Weeks or months, I guess - biomechanics of spine was not my area of scientific interest.
As the Rafale B has a Martin-Baker Mark 16F “zero-zero” seat, he could get a pin from their club?
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So. . . can the aircraft be controlled from either seat? I’m guessing (and hoping) there isn’t a configuration that ejects the only pilot and leaves a passenger. Right? (All my experience is with cars that can be controlled only from the front seat.)
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When I was in the Navy, one of the officers that was tangentially in charge of us was a RIO (backseat guy) and was said to be a “Velcro Stretcher” whenever they landed. I guess the ejector handle or whatever is held down with velcro to keep it out of the way or something.
When planes land on a carrier, the first thing they do when they hit the deck is gun the engines to full power. That’s so if they miss the wire, they will have enough energy to keep going and try again. Otherwise they would be going way too slow and go off the angle deck into the water. On very rare occasions the wire will break or the tail hook will only partially stop it or something…and at that point the pilot is supposed to eject. Apparently this guy was really nervous.
(Google “Velcro Stretcher” at your own risk. I had no idea and am definitely not looking forward to explaining why that is in my search history should someone decide to check…)
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Well in the F-15 and F-16, there are controls in both seats of the 2-seat models. The control that determines how the ejection seats respond to pulling the rear seat handle(s) is in the rear seat of the F-16 (I think it is in the same place in the F-15, but it is so long ago I had the chance to fly a few sorties in one that I don’t remember for sure). There is a way to leave the passenger behind though. If someone has mistakenly set the rear seat controls to “solo” (the setting for when someone is in the front only), then if the pilot (in front) ejects, the rear seat will not go and the passenger will also likely be burned by the rocket ejecting the front seater (which is why when both seats go, the rear seat always goes first…
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Why is it that that front-seat rocket can burn the person in the rear seat but not vice-versa? Is it because of the slipstream, or apparent wind, or whatever it’s called? The outside air moving quickly relatively rearward?
What if it somehow happened in still air (at the top of one of those aerobatic maneuvers that turn all the aircraft’s kinetic energy into potential energy, for example, or if it somehow happened on the ground [is there a lockout to detect and prevent that?])? Could the front-seat crew member then get burned by the ejection of the rear seat?
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The short answer is that the front seat passes over the rear seat area when ejecting. As seat goes up, jet is still moving forward so rear seat area is under the rocket. As rear seat goes the jet passes beneath it, so it could burn someone in a seat behind it, but there is no such 3rd seat.
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Yeah, safer if us civilians stick to watching war porn instead of participating in it.
Side note:
I was crew on a aircraft carrier forever ago, and we would to “airshows” where there would be flight antics and some bombing of the ocean. A 2K lb bomb detonation is cool to watch, but it sucks to be a sea critter in the affected area.
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Me too. Nothing quite like seeing a silent F-18 coming towards you at Mach ? then simultaneously passing you 20 feet away (had to be further but it sure seemed awfully close), deafening you with a sonic boom, and watching it go straight up and out of sight.
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We still had F-14. Afterburners. What an absolutely glorious waste of power and resources. It was all awe when I was in. There is a patina of perspective that has been applied in the intervening years.
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