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A New Twist On Skywriting

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the air-apparent dept.

Nugget writes "The advent of Internet-based flight tracking technology enables an entirely new kind of skywriting. Gulfstream Aerospace sent up one of their $50M business jets today on an 8.5-hour test flight spanning 11 states for the sole purpose of leaving their mark on the Net in the form of a flight track that spells out 'GV' (the nickname of the Gulfstream V aircraft being flown) when viewed online."

17 of 149 comments (clear)

  1. What a disgusting waste of fuel by jimmoores · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At a time when global warming is ruining our climate, this is obscene.

    1. Re:What a disgusting waste of fuel by keesh · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Yes, because this makes a huge difference. It's good to see you complaining about things that matter, rather than attacking small irrelevant wastage.

    2. Re:What a disgusting waste of fuel by Instine · · Score: 3, Insightful

      "small irrelevant wastage."
      Like you? I mean literally. You are unlikely to make a difference right? Who ever you are. So why bother right? One More SUV is hardly going to kill the planet. Not switching you crap off before going to bed - Buying your power from a company useing or investing heavily in renewables... None of it is going to make a noticable change right?
      Fuck whit.

      --
      Because you can - or because you should?
    3. Re:What a disgusting waste of fuel by deadweight · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Can we assume that you never do anything like drive your car to the movies. If you do, you are spewing C02 when you could just wait for a Netflix DVD to come to your door. Everyone who NEVER uses any kind of fossil-fuel provided energy to do ANYTHING not absolutely life-or-death, please go track down the Gulfstream owner and do your CO2 rant. The rest of you shut the fuck up.

    4. Re:What a disgusting waste of fuel by bshroyer · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's not as bad as you make it out to be - if you imagine the average SUV-driving commuter has a 20-mile one-way commute, 20 days per month, that's 800 miles. On a "pounds CO2 per passenger per mile"** basis, commercial jet travel is quite efficient. In other words, that same SUV would produce twice as much CO2 if it were driven from NYC to Denver.

      In today's age, a better question is whether it's really necessary to go to Denver. There's still a lot of unneeded business travel going on, when voice- or video-conference would work just as well.

      (** quite possibly the worst, non-SI unit of measure I've ever used)

      --
      The cure for cancer is coming: Reovirus
    5. Re:What a disgusting waste of fuel by drew · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Ah, but if you video conference to a meeting in Denver, you can't go skiing after it's over.

      --
      If I don't put anything here, will anyone recognize me anymore?
  2. I didn't notice by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Until I read it online.

  3. and I thought... by Speed+Pour · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...the super bowl was an incredibly stupid waste of advertising money for a dot.com

    I guess they found a way to trump stupid

    --
    - Nobody would know what RTFA meant if it didn't need to be said all the time
    1. Re:and I thought... by Richard_at_work · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Its a test flight, its not as if the entire purpose of the flight was to do some skywriting, if they hadnt done this then they would have gone round and round in a figure of eight for exactly the same period of time. There were other reasons for this flight, which would have been the basis for the expenditure, this is jsut a little fun.

  4. Re:Hmmmmmm by eric76 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't remember ever seeing any FAA regulation that you can only fly direct lines between airports.

  5. Etch-a-sketch by Alain+Williams · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Doesn't it remind you of the drawings that you used to do with an etch-a-sketch ?

  6. Re:Hmmmmmm by MPHellwig · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Indeed the only regulations that interfer with your flight are the no-fly zones, the rest is up to you.

  7. Re:The first thing I thought of by satellitenoise · · Score: 3, Insightful

    LEDs on a plane? That's dangerous. If it flies over Boston, they might consider it a hoax device.

  8. Re:Someone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    And here you are, posting to Slashdot rather than actually doing something.

    Perhaps you have taken it upon yourself to alert others to this important cause?

  9. They were probably going to fly anyway. by Kadin2048 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe you missed the part of the article where they said this was a test flight. As in, they were testing the plane. The choice of route was a stunt, granted, but if they hadn't flown a great big "GV," they probably would still have done the test flight, and just flown around in a circle, or some other arbitrarily-defined pattern. It's just that flying in this particular pattern got them some extra press, so why not?

    Calm down a little before you flip out, next time.

    --
    "Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
  10. Re:Hmmmmmm by svanderw · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Except for all of the regulations on exactly which flight levels you're allowed to fly at, depending on your direction of flight.
    Oh, and the equipment that you've got on your aircraft.
    And the time of day (in some circumstances)
    And the day of the week(in other circumstances)
    And the fact that Air traffic control needs to know where you're planning on flying.
    Europe is even more difficult to fly in based on all of the restrictions that they put against the flight paths attempting to adjust the air traffic flow.

    Oh, or were you basing the comment on the tiny non-jets(piston/turboprop) that can't fly very high.
    (speaking as someone who's attempting to manage this data for commercial flight planning purposes)

  11. Re:Hmmmmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    You might wanna check those visual flight rules again.

    Air traffic control doesn't need to know a thing, so long as you stay out of their controlled airspace. If you ask for radar following, the only thing needed is a transponder ident.

    Any licensed pilot can fly anytime they want, wherever they want (restricted airspace the exception of course). Without ever telling *anybody* *anything*