Ejection Seat: Difference between revisions

** In ''[[Tomorrow Never Dies (Film)|Tomorrow Never Dies]]'', [[James Bond (Film)|James Bond]] uses an ejector to eject an unwanted co-pilot from his stolen fighter jet, downing another plane in the process.

** During one scene in ''[[Goldeneye (Film)|Goldeneye]]'', [[James Bond (Film)|James Bond]] ejects himself and Natalya from a stolen prototype combat helicopter that was rigged to shoot itself with its own missiles. Of course, the ejection mechanism shot out the blades from the top rotor first, for fairly obvious reasons.

* The quote at the top of this page comes from ''[[Star Wars]]'' during the assault on the Death Star (unfortunately for him, he gets blown up before he has time to eject). The starfighter is designed so that the cockpit and couch would separate from the fuselage and engines, thus leaving the pilot drifting in what was effectively a survival capsule. The suit is air tight and has a small force field that will keep you breathing for about three or four hours. Now being next to a giant moon-sized space station that explodes isn't exactly survivable so it was still a waste of time.

* ''[[Top Gun]]'' shows that ejecting doesn't always help, as Goose smacks into the canopy and breaks his neck. This was a real risk at one time; now the ejection seat in many fighters is designed with a mechanism to shatter the glass before the pilot could hit it in the case that the canopy is not out of the way already.

== Literature ==

* The ''[[Star Wars]]'' Expanded Universe uses this a lot more than the films, so that people can and do survive that way. Sometimes, however, the ejector seat malfunctions, sometimes the canopy doesn't open. Both the successful and the tragic versions happen in the ''[[X Wing Series]]'', both books and comics. With the mag-con field active over their flight suits, pilots can survive for something like ten minutes before freezing, since [[Space Is Cold]]. There was actually a plot the Darklighter comic which [http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/5131/blz10.jpg hinged] on [http://img145.imageshack.us/img145/1857/blz11.jpg ejecting] in better suits while their modified TIEs got shot down.

* Averted in ''[[The Laundry Series|The Jennifer Morgue]]'' by [[Charles Stross]], which goes into some detail as to why an ejection seat in a car is an insanely bad idea; when Bob Howard presses the eject button on his [[Cool Car]], the ''entire car ejects'', which is only slightly less so. It's made clear that only time you should press the button is if ''not'' pressing it is ''definitely'' going to kill you. The explanation also deflates the idea of the "easy eject"; Bob describes how, due to the G-forces involved, the pilot is likely looking at weeks in traction ''at best''.

* As in the games on which they're based, the ''[[Wing Commander (Literature)|Wing Commander]]'' novels occasionally feature ejection seats. In ''End Run'', it's noted that there's a mechanism that's supposed to prevent an ejection while on the carrier, but that has a reputation for not always functioning. [[Chekhov's Gun|Later in the novel]] it fails for one pilot, smashing him against the landing bay overhead<ref>for those not familiar with naval terminology, the ceiling</ref>.

 

== Live-Action TV ==

* When Wendy Watson flies to rescue ''[[The Middleman]]'', [[Ridiculously Human Robot|IDA]] triggers the Middlejet's [[Ejection Seat]] remotely, much to Wendy's horror.

* Fighters in ''[[Babylon Five]]'' are often equipped with ejector seats, though rescue is a bit of a crapshoot in space.

* ''[[Get Smart (TV)|Get Smart]]'': Maxwell Smart's car occasionally features an ejector seat. You can imagine how well that works.

* The ''[[Myth Busters (TV)|Myth Busters]]'' proved you could, with some difficulty, put a crude ejector seat in a car and trick somebody into sitting on it.

* In ''[[Farscape (TV)|Farscape]]'', Aeryn is ejected in one of these, with [[Meaningful Funeral|disastrously heart-breaking]] but, of course, [[Death Is Cheap|non-permanent results]].

* Documentary series ''[[Pawn Stars]]'' had someone try to sell this to the pawn shop. It was appraised as genuine.

** And they learned it was still functioning and in all the years it had been owned and used as a chair in someone's living room, no one decided to randomly try the eject button.

* In real life, 20% of aircraft ejections result in the pilot sustaining career-ending injuries, such as death. Also, 100% of aircraft ejections result in the pilot losing several inches of height, due to the sudden compression of being flung out of your plane at anywhere from 12 to 22 Gs (depending on what ejection seat your plane was equipped with). Most air forces impose a career limit on the number of ejections permissible before it's desk job city for you.

** Indeed pilots don't eject at the first hint of trouble, either. Considerable effort if first put into ''slowing the aircraft'' because at supersonic or just plain fast speeds the wind the pilot is slamming into could possibly rip the mask off of a pilot's face and ram the air down his esophagus, [[Squick|inflating his stomach like a balloon]], which makes simply impacting the ground sans parachute sound like a better option. Slowing down to a more reasonable speed to eject into is a good idea, if you can do it. A 200 mph wind is about the fastest nature throws at us. 600 mph is ''unnatural''. The conventional wisdom among pilots is to eject only if not ejecting ''will'' kill you.

** Before ejection seats were invented, escaping an aircraft by "bailing out" was even more dangerous. If you were lucky, there was a control that would blast off the canopy with explosive charges. If not, you had to open the canopy yourself, either climb out or roll the aircraft over and ''fall'' out, and essentially perform an impromptu skydive. Unlike a normal skydive however, the aircraft is likely to be violently spinning and rapidly losing altitude due to loss of engines, control surfaces, entire wings, or all of the above. If the plane was flying low enough or couldn't be controlled at all, many pilots chose to stay in their planes and die instantly in the crash instead of risk bailing out and dying a slower, more horrible death. At least 50% died on the way out (not counting the ones who didn't make it out at all), and only around a quarter made it back home safely, the rest of the survivors either being taken prisoner or horribly wounded. Early-model Messerschmitt Bf 109s and Bell P-39 Airacobras were notoriously difficult to bail out of because the wind would literally hold the side-folding canopy shut, making it almost impossible to escape the plane.

*** Production Airacobras didn't have sliding canopies, they had ''doors'', but that didn't make them easier to bail out, for a different reason. The relative positions of the cockpit door and the stabilizer effectively made sure that if any pilot taller than a midget would forget to take a fetal position after bailing out, his legs will be broken by a stabilizer, this usually being a career ending injury even if the pilot managed to land on his own territory and was saved by the groung troops. More than a few pilots suffered such a misfortune, the most famous of them being a Soviet ace Boris Glinka (29 victories).

[[Category:Tropes On a Plane]]

[[Category:Ejection Seat]]