

New russian helicopter can land on top of Mount Everest, never ages - the-kenny
http://en.rian.ru/video/20110210/162539714.html

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furyg3
What's up with the whacky accent? I hear this in demonstration / marketing
videos from big industrial companies all the time, and I can't figure out why
you'd want someone who speaks so oddly.

"We need a professional sounding English narrator. British accent, of course,
it's more refined. But not a native speaker... that's too ordinary. We need
someone who's faking a British accent. Also, random word emphasis is a plus."

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al05
I am british, and I could not stop laughing at the accent. You can tell its
how someone not britain thinks how a british person speaks. Waaay to
exaggerated.

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varjag
Nice to meet you Mr. Brown. How do you do?

English curriculum in Soviet schools was meant to be based on British English,
but of course precious few teachers ever traveled to the UK or interacted with
Britons.

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noonespecial
Perhaps an exciting first step to retrieving all of the human remains and the
litter that's accumulated on the ascent over the years? Clean up the joint a
bit?

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wybo
Wasn't this done already?

[http://www.everestnews.com/stories2005/everestcopter05272005...](http://www.everestnews.com/stories2005/everestcopter05272005.htm)

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stcredzero
To me, the "never ages" part is the most interesting, though in terms of
aerospace, this doesn't have to be literally "never". An "estimated service
life of 150 years" would be half again as long as humans have had powered
flight, and would basically amount to the same thing.

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arethuza
"Designers say the helicopter’s performance is quite unique, that it will not
age. Special wear resistant composite materials are used on the helicopter’s
fuselage"

I'd have thought that most problems with helicopters come from the engines and
other complex parts, not the fuselage.

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jws
Yes, but they made no claims about that. In their little corner of the
universe the helicopter is the air frame. Those engines, rotors, tires,
batteries and whatnot are just incidentals that people insist on bolting on.

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shortlived
No according to the article, it can fly as high as Mount Everest, but that is
a lot different than landing on the peak.

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Nick_C
Yeah. Helicopters in flight use less power because of "free" translational
lift, the lift provided by air flowing over the rotor because of the
helicopter's forward speed.

It uses much more power to lift off when stationary because there is no
translational lift.

So if the helicopter is at maximum power while moving, it has no "extra" power
to hover or land gently or take off. It can fly as high as Everest, but it
can't land or takeoff.

I remember reading (I think it was "Chickenhawk", great book) that some pilots
in Vietnam with an overloaded helicopter stuck on a ridge would basically drop
it off the side of the ridge to get some forward speed before they would
recover and climb up to altitude. That takes guts.

While I'm telling anecdotes, a long time friend had always wanted to fly, it
was his dream, so he joined the Air Force after school. He passed the basic
ab-initio training with flying colours and got assigned to heavy transports.
He quit after two years. I was very surprised and asked him why. He said he
was so scared he couldn't handle it. (He wouldn't say what, but I assume
something like short landings at night on unmade strips in the middle of the
bush, etc.)

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varjag
Looks like Mi-8 after a facelift.

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zwadia
That's truly amazing because I can't recollect a Helicopter that big making it
to 8,800m as they claim. Usually it is very light copters that can do that.
Clearly the Indian army will want to get their hands on this as they operate
in the highest battlefield on earth:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siachen_Glacier>

Evacuating troops and dropping supplies there is difficult to put it lightly.

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zwadia
And yes the accent was "extra-normal" quality.

