PDA

View Full Version : Bet you didn't see this on TV!



popper
03-18-2014, 04:18 PM
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c64_1279412306
What a rube goldberg. Guess they don't know how to work with METAL.

DRNurse1
03-18-2014, 04:31 PM
What were they thinking and how did the model tests work out???

Smoke4320
03-18-2014, 04:38 PM
its just taxpayer money .. we can get/steal more !!

daniel lawecki
03-18-2014, 04:50 PM
Looked like a 10 year old designed that. Good thing they have and over abundance of tax payer money to waste.

Just Duke
03-18-2014, 04:53 PM
OMG!!!!! That is the DUMBEST!!!!!! concept I have ever seen or heard.


FOREST SERVICE DECIDES TO SCRAP $36 MILLION PROJECT
www.apnewsarchive.com/1986/Forest-Service-Decides-To-Scrap-$36-Million-Project/id-900e92f37d2fe33a21557ff9533ed607
ANNE MCGRATH , Associated Press
Jul. 3, 1986 4:51 AM ET
LAKEHURST, N.J. (AP) _ The U.S. Forest Service has scrapped its Heli-Stat project after the experimental, eight-story aircraft crashed in flames, killing one crew member, an official said.
Forest Service officials decided to drop the experiment Wednesday during a meeting with representatives of the company they hired to develop the 343-foot airship, said Nick Grand, spokesman at the Naval Air Engineering Center, where the accident occurred during a test flight Tuesday.
The accident occurred less than a mile from the site of the 1937 Hindenburg airship disaster in which 36 people died.
Known as the Heli-Stat, the aircraft that combined a blimp and four tailless helicopters had been criticized, even before the crash, by several federal agencies as a $36 million folly that might not be structurally sound.
''This particular project is finis, and the concept of using hybrid aircraft for lifting logs from remote areas will be re-evaluated,'' said Grand.
But a Forest Service spokeswoman in Washington, D.C., Rose Narlock, said she had no official word that such a decision had been made.
Testing of the Heli-Stat, authorized by Congress in 1980, was scheduled to be completed by Oct. 1, the end of the current fiscal year, said John Lowe, deputy director of timber management in the U.S. Forest Service.
The Forest Service never envisioned producing the airship, but thought companies might want to if the experiment at Lakehurst proved successful, Lowe said in a telephone interview from his Washington, D.C. office.
The agency had hoped such a craft, originally projected to cost $10.7 million, could allow the harvesting of remote timber without building roads.
The Heli-Stat was the brainchild of helicopter pioneer Frank N. Piasecki, who didn't return telephone messages left Wednesday at his office. His company, Piasecki Aircraft Corp. of Essington, Pa., had leased space at the naval center for the project.
Moments before the crash, the Heli-Stat's right rear chopper broke loose from the harness that attached it to the blimp, there was a strong vibration and the other three helicopters quickly tore free of the frame, Grand said.
''Old mama gravity took over,'' he said. ''Everything came crashing down.''
He said the copters' fuel tanks ruptured and the fuel ignited. The helium- filled blimp was left torn in half.
According to Grand, the airship had just taken off and its wheels were 15 to 20 feet off the ground when the first helicopter separated. Joe O'Halloran, production control supervisor for Piasecki Aircraft, said the airship was being maneuvered and had gone about 150 feet before the accident.
In the past, Piasecki has said he was confident the Heli-Stat would be successful, adding that some timber companies had expressed an interest in the craft.
But a 1982 report by the General Accounting Office, the auditing branch of Congress, said the Heli-Stat was a white elephant, and that the final cost of develping, housing and testing it would surpass $40 million, which never would be recovered.
The GAO also cited structural problems found by the Navy, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration.
Killed in the crash was Gary Olshfski, 39, of Bordentown. The craft's four other crew members suffered minor injuries, as did a firefighter on the ground.

FISH4BUGS
03-18-2014, 05:11 PM
I doubt any engineers worked on that. Man what a piece of junk.

Garyshome
03-18-2014, 05:18 PM
its just taxpayer money!

largom
03-18-2014, 05:24 PM
Why would the Forest Service need this? If timber companies want the logs let them build it. I have never agreed with the forest service building roads at tax payers expense so timber companies can harvest the timber.

Larry

starmac
03-18-2014, 05:25 PM
Why are they claiming to scrap the idea, it sounds to me like it scrapped it self without their input, taking a life with it. All to keep private enterprise from doing what they know works and make a profit.

bikerbeans
03-18-2014, 05:42 PM
Well at least the forest service was smart enough to use helium instead of hydrogen in their modified blimp.:roll:

BB

HarryT
03-18-2014, 06:05 PM
President James Earl Carter (D) was in office back then. It was Bush's fault!

Looks kind of like the Sky Dreadnought that's being seen over Ukraine.

waksupi
03-18-2014, 07:26 PM
That was never a good idea, would never have been fast enough for a logging operation.

As far as spending money to build logging roads, those roads are, or were, instrumental in fighting forest fires in remote areas. The greenies have got many of them blocked and destroyed, restricting public access to public lands, and burning tens of thousands of square miles of timber. The roads are necessary to be able to manage the timberlands, unless you prefer the ongoing let it burn policy of the wackos.

oldfart1956
03-18-2014, 09:23 PM
I doubt any engineers worked on that. Man what a piece of junk.

I'll bet an engineer did work on that! Back in the late 80's early 90's I worked at Grove Manufacturing...building cranes. While in the R&D dept. I got the job of assembling a new design yard crane. (think Jeep body with a little boom) It was a tinkerers dream! Loved it. Got the thing 90% assembled and they delivered the lights/electrics and sundry other parts. Then spent an hour trying to explain to the engineers why the 8 inch round headlights they sent me wouldn't fit in the 6 inch square holes on the grill. They just couldn't grasp it. On the CAD machine..it fit. I finally had to physically lead one of the brainiacs out to the shop floor and let him see. He stood there for 20 minutes trying to fit the headlights in the hole. They redesigned the grill. Audie...the Oldfart..

fatboy
03-18-2014, 09:41 PM
the announcer claimed it to be "another freak disaster", I call BS just look at it, I do hope they go easy on the 8th grade shop class that actually built it though, it was there first try ya know.

popper
03-18-2014, 10:41 PM
8th graders know better.

Just Duke
03-19-2014, 07:33 AM
I found the two engineers that worked on the craft and were probably smoking their breakfast when they designed it.
Also in the picture is their new craft that will make folks lighter than air. Or feel like their lighter than air.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/d8/Cheech%26ChongsGreatestHit.jpg

Just Duke
03-19-2014, 07:45 AM
The people that built this country.
99968


The spawn that is destroying it. We are doomed!!!
99969
http://www.brobible.com/college/article/university-of-akron-frat-suspended-paddling/


99971
http://www.holytaco.com/day-history-invention-beer-bong/

shooter2
03-19-2014, 08:47 AM
I bet that is just the tip of the iceberg. No wonder we're broke.