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by TylerE 1541 days ago
Because you have to get up and over the tail of the airplane without it slicing you like a cleaver.
2 comments

A cleverer ejection seat could track the tail and body of the craft, and adjust the rocket force based on the trajectories in each case.

Then you don't have to use enough force to avoid the tail in every case, but merely enough force to avoid the tail in this case, which will normally be far less.

The aircraft being exited is often not in a factory nominal condition.
Solid fuel rocket, so no throttle.
Yes. And if someone is curious why are we using solid fueled rockets in this application:

The big benefit of solid fueled rockets is that they are very reliable, and require no maintenance. They are basically a big “candle” composed of a mix of fuel and oxidizer. You can lit it a day after it was made or twenty years later it will work the same.

The liquid fueled options have valves and other moving parts which can jam, corrode and degrade with time. So it would require frequent maintenance and would still be likely less reliable than the solid fueled variety.

I think the reliability part is what most are missing here.

Devs, you have to think like the 90s. You are shipping software on a CD or floppy l, with no updates ever. Ever.

You get it right, or you may bankrupt the company.

That is an ejection seat, and the simplier the design, less to QA! And on top of this?

The hardware under your software is possibly decaying, and your software still must work.

Sort of like designing software for an apollo mission.

You could use an array of motors, and only activate however many are needed.
While I'm unaware of an ejection seat which blows the tail off the aircraft backward with another shaped charge, there's nothing preventing this.
Of course there is: whatever event warranted the ejection. The seat/canopy mechanism is relatively localized within the aircraft, adding one more system to fail is perhaps frowned upon in this absolute last-chance survival system.