Torpedo to the Rescue

Episode 10: Long-Range Lifeboat

The Challenge: Use torpedo technology to design a  manned Coast Guard lifeboat that can be dropped onto an ocean rescue scene from a long-range plane in a matter of minutes.

The Material: A phenomenon called supercavitation, where a bubble is formed behind an object that travels through water at a high rate of speed. The bubble sheaths the vessel in an armor of water vapor, reducing its drag by as much as 70 percent, possibly enabling a rescue boat to be dropped straight out of an airplane and survive the impact with the water.

What to Watch For: Kevin’s belly flop and the team pushing a boat out of a plane at 100 miles per hour.

When to Watch: Wednesday, March 19, at 10 p.m. ET/PT.

Comments

[Jaques]

I can't believe you guys let all of those pieces from the boat you dropped from the plane sink and just leaving them in the water!!!! Da Da Da!!!!!!! It's bad for the environment! Also, none of the things you do on the show would actually ever be seen in action or be helpful to people!

[D. Griffin]

I missed the first couple of minutes. What is wrong with using inflated lifeboat?

[Merle]

Dropping a boat from a plane was done in the early 1950's. It was done with modified Air Force bombers. The ultimate being the SB-29.
http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=2562

The big difference was the boat came down by parachute.

I'm guessing that maintaining the specialized delivery aircraft was probably expensive, but I believe were predominantly used in cold water areas.

[Erick Brown]

WHY! WHY! WHY!!!! ARE THESE GUYS OVER-COMPLICATING AND EVER-ENGENEERING SOMETHING THAT SHOULD BE PRETTY STRAIGHT-FORWARD! Yes you could use cavitation to desrease the G-forces involved with droppong a boat from the air...OOORRRRRRRR. You could use existing technology like oooohhh I don't know..... A DRAG CHUTE!!!! That would allow you to deccelerate IN THE AIR! instead of in the water. If you slow the forward speed of the boat to 20 MPH you will seriously decrease the G's the boat is subjected to on impact.

Simple always works best!

[Aaron]

Once again Smash Lab has tried to create something has has already been made, and, get this, Smash Lab's version is impractical and not cost effective. There is no surprise here.

The other thing about this, if people are in the water and boats are being dropped down along with other objects, wouldn't that prove to be a safety hazard?

Of course, this is Smash Lab, where practicality and safety do not apply in their "world."

Why not just drop down an inflatable life boat? It is already buoyant and compact and wait, it gets better, it is already in use.

[hot4deanne]

Hey this would have been the perfect episode to see Deanne in a bikini! They really missed a ratings goldmine there!

[CB]

If the military can drop 10-20 ton tanks and trucks from a plane using large parachutes, why not attach one to the boat and be done with it already. Don't recreate the wheel. It's not that entertaining. Mythbusters is much better entertainment and you actually dispell myths. No one ever wonders if you can do these things........and no one cares......

[veej]

AS a fellow engineer/architect I was impressed with the results.I would have liked to see the Fins attached to the boat instead of the release mechanism, that way the pitch/yaw of the boat is severely reduced after release. This was effectively used by the skipping Dam-buster torpedo's of WW II

[clear]

Why drop a boat from a copter? Use the copter to lower it to the water and drop it a whole 5-10 feet. I have watched a few eps of this show and they are a waste of time!

[retired USCG]

The lesson on cavitation was interesting. The Russians have a system where they drop a manned boat. A good old aerodynamic decelerator seems to do the trick for them!

Great fun to watch, but pretty lame concept.

[ScottFPE]

Stupid is as stupid does. Can we cancel this?

V=2gh

Figure it out. Deanne is window dressing.

Hopefully the smash lab artists (they are not engineers) will soon be flown to Dutch Harbor and can become greenhorns on Deadliest Catch.

Discovery loses credability with kind of nonsence.

[PML]

As an engineer, I am personally insulted by the lack of professionalism and complete disregard for the scientific method. Let's see some more science and fewer dramatizations. Have you noticed that they don't ever say what type of scientists or engineers they are?

Once again, they have totally overcomplicated the problem and have seemed to ignore the practicality of airlifting a full size rescue boat compared to a much smaller and more compact inflatable raft. They also fail to mention why there is a necessity for rescue personnel to accompany the boat in its dramatic but tragic descent to the water below. What happened to the tried and true method of dropping the rescuers from a helicopter or parachuting in? There is nothing like reinventing the wheel, and no this isn't a better mouse trap.

The worst part is that they are attempting to pass this junk off as science! Take this show off the air. This isn't the quality programing that I usually expect from the Discovery Channel.

[ps]

GOD!!!! these mother !@#$ers need to revert back to thinking inside the box!

[Fred]

This series stinks! I keep waiting for the cast to jell but it never does. The subjects are ridicules and the outcomes are predictable. This seems to be part of the trend to over dramatize everything.

[Terri]

Definately overcomplicating everything! Once again safety...when this boat drops and there's your stranded boaters/rescuers in the water close to where the boat lands, congrats, you probably just killed the person(s) you were trying to save.

Secondly, I don't think 15G's are survivable...but anyone who really knows, please correct me if I'm wrong. And there "pretty good" landing was in calm weather with calm waters. How many water rescues are really done in those conditons? Um...almost none.

[Kelly]

I saw the commercial for this episode during...Mythbusters, of all shows. Someone kindly correct me if I'm mistaken, but doesn't the U.S. Coast Guard do the same thing more effectively using........(get ready for it)...inflatable boats tethered to parachutes?!?

[SeaDog]

This series needs to be cancelled. I solved this one when I saw the preview. Use a hard case inflatable raft. These have been around on I don't know exactly but at least fifty years and are used by the navy and coast guard for this exact purpose.

[Mike]

The post about this being done since the early 50s is right on. I have a website on an SB-17 that crashed in the Olypmic Peninsula.

http://www.peak.org./~mikey/746/

Note the yellow Higgins wooden lifeboat slung under the SB-17 in the title page. These boats were pre-loaded with survival gear appropriate for the rescue zone- this one was loaded with tropical gear which didn't help the surviving crew members very much when they crashed in the mountains.

Here's a previously "Restricted" photo sequence of the boat drop testing circa 1951.
http://www.peak.org./~mikey/746/boat.htm
The trick was the pivoting parachute harness.

Try doing some homework, Smash Labbers. >:{

-Mike
mike@juggerbot.com

[Ubberkommander]

Hello superficial savants that do not have the mental capacity of a boiled potato. The fact that your ridding on the coat tails of the Myth Busters is disgusting. I could right a better show after drinking half a fifth of tequila. Please take this moranic show.

[Ferm]

I think you guys are a ripoff of mythbusters. Your show is boring and your cast has no chemistry together. They never prove all of the experiments and once stumped they just give up. I did like the bed liner episode but other than that this show is laking. All of these experiments could be done on mythbusters and be alot more enjoyable to watch.

[Johnathan Denson]

I am a member of the U.S. Coast Guard. I drop boats to people in the Ocean for a living. They so overly complicated this. We drop 26 man inflatable boats 2 at a time to people in the middle of the ocean and we do not use parachutes. We inflate the boats from a tether that attaches it to the aircraft and the boat turns into it's own parachute. We also drop de-watering pumps to help smaller sinking boats, message blocks, radios, anything that can drop safely, we can drop. And we have dead on accuracy.

[Karl]

Unbelievable. I see a lot of the same amazement in the other comments. Even after accepting their progressively dumber ideas and saying, yeah, well, it is stupid but let's just get on with it, they do not even deliver the acclerometer data at the end. It is the girl just guessing that 15 G was delivered. That crash of the "boat" into the water was disastrous. The crew would be crushed bugs on the front panel.

Staying within their assumptions that ignore all the obvious potential solutions like parachutes or other drag inducing devices to slow the impact down, they come up with a flat impact with water at 100 mph as a plan? If they just thought a minute more, or asked someone smart or experienced what they think might make a good shape, someone might have suggested that a long, narrow nose with stepped cavitation inducing rings sort of like their arrow test might have given them a long smoother entry and not that spectacular crash with its 80 foot splash! They do not need cavitation, but only minimizing the impact of a rescue boat. Once they opted for going underwater like a submarine, they could have just used a torpedo shaped nose for entry. That could even be jettisoned. So bad.

The whole idea of supercavitation is for high speed travel underwater, and not for stopping something. It is for launching ICBMs and bulletlike projectiles that hold their speed. This was wrong at every level.

OK let's form another crash test dummy show with all the smart ideas listed here. MegaBite is out...

[Eric R]

ok kiddies, today's solution is cavitation.. let's see, what problem can we come up with to use this solution on...

come on, morons, ever heard of parachutes? or just drop something with a high surface/weight ratio like an inflatable so drag will scrub off most of your speed.

and imagine my surprise that a heavy metal boat would experience lower deceleration than a lightweight fiberglass one.. shocking. if they'd droped that metal boat with no stupid prow fin at all it would have probably had the same 15g deceleration.

also, here's a free hint for you.. supercavitating torpedoes don't use a blunt high drag nose to generate a cavity, they do it by injecting a gas into the water ahead of the torpedo.

once again, a lack of a control, lack of understanding of the underlying principles, and overcomplication doom the smashLOL to failure.

mark it down as FAILURE #10

[Critical Thinker]

The cast and crew of this show actually amaze me. Just when I think that they can't come up with a more idiotic idea, lo and behold a new episode appears which is even more idiotic than the prior episode.

The cast are the stupidest people I have ever seen on television. And that's saying a lot considering I used to watch MTV and Spike.

Discovery Channel is actually lowering the IQ of their viewers by subjecting them to this show.

[brandon]

why don't you use a bomber instend so you can drop it stright down. why don;t they just take a helicopter in if a plane can reach it so can a helicopter. DUHHHH............