On Oct 13, 3:14 am, Eric Greenwell wrote:
To the contrary, Schleicher and the others have chosen not to use a
"safety cell" design.

No, the ASW safety cockpit is a "safety cell" design, but your legs
occupy the crumple zone. The idea was it was better that you broke
your legs than died. Reinforcements - material irrelevant - in the
cockpit walls and canopy frame stops the cell from collapsing into the
space your torso occupies.

The nose would have to extend several feet beyond
were it does now to have sufficient crush distance, and they do not
believe pilots will buy such a glider.

Research has shown that only a modest - less than 50 cm - extension of
the nose is sufficient to absorb enough energy that a safety cell in a
glider can be effective up to at least 25 g:

http://www.ostiv.fai.org/CkptRoeg.pdf

As has been pointed out by others in this thread, Lange have used this
research and so developed the extended collapsing nose-cone of the
Antares.

On Oct 13, 5:32 pm, Eric Greenwell wrote:
It looks like a good design; still, an additional 4" over a "normal"
fuselage is not much compared to the several feet of crush zone
available in an automobile.

The human body can easily survive 45 g with a good harness:

http://csel.eng.ohio-state.edu/voshell/gforce.pdf

So only a few tens of centimetres are required to reduce the
acceleration in a glider crash to survivable levels.

Is it intended that the [Antares] cockpit function in
the "safety cell" manner that Dan G was describing...?

Yes:

http://www.lange-flugzeugbau.com/htm...0e/safety.html

I wish there indpendent tests of glider crash protection that were
released to the public, because it is very difficult for us to determine
the effectiveness of a design, especially new designs that have not had
any crashes yet.

There has been lots, see the link I posted above and also the DG
website for some overviews. Tony Head first conducted crash testing in
1988 and did lots more. TUV Rhineland did testing throughout the
1990s.


Dan