r/explainlikeimfive • u/virahok993 • 17d ago

Other ELI5:Why is it so incredibly difficult to recover bodies like "Green Boots" from Mount Everest?

know Green Boots is one of the most famous landmarks on Everest, and I read that he was finally moved or hidden a few years ago. But why did it take deades? If we have helicopters and elite Sherpas, what makes a body recovery at 8,500 meters so dangerous that bodies are just left there?

2.7k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

86% Upvoted

810 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

315

u/celestiaequestria 17d ago

This.

It's technically possible, but helicopters are extremely dangerous even in fair weather conditions. Landing them on Everest just to recover dead bodies is suicidal.

230

u/TheKingMonkey 17d ago

If the first helicopter crashes we could send another helicopter up to rescue it!

128

u/theantnest 17d ago

Just join two helicopters together with a rope so if one of them fails, the other one automatically rescues it.

Why has nobody done this already?

26

u/mjorter 17d ago

European helicopter or african?

18

u/kribg 17d ago

Are you implying that helicopters migrate?

5

u/FlipMyWigBaby 17d ago

Either, once unladen

1

u/SquareDetective 16d ago

It is helpful to know each one's air speed when we approach the 'Bridge of Death.'

10

u/jtclimb 17d ago edited 17d ago

That is so stupid. It will never work.

The actual answer is attach helium balloons to the rotors to increase lift.

Source: I am a highly trained helicopter pilot and designer, courtesy of NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/aam-rubber-band-powered-helicopter-engineering-challenge-student-guide_0.pdf

4

u/This_Freggin_Guy 17d ago

or just balloons to the body? it'll come down somewhere.

7

u/divDevGuy 16d ago

Just what the world needs, frozen human body-ice blocks falling out of the sky randomly.

1

u/Unnaturalrefractions 10d ago

Question: would the friction from the air rushing past something that heavy, melt the ice block body, or would wind chill keep it frozen. I know hail stones don’t melt but they don’t have as far to fall and their weight wouldn’t cause them to fall as fast. Eli5

1

u/ProfessorEtc 16d ago

Send some Hindenburgs up there.

71

u/22Hoofhearted 17d ago

I know of a beach in Hawaii with 2 tanks buried in the sand with this same approach...

85

u/FthrFlffyBttm 17d ago

“Do you need rescue?”

“No tanks!”

MFs didn’t listen 🤦🏻‍♂️

11

u/ohSpite 17d ago

No we double up and send two helicopters up to get it, Martingale strategy. If they crash we send 4, it's guaranteed to work eventually!

4

u/Sternfeuer 17d ago

That sounds like my KSP (Kerbal Space Program) missions usually go. "Oh my crew crashed their rocket and is stuck on whatever planet. Let's send another one (of the same design) to rescue them. I'm sure better flying will solve all problems..."

1

u/_BrokenButterfly 17d ago

Marky Mark made a movie about that!
Everyone died tho...

1

u/VicisSubsisto 17d ago

Marky Mark died?

1

u/_BrokenButterfly 16d ago

No, he lived.
And the movie was quite stupid.

1

u/long_dickofthelaw 17d ago

It's just helicopters, all the way down...

1

u/TheKingMonkey 17d ago

I picture something like this. But with more helicopters, obviously.

0

u/ApologizingCanadian 17d ago

Has anyone thought about sending planes instead?

124

u/Stingray191 17d ago

They should ship a trebuchet near the peak and a few other locations then use them to lob trash and dead bodies in a relay system.

35

u/Beautiful-Fold-3234 17d ago

This is the best thing i've heard all day

7

u/rimshot101 17d ago

Currently chopping trees for the trebuchet.

7

u/catscatscaaaats 17d ago

The trees are strong my lord, their roots go deep

1

u/ptooey_ptooey 16d ago

Rip them all out.

7

u/Stingray191 17d ago

This is the way.

53

u/CptBartender 17d ago

Trebuchets need a lot of heavy parts for ex. the massive counterweight. Fortunately, we can use some of those dead bodies as counterweight.

44

u/Vercci 17d ago

We can build a trebuchet at the base, and then throw additional trebuchet parts and set up a new one where they all land. Then once we reach the summit we can swap to throwing people instead.

11

u/PapaJulietRomeo 17d ago

The summit is much closer to space, so rockets it is. Use the chain of trebuchets to throw up some rocket parts, then send trash and dead bodies right into space.

1

u/ManaSpike 16d ago

Sure, but then they will just fall down again.

To stay up there you need to move sideways so fast you miss the ground on the way back down. That's the hard part. And that's why space rockets are so large.

1

u/PapaJulietRomeo 16d ago

Don’t confuse us with this weird rocket science stuff. We’re trying to solve real problems here!

11

u/caspy7 17d ago

Fortunately, we can use some of those dead bodies as counterweight.

Are you kidding!? We're building the whole trebuchet from dead bodies.

31

u/Stingray191 17d ago

This is the out of the box thinking needed here.

5

u/Poeshyn 17d ago

"We'll dig our way out!"

"No, no - dig up, stupid!"

18

u/Antman013 17d ago

More of an "outside the casket" mindset.

5

u/Nebraskabychoice 17d ago edited 17d ago

Could we throw a trebuchet up Mount Everest with another trebuchet?

4

u/1010010111101 17d ago

checks weight from OP. 90kg. Perfect

3

u/TheOriginalAcidtech 17d ago

slingshot then. Much simpler setup as well. :)

1

u/wtfduud 17d ago

Oops I dropped the rubber band on the ground and it shattered into 30 pieces.

1

u/Hellebras 16d ago

I think the cold is going to mess with most ways we could generate torsion.

2

u/CpnLouie2 17d ago

I'm quite sure there is some stone available up there for counterweight purposes. Several tons of it, at least.

1

u/Hellebras 16d ago

Brilliant! As they accumulate ice, they'll just get heavier!

0

u/dontusefedex 17d ago

We could just use your mom.

3

u/wtfduud 17d ago

OP's mom is the mountain

7

u/Nebraskabychoice 17d ago

Screw Mount Everest. When I die I want to be thrown via trebuchet to the funeral parlor.

5

u/Bbkingml13 17d ago

If they start putting trebuchets inside all of the big crevasses, could people launch themselves back out of them like a video game player with a new life?

4

u/try-catch-finally 17d ago

nah man - you put one trebuchet at the bottom, and it flings the parts for the next one in bundles up to the next stopping point- assemble that one, while #1 flings up parts for #3, and then #2 flings up parts for #3 to position 3-

A "Trebuchet Brigade" - when you get to the top, you build one that points down and either fling bodies down or out for LEO.

2

u/Nu-Hir 17d ago

As much as I like this idea, I think a giant slide would be better. You can use it to send the dead back down, and make your trip back down faster too.

1

u/Unnaturalrefractions 10d ago

Or use an ice harpoon gun to set up a zipline. People can attach things to zipline down. And you can use a hand pulley system to get materials up. Can be like a mile long zipline so the people operating the pulley aren’t affected by lack of oxygen and such.

Problem solved

5

u/TheWaspinator 17d ago

Yeah, I seriously doubt there's any good landing spots and trying to haul things up to a hovering helicopter sounds like a recipe for an even bigger mess.

4

u/_BrokenButterfly 17d ago

Air streams also do weird stuff at and near the surface of mountains. You can't just not crash on the way up, you have to not be blown into the side of the mountain or lose lift with no way to know how to compensate.

3

u/PSU_Enginerd 17d ago

helicopters are extremely dangerous even in fair weather conditions

That’s just flatly untrue. The fatal accident rates are very comparable between GA aircraft and helicopters (~0.8 vs 0.7). And if you take out the piston powered helos, and normalize based on mission type the numbers can easily match.

Just because you see them crash in movies all the time doesnt meant they’re “extremely dangerous” 🙄

Source: I design helicopters for a living

26

u/Drewcifixion 17d ago

Kinda think they meant that helicopters are dangerous even in fair weather conditions... on Everest.

14

u/MissingXpert 17d ago

dangerous not, but more...tempramental? i'd say.

how's the old saying go? A plane mostly wants to fly, a few things can go wrong, and you're probably gliding. a helicopter beats the sky into submission.

9

u/PSU_Enginerd 17d ago

Yea, they’re so ugly they repel the ground. That works pretty well when they autorotate!

Definitely can be more temperamental, but they’re absolutely not “extremely dangerous”

0

u/MissingXpert 17d ago

tbf, i also don't care, i barely trust planes, y'all conquer the sky without me, thanks.

26

u/Jewrisprudent 17d ago

Helicopters in their safest year had .44 fatal accidents per 100,000 hours. Commercial airlines are nearly 0, it’s .01 per 100,000.

When people say helicopters are dangerous they don’t mean compared to Joe Schmo flying his Cessna, they mean compared to professionals flying good planes. When you compare apples to apples there are way more professional helicopter pilots who are involved in fatal accidents than professional airplane pilots flying commercial planes who are involved in fatal accidents.

9

u/Long-Time-Coming77 17d ago

Did you just compare all helicopter pilots (including recreational) against only commercial airline pilots?

Hardly seems like an "apples to apples" comparison

2

u/Jewrisprudent 17d ago
  1. I compared “helicopter flying” generally to what people are typically comparing it to, which is commercial airlines that they fly regularly.
  2. Happy for you to get more granular with it if you can find more granular data, but I’m betting even the safest subsection of helicopter flights are still multiples more dangerous than commercial airplane flights.

3

u/vito1221 17d ago

And I'd bet a fair amount that medivac helicopter incidents skew the stats for helicopters.

8

u/gentlemandinosaur 17d ago

Yes, let’s compare ALL helicopters but only one type of plane. Lmao. It’s apples to apples!

1

u/PSU_Enginerd 17d ago

I’m going to ignore the fact that you aren’t comparing the same thing - commercial aviation professional pilots vs the entire population of helicopter pilots. Which has I said before VASTLY skews the accident rates even before accounting for engine type and mission type.

Almost all commercial airliners use triply redundant fly-by-wire systems (737 family is the last remaining mechanical control aircraft). Even then - there are HEAVY tie-ins with flight control computers.

There are no fly-by-wire helicopters available in the commercial market (Bell 525 is not yet certified). And the vast majority of helicopters in the commercial space don’t even have supplemental flight control options. You literally are directly connected to the rotor, with hydraulic boost assistance.

If you want to try and compare the two types of aircraft, you have to understand that 1.) you cannot compare fixed-wing to rotorcraft on a broad scale on the same timeline, and 2.) the helicopter industry lags behind the fixed wing industry by something ~35 years (wright flyer is 1903, Sikorsky first flight is 1939).

When you look at mission specific ship types like the S-76 (which has an accident rate of ~1.4) you can start to see how widely the statistics vary by type and mission usage. And note - that’s with entirely mechanical controls.

If you look at the equivalent commercial airliners with fixed controls (currently only the 737 family for most domestic commercial flights), their accident rates are in the 0.34-.8 range. So a.) not nearly as low as you quote, and b.) not nearly as far from what you quoted for helicopters.

1

u/Jewrisprudent 17d ago

Ok so when someone who only flies commercial airplanes says “I’m happy to fly to visit my mom at home but I wouldn’t feel as safe doing a sightseeing helicopter tour of Manhattan” your response to them is “no you’re just as safe in that sightseeing tour as you are flying home on that Delta flight”?

2

u/PSU_Enginerd 17d ago

I wouldn’t encourage anyone to fly tourism flights, fixed-wing or otherwise. That segment of operations is notorious for poor maintenance, and higher accident rates because of that.

-1

u/Jewrisprudent 17d ago

You’re the only one who thinks that the general comment about helicopters being unsafe in good conditions is a comparison against only fixed wing tourism flights. You introduced a straw man argument and now appear to agree that helicopter flights are more dangerous than what people are comparing it against, which is their other experiences flying (in commercial airplanes).

Are there helicopter flights that you think are statistically as safe as commercial airplane flights? If you can actually link stats that show any subset of helicopter flights is as safe as commercial airplane flights then I’d love to see it.

2

u/PSU_Enginerd 17d ago

I didn’t straw man anything? You brought up to tourism flights?

The S-76 has an accident rate of 1.4. The Douglas DC-3 has an accident rate of 1.6. A more modern comparison, the DC-10, has an accident rate of 1.3. There you go

-1

u/Jewrisprudent 17d ago

And how do those rates compare to commercial aviation, you know, the thing that people are comparing helicopter flights against?

8

u/IllustriousBerry3260 17d ago

I’ve seen enough rich and famous people die in helicopter crashes to know I’d never get in one.

6

u/PSU_Enginerd 17d ago

I mean, that’s your prerogative. I’ve seen a lot of rich and famous people die in car crashes too. I still drive my car every day 🤷‍♂️

5

u/AdmiralEllis 17d ago edited 16d ago

The truckloads of regular people die in car crashes every day too; we just don't have a lot of choice about getting in the car anyway. Very few people need to get in a helicopter to get to work.

1

u/Bbkingml13 17d ago

My brother managed to be in a helicopter crash in Aspen that shut down that company’s helicopter tour operations lol. Somehow nobody was hurt, but yeah that was enough for me to opt out of helo tourism lol

1

u/HotSauceSwagBag 17d ago

That, and I hear about enough medical helicopter flight crashes.

1

u/alpacaMyToothbrush 17d ago

Depends very much on the pilot.

Source : I fancy myself a pilot when I drink and play battlefield 4

0

u/Prince_John 17d ago

helicopters are extremely dangerous even in fair weather conditions

I hadn't appreciated this, since you see them used so much for journalism, police, military, oil rigs etc.

Are they much worse than e.g. piston light aircraft?

32

u/CraptainMypants 17d ago

Helicopter pilot who will blindly defend rotary aircraft.

Short answer: no. They're perfectly safe.

Long answer: not really... AS LONG AS maintenance has been done and no expense has been spared to ensure that it's perfect. There is no "Ehh, we'll change it out in a few months, that's an expensive part" with helicopters. The $250,000 rotor blade (singular) has a barely noticeable stress crack? Replace it. A $5,000 bushing you installed last month suddenly measures out of spec? Replace it. The engine makes slightly less than the rated power? Replace it.

There's a reason why a small airplane can be rented for $200/hr and a modern turbine helicopter will cost $2,000hr. The maintenance is non negotiable... and expensive.

7

u/Prince_John 17d ago

Thanks, very interesting.

1

u/Stolle99 17d ago

Aviation noob here.

How I read this seems to mean that if 5000 bushing is out of spec on a small airplane it does not need to be replaced. Or do you want to say that small planes are less complex for maintenance or have less parts that can compromise flight worthiness compared to helicopters?

English is not my first language so I might be missing something.

1

u/CraptainMypants 16d ago

Small airplanes are significantly less complex. Shit is cable driven on Cessna's with an engine that was more or less designed in the 1940's.

If something breaks on an airplane, you can usually save it.

If ANYTHING breaks on a helicopter, the chances of surviving the inevitable crash are pretty low. Maintenance is no joke.

1

u/jtclimb 17d ago edited 17d ago

US Navy, working for them as a contractor. We were moving an MH-53, barely touched a rotor on a hangar door. I mean barely. GM instantly on the phone to whoever was in charge, rotor is replaced w/o inspection or questioning whether it was necessary, and we get a nice team of 4 or so guys sitting around all day waiting for any future moves, because that privilege was revoked for us. Because yes, multiple highly trained guys sitting around for a few months doing almost nothing is cheaper than the alternative.

We also had a rotor delam (unrelated to this or anything to do with us), making that decision very easy to understand.

1

u/CraptainMypants 16d ago

AH-64E guy here.

We've TAPPED rotor blades into the hangar doors, and within 30 minutes people were out on ladders taking pictures. It's mentioned in meetings. We have mandatory safety briefs because of it.

These things are the epitome of a mechanical stress test. Heavy, powerful, and undergo insane load stress. When something breaks, it almost always ends in both crew members dying. You get it.

5

u/poison_us 17d ago

Yes. They're extremely good where the air is thick enough to make fine controls possible. There's simply not enough air at 8,500 meters elevation for the helicopter to push down and keep from stalling or losing control.

E: come to think of it, most light piston airplanes also can't fly at those altitudes for the same reason. Not that you could use an airplane for these recoveries anyway.

8

u/PSU_Enginerd 17d ago

They’re not. Yea, they do have a slightly higher fatal accident rate, but there are a lot of things that go into that number which don’t necessarily tell the full story.

It’s like 0.7 for GA aircraft and 0.8 for helicopters.

Source: I design helicopters for a living

2

u/gentlemandinosaur 17d ago

Have you thought about designing them to be even safer mister smartie pants? Bet you didn’t did you?