The Airlander 10, a flying vehicle that is both the world’s largest aircraft and something that looks like a floating set of butt-cheeks, recently had a successful maiden flight. Its second outing, not so much. The Airlander 10 managed to crash, except that ‘crash’ is far too strong a word for it.
It was more of a bonk, or a nudge, or something. Any crash were you gently — it looks gentle, anyway — bounce off the planet and then touch down again needs a less frightening name. We’re downplaying this, of course, but it just looks so… slow.
Not that the “heavy landing” was without consequence. The cockpit was damaged when the Airlander 10 hit the ground nose-first. The crew was unharmed according to Hybrid Air Vehicles, the company behind the aerial buttocks. The full flight took 100 minutes and all other aerial activities went as planned. HAV will now work through a “…robust set of procedures for flight test activities and investigation of issues” to see what exactly happened with the nose-bonk.
You can see the crash happening in the video above, as it was filmed and uploaded to YouTube by user Lee Cordell. Some of the cockpit damage is visible but we’d probably still be all right with being involved in an aerial mishap of this type. It probably looks a lot scarier if you’re sitting in the cockpit and watching the planet fill the windscreen, though.
Source: via Ars Technica