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What NASA Won't Tell You About Air Safety
rabble writes "According to a report out of Washington, NASA wants to avoid telling you about how unsafe you are when you fly. According to the article, when an $8.5M safety study of about 24,000 pilots indicated an alarming number of near collisions and runway incidents, NASA refused to release the results. The article quotes one congressman as saying 'There is a faint odor about it all.' A friend of mine who is a general aviation pilot responded to the article by saying 'It's scary but no surprise to those of us who fly.'"
"When two planes almost collide, they call it a near miss....IT'S A NEAR HIT! A collision is a near miss...::BOOM::...look, they nearly missed."
Living With a Nerd
But I'll let you know when I am.
Also:
Airline food (when you can get it)
In-flight movies (once saw Dirty Dancing Havana Nights on both legs of a 1 stop flight from Vegas)
Senators in the mens room
"'There is a faint odor about it all.' "
Isn't that like Pigpen remarking on someone's bathing habits?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
And soon:
Cardiac arrest from blood pressure spike due to (non-gender-specific) bitch on cell phone
In flight pummelling received by (non-gender-specific) bitch on cell phone
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
Important hint: DON'T PICK THE FISH.
Are you adequate?
...inexplicable rise in the number of home-made Nigerian helicopters and Sputniks crowding the airspace.
> pilots said airlines were unaware how frequently safety incidents
> occurred that could lead to serious problems or even crashes,
> The survey's purpose was to develop a new way of tracking
> safety trends and problems the airline industry could address.
> revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence
> in airlines and affect airline profits.
So NASA, worried the industry could be overlooking some bugs, initiated a code review with the intent of creating a bug-tracking system. Four years and $8.5 million later, the project presumably completed, they didn't release - because it would expose bugs?
I wouldn't have thought it was NASA's role to cover-up airline industry problems. I'd expect airline industry non-sequitors like this to have been performed by the FAA and NTSB. NASA should restrict itself to losing their own design plans, and occasionally mucking up english-metric conversions.
Only if these "near misses" are with terrestrial craft, which I think we all realize isn't the case.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
If only we could fly to the airport.. Wait...
"Captain, his thinking is two dimensional." (Spock to Kirk from Start Trek II)
... Planes, like cars, have specific altitudes they must fly based on their compass heading and nature of their flight.Hmmm my car seems to be missing the altimiter and compass and "flying mode" options...
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
No qualifications at all...
But given the performance of a sturdy, dense, streamlined 1.5 ton automobile put up against primary jet engine exhaust, and the fact that cessnas and sailplanes rely on large, weakly loaded wings + control surfaces in order to generate their lift... I would feel pretty confident in predicting that attempting to enter a turbulence cone a half mile (perhaps significantly more) behind the 747 in these planes would result in a large "snap" followed by a plane chassis that has lost interest in the 747, and is now pursuing horizons that are more firmly grounded in stiff reality.
People in Soviet Russia, however, appear to be afflicted with amusing juxtapositions of the aforementioned situation
Exactly -- flying is still safer. Especially if you're planning to drive across an ocean. Somebody with a brain (or someone highly suggestible) please mod parent up.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I would venture that most cars are designed to fly/drive at 0 ft AGL (Above Ground Level). On the few occasions I have strayed from this altitude, either I, my passegngers or my cars suspension have been sorry.
For the record I've done -1 ft AGL more often than +1 ft AGL. And for all you neigh sayers, I welcome you to help winch/shovel my car out of the next mud puddle I get stuck in.