Video of NASA dropping helicopter to watch it crash

The good people at NASA dropped a lightweight helicopter from 35 feet to watch it crash. This was the same helicopter that was dropped in December for crash testing. The first time, the helicopter suffered minimal damage due to a new "expandable honeycomb cushion" that absorbs the impact. This time, the helicopter was not outfitted with the cushion. The result was more like what you might expect. From NASA:

"Three, two, one, release," said the technician on the loudspeaker at the Landing and Impact Research Facility. With that countdown the helicopter smacked hard into the concrete. Its skid gear collapsed, its windscreen cracked open and its occupants lurched forward violently, suffering potentially spine-crushing injuries according to internal data recorders. The crash test was all in the name of research to try to make helicopters safer.

"The goal of any research program that has an element of impact dynamics is to develop an understanding of the crash response of the vehicle," said Karen Jackson, an aerospace engineer who oversaw the test. "Once we understand that response we can look at ways to improve the crash performance..."

Researchers say the "g" forces the MD-500 experienced more than tripled those recorded in the previous test. But that doesn't mean the research is over. Engineers have gigabytes of data to analyze to confirm exactly what impact the new honeycomb cushion technology might have for helicopters in the future.

"Chopper Crash Test a Smash Hit"

• [Lobster]

  Helicopters don’t work in space. Don’t you learn that the hard way?

  • [ab3a]

    Reminder for everyone here: NASA stands for National AERONAUTICS and Space Administration.

    Their objective is to research aircraft as well as spacecraft design. The latter is often overshadowed by their spectacular results with spacecraft. However, aeronautics research is still very necessary and helpful.

    For example, basic research in to new methods for improving the ability of aircraft to shed in-flight ice buildup are needed. Basic research in to newer airfoil designs that might improve fuel efficiency would be helpful. And as the recent and very unfortunate crash of Air France 447 shows, even things as mundane as a pitot tube (a device used for measuring air speed) could use some improvement.

    Thus I am glad to see my tax dollars applied to studies of basic aircraft crash-worthiness. It is well worth the money, and I hope it improves designs of all aircraft, not just helicopters.

    • [spocko]

      aba3a is spot on regarding this. The other great thing that NASA does is to help with safety with a program that enables pilots to submit errors and mistakes that they made when flying (either because of air craft design or personal failings). It’s a very successful program because it is anonymous. If a pilot screws up on a fly by wire system because of the lack of feed back he might not want to admit it to his boss. But it could lead to a real death so he submits it to the NASA program anonymously and then the industry experts look at the data and say, ‘We need more feedback on fly by wire systems’.

      This kind of error reporting lead them to determine the importance of audio and physical cues that were being shared by both pilot and co-pilot even though only one was flying.

• [S2]

  If only honeycombs had been installed, Clancy’s “Jack Ryan world” would have been so different…

• [strangecharm]

  Isn’t the most dangerous part of crashing a helicopter the two huge metal blades spinning rapidly right over your head, ready to chop it of or tear your helicopter apart?

• [robetler]

  Better than shooting a man in Reno just to watch him die.

• [Avram / Moderator]

  It’s like an episode of Mythbusters, with a higher budget. Or maybe the Letterman show from the ’80s, when he used to drop stuff off a building.

  The slo-mo bit at the end needs The Blue Danube on the soundtrack.

• [Anonymous]

  Yeah – the Langley facility this is shot at is awesome. Saw it last year, and there is a truly amazing collection of stuff they’ve tested being stored nearby – including a NASCAR stocker of what looks to be a few years old vintage and several composite helicopter bodies.

• [Jamie]

  @Chesterfield: I wore one when I was out there. I’ve worked under gantry cranes before, and no machine is perfect: sometimes stuff falls off, sometimes somebody drops a wrench. The thing is a couple hundred feet tall. No way I’d want to take a quarter-20 that’s moving at terminal velocity to the top of my noggin without some skull armor.

• [dross1260]

  Great. Now about those honeycomb rotors…

• [littlebone]

  Looks like a mashup between Mythbusters (or the late Smash Lab) and Wheel of Fortune.

  Adam, I’d like to buy a vowel.

• [toxonix]

  The only way to make a helicopter safe is to keep it on the ground in the first place. Even then its only marginally safer.

• [Selkiechick]

  2 comments

  1. Landing And Impact Research….. NASA’s mad scientists have a lair… awesome. :)

  2. I bet the Mythbusters are jealous!

• [Ugly Canuck]

  But kids!
  If you dropper the chopper
  you may come a cropper.

• [adamnvillani]

  Every kid with toy cars or toy helicopters likes to smash them together… how cool would it be to do that for real, and get paid for it?

• [Jamie]

  That facility is awesome. Back in the late ’90s I actually got to climb around on the thing and talk to several of the designers and builders as part of a history project I was writing. It was originally built as the Lunar Landing Research Facility, designed as a place to simulate the last minute or so of landing on the moon, 1/6 gravity and all. It’s a huge metal structure that had a big ol’ gantry crane on it, and it had a servocontrolled cable that supported 5/6 of the weight of the simulated lander, which used hydrogen peroxide rockets. The concrete pad under the crane was painted — complete with faux shadows and perspective tricks — to look like a lunar landscape would.

  The astronauts practicing the landings would climb into the “lander” and they’d start the run towards a designated spot on the pad beneath the gantry, firing the rockets to slow their descent just like a moon landing, then they’d fuel it back up, crank it back to the top, and do it again.

  After the Apollo program ended, it sat abandoned at the Langley Research Center for a while, then NASA realized it was a great place to do crash-test-dummy type stuff with aircraft and parts of aircraft (including, yes, Mythbusters-style smashing of fuselage sections).

• [gollux]

  Bad spinal compressions at the end of that simulated autorotation landing. Snapped necks as well.

• [Anonymous]

  Honeycomb’s big, yeah yeah yeah! It’s not small, no no no!

  • [spocko]

    Double plus 1 good comment.

    Personally, “I can’t get enough of my super Sugar Crisp.”

• [Chesterfield]

  Ha! I love the hard hats. Just in case, you know, you happen to be standing in the wrong place when they drop the helicopter.

  • [Anonymous]

    Are you kidding? If I had a cool NASA hard hat, I’d wear it every day too!

• [ill lich]

  Everything looks beautiful in slow motion. I bet even “tub-girl” would look beautiful in slo-mo, though I have no interest in proving that theory.