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If only that had been true. Unfortunately it took the creation of the Office of Commercial Space Transportation to even create the basic infrastructure necessary to even license commercial spacecraft.

In other words, the "FAA" of outer space is..... the Federal Aviation Administration... the FAA!

I would have to agree that had NASA administrators been using their head, that they would have created an office of commercial space transportation when the Gemini spacecraft were being launched... or perhaps when the NASA administrators started to use the terminology of "Space Transportation System" for the Shuttle program.

I do know of private investors who had raised the necessary capital to "buy" a private space shuttle, and only wanted the production line to continue for another couple of iterations with the opportunity that the privately owned shuttle would be used primarily for commercial payloads. And NASA did "sell" some space on some of the early shuttle flights to private companies, including some astronauts that were employees of private for-profit companies that only used the shuttle to help work on various projects for these private companies. This is something that since the Challenger disaster has all but stopped, when the shuttle was considered too much of a risk and the flights became government projects only.

The demand for commercial spaceflight never really stopped after Challenger, and many of the companies that wanted to get into space instead opted for unmanned rockets instead. There is a small but active fleet of private spacecraft that do get into space from time to time in part because of this demand, but the price to get there is driven, unfortunately, by government contracts and nobody willing to try and drive the cost of the rockets down as the economics for the few extra spacecraft that would be flown at cheaper rates is comparatively fewer than would make up for the loss in revenue due to keeping the price at the rates government agencies are willing to pay.

The economics that open up due to spacecraft like Spaceship One and tourism models like Virgin Galactic are of the level that whole new kinds of customers are able to pay for real spaceflight. Something like a medium sized university can also afford to launch something on these cheaper rockets and spacecraft where they are simply unable to get the money together for an unmanned rocket like the Delta-4 made by Boeing.

Read my post again, and then the one immediately below yours from someone that has done exactly what I described over O'Hare. I was directed to use a perpendicular runway as a point of reference, but even if it is not there, the concept is the same: the area directly above an airport is a transit corridor, but the transiting aircraft must approach and depart the area in a way that remains clear of the traffic that is landing and taking off.

I'm not intimately familiar with O'Hare's operating rules under IFR, but low overcast can significantly reduce airport capacity. Parallel ILS approaches can only be made on runways that are separated by a certain distance. I believe the threshold is 3400 feet, although that can be increased or reduced by the presence of sufficiently accurate radar surveillance equipment or approved pilot/crew training. O'Hare is also a regular user of LAHSO (land and hold short operations on intersecting runways), but FAA policy prohibits it under low overcast (less than 1000 feet) conditions.

They have already built at least six that will be delivered but until now they have been used to get the necessary number of flight hours for type certification (which it has now). The facilities to produce four a month are already there but until certification there wasn't much point in manufacturing more in case some changes were needed.

There are more than five A380s that aren't prototypes in the sense that they won't be delivered to customers since they will but until now they have been used to get the necessary number of test flight hours logged before it can receive its type certificate, which it did the other day - it's here.

Why did it get its type certification from the FAA then? Here it is.

You forgot the Air Commerce Act of 1926, which started government regulation of air commerce.

No permits are necessary. Most of the rules are self-imposed by the NAR and Tripoli for safety reasons.

And I quote:

b. Amateur rocket activities means launch activities conducted at private sites involving rockets powered by a motor or motors having a total impulse of 200,000 pound-seconds or less and a total burning or operating time of less than 15 seconds, and a rocket having a ballistic coefficient--i.e., gross weight in pounds divided by frontal area of rocket vehicle--less than 12 pounds per square inch.

Name one standardized exam that provides a comprehensive assessment of everything that needs to be considered to "certify" college graduates as qualified and hireable employees in any field, scientific/technical or otherwise.

Off the top of my head, how about:

(1) The ACS exams in chemistry.

(2) State RN license exams and board certification exams in medical specialties.

(3) The bar exam.

(4) The FAA exam for getting a license to fly an airplane on instruments.

(5) The CPA exams.

Need more? I'm sure I can find a round dozen with a few more minutes thinking.

Does it measure every area of knowledge...blah blah blah

In other words, is any test absolutely perfect? Of course not. Nothing is. But I believe we were talking about the real world, not Black 'n' White Land were anything not utterly perfect is ipso facto utter garbage. In our real world, "imperfect" exams do a damn good job sorting out competents from lookalike fools. A much better job than such feel-good fluffy stuff as recommendations from people who like you, or grades assigned according to some mysterious secret formula by someone of whom I've never heard.

How about we reverse the challenge? Why don't you find me a job in which people's lives are directly in your hands (like surgery, piloting, or critical care nursing), and which does not require a comprehensive exam before you start the job?

Here's what happens if you implement a do-or-die exit exam: learning of any important area of knowledge, skill, or ability that is not on the exam will get worse, because students will shift focus to learning (by rote memorization, if possible) all the things on the exam and they will ignore all the things that aren't.

Well let's hope so. See, either it's a good exam or it's not (in my case "good" would have been defined as "testing the skills employers really want.") If it's a bad exam, well, a poor or half-assed implementation doesn't prove an idea is shit. Otherwise Linux 0.1 would have been the death of Open Source Software, ha ha. But if it's a good exam, then students should not be spending time learning what's not on it, because that stuff isn't, in fact, "important." You just think it is, or wish it was. And a nice side-effect of the exam would be that it will dispel that illusion.

you'll see that overreliance on exit exams is at the top of most experts' lists of what has gotten the Indian educational system into this mess in the first place.

Sure. And lots of "experts" have theories about what makes the stock market go up and down, or how to boost employment without waking up inflation, or which team is going to win the Rose Bowl. Get back to me when there's factual measurable proof of this remarkable (and to my ear laughable) proposition.

http://www.faa.gov/aircraft/air_cert/design_approv als/uas/uas_faq/

There is apparently no restriction on autonomy, according to the FAA, but a craft being flown as a civil aircraft (rather than as a hobbyist model airplane - there are restrictions differentiating the two, but I was unable to locate them on the FAA's site) requires an experimental certificate if it's unmanned, regardless of whether or not it's autonomous, and the FAA is limiting issuance of those certificates for the time being.

In the US, notice/permission to launch ballons such as this can usually be done by calling the nearest FAA ATC facility 6 to 24 hours before beginning the operation and giving them the particulars. The applicable regulation is FAR Part 101. http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/faa_regula tions/

You don't have the foggiest notion what you're talking about

Bzzt! Nice try. I'm a licensed private pilot.

Why don't you post details about the "very specific protocols" you're so knowledgable about for these situations?

Although it is pretty hard to argue with the "facts" you dredged from a fanatical conspiracy book entitled "The War on Freedom," the "very specific protocols" you asked for are readily available on the FAA's website. There's nothing at all in there about "scrambling fighter planes."

The complete lack of standard military interception on 9/11 is most reasonably explained as being by design.

I think maybe you've read that conspiracy book a few too many times. Reality doesn't jibe with the myriad holes in your crazy theories.

Before deciding that DGPS should go the way of the dodo, you should consider the international issues and penetration for DGPS and WAAS.

DGPS provides 1-3 meter accuracy with proper beacon reception equipment. The service delivers its coverage in circles around transmitter sites. The DGPS standard is an international standard, allowing precision approaches within 200-500 miles of a transmitter site. DGPS coverage is already quite good.

WAAS provides 1-3 meter accuracy with no additional equipment. WAAS itself provides this service in a service volume using two existing geostationary satellites.

Receiving WAAS service in the continental U.S. is sometimes difficult on the ground. Those of you who use GPS in mountainous terrain may have experience with this. Solving this reception issue inside the U.S. might be as simple as adding a third or even fourth satellite to transmit the corrections. Once receivers on the ground are better able to receive the correction signal, WAAS is clearly a more convenient solution.

NDGPS had a good footing and was a fantastic solution in its day. Discontinuing the sites within the U.S. is certainly a feasible budget solution. However in coastal regions, DGPS stations should be continued at least until the current generation of marine receivers is replaced.

You say 10,000 feet requires oxygen?

Well, the FAA seems to think so:

http://www.faa.gov/pilots/safety/pilotsafetybrochu res/media/hypoxia.pdf

But as they say, every person's reaction to hypoxia is different.

Thanks for the critique

Well, I am neither a physicist, nor a chemist, nor an aerospace engineer, so I have lots of questions. I thought the article at least gave some layman level information about the scale of overpressures a commercial airplane can withstand at cruising altitude (no more than 10%) without disclosing exactly how much of which binary liquid explosive would be enough to do the deed. True, a professional (or a learned slashdot regular) would find the article lacking.

I also have no idea what degree of destruction a 747 or 777 can withstand at cruising altitude. Tough smaller planes like the 737 have withstood major airframe failures and survived to land safely. If modern planes are tougher than the 737, then yes, it would be difficult to smuggle enough explosive onboard to down the plane and a hijacker would look for another means of destroying the plane. Which leads us to the scenario you suggest.

Poison gas.

Now that IS a plausible scenario, particularly if the hijackers kill the passengers & crew and then (if they're still consious) manually pilot the plane (or reprogram the autopilot) to cause even more destruction on the ground.

However, all too often, the first sign a pilot has strayed into restricted airspace is when a blackhawk helicopter pops down next to them, or they get buzzed by a fighter jet. Radio problems are a recurring theme in the encounters- military aircraft with semi-working civilian-band radios, or military pilots not knowing what frequencies the pilot is on/should be on.) You can't really lean out the window and say "hey, officer, what's the problem?", and GA pilots are faced with a terrible conundrum- clearly someone is pissed, but what to do? Change flightpath, possibly becoming more of a threat? Keep going straight, inadvertently continuing towards whatever everyone is hot and bothered about, and get shot down once they cross some 'line in the sand'? Nevermind that when you've got a guy with a very big machinegun trained on you, flying the plane suddenly becomes the least of your worries, and that's VERY dangerous...

In case you'd rather read the draft yourself, instead of depending upon Fox's analysis, here's a link to the draft environmental assissment.. Warning, it is a 229 page PDF. The exec. summary, however, is only 11 pages.

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.

Having just completed a tour of the Northern California TRACON, I can tell you that hardware is not a problem. The hardware they are using in there is nothing but leading edge, including workstations with screens above it built by Lockheed Martin costing roughly $500M each (believe it or not, they undercut their competitor by half!), running ACE-IDS. This is still running Windows, while their TMU (Traffic Management), and weather monitoring systems were all already running Linux (didn't notice the distribution, but it looked to be running KDE).

ACE-IDS had already been installed and been in use since 2002 at Potomac (Washington, D.C.) TRACON, DFW TRACON, Gateway (St. Louis) TRACON, Boston and Seattle TRACONS, Honolulu Center, and recently at Sacramento Int'l Tower.

The TRACONs should be all up to date; if not, shortly will be.

BL.

Having just completed a tour of the Northern California TRACON, I can tell you that hardware is not a problem. The hardware they are using in there is nothing but leading edge, including workstations with screens above it built by Lockheed Martin costing roughly $500M each (believe it or not, they undercut their competitor by half!), running ACE-IDS. This is still running Windows, while their TMU (Traffic Management), and weather monitoring systems were all already running Linux (didn't notice the distribution, but it looked to be running KDE).

ACE-IDS had already been installed and been in use since 2002 at Potomac (Washington, D.C.) TRACON, DFW TRACON, Gateway (St. Louis) TRACON, Boston and Seattle TRACONS, Honolulu Center, and recently at Sacramento Int'l Tower.

The TRACONs should be all up to date; if not, shortly will be.

BL.

(deploying the boots early can result in the ice simply forming around the shape of the inflated boots, rather than their deflated shape, rendering the boots ineffective.)

I really hope that no pilots are getting their flying advice from slashdot (just like no lawyers are getting legal advice here), but just in case: the latest research indicates that ice bridging is a myth, and you should use the boots as soon as you detect any icing, rather than waiting for build-up.

http://www.aopa.org/pilot/features/inflight9910.ht ml, http://www.elliottaviation.com/wavelink/1999q1/wav art21.asp and http://www.faa.gov/library/manuals/examiners_inspe ctors/8400/fsat/media/fsat9818.doc are good references.

http://www.pilotfriend.com/safe/safety/icing_condi tions.htm is a great article about all sorts of aircraft de-icing and anti-icing methods.

Surprisingly few of our Defense Contractors' engineers are actually qualified pilots. That's why our DC ANG F-16 pilots complain that the F-16 is an airplane "designed by engineers, not pilots." That's why Lockheed had to pay so much money to the wives of German fighter pilots after the F-104 fighter failed so miserably as to break up under stress. (Our own government didn't do anything extra for the US F-104 widows.)

The Boeing B-1 Lancer was a good plane when they designed it, but the engineers then overloaded with so much gear that they either stall on climb or go into an unrecoverable dive. Naturally, the Reagan DoD claimed we needed the B-1 to win the Cold War. I guess that's why they're still flying B-52s.

Pointing to a DoD press release doesn't help your case, and neither do ad-hominem attacks, (to which I shall never stoop). This is the same DoD that claimed we had a missile gap in 1960, that East Germany had a higher standard of living than West Germany in the 1980s, and that we're winning the war in Iraq. The first version of the M-1 tank couldn't even shoot and move at the same time. The Bradley Fighting Vehicle? Another triumph of military engineering so great they had to make a movie about it.

The Moab desert robot drive challenge was successfully completed only last year. AI isn't as advanced as you might think. UAVs certainly do NOT have to follow all the rules of passenger aircraft under Parts 61, 91, 141 or 142 of FAA regulations. When UAVs fly, the FAA issues a NOTAM and restricts the airspace around it so no airplanes with humans on board fly anywhere near them. A surprisingly large amount of U.S. airspace is restricted, including most of the airspace over Nevada, for instance. Thus, the military and defense contractors get whatever exemptions they want from civil airspace rules. Don't believe me? Fly over Area 51 and see what happens.

The FAA controllers regularly complain about military bozos who want to restrict all US airspace to military traffic only. After 9/11, the Pentagon almost seized Washington's Reagan National airport and were stopped only when members of Congress figured out how long it would take them to drive to other airports.

Those of you who are ready to fly in airliners piloted by AI should:
1) take a class in AI
2) get a pilot's license, or at least take a flight lesson.
I have done both (not at MIT, though), and those designing these aircraft, for the most part, have not.

The main point of this is, don't believe everything you read in a press release.

Will they be required to be FAA certified? Then will they have N----- numbers on them?

I don't believe that's relevant. I see no mention about aircraft registration requirements in FAA's Procedures for Handling Airspace Matters, Chapter 29, Outdoor Laser Operations, mainly laser operation restrictions within certain ranges of airports.

Currently there is no recognized technology solution that could make these aircraft capable of meeting regulatory requirements for 'see and avoid,' and 'command and control,'" said Nick Sabatini, associate FAA administrator for aviation safety.

Obviously this character has never heard of TCAS (Traffic alert and Collision Avoidance System) - no wonder there's so many prangs in US air space. Oh but hang on, TCAS was allegedly developed by the FAA!

What additional rules should affect pilotless UAV's (ie: not remote controlled planes, often termed SUAV's):

• UAV's should be fitted with self-illumination including beacons. This allows them to be seen by other aircraft.
• UAV's should be fitted with TCAS. This means that their collision-avoidance procedures will be consistent with those of GA aircraft - no mid-airs because the UAV went up (instead of down) when the other aircraft was supposed to go up. It also means this will place a minimum size limitation on UAV's (which can only help to make them more visible to other aircraft operators).
• UAV's should be fitted with altitude-transmitting transponder ID tags. This allows them to be detected and monitored by ATC. Further, the transmitted ID should contain the current (programmable obviously) telephone number of the reponsible operator - allowing ATC to contact the operator to remove the UAV from conflicting airspace.

"I would not want to be flying (either private or commercial) in the vicinity of one of these UAVs."

You couldn't even if you wanted to: there would be an active TFR in the area(s) that the UAVs would be flying around. You do check TFR's before you fly, don't you?

If you don't, I would suggest you quickly start before you find yourself in the middle of an NTSB/FAA court proceeding and finding out that your license has just been suspended for the next 90 days.

A quick check of the FAA's Graphical TFR List, a call to your local FSS, or getting flight following from the nearest ARTCC will generally keep you in the clear.

Part of the problem is that the environmental noise has gotten so bad, headphone wearers have to crank their portable devices to be able to hear their tunes over the noise of traffic, trains, construction, etc.

It's kinda sad that Congress wants to talk about iPod volume levels when in fact the government has the power to directly affect some of the underlying causes.

[disclaimer: I worked on some of the documents linked above]

I think it's worthwhile to note that the movement of people through air travel in the US would be a signifigant vector for the spread of an infectious disease considering that nearly 800 million people are expected to move through the US by air in 2007

That's 12% of the population of the planet

GPS is just one of many nav instruments in the airplane, and for all but a handful of airplanes and approaches, is not the primary nav signal used for the last few thousand feet (the ILS is.)

... no university could/would spend their **entire budget** to get the thing to fly a single mission, not to mention the price to fix it up, apply for the proper licenses from the http://ast.faa.gov/ AST, etc. Better to start from scratch and get a real education in things like high speed aerodynamics and propulsion along the way.

You might want to let them know about that.

Aeralib

Yet here is a picture of FAA headquarters. From the FAA.

... you just havent looked hard enough:

xcor

blue origin (Jeff Bezos, Amazon)

spaceX

Armadillo Aerospace (John Carmack)

(Not mentioning the obvious: Virgin Galactic and Scaled Composites.)

And don't forget about America's Space Prize a $50 million dollar prize for the development of a reusable vehicle to service http://www.bigelowaerospace.com/">Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable space hotel. (Robert Bigelow owns the "Budget Suites of America" hoetl chain). Several contendors for the prize at the moment.

And actually the american government is quite progressive on commercial space travel. They have an office: the office of Commercial Space Transportation. They actually recently put out a 120+ page proposal on regulations for human spaceflight, open for suggestions from the "players". Revisions are being suggested from companies and actually heeded. The system is working quite well.

Just from discussing it with customers of mine (who pay $150,000 for a week in Vegas for 2 people, what's $150,000 to hit space?), I bet there are at least 100,000 people in the world who would pay $50,000 to travel.

I've read studies that have similar numbers of people willing to pay bigger dollar amounts. The market is there; thats why the companies listed, among others, are working on a solution.

For anyone who has done more research than I could, what are the obstacles to private research? There's a market, there's a will, so there must be a way. Who is putting the kibosh on it?

Money. Gotta get those venture capitalists to see the vision. There are safer investments than human space travel. The companies that are most likely to succeed are the ones that are self-funded (see the ones with big names next to them) or the ones that handle both commercial and govenment contracts (for example, Xcor does government research, and spaceX does government launches. It pays the bills and bolsters investor confidence.)

-everphilski-

The US is not the only country in the world. Check an atlas, its true!!

I know, but look at the alt.space community ... where is all the action taking place? Where are the spaceports opening? Which government has a branch of Commercial Space Transportation? Only the US. The innovation is happening here, and only here it seems. You don't see it happening in Europe or elsewhere. I keep asking why and noone gives me a good answer.

-everphilski-

Decisions to cut corners on development and test costs exists in safety critical avionics systems on commerical aircraft. Both the FAA and EASA trusted Honeywell that the systems complied with Level A Hazard requirements of tolerating 1 failure in 10-9 operating hours, or 1 failure in 1 billion operating hours. This dangerous systems failure occured in the first 4 months of commerical revenue service! The blind trust in Honeywell resulted in a "rubber stamp" approval by FAA and EASA to allow operators of the aircraft to fly with the backup secondary navigation system disabled. Had this failure occured with the secondary navigation disabled, while flying in IFR, the results would have been catastrophic! Quote from the FAA AD Order: We are issuing this AD to prevent temporary or possible sustained loss of all modular avionics units (MAU), which triggers a cascade of failures in systems dependent on MAUs functionalities. Such failures could reduce the flightcrew's situational awareness and increase workload and consequently reduce the ability of the flightcrew to maintain the safe flight and landing of the airplane. prohibit dispatch of any flight with the integrated electronic standby system (IESS) inoperative, even though it is allowed by the current version of the Master Minimum Equipment List; and performing a test to determine proper operation of the network interface card (NIC) communications and repairing if necessary. This AD also requires installing a certain software version of the PRIMUS EPIC system http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_ Library/rgAD.nsf/0/a26cc12a9c5c33e686256f7a0054419 d?OpenDocument

I've said this before and I'll say it again: the FAA will be useless based on their desire to want to regulate space tourism.

The FAA AST, the particular part of the agency with responsibility over spaceflight, is a very different group from "The FAA" as a nebulous whole, or "The FAA" referring to the aviation side of things more specifically.

International treaties make governments responsible for all spaceflight activity from their territory. Governments regulate things which they are responsible for, by international treaty. This is pretty much by definition.

The FAA AST has, since commercial spaceflight became a possibility, been both required to by law and actively and generally successfully engaging with the industry to find ways to regulate that protect public safety and the government's inherent interest in the activity, but still encourage the industry to be successful.

With a few relatively minor exceptions, the AST has not gotten in people's way. There have been particular timing and review problems with specific projects, but in general they've been doing a credible, thoughtful, professional, and positive job of helping make things happen for the industry.

This is slightly self serving for me to say this (I have dealings with them and get along with them fine) but it's also true. The liasions from various companies to AST genuinely like what's happening here, because it's letting them move forwards and to some degree helping.

http://ast.faa.gov/files/pdf/Human_Space_Flight_NP RM.pdf

>> If this happens, what purpose would Nasa serve?

> How about rulemaking and safety standards?

> The Department of Agriculture doesn't farm, and the FAA doesn't fly airplanes.

The FAA AST already has the job of rulemaking and safety standards for spaceflight.

After 9/11, the airline industry, which isn't regulated,

Hypoxia is a "nice theory" to the same extent as gravity and evolution are "nice theories". This is a very well researched area, which you don't appear to know much about, so here are some links:

Maximum altitude of human habitation:
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2005/MoniqueAnthony .shtml

Maximum altitude of human survival:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_zone

On the one in a billion who can make it to the top of Mt. Everest without supplimental oxygen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherpa_Ang_Rita

I'd like to remind you that these numbers are for extremely fit, trained individuals. For your AVERAGE human being, like the ones who are presumably going to ride in this thing, the numbers are far less. But don't take my word for it, take the FAA's (Federal Aviation Administration) when they decided what minimum levels of oxygen should be supplied to air passengers, not to mention pilots:

For private flying:
http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_ Library/rgFAR.nsf/0/BA9AFBF96DBC56F0852566CF006798 F9?OpenDocument

For Part 121 Airline flying:
http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_ Library/rgFAR.nsf/0/38EA18D996EDBCEC86256F3C0069EB 60?OpenDocument

So, while it is possible, briefly, for extremely fit, acclimated individuals to survive at 15,000 foot plus altitudes, it is not something that you would want to go through just to ride on a bloody train. If you really want to learn more about Hypoxia, go to a local Air Force base, and they may give you a complementary ride in an altitude chamber. This is done with all military (and most civilian) pilots, so that they can learn what their personal symptoms of hypoxia are. They even videotape it - it's very entertaining to watch yourself drool and not remember it, and to see how a sentence you were to write at each 1000' pressure bump turns from neat penmanship into a seismograph.

Hypoxia is a "nice theory" to the same extent as gravity and evolution are "nice theories". This is a very well researched area, which you don't appear to know much about, so here are some links:

Maximum altitude of human habitation:
http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2005/MoniqueAnthony .shtml

Maximum altitude of human survival:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_zone

On the one in a billion who can make it to the top of Mt. Everest without supplimental oxygen:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherpa_Ang_Rita

I'd like to remind you that these numbers are for extremely fit, trained individuals. For your AVERAGE human being, like the ones who are presumably going to ride in this thing, the numbers are far less. But don't take my word for it, take the FAA's (Federal Aviation Administration) when they decided what minimum levels of oxygen should be supplied to air passengers, not to mention pilots:

For private flying:
http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_ Library/rgFAR.nsf/0/BA9AFBF96DBC56F0852566CF006798 F9?OpenDocument

For Part 121 Airline flying:
http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_ Library/rgFAR.nsf/0/38EA18D996EDBCEC86256F3C0069EB 60?OpenDocument

So, while it is possible, briefly, for extremely fit, acclimated individuals to survive at 15,000 foot plus altitudes, it is not something that you would want to go through just to ride on a bloody train. If you really want to learn more about Hypoxia, go to a local Air Force base, and they may give you a complementary ride in an altitude chamber. This is done with all military (and most civilian) pilots, so that they can learn what their personal symptoms of hypoxia are. They even videotape it - it's very entertaining to watch yourself drool and not remember it, and to see how a sentence you were to write at each 1000' pressure bump turns from neat penmanship into a seismograph.

The Russian occupation numbers: 1697 days occupied from 1971 to 1986 before Mir got launched in 1986. The Mir got 4594 occupied days and occupied till an agreement with the US in 1993 (splitting the flights of the last 7 years). The Skylab list now look rather small. However, I think a "who has the biggest discussion" is silly. Commercial space-agencies are laughing.

See GPS Modernization.

Actually, it appears to be a javascript issue.

Here is the site,

http://www.airweb.faa.gov/Regulatory_and_Guidance_ Library/rgWebcomponents.nsf/HomeFrame?OpenFrameSet

problem occurs when I try to search the "historic FARs". I won't give me the full list while IE/Opera continue on another page.

Not VLF, but HF is used for communcations by Trans-Pacific flights.
Pretty much every night that I listen to NOPAC I hear flights across the Pacific calling to Alaska or other points, getting info about flight conditions and spacing for other planes. When the HF is out, the planes form a relay network using VHF from plane to plane to relay messages. If that fails, the planes are supposed to make right-angle turns and space themselves out north and south of the route, to keep them from running into each other. It's all spelled out in the above document.

In any case, these solar storms can take out the HF communcations for brief periods when they happen, and then again a few days later.

What's really going to cause problems, though, is BPL which sacrifices the globe-circling capability of the 3-30Mhz HF spectrum for a short term monetary gain for energy companies.

And when the sunspot cycle picks up again in 2007-2008, there's going to be terrific noise from these giant power-line antennas around the world bouncing all over the ionosphere, so expect your airplanes to be making more of those right-angle turns.

The FAA's Associate Administrator, Patti Grace Smith, presented Mr. Melville with the first FAA-issued commercial astronaut wings. A few short months later, on October 4 th, I had the privilege of awarding the next set of wings to Astronaut Brian Binnie.

>Apparently, a major source of opposition to BPL is operators of ham radios.

Hams are just canaries in this fight, not villains.

BPL has been shown to cause radio interference to all users, amateur, military, and commercial. Michael Powell, then FCC chairman, squashed a report from the NTIA that said it causeinterference>/a, and the FCC required that frequencies allocated to government use be "notched out." That leaves just us citizens unprotected and ungagged (at least for now).

And before you say that HF radio isn't necessary anymore, and everyone who is anyone uses cell phones (of if they have buckets of money Iridium satphones) take a look at just one of thousands of uses, NOPAC. Last night on 10.148 Mhz (square in the middle of the band that BPL trashes), I heard a Singapore Airlines flight over the Pacific contacting a NOPAC control station in Alaska asking for route planning information, right on the heels of a JAL flight doing the same thing. The NOPAC instructions have detailed accounts of how to use HF radio when over the Pacific, which is what I heard last night.

Finally, the FCC didn't grant any license to BPL systems. Instead, it said that they would be allowed under Part 15 regulations. Those are the same regulations that govern radio controlled cars; in essence, they're allowed to use low power if they don't cause interference and if they accept interference. The NTIA and others argued that BPL was fundamentally different from a kid with a radio controlled car on 27Mhz, because BPL will be widespread both geographically and in spectrum -- occupying the entire area beteween 2MHz and 80Mhz.

The result: a few critical government frequencies get notched out, and everybody else gets told to call the power company and complain "if" there is any problem. And in the few test cases where this has happened, even in test trials, getting the power company to do anything has taken months, and only a few even tried, and of those few that tried, all but about three had to discontinue the project becuase they couldn't resolve the Part 15 complaints.

So yes, it hasn't happened widespread yet, and it hasn't caused widespread problems yet, but don't blame the people who are technically savvy enough to see what's going to happen.

And finally, don't you think it's strange that energy companies are getting a big help from the current administration to get into the ISP business? I mean, it's not like there's any connection between energy companies and the Bush administration, is there?

If you want fiber, push on getting fiber.

Sorry forgot to hit the preview.

Here for example : Moses Lake Spaceport

The FAA paperwork requirements are actually quite basic:

Pre-application consultation;

Application evaluation, comprised of:

Compliance monitoring.

Anything less is really a public dis-service. Which of these wouldn't you do before someone set off something with an impulse of >200,000 lb-sec?

Maybe someone will know for sure out there, but aren't the keyhole satelites capable of resolving down to 1 meter? I thought the high resolution images were from satelites.

Here's a start.

Contact your local Flight Standards District Office for a Special Flight Permit.

Do not expect this process to be simple or fast. It will involve a lot of red tape and it will take a while (probably a few weeks unless you're EXTREMELY well-prepared for the fone call). However, it's better than having to explain to the FBI, local police, and FAA why you decided to launch a large balloon to a ridiculous altitude without their permission or knowledge.

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