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Steve Appleton, Micron CEO, Dies In Plane Crash
CR0WTR0B0T writes "Micron CEO Steve Appleton was killed in a plane crash around 9AM on Friday, February 3rd. He was flying an experimental fixed-wing single engine Lancair, which crashed in between two runways at the Boise airport."
"Experimental fixed-wing single engine..."
Let me be the first to tell you that if I were your new CEO, I'd stop right there.
Guess that Steve was looking for the John Denver Experience.
http://investors.micron.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=646118
Apparently this was the second crash he was involved in. He crashed in 2004 as well.
Micron's Website: http://www.micron.com/
What Micron is: A company that is in the business of designing and building some of the world’s most advanced memory and semiconductor technologies.
...plane crashes are dangerous.
Sounds like he knew he had a major malfunction and was trying to land. Air traffic controllers are heard screaming expletives.
Airplane Photos, Airline News, Planespotting Guides
Steve Jobs....Steve Appleton....Steve Wozniak.....How many F**** Steve's are there!?!
From Wikipedia:
"Steve Appleton participated in a number of sports, including professional tennis. His hobbies included scuba diving, surfing, wakeboarding, motorcycling and more recently, off-road car racing. His aviation background included multiple ratings and professional performances at air shows in both propeller- and jet-powered aircraft. He also had a black belt in Taekwondo.
On the 43rd edition of the Tecate SCORE Baja 1000 on 2010 Appleton finished 1st on a SCORE Class 1 buggy and 7th overall with a time of 20:32.18.[6]"
I feel like such a bum compared to this guy, actually I am a bum compared to this guy.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Bad past 12 months for CEOs of tech companies named Steve. :(
If I were a CEO named Steve working for a tech company I'd spend every day wrapped in bubble wrap for a while... there again- that might end up suffocating me.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Seems that small plane crashes are a major source of accidental death among rich people:
http://articles.cnn.com/2005-06-27/us/obit.walton_1_john-walton-wal-mart-jackson-hole-airport?_s=PM:US
Steve Jobs....Steve Appleton....Steve Wozniak.....How many F**** Steve's are there!?!
Did Steve tell you that perchance? Hmmm... Steve.
Guess that Steve was looking for the John Denver Experience.
John Denver, Steve Fossett and too many others.
The spirit to take risks is the spirit of adventure.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Coming from an EAA member with some hands on experience in aircraft construction etc.
Lancairs are light composite home/kit built aircraft with somewhat high wing loading and comparitively powerful engines.
On one hand, you have near-turboprop like speed and performance for a quarter of the price. On the other hand, you end up with some not so agreeable handling characteristics.
I'll just say that amongst the General Aviation and home / kit community that "They have a bit of a reputation."
But you're a live bum with potential and a future.
He's just dead and will never do anything else.
9am Friday morning? Why wasn't he at work?
Depends on the risks. There is no real adventure in confronting the same challenges day-in, day-out. Once you pass an obstacle, the spirit of adventure is to move on to the next one, not to go back.
I'm not criticizing what these guys did - they did many things that really WERE adventures - but they didn't die in one. They died on simple, unadventurous excursions that went badly wrong. Had Fossett found the site for his attempt to break the land-speed record and then died in that record attempt, that would have been an adventure. He would have been pushing the limits of what was known. Donald Campbell died in an adventure - a little negligently, as he didn't wait for the water to calm, but nobody had ever built a boat that fast and nobody knew what would happen at any moment. That's an adventure.
The successful solo attempt to balloon around the world by Fossett was equally an adventure - and a brilliant one at that. He held 115 other records over his life. That's a hell of an achievement. It's tragic that he died during an extremely boring site-scouting flight due to something as mundane as a downdraft plunging him into a mountain. Low flying in turbulent air next to a mountain was certainly in the spirit of taking risks, but where's the adventure in it? He'd conquered worse in just about every vehicle known to man.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I met Steve a couple of times when he visited our facility doing work on some joint (PCM) projects. From the previous posts you can probably tell he was quite a guy and it came across immediately when you met him. Our hearts go out to his family and friends.
He died because he fucked up. Not because the aircraft was "experimental".
His engine quit and he tried to turn back to the airport (the "impossible turn", it's often called) from too low of an altitude and let his airspeed dwindle down too low, and ended up stalling the thing and also entered an incipient spin and augered it into the ground. This is the classic impossible turn + stall/spin that kills so many pilots who lose their shit, panic, and do exactly the most wrongest things possible at the controls of their powerless (now poor glider) aircraft.
I myself fly an experimental aircraft all the time (Vans RV) that I built myself. An experimental aircraft that's built correctly is as safe as a factory-built aircraft, but the pilots who fly them are most definitely NOT as safe as a typical private pilot who only flies factory spamcans. Experimental airplanes are almost always very *high performance* aircraft, which demand advanced piloting skills, sense of judgment and training far beyond the demands of most general aviation pilots get. They are not very forgiving of fuckups at all.
The Lancair is a particularly nasty-behaving airplane to fly when you suddenly lose power. You must push the nose over *a lot* and *immediately* to keep the airspeed up, lest you abruptly cause that thin little super critical wing to stall. You have to dive towards the ground to keep it flying (very counter-intuitive, but that's how it works if you want to live). This pilot didn't do that. An eyewitness I know of (who's also a pilot) on the ground saw this whole wreck happen, the Lancair kept way too level in pitch and it slowed way too quickly... with the usual and very predictable results. :-(
One of my own best friends died the exact same way over ten years ago. Lost engine power, tried to turn back to the runway, stalled/spun and augered the damn thing into the ground. He failed to do what our training was supposed to be drilled into our brains in case of engine loss of power.... push the damn nose over and keep your airspeed up so you don't stall. The ground is going to come up at you very quickly, and there's nothing you can do to avoid that, but as long as you keep the damn thing flying and under control, just keep flying as far into and through the forced landing as your airspeed over the wings lets you, chances are good you will live, but if you panic and keep pulling back, you will surely die as your aircraft plummets out of control in a stall/spin and hits the dirt so hard all your internal organs rip loose from their mountings inside your torso, and your brain busts down thru the base of your skull and thru roof of your mouth as the sudden stop G-forces hit at the end of the ride.
rich white man dies doing things rich white people enjoy doing, but not things youll ever have time or resources to do in your life.
local slashdotter quoted as saying, "i wonder if the plane was printed on a makerbot?"
Good people go to bed earlier.
I was thinking another rich guy got killed playing with dangerous toys. It appears, however, that he was an accomplished aviator. Nonetheless, experimental aircraft are usually untested and this might be an example of production shortcuts. Takeoff is where it happens- max thrust, low to the ground, low energy... Boise is mostly flat to the southeast with rising terrain and flat with steady terrain to the northwest- maybe he should have gone straight ahead. Single engine means always be ready to become a glider. We'll know in a year when the NTSB is finished.
Have you ever noticed that anybody driving slower than you is an idiot, and anyone going faster than you is a maniac?
The spirit to take risks is the spirit of adventure.
Could you please rephrase that using an analogy including Rock, Paper, Scissors?
And I care why?
The pilots, friends, and crew that go down with them could hardly be important...
(sarcasm)
All flying experimental aircraft are certified as airworthy by an FAA examiner. They review construction records and check out the plane itself. You are not allowed to take passengers for the first 25 hours (40 hours for non-certified engines). Most experimental accidents occur during this initial testing phase. After that, the accident rate drops quite close to the rate for normally certified aircraft. The distinction is weather the plane was built using a certified "process" or not. Perhaps the AC here was confusing experimental and ultralight aircraft.
He was clearly in communication with the tower as the plane was rapidly loosing airspeed, asking permission to turn around and land. WTF? I mean seriously, whats the first fucking thing you learn as a pilot? It's amazing how that brain can fart, even for an experienced guy like this. RIP.
It's an FAA certification for aircraft not produced though a certified process. Commercial aircraft (even Cessna) are built using an extremely well documented process. Process certification is expensive - very expensive. Even planes constructed at Scaled Composites are certified experimental - not because they are built by buffoons, not because the designs are unsafe, not because they are dangerous, but because even they are usually one of a kind. IIRC even the small fleet of white nights built for Virgin are going to be individually certified experimental.
I supposed being built by an individual rather than coming off a production line does imply more risk, but that's what the testing phase is for. After that, the safety record is quite good.
The successful solo attempt to balloon around the world by Fossett was equally an adventure - and a brilliant one at that. He held 115 other records over his life. That's a hell of an achievement. It's tragic that he died during an extremely boring site-scouting flight due to something as mundane as a downdraft plunging him into a mountain. Low flying in turbulent air next to a mountain was certainly in the spirit of taking risks, but where's the adventure in it? He'd conquered worse in just about every vehicle known to man.
Actually (and this strengthens your point, not contradicts it), as I recall it, Fossett died due to a navigational error -- he flew into a box canyon too tight to get out of, and didn't realize his mistake till it was too late (*). So he wasn't even deliberately taking risks by flying low in turbulent air right next to a mountain during his otherwise unadventurous excursion -- he was literally at the point of "oh shit I have to try to make a turn, any turn, to get out of this". (Or maybe it was an attempt to perform a controlled crash and try to survive it; I seem to recall there was speculation that's what he was trying to do.) Sadly, he didn't make it.
* - If you're not familiar with this, turning into the wrong canyon is a fatal mistake. If your airplane's climb performance isn't enough to climb above the canyon walls by the time you run out of canyon, and you fly far enough in that there's not enough horizontal airspace to make a 180 degree turn and reverse course, you're completely screwed. No way to avoid a crash. The point of no return can happen long before it's visually obvious, so most pilots rely on navigation to avoid going into the wrong places. But all it takes is one mistake along the lines of confusing one canyon entrance for another, and you're done.
At least he was experimenting. That's a good way to go.
Try telling that to the armchair basement-dwelling experts in these parts, they know all but risk nothing. Losers and wannabes, mostly.
Hey... I wonder if we're related? I will be waiting for my inheritance.
Who is writing this man's biography? Where is the CNBC special? Hell, where is the 15-second blurb during the rundown of actual news spliced between two commercials?
I may be wrong, but this guy seems to have lived every last bit as much of an "experienced" life as the late Mr. Jobs. He created machines that run faster, cheaper, and yet don't quite look as pretty. He supplied more machines to public and private educational institutions than dell by a factor of almost 3 to 1, leading the field by a massive margin. And as someone who has had the privelage of repairing desktops in a town with both a Micron college and a Dell university, I can tell you they are a dream to work on. Well assembled cases using name brand components with ample internal spacing and none of that green or blue plastic fastener shit, just plain old bolts. I sincerely wish every PC built was either a Micron or an ASUS.
But I guess my main complaint here is that this guy made every bit as much of an impact on the world as Mr. Jobs, had every bit as interested of a personal life, and yet because he didn't gve keynotes wearing a black turtle neck, somehow he is not worthy of the same level of recognition, even after death?
Oh and all the Microns are built either in Chicago, Detroit, or a factory in Japan which is well known for paying the same wages as the US factories. Could've made even more money on all those millions of Micro PCs sold to schools and public colleges, but this guy thought it was better to employ Americans and pay foreign workers fair wages on machines which are being sold in bulk at a discount, and make half as much profit. Sure wish Jobs thought those things were important, but at least he did agree to pay for the suicide nets at FOXCONN.