...yesterday at Vertical Challenge 2006 at San Carlos Airport, California, a car hoisted down the length of a runway, then dropped it:
I'm not used to sitting back seat in a small plane. Tonight I did sit backseat, during someone else's instrument training (missed approaches, VOR/RNAV/GPS approaches, etc.) and found I learned an incredible amount about instrument flying that is sometimes hard to absorb when you are in the hot seat (as I usually am).
I took the opportunity in the back seat to watch the plane's altimeter over the PIC's shoulder as I correllated it with altitude readings I was taking with the SU-1 barometer modification on my Yaesu VX-5R handheld HT. At 4000 and 5000 feet altitudes in the San Francisco Bay area, over 2 hours of flying with reported surface barometric pressures of between 29.94 and 29.98 inches of mercury, without calibration, I was getting agreement ranging from 0 to 200 feet. It'll be interesting to see how much better the agreement is after I RTFM and do a pre-flight calibration.
All of the liability problems of general aviation manufacturers were brought on by their own lawyers. They maintained that they couldn't afford to fight these cases, when in truth they couldn't afford not to. Ford fought their Pinto case to the Supreme Court and had a $125 million judgment against them thrown out of court. Nobody sues Ford capriciously anymore.
Scott Crossfield, aviation legend, who died yesterday at the age of 84 while piloting his Cessna 210
Courtesy of AVweb
My pilot friend David recommended this colossal collection of aviation-related essays by Gene Whitt.
As long as the government doesn't mandate "one-size-fits-all," I don't care what the private companies do. There will always be one or two renegades who will see the obvious market opportunities and offer various levels of security. Personally, I want to fly with the clothes-optional-guns-mandatory-girls-fly-free airlines.
Sandy Sandfort
As I write this, I'm seeing live footage of the aftermath of the jetBlue Airways flight which just made an emergency landing of an Airbus with a stuck nosegear at LAX. What an amazing landing! Hell, the pilot & first officer kept the aircraft exactly in line with the runway's centerline, right to the very end. Whoo hoo! You guys rock!
A week ago, I caught a short segment of Fox News' business anchor Neil Cavuto interviewing Eric Anderson, president and CEO of Space Adventures, who was promoting his company's Deep Space DSE-Alpha program, a privately-funded Soyuz-based circumlunar expedition. I noticed, not for the first time, a surprising skepticism about private space travel from the normally highly pro-free enterprise Cavuto, who seems to be nurturing a serious blind spot on the matter, a dangerous case of NASA-romanticization.
Me, I'm sanguine about the DSE-Alpha, and hope to see Anderson's enterprise succeed. In the meantime, someone needs to buy Neil Cavuto a copy of Victor Koman's "Kings of the High Frontier." Abolish NASA, get the government out of the space business, and let people like Anderson do their thing without subsidy or interference.
Can you Breathe in Freefall?
At 120mph, inhaling is real easy. If you find it difficult to exhale, panic and scream, which is just another way to exhale. Then inhale which, as mentioned, is very easy at that speed.
In short, yes, you can breathe in freefall.
This looks good: Las Vegas hotel magnate Robert Bigelow is building space habitats based on designs that were apparently too cost-effective for NASA. Expect the first to be on orbit by 2010.
Just saw this a few minutes ago on a SuperBowl TV commercial: Richard Branson & Volvo team up in a contest to give away a suborbital flight on Virgin Galactic.
Most of us are familiar with the events marking the Ansari X Prize winning flights of SpaceDev's SpaceShip One recently. Far fewer, however, know of the story of the American Rocket Company (AMROC), the pioneering company whose intellectual property lives on in that prize-winning ship: the revolutionary hybrid rocket engine that sent it to the edge of space, twice. Read on...
Brian Smith passes on this fantastic link to a placed call eMachineShop. Their blurb:
eMachineShop is the remarkable new way to get the custom parts you need. Download our free software, draw your part, and click to order - it's that easy! Your part will be machined and delivered. Even better, your cost is low due to the Internet, software, and automated machines.
Why waste time traveling, calling, faxing or emailing to conventional machine shops? Reduce your total time up to 90% and open doors to new products and projects. Intelligent design software gives instant exact pricing, expert feedback, and unrivaled convenience.
As I mentioned earlier, I saw "I, Robot" last night. Right before the movie began, I saw a spectacular trailer for an alternate universe fantasy, "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow," starring Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Angelina Jolie. It looks like a great deal of fun, and I'm looking forward to its September release.
I mentioned this on a mailing list last night, adding that Zeppelins were featured prominently in the trailer, to which listmember Chris Claypoole offered this observation:
...[this phenomenon falls] under the purview of Hite's Law: "All change points, from Xerxes to the last presidential election, create worlds with clean, efficient Zeppelin traffic."
Every alternate history can be differentiated from our own by the presence of airships. *Every* one. So, if you're ever not sure whether you're in an alternate universe, look up.
Just a few short days after the 35th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's historic moonwalk, we learn the unalloyed truth about what he really said on that occasion:
In 1969, Neil Armstrong made history by becoming the first man to walk on the moon, uttering the immortal phrase, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind." Or did he? Previously suppressed footage discovered by blogjam shows that Armstrong's reaction was a great deal more uninhibited than history suggests, and that a hasty editing job was needed to prepare the astronaut's moment of glory for broadcast.
This is very much like the arguments I've been having with those who believe only government is capable of "real" science, of "pure" research. Yes, indeed it did take 43 years for private efforts to repeat the sub-orbital flight of [Alan] Shepherd.
But Rutan['s ship] returned to earth with everything he left with except his fuel, a feat that Government has never achieved.
Curt Howland
This is nasty and upsetting news from Steve Pegram: "Rocket Hobbyists Dropping Hobby" due to hamfisted, jackbooted regulation by the goons of the BATF. Just when we're seeing the spirit of innovation in rocketry and space travel rekindled, the government is working to snuff that spirit. This crap needs to be fought... which seems to be happening by default, since many rocket hobbyists have chosen to ignore F-Troop anyway.
Kristopher K. Barrett has turned me on to investigating a kitplane that he himself has been in the process of building: the STOL CH 801 kit aircraft.
This is getting even more interesting: Eric Pavao sends along yet another piece (Popular Science) on the SpaceShipOne flight, this one intimating that Burt Rutan has a lot more up his sleeve:
After winning the X-Prize, Rutan will quickly move on to other challenges. During press conferences leading up to Monday's flights, he dropped hints about "going to orbit sooner than you think," an apparent allusion to the Tier 3 orbital space-vehicle program that he is reportedly involved in. The SpaceShipOne program is known as Tier 1, and Tier 2 would probably be a tour-bus-like version of the same concept, a vehicle capable of carrying up to 10 passengers on suborbital space flights. Under his contract with Allen, Rutan is required to deliver data on how much such a vehicle would cost to build and fly. Mojave Aerospace--a new company jointly owned by Allen and Rutan and disclosed this week--will own the rights to SpaceShipOne technology and would oversee future franchising and commercialization efforts for the system. Details will remain secret, said the cagey Rutan, "until we're ready to push something out of the door."
Bill St. Clair passes along this SpaceShipOne flight coverage with video (you'll need to enable pop-ups in your browser).
The success of SpaceShipOne feels like a reward for my faith. I can’t say I’m terribly surprised – relief is more the word. If I were anywhere near the Mojave desert instead of freezing through a London summer, I would have travelled myself to witness it.
It’s a shining example of what like-minded people would say is the ultimate freedom – the freedom to create, to produce, to take risk, to try and also to fail. The freedom that can only fully be realized where our money (our very lives) isn’t taxed away for a variety of hare-brained political schemes and our lives aren’t regulated to the point of absurdity.
Most Americans reading this would have paid for NASA through their taxes – where’s your return on investment? I’m willing to bet that the VCs who stumped up for SpaceShipOne are looking forward to some long term return on their money.
I hope that those who advocate the big-government nanny state for various reasons sit up and take notice this week. This is what we humans are capable of – without the interference, guidance or regulation of beaurocracy.
This is the in-flight face of the first non-government, privately-financed test pilot to earn American astronaut's wings:
The world's first privately funded manned spaceflight will occur in less than 7 hours from now, with the takeoff of the carrier ship and spaceship from Mojave Airport at 0630 California time.
Via Eric Pavao: Japanese company takes delivery of first new Zeppelin airship, a 247-foot updated helium version of the original ships.
Eric Pavao passes on this fantastic news: SpaceShipOne will be making its first historic flight from Mojave in less than 3 weeks:
Mojave, CA: A privately-developed rocket plane will launch into history on June 21 on a mission to become the world's first commercial manned space vehicle. Investor and philanthropist Paul G. Allen and aviation legend Burt Rutan have teamed to create the program, which will attempt the first non-governmental flight to leave the earth's atmosphere.
Paul G. Allen and aviation legend Burt Rutan have teamed to create a manned space program, which will attempt the first non-governmental flight to leave the earth's atmosphere. SpaceShipOne will rocket to 100 kilometers (62 miles) into sub-orbital space above the Mojave Civilian Aerospace Test Center, a commercial airport in the California desert. If successful, it will demonstrate that the space frontier is finally open to private enterprise. This event could be the breakthrough that will enable space access for future generations.
My Dad used to tell stories about air-baggers back in the 1920's; these were people who strapped bags full of hydrogen to harnesses they wore, setting the contents to near-neutral buoyancy. He described their activities as jumps that could take them 50 feet in the air or higher, with the main danger being getting caught in trees and electrical wires.
I'll be attending all 3 days of the 14-16 May 2004 Foresight Senior Associates Gathering in Palo Alto, California. I very highly recommend this event to anyone interested in molecular nanotechnology. If you're not intimately familiar with nanotechnology, but want to learn, I enthusiastically recommend the 8-hour "Fundamentals of Nanotechnology" tutorial session on Friday: I'll be attending myself to dust off and deepen my own understanding.
FireFlyMovie.com is a "Guerrilla Marketing" effort of the Firefly fan community...
...dedicated to assuring that Joss Whedon's television masterpiece Firefly will someday grace the silver screen.
Just saw this on the smith2004-discuss list: Kirsten C. Tynan's "Space Entrepreneurship Network" website, which has a useful set of pointers to relevant "Treaties, Laws, and Regulation."
I have a bit of the matchmaker in my blood. Some months ago I mentioned FuturePundit; recently I mentioned SciScoop. Those blogs really should get together for drinks and dinner sometime soon, maybe catch a movie afterwards.
He won't fly on the Balinese airline, Garuda, because he won't fly on any airline where the pilots believe in reincarnation.
Spalding Gray
It's great to get feedback on one's blog postings, especially when it results in the personal discovery of a great resource. Blog commenter Ricky James runs the compendious and incredibly interesting SciScoop: Exploring Tomorrow, which I strongly recommend telling all your friends about. So much to explore!
Yesterday was the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers' pioneering flight. On the same day that a hobbiest at Kill Devil Hills was trying unsuccessfully to replicate that flight, the real news of the day went mostly unnoticed:
Today, a significant milestone was achieved by Scaled Composites: The first manned supersonic flight by an aircraft developed by a small company's private, non-government effort.
Rutan finally did it! This is fantastic news; congratulations to the Scaled Composites team. Images and a related story are available on Space.com.
A recent reader opinion letter author stated that the loss of the Columbia crew has caused him to question the value of human spaceflight and conclude that the space program has, "served its purpose". The letter writer offered several unsupported conclusions about space exploration. The most notable conclusion was that, "Man is not a spaceling".
If I follow the writer's logic correctly, we need to make some major changes in America. Apparently, man is not a suitable "roadling" either. Given that 26,000 people die in automobile accidents every year, we should stop making and driving autos. Fire fighting, law enforcement, football, auto car racing, and aviation also kill people every year. We should also ban those professions. Perhaps we should ban printing and burn books since we run the risk of getting a deadly infection from untreated paper cuts. Perhaps we should just all dig a hole in the ground, crawl in, cover our heads and never come out.
Man (including womankind) is not a timid creature. Fortunately, human beings have an irresistible urge to "push the edge of the envelope" and that includes challenging new frontiers. Like that letter writer, some early European commentators concluded that the newly "discovered" America was too forbidding and inhospitable to justify further exploration and settlement. Moving into space is as natural an act as breathing is for humans.
If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to go to the forest to gather wood, saw it, and nail the planks together. Instead, teach them the desire for the sea.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Concorde SST was finally retired by British Airways today, after years of running at a loss. As much of an Anglo-French boondoggle as it turned out to be, I've always been a bit fond of the plane: the idea of a supersonic transport has always been, um, sound; someone will do it right someday.
Years ago when I lived in London, I had the occasional pleasure of seeing a Concorde crossing over London on its way to or from Heathrow Airport, in climb or descent configuration, far enough away from the airport that its spindly landing gear were retracted and its nosecone was pulled up in its sleek inline (unbent) cruise configuration.
I even got to visit one of the birds, and step inside, ten years ago this autumn. I was part of a small group of people who toured catering operations for British Airways at Heathrow (long story) with a side trip to the Concorde hangar. I have a ton of pics from that trip, and even a couple of cool ones of myself in the Captain's seat in the narrow cockpit of the one plane we were allowed to enter. If I have time soon, I'll dig those out and scan a few to this site.
I really wish that BA would cave in to Richard Branson's attempts to buy a Concorde off its hands: a Virgin Atlantic Concorde might actually make money, as well as keep alive a fabulous piece of aviation history.
Novelist Victor Koman was dead right, when he said (in his great work, Kings of the High Frontier) that the actual mission of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration — its not-so-hidden agenda, having nothing to do with the development of space travel and exploration — is to keep scum like you and me from ever getting into space.
At the same time (as Victor also points out), NASA mouthpieces have been telling the public since the 1960s that our being able to visit space, perhaps even vacationing on the Moon, or in zero gravity at a space station, was "only about thirty years away". That's what they said in the 60s, that's what they said in the 70s, that's what they said in the 80s, that's what they said in the 90s, and that's what they're still saying today. It's always just about thirty years away.
Survival Arts welcomes back old friend and contributor from the early days of this blog, Eric Cartman. - Russell
In September 1999 I had the opportunity to attend the 20th Annual SOF Convention. Part of my reason for going was to take advantage of the various training seminars offered which included jump, medical and underwater airframe escape. As it turned out most of the classes were canceled for various reasons, but the underwater airframe escape, given by Learn to Return Training Systems of Anchorage Alaska was not. Being a pilot, I this would be an interesting opportunity to expose myself to something new. Even though I had been flying for some time, I had never considered such training on my own, even though I regularly attend various training courses. The thought of what might happen if I ditched a plane or helicopter into water seemed simple enough. Emergency checklist, radio calls, open the doors or windows to keep water pressure from sealing you in, crash and exit the craft when/if you can. Seemed simple enough. Well, not really, as I was about to find out.
The Class
Training consisted of 4 hours of classroom time followed by hands-on simulator training in the hotel swimming pool. Although large facilities exist with mechanical “dunkers” which include complete sections of various airframes, LTR has also designed man-portable devices that they can bring to any facility that has a reasonably sized swimming pool.
The class consisted of about 8 people from various backgrounds from the military, law enforcement and civilian worlds. Everyone was treated pretty much the same. The class was taught by Brian Horner, the President of LTR, and John Evans. Both have extensive military and rescue experience as well as numerous other credentials. Their rescue experience became immediately evident during the initial slide show, which included a large number of photos from actual rescues. The slide presentation included some great images of helicopter ditches in progress, as well as some “rescue faux pas” such as a rescue boat getting caught up in the rotor of a sinking Sikorsky helicopter!
Almost 10 months ago to the day, I wrote a short blurb on this blog about Shenzhou V, which was supposed to have carried 2 taikonauts. That launch happened today, in the same type of communist secrecy which surrounded Yuri Gagarin's launch so long ago, and featured only one taikonaut, Yang Liwei. CNN reports:
Quoted by Chinese media just before he blasted off into space, Yang said he would "gain honor for the People's Liberation Army and for the Chinese nation."
"I will not disappoint the motherland," he was quoted as saying. "I will complete each movement with total concentration."
All hail the "motherland": another ersatz superpower dedicated to making space its military summit. Yet another incident which compels me to recommend Victor Koman's Kings of the High Frontier.
Just heard about this: "The Robert A. and Virginia Heinlein Prize for Accomplishments in Commercial Space Activities":
The Heinlein Prize is a cash award of $500,000 to an individual or individuals for practical accomplishments in the field of commercial space activities.
I'm not sure if this is newsworthy or not. I can't find on their site what they mean by "practical accomplishments," and after a bit of searching in the obvious places, I still can't find out where they get their funding. But it's interesting, nonetheless.
I suggest the Heinlein Prize people be as specific in their mission as the people at the X Prize Foundation.
YES! Just out today: Burt Rutan unveils Scaled Composites' SpaceShipOne and its drop-ship, the White Knight.
When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.
Leonardo da Vinci
It is inconsistent with the nature of life - as revealed by the record of the past - for a species to remain in an environmental niche when the opportunity exists for escape. Most individuals of the species remain within the security and comfort of the environment to which they have become adapted... [But] certain individuals will always probe the limits of their environment. These adventurous few are the vanguard of a new development in the evolution of life... As most fish remained in the water, and most apes remained in the forest, just so, in tomorrow's world most of us will remain on the earth... But a small percentage of the human species... will leave us, and their descendants will spread out into the galaxy.
Robert Jastrow
Introduction to The Next Ten Thousand Years by Adrian Berry, 1974
I'd mentioned this a short while ago; here's more information. Apparently this indeed did happen in the dead of night, 4 days ago. The NOTAMS on this page are gut-wrenching to read. See also the Friends of Meigs page (main one here) on the same site; one telling comment:
From Stuart Gitlow on 01-Apr-2003 How do we define terrorist: A terrorist would attack a public work of great importance to the community. A terrorist would attack the public work with no notice, no announcement, and no regard for those using the facility. A terrorist would ignore the needs and desires of those around him. A terrorist would destroy the target without any plan for replacing the services that facility provided. And a terrorist might attack in the dead of night, the better to proceed with his heinous plan without anyone noticing until it was too late.
I heard first about this from a posting by Toren Smith last night. This morning I met my old flight instructor for racquetball, and it was the first topic of conversation. It's worse than I'd thought. I'm personally really pissed off at this because I visited that area of Chicago many years ago after Navy boot camp, and told myself that I'd eventually fly into that field. If you'd ever seen it - and the view from it - you'd be pissed too. Oh, and the only reason the polipukes were able to get their way with the field - the Mayor's wife wants a friggin' park there - was that this time they had - you guessed it - the excuse of (drumroll please): homeland security.
Here's a great little vignette: the story of retired USAF Col. Gail Halvorsen, AKA "The Candy Bomber", the most famous pilot of the Berlin Airlift.
Thanks to Steve Pegram for passing on this dire warning. I needed the lift, so to speak...
This is a great resource: "FuturePundit: future technological trends and their likely effects on human society, politics and evolution". This is one of the incredibly productive Randall Parker's 4 well-separated specialist blogs, and I plan to refer to it often.
Manned spaceflight versus robotics? Let's see ... on your wedding night, would you be satisfied to send in a remote, and receive telemetered progress reports?
L. Neil Smith
Tactical Reflections