes launched in close succession would all get tangled up. GA aircraft, however, do have a system that brings the whole plane down by parachute. Don't know how reusable the plane is after firing this, but it's better than the alternative.

BTW, WWII-era Germany did, in fact, introduce ejection seats. Kind of primitive, but functional. Otherwise, bailing out of their late war jets would have been impossible. Downward ejection was thing, as mentioned, but of limited utility because most emergencies that call for ejection happen at low altitude (and it made the early F-104 even more of a deathtrap). Being shot down in combat at 30kft is not the primary way aircraft are lost, and as such, the idea fell out of favor.

As for auto ejection, it was a thing in some aircraft, in most it wasn't. I know that in Yak-38 this feature punched quite a few Soviet naval aviators out, whether it actually saved their lives by doing that (as opposed to wasting a perfectly controllable jet) has been questioned, but given how hard the Yak-38 was to fly, I'd say I'm with the seat on that one.  

[Get_Lo]

My advice is just discard everything SUBS says. I really have no idea where he gets all his sources and I really would like to know, sounds like a fun place. 
never have I seen him source anything 

[khajaja]

^

[Dragon1-1]

The problem is that to someone ignorant, but willing to learn, this sounds just plausible enough to be true. Debunking him is tiresome. His delusions usually require some knowledge to tell apart from genuine info. 

As for sources, it's either comic books (remember who was the big proponent of commercial applications of repulsors?) or his own ass.

[Mars Exulte]

8 hours ago, Dragon1-1 said:

his own ass.

I'm going to go with this one

[SUBS17]

On 8/12/2022 at 3:10 AM, dmatsch said:

SUBS17:  The F-104 starfighter, designed by the legendary Kelly Johnson had a downward-firing ejection seat.  The tailplane was too large to have it fire upwards.  It's the only one that I know of that did this.

 

F104 the Seat goes upwards. An ejection Seat has to fire upwards in order to eject on the runway. If the pilot had a downward firing ejection seat then it would be a waste of time putting it into the aircraft. At high speed the ejection seat will still clear the tail it is only a couple of metres.

Edited September 4, 2022 by SUBS17

[Dragon1-1]

Hey, you're finally making sense, keep at it.  That said, old ejection seats are not powerful enough to eject on the runway. The idea behind the original, downward-firing seat in the F-104 was that the reason to use it would be getting shot down during high altitude missions, so that a downward-firing seat would work. In operational use, they encountered the exact problem you describe (compounded by the F-104 being hard to land), and some pilots died because of it. The seat was changed to an upward-firing one pretty quickly after that.

[SUBS17]

The only aircraft that I have heard of with downward firing Ejection Seats were bombers which are a waste of time. Zero-zero ejection seats will work on the ground but all of them have that capability. It is the Ejection Seat that warns pilots to "PULL UP", "EJECT", "ROLL." They do more but that is where that voice comes from which is right behind you. The equipment that does that uses SRTM and can predict a crash which is why it is there.

[Blackjack_UK]

On 9/4/2022 at 6:41 AM, SUBS17 said:

... An ejection Seat has to fire upwards in order to eject on the runway. If the pilot had a downward firing ejection seat then it would be a waste of time putting it into the aircraft. At high speed the ejection seat will still clear the tail it is only a couple of metres.

 

Nope. As stated elsewhere, rear compartment seats in the B52 fire downwards. Some tests were done by Bell on sideways firing seats for helicopters but the test dummies left their eyes in the cockpit so this was deemed a non-starter...

While Martin-Baker seats always had the oomph to clear the tail, early Lockheed seats in particular didn't as they just used an ejection gun rather than the rocket MB went with.

Edited September 6, 2022 by Blackjack_UK
Typo

[Blackjack_UK]

On 8/27/2022 at 8:32 PM, Dragon1-1 said:

Escape pods were a thing in a handful of aircraft, I think the B-1A, B-58 and the F-111 did have those (along some experimentals), but that was because they went really high and really fast.

True. Biggest disadvantage was that if you had a fire in the cockpit area (not that uncommon) then you took it with you and abandoned an otherwise perfectly serviceable aircraft. The main reason in the F-111 was to allow the crew to have a survival habitat with them. It was initially intended as a naval aircraft, after all...

 

On 8/27/2022 at 8:32 PM, Dragon1-1 said:

BTW, WWII-era Germany did, in fact, introduce ejection seats. Kind of primitive, but functional. Otherwise, bailing out of their late war jets would have been impossible.

Yes - they had a massive arm that ran along the spine of the aircraft and hooked to the pilot's harness. Underneath was a big spring - pull the lever, the spring is released and pops the arm into the airflow. Drag does the rest and hauls the pilot out and over the tail. Not for their jets though, it was used operationally (and successfully) in the Dornier 335 Pfeil which had an engine in the tail with a large propellor...

[Dragon1-1]

10 minutes ago, Blackjack_UK said:

Yes - they had a massive arm that ran along the spine of the aircraft and hooked to the pilot's harness. Underneath was a big spring - pull the lever, the spring is released and pops the arm into the airflow. Drag does the rest and hauls the pilot out and over the tail. Not for their jets though, it was used operationally (and successfully) in the Dornier 335 Pfeil which had an engine in the tail with a large propellor...

The Pfeil was only one of several aircraft that had them. He-162A had a more proper cartridge-operated ejection system, not entirely unlike early Lockheed ones.