What happens when a DC-10 loses hydraulics.
I remember this incident very well, because I was about to get on a flight from Omaha to LA as it was happening (I had been briefing SAC on the potential applications of X-30. Yes, I know, I know).
10 thoughts on “Flight 232”
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Dad worked on the DC-10. From the stories he told about it I vowed never to get on one.
You were involved in the X-30 project? I knew you were at Rockwell at one point but did not know that. I am not going to bother asking questions about it because you probably still cannot talk much about it.
The impression a lot of us had looking from the outside was that it was just another piece of Reagan arms race vaporware like Star Wars. I did hear at one point during the X-33 program that some of the components were based on lessons learned with the X-30 program. Then again X-33 did not get anywhere either. Aircraft maximum velocity has been going down rather than up. Not just in the civilian market but even for military aircraft as well ever since the cancellation of Mach 3 fighters/bombers and the switch from turbojets to low-bypass turbofans. The 1970s oil crisis certainly did not help. Even when Boeing proposed the Sonic Cruiser a couple of years back the proposal did not last long on the table as the airlines are more interested in cutting fuel costs than in a fast airplane.
I wasn’t working the design, I was doing applications (mostly civil). It was a crazy scam. Some of the people at North American Aviation thought that you could get all the way to orbit without a rocket engine. That was the program that really turned me off to airbreathers.
What do you think about the SABRE engine?
Far too costly and complex for the benefits it offers.
Most of the components where I heard they were using concepts from X-30 were the lightweight propellant tanks and thermal protection systems. I am not an expert on the matter but scramjets as currently proposed only seem to be useful for long distance cruise flights at high velocity. Not being able to get to the cruise speed using the scramjet seems like a big issue to me even if you could solve all the other problems. Other engines that can work in high Mach regimes like pulse detonation engines or LACE do not have that issue.
Yes for orbital flight airbreathers do not seem to make sense. In that regard Reagan calling it the new Orient Express was not totally misguided.
If you want to cruise, use an air breather. If you want to turn, use a wing. If you want to accelerate, use a rocket.
The only markets I see for fast civilian planes are as either super bizjets or, maybe, very time sensitive cargo. But overseas routes aren’t enough; you need to fly > Mach 1 over land, so you need the reduced sonic boom tech.
The sharp-edged hollow cylinder design contains the sonic boom internally, but as Rand pointed out in an older blog post on it, there’s no way to generate lift without re-introducing the sonic boom. However, the other day I realized it might be a nifty way to make a supersonic hollow sniper bullet that doesn’t make a loud “crack”.
Everybody forgets AA96, in 1972; although not a hydro failure, it was similar to Flt 232 in that most primary flight control was lost. Incredible skill by Capt. McCormick to get it back on the ground with no lives lost. That damned cargo door…