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In Soviet Russia...

...small planes are parachutes!

http://www.cirrusdesign.com/about/safety/caps.aspx

And there have even been some deployments: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cirrus_Aircraft_Parachute_System#CAPS_deployments

James Fallows wrote in The Atlantic (twice) about small airplanes being equipped with a parachute to deploy in case of engine failure. Here's the technology.
If terrorists take over a plane, just deploy that sucker.

Cirrus offers a ballistic parachute on all of their aircraft and they are FAA certified. The debate is still out if they are any safer for having them as it appears pilots may be more apt to do things they know they shouldn't.

Ever considered adding to the experience to give your head something to do? I like to keep a scorecard during most games I attend. It fills in the "down-time" nicely.

Learning how the shorthand used on a baseball scorecard, and developing your own style so you can "read the game back" to yourself later, is an interesting thing to do, and keeps your head in the game... you can start to see how a player is doing that day vs. the last time you saw him play, etc... did he hit to right field more than left? Etc. (Also can be pretty invaluable if you ever find yourself coaching a recreational league team.)

I understand your need for constant action. It goes away as you get older.

A nice baseball game, my scorecard, a brautwurst/hot dog, a beer, and my AM headphones (I like listening to the radio announcers instead of the inane announcers are most stadiums, and you get some other background information on the players)...

And I'll meet you at the ballpark ANYTIME! Take me out to the balllllll-game... heh.

I'll save the "excitement" for the airport.

(I fly small aircraft.)

Now, commercial airlines... THAT's boring! Baseball is FAR more interesting than riding in high speed aluminum tubing stuffed to the gills like the lower levels of the Titanic!

Just think, we live in a country where every single one of us, not just chosen "military" or other priveledged people can fly one of THESE:

http://www.cirrusdesign.com/

And instead, we drive around in minivans on weekends to soccer games. Sad. Teach the kid to fly instead.

Hmmmm... Why not a parachute? (see bottom of features list)

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your viewpoint, the FAA is quite reluctant to accept any significant changes in GA because, you know the saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." However, there has been multiple leaps in the technology implemented in small airplanes over the past few years.

For example, instead of carburetors, most new planes now come with a FADEC system that handles the fuel injection into each individual cylinder, increasing performance and ridding the pilot of that pesky mixture control lever. Also, this system gives you real time status information on each cylinder so you can monitor their performance and detect a problem before it becomes too serious. About the mags, I can't really see why you'd want to get rid of them, they really are a pilot's best friend because even a total electrical failure (well almost anyways) cannot stop the magneto from sparking the engine. You have to always remember that aviation is practically married to redundancy, and for good reason.

While you did mention GPS being added into planes now, that's really only half the story. Glass cockpits are literally revolutionizing how we fly. Take a look at the good 'ol 152 cockpit then and now, there's a pretty big difference, no? The GPS is also going to make traveling to smaller airports in IMC a much greater experience when WASS/LAAS and TLS approaches become implemented around airports in the upcoming years.

Besides the GPS, ideas such as 'live' radar via XM radio, as well as a much more affordable radar dish are making storm traversal a much easier, safer thing for light airplanes, while Mode S transponders are finally bringing collision avoidance systems down from the major airlines to general aviation which I'm sure you'll agree is a major advantage.

Going outside the cockpit, we find that airplanes are beginning to be made with composite materials which are both lighter and stronger. However the high cost associated with manufacturing them, as well its unknown safety factor, are keeping it from being too widely accepted. The cirrus even designed a parachute for the entire plane. Overall, while the major design of airplanes have basically remained the same, I would say that there has been many great innovative improvements in general aviation that are changing the way pilot's fly.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your viewpoint, the FAA is quite reluctant to accept any significant changes in GA because, you know the saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." However, there has been multiple leaps in the technology implemented in small airplanes over the past few years.

For example, instead of carburetors, most new planes now come with a FADEC system that handles the fuel injection into each individual cylinder, increasing performance and ridding the pilot of that pesky mixture control lever. Also, this system gives you real time status information on each cylinder so you can monitor their performance and detect a problem before it becomes too serious. About the mags, I can't really see why you'd want to get rid of them, they really are a pilot's best friend because even a total electrical failure (well almost anyways) cannot stop the magneto from sparking the engine. You have to always remember that aviation is practically married to redundancy, and for good reason.

While you did mention GPS being added into planes now, that's really only half the story. Glass cockpits are literally revolutionizing how we fly. Take a look at the good 'ol 152 cockpit then and now, there's a pretty big difference, no? The GPS is also going to make traveling to smaller airports in IMC a much greater experience when WASS/LAAS and TLS approaches become implemented around airports in the upcoming years.

Besides the GPS, ideas such as 'live' radar via XM radio, as well as a much more affordable radar dish are making storm traversal a much easier, safer thing for light airplanes, while Mode S transponders are finally bringing collision avoidance systems down from the major airlines to general aviation which I'm sure you'll agree is a major advantage.

Going outside the cockpit, we find that airplanes are beginning to be made with composite materials which are both lighter and stronger. However the high cost associated with manufacturing them, as well its unknown safety factor, are keeping it from being too widely accepted. The cirrus even designed a parachute for the entire plane. Overall, while the major design of airplanes have basically remained the same, I would say that there has been many great innovative improvements in general aviation that are changing the way pilot's fly.

Then of course, there's the "half-yoke" used in the http://www.cirrusdesign.com/ Cirrus Design SR series of aircraft. Looks for all the world like a joystick, but flies like a one-handled yoke. Unusual, but since you usually fly a two-handled yoke one-handed anyway it's easily adapted to.

For those who aren't pilots, normal procedure is to have one hand on the yoke and the other operating all the other controls (radios, fuel, throttle etc.).

I was also drilled with "never stop flying the plane." Of course, that doesn't mean "fly the plane into the ground." What it means to me is, "always keep the plane under control: predictable and safe." If I've lost positive control, for whatever reason, that's my first priority: get back to predictable and safe. Having a parachute on board is one more way I can do that. Yes, I'll bend the plane, but I'd rather do it at 20 mph than Vne.

You are assuming that "I'm flying the plane" means "the plane is under my control." That's true more than 99.9% of the time, but that's not what we're talking about here. If I blow my engine, I'm obviously not gonna pull the parachute, since the plane is still under my positive control. Same thing if I run out of gas, or other minor emergencies. I'm talking about situations in which positive control is simply impossible, like losing a wing due to mid-air, and the PIC having a stroke (in which case the wife saves everyone's life).

I don't think flying is too dangerous, or I wouldn't fly for my own safety. I don't think I'm an unsafe pilot, or I wouldn't fly for the safety of pilots like you that I share the sky with. I just think that too many GA accidents occur because the situation gets out of control, and someone (anyone!) is too afraid to break the chain because it would be embarrassing. I've had to abort a takeoff before, and I called the tower. Yeah, I was a little red-faced, but I got a tow and answered a few questions, and that was that. I'd rather take a shot to my ego and be safe on the ground, then be another greasy smear for the FAA and NTSB to deal with. Your safety methods are of course at your discretion. If we differ in our approaches, then let's just agree to disagree, but at least give me the option to use the parachute.

There will never be flying cars simply because there is a much greater social revulsion to fatal airplane crashes than to car crashes. To keep planes from routinely falling out of the sky, aviation is massively regulated. Compare the regulation of general aviation to automobiles. It is 100x more difficult to get and maintain a pilots licence, than an auto licence. They are actually selective! It is very difficult to be innovative in general aviation because all airplane components are so difficult to qualify through the FAA. Ever wonder why a nice single engine plane like a Cirrus, the material equivalent of say a Lexus, costs 10x as much? It is ruinously difficult to put new innovative equipment on an airplane. The same rules apply to the Buck Rogers silliness the original posting prattles on about.

If General Aviation operated under 14 CFR Part 121 (or even 135) they would have an equivalent level of safety. But it would be cost-prohibitive! The fact is that you are in an unnatural environment for the human organism anytime you are high enough (~10m) or fast enough (~50 kmh) to kill you. As the old pilot's saying goes, it is "unforgiving of any mistake."

All the light GA craft with PFD/MFD technology have backup instruments. For an example, check out Cirrus or Diamond. The Cirrus puts its backup steam gages below the PFD, the Diamond above.

You ask: What is being done for the almost 1000 GA pilots who died that year because of using ancient vaccum designs or >10 year old VORS

I disagree with your premise, that there is something inherently fatal in using this old technology. Most of the GA pilots who die in any particular year die not from equipment failure of any type, but from bad judgment. Just this last week, two planes spun in trying to return to a field they had taken off from -- your instructor warned you about that before you ever soloed, didn't he (or she)? Likewise, the #1 killer remains VFR flight into IMC.

Technology cannot improve your judgment. It can improve your situational awareness, and it can lighten your workload.

I'm a private pilot and I appreciate the fact that barring a mechanical meltdown with the engine, it will keep running if fed with fuel. I'd like some high-tech in my aircraft too, but it comes at a price. Take a look at this panel:

Cirrus

It's a very nice aircraft with all the extras, and it costs $350,000+ And it has magnetos on the engine. Go figure.

I'd rather get a Cirrus SR-22, and just buy an SUV. A car cannot be an airplane, and vice versa, I'd much rather have two vehicles which do what they werre designed to do very well than one vehicle that does two things poorly.

Not to mention the absurdity of trying to design avionics that work for both ground and air navigation... Imagine your car yelling at you for busting class B airspace when you drive past an international airport.

I'd rather get a Cirrus SR-22, and just buy an SUV. A car cannot be an airplane, and vice versa, I'd much rather have two vehicles which do what they werre designed to do very well than one vehicle that does two things poorly.

Not to mention the absurdity of trying to design avionics that work for both ground and air navigation... Imagine your car yelling at you for busting class B airspace when you drive past an international airport.

Flying lessons or...

a plane

It doesn't get any better than this!

Science, freedom, beauty, adventure: what more could you ask of life? Aviation combined all the elements I loved. There was science in each curve of an airfoil, in each angle between strut and wire, in the gap of a spark plug or the color of the exhaust flame. There was freedom in the unlimited horizon, on the open fields where one landed. A pilot was surrounded by beauty of earth and sky. He brushed treetops with the birds, leapt valleys and rivers, explored the cloud canyons he had gazed at as a child. Adventure lay in each puff of wind.

I began to feel that I lived on a higher plane than the skeptics of the ground; one that was richer because of its very association with the element of danger they dreaded, because it was freer of the earth to which they were bound. In flying, I tasted a wine of the gods of which they could know nothing. Who valued life more highly, the aviators who spent it on the art they loved, or these misers who doled it out like pennies through their antlike days? I decided that if I could fly for ten years before I was killed in a crash, it would be a worthwhile trade for an ordinary life time.
-- Charles A. Lindbergh, 'The Spirit of St. Louis.'

High Flight
Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, -- and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of -- wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew --
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untresspassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
-- John Gillespie Magee, Jr

Nobody else seems to be surprised that the worms are still alive. I hope NASA will try to understnad what kept them alive, the locker or the worm anatomy ?

This coul dend up with major consequences on space, and air travel safety (I'll ask for a locker myself next time I take the plane ;-).

Don't laugh, there is ongoing research and inovation and airplane safety, like the built-in parachute on the cirrus.

cirrus design is a small startup that, according to articles in Popular Science, for one, is producing small single engine planes that come with an airframe parachute standard. I think eclipse aviation might have said something about doing this, too, but im not sure.

Point is that if these become standard, use will go up. I for one wouldnt want to go buy one and install it, but if it came built in...

In case these haven't already been posted: the story in detail (as part of an interview with the pilor) is available at aero-news.net

... the plane company's web site cirrusdesign.com has also been boasting about it...

... the story is a good read; sounds like Lionel Morrison had a very entertaining time :-)

The manufacturer's web site is at Cirrus Design, and a picture of a test plane is there along with the first-save story.

The plane was made by a Duluth, MN company called Cirrus Design. Their (shitty) website is: http://www.cirrusdesign.com/

Cirrus light aircraft do include a parachute. I don't know if a parachute was practical with an aluminum-based aircraft.

I seem to remember a report of the first successful real-world use of a emergency parachute for light aircraft. A cessna-like plane had its engines cut own and the pilot was able to parachute his entire plane to safety.

I've never done a real engine-out landing -- just simulated ones -- but the fact that a normal plane simply glides when its engine is cut is definitely a plus. The glide ratio of the Cessna 172s I fly is 9:1, so if you're at 2,000 feet AGL and the engine fails you've got around 2 miles to find yourself a nice field, golf course, highway, beach, dry riverbed, etc. to put yourself down on. (That 2 miles is conservative and assumes you won't have the plane perfectly trimmed for best glide, that you've got some glide-distance loss due to unfavorable winds, etc. Incidentally, best glide is at just over 60 knots, so you've actually got a minute or two to troubleshoot and try to restart the engine, too.) Still, the parachute *is* an intriguing idea...