ReplayQuick Play
About
Snippet
You're
on
a
helicopter
tour
of
the
Grand
Canyon
when
the
pilot,
who
made
the
obvious
mistake
of
eating
fish
for
lunch,
suddenly
groans
and
faints.
Fortunately,
he
left
you
hovering
100
feet
above
the
ground.
As
luck
would
have
it,
you
had
read
a
Wikipedia
page
about
helicopters
the
previous
night.
You
know
that
helicopters
have
four
basic
controls.
The
cyclic
is
the
stick
you
hold
in
your
right
hand.
Move
it,
and
the
helicopter
moves
in
the
corresponding
direction.
Your
left
hand
holds
the
collective
pitch
lever.
Pull
up
on
this
and
you
increase
the
pitch
on
all
the
blades,
generating
lift.
At
the
end
of
the
pitch
lever
is
the
throttle.
Finally
you
have
two
foot
pedals,
which
vary
the
amount
of
tail
rotor
thrust
and
so
help
turn
the
helicopter.
"Easy!,"
you
think.
"Gently
lower
the
collective
pitch
lever
and
you'll
descend
gracefully
to
the
ground,
a
hero."
However,
when
you
try
it,
you
discover
that
life
isn't
that
simple.
The
helicopter's
nose
drops,
and
you
start
to
spiral
down
to
the
left.
Suddenly
you
discover
that
you're
flying
a
system
where
every
control
input
has
secondary
effects.
Lower
the
left-hand
lever
and
you
need
to
add
compensating
backward
movement
to
the
right-hand
stick
and
push
the
right
pedal.
But
then
each
of
these
changes
affects
all
of
the
other
controls
again.
Suddenly
you're
juggling
an
unbelievably
complex
system,
where
every
change
impacts
all
the
other
inputs.
Your
workload
is
phenomenal:
your
hands
and
feet
are
constantly
moving,
trying
to
balance
all
the
interacting
forces.
Helicopter
controls
are
decidedly
not
orthogonal.
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