Ultimate Vehicle question...

[Yamo]

Looking at my copy of Ultimate Vehicle, I see the writeup for vehicles with ejector seats. My problem is this: The ejector seats are built as Telekinesis that affects a whole object "only to throw object straight up."

 

Shouldn't there be some sort of, oh, I don't know...PARACHUTE involved?

 

Seems to me that an ejector seat in a fighter jet that just shot the pilot up out of the cockpit with no provision for making sure he reached the ground without splatting would be silly to say the least!

 

Sure, I guess you could add the parachute write-up from FREd, but the pre-made vehicles with ejector seats don't opt to.

 

What's the point of this feature as written? It's basically a suicide device.

[nblade]

Actually the parachute is part of the pilot's gear and not really part of the plane. This gear would include a slew of survival equipment as well. Not that it really matters, but it would be an interesting diversion to see a complete write up of the the parachute and survival gear.

[BobGreenwade]

The ejection seat, as written, is meant for automobiles (such as those used by Batman and James Bond). For a jet fighter's ejection seat, just apply the parachute separately.

 

As for the sample aircraft not having parachutes to go with the ejection seat, I will confess that this was an oversight on my part. Sure, one could argue that Steve should have caught this as well, but the initial responsibility lies with the originator, and that's me. (Now that I think on it, I may have even neglected to include the ejection seats at all on those vehicle sheets -- with all Steve had to worry about on that book, he was doing well enough just to catch that much!) The "ejection seat parachute" (Linked to the TK, perhaps?) should be added to each of these craft.

 

As to whether it will be added to the TUV Errata and any future edition of the book... well, that's for Steve to decide.