Any numbers for civil airliners are, I figure, "bird strikes that
anyone noticed", or perhaps "bird strikes that caused damage", rather
than bird strikes pure and simple.
I'm also wondering about something even more basic: what are they
going to do about condensation freezing up on the heat exchanger?
On Mon, Feb 19, 2018 at 10:18:23PM -0800, Doug Jones wrote:
The Ez-Rocket had bird strikes on consecutive flights in July 2002, one at
Mojave and one at Oshkosh. I know this because I had to clean up the messes.
Two dead birds, but no damage to the aircraft, in part because it had no air
inlets.
On 2018-02-18 10:30 AM, Keith Henson wrote:
I asked REL about bird strikes and got this back
Yes, we have considered FOD but do not think it???s a problem. A first
generation space plane like Skylon will only be designed for 200 flights
or so, however bird strike occurs at roughly 10^-5 for civil airliners
(from memory) so the probability of a strike over the vehicle life is
quite small.
Nevertheless FOD and birds will pass axially along the intake duct and
strike the bypass burners rather than the precooler which is tucked away
inside. Since the bypass system is not running for takeoff this will
result in a mission abort rather than loss of vehicle
Keith