The jet stream is part of the fligtht. It's part of the environment and part of the risk. That wind up there is moving pretty damn fast. No doubt about it. And you stake your path along that river of wind, it will help.
Now, the gamble is the following: Without the jetstream's help, we're fucked. So we better read the jetstream right. Because if we read that jetstream right, we might just do the impossible.
If you screw up in your weather predicting capabilities, you're in trouble. And screwing up while flying in the middle of the ocean or mountain range can mean your death. Or anywhere else for that matter since that airplane can only land at airports with very long run ways. So you better be right about that jet stream.
Being able to read the jetstream properly is also part of the challenge in a flight of this nature. The weather guy is as important as the engineer, as the programmer, as the aerodynamist (brilliant guy!), and all the rest of the team.
Everybody has to be right. Or some poor bastard dies, in this case he's a rich poor bastard. But really, who cares how much money the guy makes? The fact of the matter the guy had the balls to get in an airplane that "might" get him there all the way there without failing. There is not a whole lot of room for error.
This is not a flight about distance, or records. Or the technical aspects of time and distance. It's a flight about people setting goals for themselves that are far greater than the goals people like you and me set.
These guys go out there and do things that nobody else has even ATTEMPTED before. And today, they won. And now somebody has done something, nobody else had been able to achieve before.
Who the fuck cares about how much the jetstream helped or didn't help? That's not the point of the flight. The point of the flight was to break the boundries of human imagination.
But this will all go for naught, because it's all lost on you. And how can I blame you, everybody likes to bust a quarterback around the donut table on a Monday morning.
I know a lot about airplanes, but not about sailplanes or high alititude flight. As I wrote that last post, I also realized there would be many obstacles in an around the world flight on a sailplane.
The whole night and day thing is problem. No thermals at night, or over cloudy terrain.
The other is that if you're flying a sailplane and your not in a thermal, you're dropping. No thermal, no lift. You only glide, but if you're gliding that means you're dropping.
Oceans (as far as I'm know) don't create thermals. So that's another hurdle.
The other thing is that thermals only reach so high. So you would never get decent altitude. He was at 44k because there are advantages to flighing that high. You get a help from the jet stream, and the air is thinner so it takes less fuel to push through it.
Yeah, it's not impossible. But very challenging. The only alternative would be to use rechargable solar cells on wings to power electric motors, but even that technology is inefficient. And then it would technically become a powered aircraft, so we've strayed away from the sailplane model.
It would be near impossible to do this in a sailplane, mostly because you can only fly sailplanes during the day. At night there are no thermals to keep you afloat. that's why you need some sort of self-contained power source (batteries, or fuel).
And to the gentleman from a prior post that does not seem to be impressed by this _amazing_ feat, I pity you.
Why should Microsoft care?!
on
Firefox In Print
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Why should MS care about loosing browser dominance? I mean, IE is free software that takes up time and resources from the company's profit centers? Why should they compete?
The Browser Wars of the '90s are long done, and probably won't be happening again because we don't need them. The world of the web is going toward standards compliant code. There is no point in getting 'dominance' from having proprietary code anymore. Nobody cares and nobody benefits from proprietary code.
So if I was MS, I would just kind of let IE die off and put those resources into profitable products. That is after all what MS does best--making a profit, not making quality goods.
So why should MS take a stand and fight back? It doesn't make sense to me.
Slashdot Mirror
Is there a picture of this some place where I can just see a jpg of what the plane looks like? I'm a bit of an airplane nut.
Now, the gamble is the following: Without the jetstream's help, we're fucked. So we better read the jetstream right. Because if we read that jetstream right, we might just do the impossible.
If you screw up in your weather predicting capabilities, you're in trouble. And screwing up while flying in the middle of the ocean or mountain range can mean your death. Or anywhere else for that matter since that airplane can only land at airports with very long run ways. So you better be right about that jet stream.
Being able to read the jetstream properly is also part of the challenge in a flight of this nature. The weather guy is as important as the engineer, as the programmer, as the aerodynamist (brilliant guy!), and all the rest of the team.
Everybody has to be right. Or some poor bastard dies, in this case he's a rich poor bastard. But really, who cares how much money the guy makes? The fact of the matter the guy had the balls to get in an airplane that "might" get him there all the way there without failing. There is not a whole lot of room for error.
This is not a flight about distance, or records. Or the technical aspects of time and distance. It's a flight about people setting goals for themselves that are far greater than the goals people like you and me set.
These guys go out there and do things that nobody else has even ATTEMPTED before. And today, they won. And now somebody has done something, nobody else had been able to achieve before.
Who the fuck cares about how much the jetstream helped or didn't help? That's not the point of the flight. The point of the flight was to break the boundries of human imagination.
But this will all go for naught, because it's all lost on you. And how can I blame you, everybody likes to bust a quarterback around the donut table on a Monday morning.
The whole night and day thing is problem. No thermals at night, or over cloudy terrain.
The other is that if you're flying a sailplane and your not in a thermal, you're dropping. No thermal, no lift. You only glide, but if you're gliding that means you're dropping.
Oceans (as far as I'm know) don't create thermals. So that's another hurdle.
The other thing is that thermals only reach so high. So you would never get decent altitude. He was at 44k because there are advantages to flighing that high. You get a help from the jet stream, and the air is thinner so it takes less fuel to push through it.
Yeah, it's not impossible. But very challenging. The only alternative would be to use rechargable solar cells on wings to power electric motors, but even that technology is inefficient. And then it would technically become a powered aircraft, so we've strayed away from the sailplane model.
It would be near impossible to do this in a sailplane, mostly because you can only fly sailplanes during the day. At night there are no thermals to keep you afloat. that's why you need some sort of self-contained power source (batteries, or fuel). And to the gentleman from a prior post that does not seem to be impressed by this _amazing_ feat, I pity you.
Why should MS care about loosing browser dominance? I mean, IE is free software that takes up time and resources from the company's profit centers? Why should they compete? The Browser Wars of the '90s are long done, and probably won't be happening again because we don't need them. The world of the web is going toward standards compliant code. There is no point in getting 'dominance' from having proprietary code anymore. Nobody cares and nobody benefits from proprietary code. So if I was MS, I would just kind of let IE die off and put those resources into profitable products. That is after all what MS does best--making a profit, not making quality goods. So why should MS take a stand and fight back? It doesn't make sense to me.
Have you been to West Texas? Come on. I think if it (somehow) managed to fall into the Gulf of Mexico nobody would miss it for a month.
This update changed something in FTP and now I can't FTP into my computer. Any help for this would be greatly appreciated.