Actually in my case, the gate was "available" (i.e. empty), the wait was for the gate staff to arrive at work at 6:30am (we landed just after 6:00am) so they could operate the jetway and open the arrival lounge doors etc.
The guy whose job it is to bash your luggage with a sledgehammer wasn't quite at his post either... We had to wait for him.
If you had arrived "on time" and been in the same seat 30 more minutes in the air, do you think you would have felt better about it than arriving "early" and sitting on the tarmac 30 minutes? The sitting time would have been the same.
I can see you might have issues if they didn't let you use the restrooms.
Serious Answer: Absolutely, Yes.
The flight was scheduled to last 13.5 hours and if we were flying for that amount of time I would have just accepted it.
But to be told we were arriving early (Hurrah! Let me out of this tin-can!) and then being betrayed and having to sit and look at our gate for 30 mins, that was the worst bit. Those 30 minutes felt like hours.
Personal anecdote that doesn't add much, but I want to tell it.
Flew from Auckland, New Zealand to San Francisco, USA direct ~13 hour flight. Don't know if it was due to padding or just good tailwinds but we arrived 30 minutes early and had to wait on the ground until the airport could let us go to gate and de-plane.
Sometimes "too early" is just as painful as "too late". Having to spend 30 extra minutes in a seat that you have just spent 13 hours sitting in while we could actually see our jetway/airbridge from the windows was torture....
Either you are the guy in the article and you are using American style language to make your story more readable for this audience OR this exact situation is more common around the world than you might think... Fleeing driver stopped by trucker intervention
In New Zealand we have "Road User Charges" for diesel powered vehicles. It acknowledges that a lot of diesel fuel is used for non-roadgoing purposes (agricultural tractors, stationary generators etc.) so taxing the fuel for transport infrastructure at purchase is unfair. So those who have diesel powered vehicles purchase "Road User Charges" vouchers in blocks of 1000kms. The rate is set by vehicle weight class. Vouchers must be displayed and they show mileage tallies. This can be checked against the vehicle's odometer by traffic police and there are fines for driving without sufficient RUC purchase. For a standard private car they get charged NZ$62 per 1000 kms. A 45 tonne truck pays NZ$359 per 1000kms. I imagine this scheme will eventually carry over to EVs when the fleet is large enough to be statistically considered in transport infrastructure costings. These "RUCs" add to the overall cost of running a diesel vehicle, but for passenger vehicles it is still somewhat cheaper overall (but not by much)
Not having to carry a lunar lander will save a lot of mass that can be re-purposed to making living conditions a bit less hellish. You'll still probably cram into a small capsule for actual re-entry, but on the way there and back you could have a bigger "not-returning-to-Earth" cylinder for en-route living quarters.
Being out in bright sunlight and seeing those lens wearers with weird blanked out eyes. Who will be the first one shot by some redneck with the excuse "Ah thort they was'n alien or a zombie, so I blasted that there creepy-eyed f*ck*r"
Secondary Payload is a camera, so maybe we'll get some open-source (freely available?) imagery as well. Don't know what it will be pointed at or how good the images will be. I'll be following this to see what comes of it.
I agree about the volume increasing by N^3, but does that necessarily mean the weight increases by that factor? Most of the volume inside the fuselage of an aircraft is air. Empty space to be filled with systems and payload. I guess it could be argued that the most efficient aircraft are designed to transport as close to their full volume as possible of payload, but not all of it will have the same density as the structural material.
I suspect you are on the correct path but I'm not sure if the ratio is a simple N^2 for air moved versus N^3 for mass. There must be an efficiency curve intersection in there somewhere, I'm just not smart enough to define it.
Simple answer : Proximity to Antartica.
The Operation Deep Freeze base is in Christchurch, New Zealand. The great majority of flights to the great southern continent are via Christchurh.
Down here in New Zealand we have a company looking to get into the small satellite launch game.
Rocket Labs. Perhaps New Zealand could be considered more friendly than India and some business will come down South. Their URL even has "USA" in it to show how US-friendly they are.
They haven't launched a production Electron vehicle yet, but the launch site is built and first try is scheduled for some time in the next few months.
Danny Boyle wasn't a bankable name, or, indeed, a successful director.
I think you must be talking about a different Danny Boyle. Maybe his profile isn't so high in the US but maybe you should look him up on IMDb. He has directed a number of successful movies. If that doesn't make him bankable then I don't know what does.
Directors, special affects artists, and maybe writers, yes. But good acting isn't hard to come by. Acting is pretty easy, and there are lots of great actors who are never given the opportunity to work with the best directors, producers, or writers.
Yes, acting IS easy...
However, GOOD acting is hard work and requires talent and commitment.
I'm not breathless with excitement over the results of the Oscars but I do realise that those nominated are usually there for a good reason.
The "warehouse" was actually an industrial laundry.
I was in Auckland and I saw the fire in the distance, but not the meteor (damn!)
I doubt that the two are connected. Laundries of this ilk probably have heavy-duty boilers for heating water (gas or electrically powered). I think there would have been plenty of means and opportunity for an electrical fault to cause a fire.
The guy inside was the owner, sleeping overnight in an upstairs accommodation flat/apartment to get an early start on the next day's work. He got a cut on his arm when the fire service forced open a locked door to let him out.
Only the contemporaneosityness (word?) of the two phenomenon give them even a tenuous link. Occam's razor.
Again, there was much fumbling. This time, it was only a few seconds before the captain came back on. "There we go. Thanks everyone, that did it." The rest of the flight was uneventful..
So the co-pilot finally figured out that it was HIS cell-phone that was still on...
This is a good point. If the autopilot suddenly experiences an uncommanded hard pitch-down, what does the pilot do? Flicks off the autopilot and hauls on the controls until the plane is level again, thereby slamming all floating people and things into the floor.
I guess it is too rare an event to train for, but I wonder if would have been possible for the crew to save some injuries through a vomit-comet style gentle recovery procedure.
I'm pretty sure I'd just haul on the controls until *I* felt "normal" again. Sod the self-loading cargo...
Just wonder how much do we have to wait for a fart capture device (cow farts are actually a major source of trouble)
Coming from a country (New Zealand) where we almost instituted a tax on animal-based methane emissions (popularly called "The Fart Tax") I can tell you that the problem is actually "burps" rather than "farts".
Ruminants mostly emit the methane from the front end. But FART is a better word to get into a headline...
The tax was axed after pressure from the very powerful farming lobby forced the government to drop the proposal.
At least if they try to sue through the court system, they will have to reveal their own identity and then you can send your own Uber-Ivan to sort them out.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually in my case, the gate was "available" (i.e. empty), the wait was for the gate staff to arrive at work at 6:30am (we landed just after 6:00am) so they could operate the jetway and open the arrival lounge doors etc. The guy whose job it is to bash your luggage with a sledgehammer wasn't quite at his post either... We had to wait for him.
Serious question.
If you had arrived "on time" and been in the same seat 30 more minutes in the air, do you think you would have felt better about it than arriving "early" and sitting on the tarmac 30 minutes? The sitting time would have been the same.
I can see you might have issues if they didn't let you use the restrooms.
Serious Answer: Absolutely, Yes. The flight was scheduled to last 13.5 hours and if we were flying for that amount of time I would have just accepted it. But to be told we were arriving early (Hurrah! Let me out of this tin-can!) and then being betrayed and having to sit and look at our gate for 30 mins, that was the worst bit. Those 30 minutes felt like hours.
Personal anecdote that doesn't add much, but I want to tell it. Flew from Auckland, New Zealand to San Francisco, USA direct ~13 hour flight. Don't know if it was due to padding or just good tailwinds but we arrived 30 minutes early and had to wait on the ground until the airport could let us go to gate and de-plane. Sometimes "too early" is just as painful as "too late". Having to spend 30 extra minutes in a seat that you have just spent 13 hours sitting in while we could actually see our jetway/airbridge from the windows was torture....
Either you are the guy in the article and you are using American style language to make your story more readable for this audience OR this exact situation is more common around the world than you might think ...
Fleeing driver stopped by trucker intervention
Should have been called the "S.S. John Young's Corned Beef Sandwich" Delivery Vehicle
...or the "S.S. John Young Farting Citrus" Delivery Vehicle.
John Young was too awesome for words.
You mis-spelled "Psychotic"
In New Zealand we have "Road User Charges" for diesel powered vehicles. It acknowledges that a lot of diesel fuel is used for non-roadgoing purposes (agricultural tractors, stationary generators etc.) so taxing the fuel for transport infrastructure at purchase is unfair. So those who have diesel powered vehicles purchase "Road User Charges" vouchers in blocks of 1000kms. The rate is set by vehicle weight class. Vouchers must be displayed and they show mileage tallies. This can be checked against the vehicle's odometer by traffic police and there are fines for driving without sufficient RUC purchase. For a standard private car they get charged NZ$62 per 1000 kms. A 45 tonne truck pays NZ$359 per 1000kms. I imagine this scheme will eventually carry over to EVs when the fleet is large enough to be statistically considered in transport infrastructure costings. These "RUCs" add to the overall cost of running a diesel vehicle, but for passenger vehicles it is still somewhat cheaper overall (but not by much)
Not having to carry a lunar lander will save a lot of mass that can be re-purposed to making living conditions a bit less hellish. You'll still probably cram into a small capsule for actual re-entry, but on the way there and back you could have a bigger "not-returning-to-Earth" cylinder for en-route living quarters.
Being out in bright sunlight and seeing those lens wearers with weird blanked out eyes. Who will be the first one shot by some redneck with the excuse "Ah thort they was'n alien or a zombie, so I blasted that there creepy-eyed f*ck*r"
Secondary Payload is a camera, so maybe we'll get some open-source (freely available?) imagery as well. Don't know what it will be pointed at or how good the images will be. I'll be following this to see what comes of it.
I agree about the volume increasing by N^3, but does that necessarily mean the weight increases by that factor? Most of the volume inside the fuselage of an aircraft is air. Empty space to be filled with systems and payload. I guess it could be argued that the most efficient aircraft are designed to transport as close to their full volume as possible of payload, but not all of it will have the same density as the structural material. I suspect you are on the correct path but I'm not sure if the ratio is a simple N^2 for air moved versus N^3 for mass. There must be an efficiency curve intersection in there somewhere, I'm just not smart enough to define it.
Yeah! ...and don't forget the earthquakes! Shake, roll and rattle | When you live in the Capital (that *almost* rhymes)
Yeah! ...and it is illegal to have a private garden. Kiss "Goodbye" to your geraniums if you move here.
Simple answer : Proximity to Antartica. The Operation Deep Freeze base is in Christchurch, New Zealand. The great majority of flights to the great southern continent are via Christchurh.
Down here in New Zealand we have a company looking to get into the small satellite launch game. Rocket Labs.
Perhaps New Zealand could be considered more friendly than India and some business will come down South. Their URL even has "USA" in it to show how US-friendly they are.
They haven't launched a production Electron vehicle yet, but the launch site is built and first try is scheduled for some time in the next few months.
North Korea is stuck on an island with enemies to the south.
A metaphorical island, perhaps?
Last time I looked at an atlas, the Korean peninsula was firmly attached to China.
Or it is the tail on the rump of the Chinese dragon. (metaphorically speaking)
Danny Boyle wasn't a bankable name, or, indeed, a successful director.
I think you must be talking about a different Danny Boyle. Maybe his profile isn't so high in the US but maybe you should look him up on IMDb. He has directed a number of successful movies. If that doesn't make him bankable then I don't know what does.
Directors, special affects artists, and maybe writers, yes. But good acting isn't hard to come by. Acting is pretty easy, and there are lots of great actors who are never given the opportunity to work with the best directors, producers, or writers.
Yes, acting IS easy...
However, GOOD acting is hard work and requires talent and commitment.
I'm not breathless with excitement over the results of the Oscars but I do realise that those nominated are usually there for a good reason.
The "warehouse" was actually an industrial laundry. I was in Auckland and I saw the fire in the distance, but not the meteor (damn!) I doubt that the two are connected. Laundries of this ilk probably have heavy-duty boilers for heating water (gas or electrically powered). I think there would have been plenty of means and opportunity for an electrical fault to cause a fire. The guy inside was the owner, sleeping overnight in an upstairs accommodation flat/apartment to get an early start on the next day's work. He got a cut on his arm when the fire service forced open a locked door to let him out. Only the contemporaneosityness (word?) of the two phenomenon give them even a tenuous link. Occam's razor.
You do NOT need to drive a tank.
...unless everyone else IS driving a tank.
Or for cosmetic surgeons to say to prospective patients "Here is how much more attractive I could make you.... for a special price of just $5000"
Again, there was much fumbling. This time, it was only a few seconds before the captain came back on. "There we go. Thanks everyone, that did it." The rest of the flight was uneventful..
So the co-pilot finally figured out that it was HIS cell-phone that was still on...
This is a good point. If the autopilot suddenly experiences an uncommanded hard pitch-down, what does the pilot do? Flicks off the autopilot and hauls on the controls until the plane is level again, thereby slamming all floating people and things into the floor. I guess it is too rare an event to train for, but I wonder if would have been possible for the crew to save some injuries through a vomit-comet style gentle recovery procedure. I'm pretty sure I'd just haul on the controls until *I* felt "normal" again. Sod the self-loading cargo...
Just wonder how much do we have to wait for a fart capture device (cow farts are actually a major source of trouble)
Coming from a country (New Zealand) where we almost instituted a tax on animal-based methane emissions (popularly called "The Fart Tax") I can tell you that the problem is actually "burps" rather than "farts".
Ruminants mostly emit the methane from the front end. But FART is a better word to get into a headline...
The tax was axed after pressure from the very powerful farming lobby forced the government to drop the proposal.
At least if they try to sue through the court system, they will have to reveal their own identity and then you can send your own Uber-Ivan to sort them out.