Re: Fighter bay design (was: FT-Fighters and bays)

The delta-v of an aircraft to a carrier and the potential kinetic energy
released on impact is considerably different than in space. For an
aircraft, the controller has to make a choice between dunking the
aircraft (lost money) and messing  up his deck, but at the same time
dunking the aircraft decreases
the chances of pilot survival (especially if pilot is wounded or
ejection systems damaged).

In space, the damaged fighter will be quite happy sitting somewhere and
waiting - won7t sink, and even if it does float away it would hardly get
lost. As long as the pilot can be gotten out, away from the carrier is
safest.
What I meant by dead pilots was that it will take time to get a pilot
from a fighter into a pressurized environment, no matter how it's done.
I figure either he has a hole in his pressurization and will be dead
very shortly, or he can afford to wait five minutes for rescue to get
there.

P.S. Fukuoka is still a large rural city, as always. Kitakyu is cleaner,
but still dead in the water. Little changes in a land where inertia is
king.

> Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2001 10:40:52 -0400
> From: Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com>
> Subject: Re: Fighter bay design (was: FT-Fighters and bays)
>
> At 3:49 PM +0900 6/7/01, Edward Lipsett wrote:
> > The next-easiest is (3): if the fighter pilot is wounded or the
> >fighter cannot be
> >controlled safely for some reason, it should not be allowed to
> >approach the carrier at
> >all. Either the pilot is in an airtight environment (even a suit) or
> >he's dead; if
>
> This runs contrary to everything that is held to be in Aviation Ops.
> You always want your crews knowing that you will do every thing you
> can do to get them home alive. Morale would be severely impacted by
> this. Given the nature of space flight, an automated approach ala
> Harriers coming into land on a carrier (Stopping first then landing)
> would be trivial.
>
> >into air anyway. The carrier will not want any highly-explosive
weaponry and
> >high-velocity fighters near it, even if they are friendly, unless
> >they are under
> >reliable control.
>
> As opposed to currently where those aircraft come in and practically
> crash land into the decks with all of this nasty gear onboard.
> Armaments are safed by use of safeties and fuzing. The only time you
> get major incidents is when you have fire. Hard to have that in
> space....

=====
Edward Lipsett
Intercom, Ltd.
Fukuoka, Japan
translation@intercomltd.com
http://www.intercomltd.com
Fax: +81-92-712-9220