Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

thenationalnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 178 posts

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#71

Post by topkai22 »

vagrantJin wrote: post #48

Saw the "English version" of Indian news articles keep refering to the guy as a high school dropout in the headlines and sub headings. That's a mighty odd description that has nothing to do with the incident. I found that rather derisive and left a bitter aftertaste. Education does not neccesarily prevent accidents. Even spacecraft, built by the best engineers in the world, with the best materials, tested for years,…

I’m with the sibling commentators- this phrasing is generally complimentary in the American press. It’s kind of strange cultural norm, but it’s a celebration of the “self made” aspect of what the person accomplished, not a denigration of his education level.

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#73

Post by pm90 »

kumarvvr wrote: post #65
wincy wrote: post #15

He didn't have a helmet or so much as a seatbelt in the helicopter. The tail rotor flew off, hit the main rotor at a high speed, which knocked him sideways, out of the fuselage. It was at this point his head came into contact with the spinning main rotor, likely killing him instantly. A seatbelt seems like it would have saved his life. It was recorded, which is how I know this, I honestly wouldn't suggest looking for…

Was he smart? I give credit to him that he is intelligent, dedicated, hard working, etc. But smart? If he was smart, he would know that a helicopter is one of the most complex flying machines ever designed. Everything is so critical, from design of the mechanical system, right down to quality of welds and quality of material used. I have seen pics and video of the copter. Its a frame, and some blades, welded in some…

It seems rather unlikely that others would be encouraged by his death.

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#74

Post by kumarvvr »

pm90 wrote: post #73
kumarvvr wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was he smart? I give credit to him that he is intelligent, dedicated, hard working, etc. But smart? If he was smart, he would know that a helicopter is one of the most complex flying machines ever designed. Everything is so critical, from design of the mechanical system, right down to quality of welds and quality of material used. I have seen pics and video of the copter. Its a frame, and some blades, welded in some…

It seems rather unlikely that others would be encouraged by his death.

Don't you think there will be others who will think "he was killed because of X Y Z, I can do better" ?

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#75

Post by trhway »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #70
wolfretcrap wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also a farmer and inventor based in India. Problem is that we do not have many tools, indian made tools cost 3-4x of Chinese tools and have 2x worse quality on average 80% things which exist in West (made in China) does not exist in India on top India doesn't make many things. Plus we suffer from too many middlemen problem, where the end product is inflated away beyond the affordability of masses. Not everything…

One would assume that if you have the resources to attempt to build something that resembles a helicopter, you would have a way to source a cloth strip to tie yourself to the seat. Not trying to diminish the magnitude of the disaster, but I think your argument does not apply in this case

sorry, i think you don't get it - the point is that you don't have all the necessary things. Which things out of the missing things were really necessary - that is rearview 20/20. This time it was strip of cloth, other time it may be something else.

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#76

Post by jobigoud »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #70
wolfretcrap wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also a farmer and inventor based in India. Problem is that we do not have many tools, indian made tools cost 3-4x of Chinese tools and have 2x worse quality on average 80% things which exist in West (made in China) does not exist in India on top India doesn't make many things. Plus we suffer from too many middlemen problem, where the end product is inflated away beyond the affordability of masses. Not everything…

One would assume that if you have the resources to attempt to build something that resembles a helicopter, you would have a way to source a cloth strip to tie yourself to the seat. Not trying to diminish the magnitude of the disaster, but I think your argument does not apply in this case

I think they were saying for the cause of the accident, not the seat belt part.

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#77

Post by e3bc54b2 »

wolfretcrap wrote: post #56
wincy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry to hear that. It’s definitely a tragic story. I ordered some things from McMaster Carr just the other day and it arrived within a few days. I get frustrated sometimes when the parts I need have to ship from China and take a month. But they are cheap and they’ll arrive eventually. It’s definitely sad to see genius wasted because the tools just sometimes aren’t available in places like India. Thanks for this info…

>I get frustrated sometimes when the parts I need have to ship from China and take a month. But they are cheap and they’ll arrive eventually. This remind me of the time when some local makers were ordering parts from aliexpress it was talking on average 30-40 days to arrive at their door and they were only ordering the parts that could not be substituted easily. Then one day government of India decided to ban aliexpr…

I was not aware Aliexpress got banned. What is the next best alternative?

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#78

Post by TeMPOraL »

Natsu wrote: post #35
wincy wrote: post #15

He didn't have a helmet or so much as a seatbelt in the helicopter. The tail rotor flew off, hit the main rotor at a high speed, which knocked him sideways, out of the fuselage. It was at this point his head came into contact with the spinning main rotor, likely killing him instantly. A seatbelt seems like it would have saved his life. It was recorded, which is how I know this, I honestly wouldn't suggest looking for…

Back in college, one of my advisors was a control systems engineer. He showed me the matrix of PDEs for the helicopter & the control system. There was also a simulator where the height of the helicopter was fixed and you could just tilt the main rotor forward or back to move and you could try this with or without a control system. The helicopter was completely uncontrollable without the control system. In the simulat…

Nowhere near the same level, but one of my proudest moments in gaming as a teenager was being able to complete a single mission in Search and Rescue 4. It took many, many hours of futzing with the game interface, and even more hours reading up on helicopter controls on the Internet. Without the latter, I couldn't really understand what's going on with the controls.

I know it's just a videogame, but it gave me a deep respect for helicopters, in a way that normal flight sims didn't give me for jet planes.

In the process, I've also learned a bit about the mechanics surrounding the drive train and the main rotor blade, and to this day I'm impressed by how it was made to work. You have a couple tons of metal, + fuel and people, hanging from the sky off a spinning rod with lots of tiny, rotating parts. The more I think about it, the more I realize I still don't have a good intuition for strength and wear-resistance of materials involved.

I wish I could fly one for real. Maybe in another life, when I'm someone with more time, money and risk tolerance. For now, I'll just wait for someone to build a nice VR simulator, and maybe my friend and I can resume our high-school competition in autorotating after simulated engine failure in bad weather.

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#79

Post by hughrr »

wincy wrote: post #15

He didn't have a helmet or so much as a seatbelt in the helicopter. The tail rotor flew off, hit the main rotor at a high speed, which knocked him sideways, out of the fuselage. It was at this point his head came into contact with the spinning main rotor, likely killing him instantly. A seatbelt seems like it would have saved his life. It was recorded, which is how I know this, I honestly wouldn't suggest looking for…

Urf I did go looking for this and found it. You’re spot on.

India is not known for looking at what can go wrong. There are many YouTube videos out there showing you how to make things with electricity which can kill you dead instantly. What’s worse is they never discuss safety and you only get to see the survivors.

My favourite is the (now removed) video of repairing a switch more power supply. The guy has a mains lead made up for his oscilloscope with no earth and is handling the probes and casing on live mains connected SMPS with no isolation transformer. One slip and he’s dead. I did wonder how many people he’d killed who watched it and did the same.

Re: Indian inventor dies in homemade helicopter accident

#80

Post by meheleventyone »

bumbada wrote: post #68
bombcar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those OSHA rules are "written in blood" as they say - and there are reasons for "stupid" rules like seatbelts and such - likely he would be alive had be been solidly strapped to the machine (thought of course he could have died other ways).

There is nothing inherently safer about using seatbelts per se. In fact seatbelts can kill you. I have a friend that went out with his has car and a friend 20 years ago, they did drink too much and had an accident. He was expelled by the acceleration the car had(because he used no seatbelt) while his friend burned alive inside the car. What makes seatbelts generally safer is that it is a single point of failure, you…

> There is nothing inherently safer about using seatbelts per se. In fact seatbelts can kill you. I have a friend that went out with his has car and a friend 20 years ago, they did drink too much and had an accident. He was expelled by the acceleration the car had(because he used no seatbelt) while his friend burned alive inside the car.

When assessing safety we can’t argue from anecdote like this. Getting ejected from a car is almost always fatal. Accidents involving fire are pretty rare. Your anecdote is so far from a norm as to be a ridiculous example to assess the safety of seat belts.

Post reply on HN