kenneth Collins wrote:
>> there's the possibility of contributing to dynamics with respect to the
> vertical axis, but only in an extremely-loosely-'coupled' way.
>> unless stuff is attached to the airframe, it's pretty-much like liquid
> in a bottle, and tends to destabilize because it has its own inertia
> that doesn't cooperate with the airframe, and actually damps flight
> control inputs.
>> it's why the 'fasten your seatbelts' light comes on during demanding
> flight operations.
that is, the primary (and almost only) purpose of 'seat belting' folks
is to 'attach' them to the airframe, and prevent their
would-otherwise-be-uncoupled inertia from mucking-up an aircraft's trim.
seat belts are a safety factor, but almost wholly with respect to the
aircraft's trim, which means that seatbelts are actually for the plane's
dynamics (upon which everyone's survival depends), not passengers.
>> one-'language' ken
>> Arthur T. Murray wrote:
> >
> > Somebody wrote in bionet.neuroscience (of all places!):
> >
> > >> the MD-80 plane crash yesterday. the stabilizer problem is analogous to
> > >> the nervous system 'lesion'. the pilots tried desperately to correct for
> > >> the malfunction induced by the stabilizer failure, but because the
> > >> failure of the stabilizer =separated= the stabilizer's functionality
> > >> from the rest of the plane's controlable dynamics, the efforts of the
> > >> pilots 'only' led to the deterioration of the functionality of the
> > >> remaining control systems.
> >
> > The following may be a dumb and naive question, and may have already
> > been asked, but:
> >
> > Could the Alaska Airline pilots have saved the aircraft by asking
> > all the passengers to walk to the back of the cabin, thus, by their
> > body weight, forcing down the tail area which had been elevated by
> > a jammed stabilizer wing? Would the weight of 88 passengers and crew
> > have been enough to level out the flight of the airplane?
> >
> > A hideous thought because it is in hindsight, but, might it have worked?
> >
> > --
> > http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/7256/mind4th.html PD AI