You are mistaken. GBrowser is done at a full G, here on earth. The lunar center with 1/6 G is doing the gBrowser. In space (zero G), they are doing the Browser.
Nuclear bomb in 12ft of water and the gov. concludes in 2001 that it's better to just leave it there. But somehow I can't bring my nail clippers on the airplane.
and to think, you guys actually voted for this crowd, and it looks like you are gonna be stupid enuf to vote for them again....
Remember that when you walk into the ballot box. Nail clippers are deadly, but lost nuclear weapons are 'no big deal'. It neatly sums up the intelligence of the current administration.
In the space program, however, everything is new. The oxygen generator was built specifically for the space station.
The generator may have been built specifically for the ISS, but it's a design that served many years aboard MIR. It's not new, it's not untested, and it is a field proven system, but, even aboard mir, it was one of the more problematic devices.
Sounds like a move to an undesirable part of the world, a pay cut, and a requirement to actually commute into somebody else's office. Thanks, but, no thanks.
The reality is, this is just a cost issue. With oil prices at $25 a barrel, the only viable commercial source is to pump it out of the ground in the middle east. With oil prices now at the $40 a barrel area, lots of other sources become viable. The tar sands in Alberta contain more oil than the entire underground reserves in the middle east, but it's more expensive to extract. With world prices in the $40 area for a barrel, the tar sands become a profitable venture extracting the oil.
There is no shortage of oil in this world, there is a shortage of cheap oil. That shortage is mostly artificial, oil companies have not been investing in infrastructure in the middle east for the last 15 years, and what's there is old and wearing out. That investment is not going to happen as long as there is the current level of political instability in the region. It's now been demonstrated, that invading and installing a puppet government actually decreases the stability of the region, and invites all kinds of attacks on foreign sponsored oil production infrastructure. In simple terms, the well has been poisoned.
There's lots of 'extractable' oil in this world, it just cant/wont be extracted for 25 dollars a barrel. Personally, I'd rather see us burning cheap middle east oil in the short term, and leave our own reserves in the ground for the grandchildren to enjoy, they can sell it to the usa for $100+ a barrel after the middle east has been sucked dry.
In a controlled environment it could be pretty fun, but there are far too many ways to Darwin yourself:
As long as they dont take innocent bystanders with them, it's good for the gene pool. Please dont disuade such behavior from folks dumb enough to do it, and especially not if they are young enough that they haven't contributed to the gene pool yet.
Actually, this has a lot of business potential. If you have a piece of equipment that needs to be space qualified for whatever reason, this is a way to expose it to the zero g environment for testing. You can call them up, book the plane, and write the cheque. There is considerably more beaurocracy involved in using nasa equipment for the same task.
With the shuttle fleet out of business, this is a natural fill in from private enterprise. The biggest justification for the shuttle has always been all the 'microgravity experiments' you can do on it. At least half of those experiments can likely be re-thought to be accomplished during the 25 second intervals. Quite a difference between a 500 million shuttle launch, and the 81 thousand for a full suite of 27 seats on this flight.
On another front, one of the things that made the movie Apollo 13 so good, was the 'real' zero g effects, filmed on the vomit comet. It's a resource not normally available to filmmakers for 'any old film'. It's only a matter of time now, and we are going to see more films with a lot more real 'zero g' scenes. I can already see a niche market developing for complex movie sets that are palettized to fit thru the cargo door on a 727. A properly built 'shuttle cockpit' that's on a pallette, along with a 'shuttle cargo bay' on another pallette, and you are all set to film a bunch of scenes on a single flight. On the scale at which hollywood burns money, it's not even very expensive. Sure would add a whole bunch of realism to see bruce willis puking in zero g....
You missed the original point. When you 'drop' the balls, and they 'just sit there hovering', you are experiencing zero g. The point is, while experiencing zero g, there is no way to determine wether that is due to the total lack of local gravitational influence, or, if its because you are on a trajectory that negates local gravitational influence.
After the plane completes the parabolic trajectory, and starts the pullup, THEN you will be able to see where the balls fall, until then, you will have no indication.
In case anyone's interested, skydiving is a cheaper way of obtaining a similar experience.
There is NO comparison between skydiving and true freefall experienced in parabolic flight. While skydiving, you get this 'minor' force of air resistance, and if you think it's really minor, explain why it's such a big deal when 140 mph winds hit shore in a hurricane, those are the winds you experience while skydiving. In parabolic arcs, you are sheltered from the air resistance within the confines of the aircraft cabin, the local air mass is traversing the same trajectory, so it's not providing you with air resistance.
I've done both, and the closest you are going to get to true freefall without use of an aircraft, is scuba diving. Get your bouyancy properly neutral, get rid of your fins, and hover out in the open, well below the surface, and well clear of the bottom. It's still not nearly as cool as the freefall in an aircraft cabin, but it's a damn site closer than a freefall skydive.
The primary difference with skydiving is the lack of walls.
The primary difference skydiving is the 100+ mph wind, which provides lots of air resistance, against which you can work to do all sorts of maneuvering. Maneuvering is determined by newtonian physics, f=ma, and the wind resistance in a skydive provides plenty of f to work with. To really experience 'weightlessness' you need to get into an environment where there is no inital vector for the f element of the equation. In the aircraft cabin, the walls shelter you from that wind resistance, the aircraft itself is being flown on a trajectory to neutralize all the other forces.
Keep one more thing in mind, there is NO free lunch. If you go for 25 seconds at zero g during the pushover, expect 25 seconds of two g during the pullup. Newtonian physics do adhere to the TANSTAAFL principles.
The type of rocket motor used on SS1 pretty much precludes it blowing up from a fuel induced explosion. The fact that it's an aerodynamic structure, with wings etc, gives it a much higher probability of coming apart in flight due to stresses on the airframe. SS1 is not Rutan's first attempt at a supersonic airframe, it's just the first one that hasn't come apart in flight and killed it's crew (yet). Google for BD-10 flight test accidents to see what happened to his last supersonic design. The feathering design of SS1 leaves it with a major 'weak spot', the whole airframe is a 'moving part'. The control problems on the last flight show, the design is not without it's weaknesses.
Wildfire will be a non event to watch the launch, since it's going up under a balloon to 80,000 feet. The airframe itself has not had an all up flight configuration live test yet, but, it's a relatively simple design, with little/no real aerodynamics involved, and no flying surfaces other than a couple stabilizer fins. Like SS1, it's using a hybrid engine, so the potential for a fuel explosion is little/none.
If you want to watch things blow up, you are much better off waiting to go watch a shuttle being fueled or launched, should they ever actually do that again. With all that liquid fuel, it's just a big bomb waiting to explode. Both SS1 and Wildfire have potential for an in flight breakup, SS1 being a much higher potential than Wildfire simply due to the type of structures involved. In either case, the chances of a real explosion are virtually nil.
I was wondering why they keep saying the shuttle is needed to complete the ISS, since Russia managed to get Mir up there without using a shuttle.. Any thoughts?
There's a few parts that are to big for the soyuz and progress vehicles the soviets are using. They are sitting at the Kennedy Space Center waiting for a ride up on a shuttle. The failure of a stabilizer gyro a few months ago would have been a total non issue, if the scheduled delivery of spares had actually happened. The spare wont fit thru the hatch on a progress, and there's no room for it on a soyuz, so it sits in florida, hoping that maybe some day it'll actually go up to the ISS, and with a little luck, that'll be before another gyro fails. If not, well, ISS is gonna have more problems...
That flying rock, I highly doubt that even a CAT 5 hurricane would produce enough wind over the wings to get the aircraft above Vs.
Googling for shuttle stall speed turns up meaningless links, but, google for landing speed and you get this . Scroll down, and you'll find it's using 213 to 225 mph as touchdown speed, and it's likely a valid assumption the range depends on all up landing weight. Working backward using traditional 'airmanship' numbers, touchdown is approximately 110% of stall speed, unless limited by tires etc, so it's probably safe to 'guess' the shuttle stalling in the area of 180 to 190 mph. Again, this is all somewhat subjective, as stall is truely based on angle of attack, and since the shuttle is unpowered, hard to measure a 'level flight' scenario, but, it's pretty reasonable to assume it is incapable of gliding slower than 180 to 190 in a sea level atmosphere just based on it's touchdown speed.
Another little detail, in order to have the wind 'pick up' the shuttle, it'll have to be nosed into wind, and set with the wings at the optimum angle of attack. A shuttle on the wheels is very distinctively 'nose low'. So, not only will you need a cat 5 hurricane, you also need Nasa folks to park it on a slight rise to get the angle of attack right.
I think nasa can rest assured, a shuttle exposed to a cat 5 hurricane by 'just parking outside' is not going to suffer a blow over. It may take some damage from flying debris, but, it's not going to blow over. I believe the structure itself is quite capable of handling hurricane force winds assuming it's parked nose to the wind, it endures much stronger aerodynamic forces during landing.
The launch facilities may be at risk to hurricanes, but the shuttles themselves, are probably safest parked out in the wide open away from potential debris, nose to the wind, and tie-downs are quite optional.
Re:And now a word from Captain Obvious...
on
Port-A-Nuke
·
· Score: 1
The Navy has had NO accidents.
USS Thresher
USS Scorpion
I think total loss of the vessel, including the reactor, qualifies as accidents. whats really amazing, is if you do some research on the subject, just how many reactors, and even worse, nuclear bombs, have been lost over time, and are just sitting at the bottom of the ocean waiting for somebody to salvage them. Both the Navy and the Air Force have contributed to the list of 'lost' nuclear bombs that are scattered around the world.
Re:One Dirty Bomb
on
Port-A-Nuke
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Yeah, just make sure you're not doing it in Chico, CA. There's a $500 fine for detonating a nuclear device within the city limits.
It's obvious this city ordinance is very effective, there haven't been any nuclear detonations there. They should put this law on the books in all cities, then everybody will be safe....
There's tons of motherboards out there today, they have an integrated video, and a socket for a processor, pick how much processor you want. Seems this is already the case for most midrange and low end motherboards....
Operating your automobile on a high density freeway in a large metropolitan area is equivalent to flying the small plane in and out of JFK. You have a responsibility to others with whom you share the road, and you have no right or expectation of privacy on that road. The problem is, there is a small number of folks that just dont comprehend the concept of responsibility. The mere existence of a recorder will get half of them to drive more carefully, and ultimately thru post incident data analysis, will get the other half off the road.
There is a time and a place to pick the fight on the privacy arguement. Arguing a 'right to privacy' when operating a deadly weapon (a vehicle) on a public hiway is the wrong time/place for that fight. This is not about your rights, but the rights of those around you. If you want privacy, go drive on private roads, but dont expect it on the public road system. There are many more people on that road, and thier expectation of responsibility trumps any right to privacy. You always have the option to not use the public roads if that's a problem for you.
But we'd have to come up with a socially acceptable definition of responsible.
This has already been done, and it's very simple. You obey the rules of the road which are encapsulated in laws. A civilized society is one which is governed by laws, laws that apply equally to all, for the greater good. An uncivilized society is one which has no rule of law, where everybody does what they please.
Data recorders would be a good thing in virtually all accident scenarios. it never ceases to amaze me how many 'law abiding' citizens seem to think simple things like speed limits 'dont apply to me'. Driving at speeds above posted limits is a form of negligence, and an insurance company is assuming liability for that negligence on behalf of the driver doing it. I see nothing wrong with that company having a desire, possibly even a right, to know what the driver is doing for whom they are assuming liability.
I've never believed that using your laptop, game boy or mp3 player/walkman "interfered with the instruments", or whatever excuse they give you.
They dont tell you it interferes with the instruments. The real reason is because it has not been tested and verified that it does NOT interfere with the instruments. The regulations on this point are very clear, only devices that are approved for operation during the takeoff and landing phase may be used. That doesn't mean unapproved devices are unsafe, it means they have not been demonstrated to be safe, and until somebody pays to take it thru the test procedures, it cannot be used.
This goes way back to the early days of instrument flying. Landing approaches were based on the radio range, and direction finders, both instruments that are effectively am radio recievers. Shortly after the advent of the portable transistor radio, a few airplanes were lost during approaches. Eventually it was determined, these portable radios were using the same intermediate frequency (455 khz) as the navigation gear, and were causing interference with the nav gear. Pilots unknowingly flew airplanes into hillsides because they were in the clouds, couldn't see anything, and thier insturments were giving false indications. There was another incident in the 60's where a jet transport aircraft impacted a mile short of the runway on a precision instrument approach. Post crash analysis determined that an electronic device being operated in the passenger cabin was interfering with the instrument landing system, and causing bad indications in the cockpit.
After this was determined in more than one occurrence, the rules for aircraft were changed to a proactive prevention style of ruleset. It matters not wether or not your device _may or may not_ interfere with landing systems. It only matters if it's been tested to prove it does NOT interfere. Unapproved devices are not permitted to be operated during critical flight phases.
If you really believe that your ipod wont interfere, and you absolutely _must_ have it on during takeoff and landing, the solution is really simple. Just take it to a lab that does this type of emissions approval, and get an approval for it. It's going to cost on the order of $100,000 for the testing and certificate, but that's a minor cost when you balance it against the number of lives on board your average jet transport aircraft in airline service. The aviation world has learned the hard way, you must begin with
#assume nothing
and then you can build from there. If a device has not been demonstrated to be safe in the critical flight phases, you turn it off. If you absolutely _must_ have it on, take the time, spend the money, go to the lab and PROVE that it's safe. Until you've done that, you can turn it off.
I've done millions of miles in the air, and seen my fair share of anomolies in navigation gear. I've dealt with the ignorant public that thinks they know better and wont turn devices off. One good thing about the new police state, it's kind of fun filling out the form with names of those folks to have them officially added to no fly lists. I hate ipods, and the ignorant attitude of folks that think they cant live without that contraption blasting mindless drivel into thier ears. You can rest comfortably knowing, I take great pleasure in adding a name to no fly lists when an ignorant ipod user wont turn the thing off for landing. People that wont turn it off are obviously 'potential terrorists', and the new police state makes it sooooo easy to brand them as such.
You feel safest driving the speed limit. Fine. Do it responsibly, in the right lane. Those of us who feel safe driving faster, let us do it in the left lane.
This is PRECISELY what the program is all about. Insurance companies know, speed kills. They also know, there is a huge percentage of the population that thinks they are above the law when it comes to driving speed limits. They want to reward those who obey the rules of the road, and that will ultimately penalize folks with your attitude.
FYI, when you got your drivers license, you contracted with society to obey the rules of the road, including speed limits. The roads are a public place, and your vehicle is a deadly weapon. NOTHING gives you the right to endanger everybody else at levels higher than your contract with society allows. Speed limits are there for YOU, just like everybody else. This program is specifically targetted at penalizing jackasses with your attitude of 'let us break the laws in the left lane'. There is NO room on the road for folks with your attitude, and you SHOULD be removed from the pool of folks driving on the public road system. It'll make the roads a safer place for those that do honor our contract with society to operate vehicles in a responsible manner.
This is not a privacy issue, there is no expectation of privacy when you are on the public road system. You are operating a deadly weapon in a public place, the expectation is of responsibility, not privacy.
Every time I go to work, once I settle into the flight deck, there's one black box recording every movement of the controls, and another recording every scrap of conversation. In the event of incidents, this data is available to investigators for analysis. That's the way it is in aviation, and now techology has made it economical to apply this principle to cars on the road. It's long overdue. btw, the 'black boxes' are actually flourescent orange, makes it a lot easier to find them in a wrecked vehicle.
If you want privacy, go take your vehicle and drive it on private roads. The history in aviation shows, data recorders are a GOOD THING. When there are incidents, the recorders have records of what happened. People learn from that data, it reduces accident rates, and helps designers make safer vehicles. Sometimes it can be used to identify liability and responsibility. Race cars are the same, much knowledge has been gained from post race data analysis, especially with regards to incidents.
If your data recorder shows you are not safe on the public roads, and that results in loss of insurance, hence ability to use the public road system, couldn't happen to a more appropriate person. This would take less than 1% of drivers off the road, but would increase road safety by orders of magnitude. Most people are responsible drivers on the road, but there's a very small number that seem to think the 'rules of the road' are there to be broken. They account for many thousands of fatalities yearly.
There is a time and a place to 'pick the fight' on privacy, this is not one of them. The public road system is a public resource, with zero expectation of privacy, and a very large expectation of responsibility. Data recorders are a good way to enforce that responsibility, because one look at accident statistics will confirm, there are way to many drivers on the road that just dont understand the concept of responsibility.
Slashdot Mirror
You are mistaken. GBrowser is done at a full G, here on earth. The lunar center with 1/6 G is doing the gBrowser. In space (zero G), they are doing the Browser.
and to think, you guys actually voted for this crowd, and it looks like you are gonna be stupid enuf to vote for them again....
Remember that when you walk into the ballot box. Nail clippers are deadly, but lost nuclear weapons are 'no big deal'. It neatly sums up the intelligence of the current administration.
The generator may have been built specifically for the ISS, but it's a design that served many years aboard MIR. It's not new, it's not untested, and it is a field proven system, but, even aboard mir, it was one of the more problematic devices.
1. Sue IBM
2. Sell Stock
3. Profit!
Nuthin to it, and Daryl has executed step 2 very brilliantly.
Sounds like a move to an undesirable part of the world, a pay cut, and a requirement to actually commute into somebody else's office. Thanks, but, no thanks.
There is no shortage of oil in this world, there is a shortage of cheap oil. That shortage is mostly artificial, oil companies have not been investing in infrastructure in the middle east for the last 15 years, and what's there is old and wearing out. That investment is not going to happen as long as there is the current level of political instability in the region. It's now been demonstrated, that invading and installing a puppet government actually decreases the stability of the region, and invites all kinds of attacks on foreign sponsored oil production infrastructure. In simple terms, the well has been poisoned.
There's lots of 'extractable' oil in this world, it just cant/wont be extracted for 25 dollars a barrel. Personally, I'd rather see us burning cheap middle east oil in the short term, and leave our own reserves in the ground for the grandchildren to enjoy, they can sell it to the usa for $100+ a barrel after the middle east has been sucked dry.
As long as they dont take innocent bystanders with them, it's good for the gene pool. Please dont disuade such behavior from folks dumb enough to do it, and especially not if they are young enough that they haven't contributed to the gene pool yet.
With the shuttle fleet out of business, this is a natural fill in from private enterprise. The biggest justification for the shuttle has always been all the 'microgravity experiments' you can do on it. At least half of those experiments can likely be re-thought to be accomplished during the 25 second intervals. Quite a difference between a 500 million shuttle launch, and the 81 thousand for a full suite of 27 seats on this flight.
On another front, one of the things that made the movie Apollo 13 so good, was the 'real' zero g effects, filmed on the vomit comet. It's a resource not normally available to filmmakers for 'any old film'. It's only a matter of time now, and we are going to see more films with a lot more real 'zero g' scenes. I can already see a niche market developing for complex movie sets that are palettized to fit thru the cargo door on a 727. A properly built 'shuttle cockpit' that's on a pallette, along with a 'shuttle cargo bay' on another pallette, and you are all set to film a bunch of scenes on a single flight. On the scale at which hollywood burns money, it's not even very expensive. Sure would add a whole bunch of realism to see bruce willis puking in zero g....
After the plane completes the parabolic trajectory, and starts the pullup, THEN you will be able to see where the balls fall, until then, you will have no indication.
There is NO comparison between skydiving and true freefall experienced in parabolic flight. While skydiving, you get this 'minor' force of air resistance, and if you think it's really minor, explain why it's such a big deal when 140 mph winds hit shore in a hurricane, those are the winds you experience while skydiving. In parabolic arcs, you are sheltered from the air resistance within the confines of the aircraft cabin, the local air mass is traversing the same trajectory, so it's not providing you with air resistance.
I've done both, and the closest you are going to get to true freefall without use of an aircraft, is scuba diving. Get your bouyancy properly neutral, get rid of your fins, and hover out in the open, well below the surface, and well clear of the bottom. It's still not nearly as cool as the freefall in an aircraft cabin, but it's a damn site closer than a freefall skydive.
The primary difference with skydiving is the lack of walls.
The primary difference skydiving is the 100+ mph wind, which provides lots of air resistance, against which you can work to do all sorts of maneuvering. Maneuvering is determined by newtonian physics, f=ma, and the wind resistance in a skydive provides plenty of f to work with. To really experience 'weightlessness' you need to get into an environment where there is no inital vector for the f element of the equation. In the aircraft cabin, the walls shelter you from that wind resistance, the aircraft itself is being flown on a trajectory to neutralize all the other forces.
Keep one more thing in mind, there is NO free lunch. If you go for 25 seconds at zero g during the pushover, expect 25 seconds of two g during the pullup. Newtonian physics do adhere to the TANSTAAFL principles.
You can start with, it's illegal...
It's actually a much more serious offence than the buglary.
That's one way to play with the statistics, exlude the majority of the population...
Wildfire will be a non event to watch the launch, since it's going up under a balloon to 80,000 feet. The airframe itself has not had an all up flight configuration live test yet, but, it's a relatively simple design, with little/no real aerodynamics involved, and no flying surfaces other than a couple stabilizer fins. Like SS1, it's using a hybrid engine, so the potential for a fuel explosion is little/none.
If you want to watch things blow up, you are much better off waiting to go watch a shuttle being fueled or launched, should they ever actually do that again. With all that liquid fuel, it's just a big bomb waiting to explode. Both SS1 and Wildfire have potential for an in flight breakup, SS1 being a much higher potential than Wildfire simply due to the type of structures involved. In either case, the chances of a real explosion are virtually nil.
I'm very curious. Just what do you eat?
There's a few parts that are to big for the soyuz and progress vehicles the soviets are using. They are sitting at the Kennedy Space Center waiting for a ride up on a shuttle. The failure of a stabilizer gyro a few months ago would have been a total non issue, if the scheduled delivery of spares had actually happened. The spare wont fit thru the hatch on a progress, and there's no room for it on a soyuz, so it sits in florida, hoping that maybe some day it'll actually go up to the ISS, and with a little luck, that'll be before another gyro fails. If not, well, ISS is gonna have more problems...
Googling for shuttle stall speed turns up meaningless links, but, google for landing speed and you get this . Scroll down, and you'll find it's using 213 to 225 mph as touchdown speed, and it's likely a valid assumption the range depends on all up landing weight. Working backward using traditional 'airmanship' numbers, touchdown is approximately 110% of stall speed, unless limited by tires etc, so it's probably safe to 'guess' the shuttle stalling in the area of 180 to 190 mph. Again, this is all somewhat subjective, as stall is truely based on angle of attack, and since the shuttle is unpowered, hard to measure a 'level flight' scenario, but, it's pretty reasonable to assume it is incapable of gliding slower than 180 to 190 in a sea level atmosphere just based on it's touchdown speed.
Another little detail, in order to have the wind 'pick up' the shuttle, it'll have to be nosed into wind, and set with the wings at the optimum angle of attack. A shuttle on the wheels is very distinctively 'nose low'. So, not only will you need a cat 5 hurricane, you also need Nasa folks to park it on a slight rise to get the angle of attack right.
I think nasa can rest assured, a shuttle exposed to a cat 5 hurricane by 'just parking outside' is not going to suffer a blow over. It may take some damage from flying debris, but, it's not going to blow over. I believe the structure itself is quite capable of handling hurricane force winds assuming it's parked nose to the wind, it endures much stronger aerodynamic forces during landing.
The launch facilities may be at risk to hurricanes, but the shuttles themselves, are probably safest parked out in the wide open away from potential debris, nose to the wind, and tie-downs are quite optional.
USS Thresher
USS Scorpion
I think total loss of the vessel, including the reactor, qualifies as accidents. whats really amazing, is if you do some research on the subject, just how many reactors, and even worse, nuclear bombs, have been lost over time, and are just sitting at the bottom of the ocean waiting for somebody to salvage them. Both the Navy and the Air Force have contributed to the list of 'lost' nuclear bombs that are scattered around the world.
It's obvious this city ordinance is very effective, there haven't been any nuclear detonations there. They should put this law on the books in all cities, then everybody will be safe....
There's tons of motherboards out there today, they have an integrated video, and a socket for a processor, pick how much processor you want. Seems this is already the case for most midrange and low end motherboards....
There is a time and a place to pick the fight on the privacy arguement. Arguing a 'right to privacy' when operating a deadly weapon (a vehicle) on a public hiway is the wrong time/place for that fight. This is not about your rights, but the rights of those around you. If you want privacy, go drive on private roads, but dont expect it on the public road system. There are many more people on that road, and thier expectation of responsibility trumps any right to privacy. You always have the option to not use the public roads if that's a problem for you.
This has already been done, and it's very simple. You obey the rules of the road which are encapsulated in laws. A civilized society is one which is governed by laws, laws that apply equally to all, for the greater good. An uncivilized society is one which has no rule of law, where everybody does what they please.
Data recorders would be a good thing in virtually all accident scenarios. it never ceases to amaze me how many 'law abiding' citizens seem to think simple things like speed limits 'dont apply to me'. Driving at speeds above posted limits is a form of negligence, and an insurance company is assuming liability for that negligence on behalf of the driver doing it. I see nothing wrong with that company having a desire, possibly even a right, to know what the driver is doing for whom they are assuming liability.
They dont tell you it interferes with the instruments. The real reason is because it has not been tested and verified that it does NOT interfere with the instruments. The regulations on this point are very clear, only devices that are approved for operation during the takeoff and landing phase may be used. That doesn't mean unapproved devices are unsafe, it means they have not been demonstrated to be safe, and until somebody pays to take it thru the test procedures, it cannot be used.
This goes way back to the early days of instrument flying. Landing approaches were based on the radio range, and direction finders, both instruments that are effectively am radio recievers. Shortly after the advent of the portable transistor radio, a few airplanes were lost during approaches. Eventually it was determined, these portable radios were using the same intermediate frequency (455 khz) as the navigation gear, and were causing interference with the nav gear. Pilots unknowingly flew airplanes into hillsides because they were in the clouds, couldn't see anything, and thier insturments were giving false indications. There was another incident in the 60's where a jet transport aircraft impacted a mile short of the runway on a precision instrument approach. Post crash analysis determined that an electronic device being operated in the passenger cabin was interfering with the instrument landing system, and causing bad indications in the cockpit.
After this was determined in more than one occurrence, the rules for aircraft were changed to a proactive prevention style of ruleset. It matters not wether or not your device _may or may not_ interfere with landing systems. It only matters if it's been tested to prove it does NOT interfere. Unapproved devices are not permitted to be operated during critical flight phases.
If you really believe that your ipod wont interfere, and you absolutely _must_ have it on during takeoff and landing, the solution is really simple. Just take it to a lab that does this type of emissions approval, and get an approval for it. It's going to cost on the order of $100,000 for the testing and certificate, but that's a minor cost when you balance it against the number of lives on board your average jet transport aircraft in airline service. The aviation world has learned the hard way, you must begin with
#assume nothing
and then you can build from there. If a device has not been demonstrated to be safe in the critical flight phases, you turn it off. If you absolutely _must_ have it on, take the time, spend the money, go to the lab and PROVE that it's safe. Until you've done that, you can turn it off.
I've done millions of miles in the air, and seen my fair share of anomolies in navigation gear. I've dealt with the ignorant public that thinks they know better and wont turn devices off. One good thing about the new police state, it's kind of fun filling out the form with names of those folks to have them officially added to no fly lists. I hate ipods, and the ignorant attitude of folks that think they cant live without that contraption blasting mindless drivel into thier ears. You can rest comfortably knowing, I take great pleasure in adding a name to no fly lists when an ignorant ipod user wont turn the thing off for landing. People that wont turn it off are obviously 'potential terrorists', and the new police state makes it sooooo easy to brand them as such.
This is PRECISELY what the program is all about. Insurance companies know, speed kills. They also know, there is a huge percentage of the population that thinks they are above the law when it comes to driving speed limits. They want to reward those who obey the rules of the road, and that will ultimately penalize folks with your attitude.
FYI, when you got your drivers license, you contracted with society to obey the rules of the road, including speed limits. The roads are a public place, and your vehicle is a deadly weapon. NOTHING gives you the right to endanger everybody else at levels higher than your contract with society allows. Speed limits are there for YOU, just like everybody else. This program is specifically targetted at penalizing jackasses with your attitude of 'let us break the laws in the left lane'. There is NO room on the road for folks with your attitude, and you SHOULD be removed from the pool of folks driving on the public road system. It'll make the roads a safer place for those that do honor our contract with society to operate vehicles in a responsible manner.
Every time I go to work, once I settle into the flight deck, there's one black box recording every movement of the controls, and another recording every scrap of conversation. In the event of incidents, this data is available to investigators for analysis. That's the way it is in aviation, and now techology has made it economical to apply this principle to cars on the road. It's long overdue. btw, the 'black boxes' are actually flourescent orange, makes it a lot easier to find them in a wrecked vehicle.
If you want privacy, go take your vehicle and drive it on private roads. The history in aviation shows, data recorders are a GOOD THING. When there are incidents, the recorders have records of what happened. People learn from that data, it reduces accident rates, and helps designers make safer vehicles. Sometimes it can be used to identify liability and responsibility. Race cars are the same, much knowledge has been gained from post race data analysis, especially with regards to incidents.
If your data recorder shows you are not safe on the public roads, and that results in loss of insurance, hence ability to use the public road system, couldn't happen to a more appropriate person. This would take less than 1% of drivers off the road, but would increase road safety by orders of magnitude. Most people are responsible drivers on the road, but there's a very small number that seem to think the 'rules of the road' are there to be broken. They account for many thousands of fatalities yearly.
There is a time and a place to 'pick the fight' on privacy, this is not one of them. The public road system is a public resource, with zero expectation of privacy, and a very large expectation of responsibility. Data recorders are a good way to enforce that responsibility, because one look at accident statistics will confirm, there are way to many drivers on the road that just dont understand the concept of responsibility.
"How to Cook four to 40 Humans."