Ten jet passengers landed with a thud beneath NASA Langley Research Center's storied gantry on Thursday afternoon.

The passengers were crash-test dummies aboard the 5,180-pound cross-section cut from a 68-passenger regional jet, similar to one that might fly out of Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport.

When it dropped, the plane hung at a 5-degree angle hoisted almost 15 feet above a thick dirt mound which sloped downward toward the ground at a 10-degree angle.

The drop was the second in a joint collaborative effort between NASA and the Federal Aviation Administration. Data gathered from the simulated crashes will help inform the development of the next generation of aircraft frames.

"This helps us get data from the crash performance of these smaller aircraft," said Joseph Pellettiere, FAA chief scientist and technical adviser for crash dynamics. "This particular test is kind of a new configuration test, in that we're dropping it onto a sloped berm, when a lot of our previous tests were just on a flat, level, hard surface. ...

"It's going to help define a baseline performance level for this size of aircraft, so when people want to come up with new designs using new material, namely composites, they can kind of run a comparison," to the traditional metal-framed plane tested Thursday, he said.

A large crowd of onlookers, many of whom were student interns savoring a chance to see the gantry in action, crowded along the fence and chanted in unison with the 10-second countdown.

Workers involved in the drop were jokingly taking bets about how the cross-section would perform. Would its tail tip forward as it landed, or would it skid down the dirt path?

Instead, upon impact, the plane, which traveled at about 30 feet per second to the ground, hardly moved beyond where it landed.

Engineers and researchers involved in the drop will spend time now analyzing the information collected Thursday. Tiny black dots on the side of the plane individually placed to ensure a lack of uniformity were captured by special cameras that will, in a way, model the crash. Instruments covered parts of the interior and the dummies themselves to help gather information about what happened upon impact.

Some of the dummies in the first row of five seats visibly bore the brunt of the impact, slouched over in their harnesses. One of the seats appeared to be broken, its passenger slumped over toward the middle aisle.

One dummy in the second row had been configured as if to brace for impact, as flight attendants instruct passengers to do in cases of crashes, in order to obtain different, additional data.

"The fuselage didn't deform as much, or, if at all, very little, compared to other sections of the aircraft," Martin Annett, lead test engineer, said of his first impressions of the crash. "That in turn puts a lot more load into the seats and the dummies."

Solimar Kwa and Alina Creamer, two interns with the contamination control and planetary protection lead, had eagerly peered through the fence as they recorded the drop on their phones.

Some in the crowd had laughed upon impact, the result of a long wait in the hot sun for a short payoff. One equated it to the build-up and hours of preparation for Thanksgiving dinner, only for it to be eaten in a matter of minutes.

But to Kwa and Creamer, witnessing the short drop was an opportunity worth seeing.

"Quite a big buildup for a 'bloop' noise ... (but) it's cool to be part of history, in a way. You think about the past and the future that we're building towards," Kwa said. "We're really lucky to be a part of this."

Hammond can be reached by phone at 757-247-4951.

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NASA, FAA drop crash-test dummies in jet section at NASA Langley - Daily Press