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Many of you will remember a famous scene from a James Bond film.
A bad guy with a gun gets into Bond's car, in the seat next to the driver
Luck has run out for James Bond? Is it the end of the story?
But James Bond pushes a small button and the bad guy gets ejected from the car
with the seat and vanishes into the horizon.
These devices that ejects out of a vehicle passengers
and seats are real not just fiction.
Not from cars, but from planes.
On fighters jets these devices eject the pilots in emergency situations.
Underneath the seats an explosive charge launches the pilots out of the plane
in a fraction of a second.
As if they were cannon balls.
It is a fairly drammatic way to get out of a plane
but can be lifesaving in hopeless situations.
The other option is to crash on the ground.
Ejection seat technology has been costantly improving through the years
and Lorenzo Pinna will show us the state of the art
with really spectacular footage.
Getting out from a plane speedin at 1000 km per hour is no easy feat.
But it is the only option for fighter jet pilots when their planes cannot fly any
longer.
Of course it is not possible to jump out and open the parachute.
At this speed the pilot would impact on the tail or be sucked in by the engines.
The only way out is the ejection seat.
Invented more than 50 years ago the ejection seat has saved thousands pilots
and has been costantly improving through the years.
Here some footage of last second ejections.
The liquid trailing behind the F 14 is leaking from the idraulic system
The plane is out of control. The two pilots eject.
A take of off with a steep climb. A stall. And the pilots eject.
The line between life and death is thin a few fractions of a second
As it is the case with this failed take off from an aircraft carrier
The plane goes down into the sea but the pilots have ejected safely.
How does the ejection seat work?
The yellow handle starts the launch process
In the seat back the blu tube where the first controlled explosion releases
hot and high pressure gases and launches the seat out of the cockpit
When the seat impacts the air at 1000 km/ hour
a small rocket goes off and pushes the seat far from the plane
A small parachute deploys immediatly after
This is where is located in the seat back
It works like a brake and when the speed has been reduced,
the main parachute deploys
taking the pilot out of the seat and bringing him gently to the ground
The ejection seat usually crashes to the ground
but in this test is attached to a parachute
It will be used again in other tests
The whole sequence from pulling the handle to the deployment
of the main parachute does not last more than three seconds.
This is a real time test
Things are not so easy as they may look
First point. The pilot may be unable to mantain a level flight.
He might be ejacted during an upside-down flight
or a steep bank
Can the ejection seat save a life in this extreme situations?
And the stress the pilot is subjected is it lethal?
During an ejection a pilot can experience up to ten times the force of gravity
The first impact with the atmosphere can deliver up to 35 times the force of gravity
Then the braking of the small parachute reduces the speed,
in a few seconds, from 1000 km/h to 200-300 km/h
These are violent stress that can damage neck and spine
To evaluate these stresses, tests on the new ejection seat
are carried out with dummies stuffed with sensors
This dummy has the size of a woman fighter pilot
( there many of them in the US Air Force)
Usually women weigh less and get a stronger kick
from the explosion and the ejection seat rockets
This ends up in even more Gs for women pilots.
The dummy sensors evaluate the stress in different parts of the body
From this studies it will be understood if lighter pilots
(under 60-65 kilos) will need modified ejection seats
Ejection seat companies are from Great Britain, USA and Russia and are looking
for
safer ways to eject even when the plane is not in level flight
Here we are in what were the old labs of Mac Donnel Douglas where researchers
are working
on a fourth generation ejection seat
This is a computer simulation and a scaled down model for the wind tunnel
This new ejection seat will be fitted with special nets
to restrain and protect pilot's arms and legs during launch
A new technology allows the ejection seat to recover the right position
even if the launch happened in upside-down flight or steep bank
Four rockets, and not just one as in traditional seats, controlled by a
computer
that will steer the seat in the right position to deploy the parachute
and save dangerous stresses to the pilot
these simulations show how the device will work
A launch in upside-down flight
This is the last model of Marin Baker ejection seat ,a popular brand among
fighter pilots
A real ejection in uposide-down flight
Another test, as well with the Martin Baker seat.
The ejection is from a plane standing still on the ground
The so called 0-0 capability . 0 speed 0 height.
In this footage a famous feat of the russian seat
Paris Air Show 1989 a Russian fighter jet, a Suchoi 29, is flying acrobatics very low
A bird is sucked into the Suchoi engines. The jet falls.
But the ejections seat saves the pilot life.
In Italy all the ejection seats for the military are built
in a factory near Latina, licensed by Martin Baker
More than 180 italian fighter jet pilots owe their life to the ejection seat
Lorenzo Pinna, many pilots have ejected saving their lives
Yes this device has been used since the 50s.
So pilots in the Vietnam war, in the Gulf war have ejected
and pilots who ran into trouble while training
You have spoken with pilots and instructors who told you that
at the moment of ejecting
there is a special effect a "pouch" feeling.What is it?
It is a resistance of the pilot to abandon the plane
Even if it is falling off the sky
It is a feeling of being protected by the cockpit even if they are
falling
and a resistance to pull the handle and start the ejection
And these are split second decisions. But with two pilots who decides the ejection?
The ejection is decided by the pilot.
The first to be ejected is the navigator behind and then the pilot.
So the responsability is the pilot's