Monday - February 17, 2020
Somewhat Lost In Translation
Rather confusing news articles say the bad stuff aboard was for launching missiles, but it turns out to be a 58 foot long industrial autoclave, which can be used to bake the liners for solid fuel rockets.
Indian customs officials have detained a ship bound for Karachi’s Port Qasim for trying to pass on an autoclave as an industrial dryer. The vessel bearing a Hong Kong flag was carrying a machine that is used to launch ballistic missiles.
Custom officials have intercepted a ship going to Karachi port in Gujarat. The ship carrying the flag of Hong Kong contained goods that could be used in the launching of ballistic missiles.
Actually, the ship has loaded autoclaves (containers that are used for chemical reactions or other processes at high temperatures and pressures). The crew on the ship gave it incorrect information and called it an industrial dryer.
The ship was halted at Kandla port in Gujarat on 3 February. It is currently under intense investigation. The Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) engaged in the investigation of the ship, will send another team of nuclear scientists to investigate the autoclave.
The ship sailed from the Jiangyin port on the Yangtze river in China’s Jiangsu province to Qasim port in Karachi. On the way, it was stopped at Kandla port by Indian custom department.
The ship was intercepted after receiving information from intelligence agencies and top security institutions. According to the report, the name of this ship is Da Cui Yun.
The vessel was intercepted on the basis of intelligence tip-off, and one DRDO team has already inspected the 18x4-metre autoclave on board. The autoclave – a pressure chamber to carry out various industrial and scientific processes—has been prima facie certified as a “dual-use” item, which means it can be used for civilian and military purposes.
A second high-level DRDO team of missile scientists will go to Kandla port on Monday to further examine the cargo, according to an official who asked not to be named. If this team upholds the findings of the first team, Customs will seize the cargo, and charge the vessel and its owners for violations of Special Chemicals, Organisms, Materials, Equipment and Technologies (Scomet) export regulations.
...
Indian security officials are concerned because the nuclear nexus between Pakistan and China dates back to 1989, when Islamabad signed a deal with Beijing to purchase 34 solid-fuel M-11 ballistic missiles. The M-11s, which can deliver a 500kg payload over 300km, are at the core of Pakistan’s ballistic missile capability with all its other delivery platforms a derivative of the Chinese weapon.
The single stage M-11 missile is only 7.5m long and .8m thick, including the warhead, so the engine area is much shorter. This autoclave could churn out a dozen liners at a time, easily.
OTOH, that statement about the Paki missile arsenal is misleading. They also have one called a Shaheen and another one called the Ababeel, which is a MIRV nuke platform. Both are much bigger than the Dong Feng-11 (M-11) with greater payload and range. All of them are solid fueled. While India’s liquid fueled IRBMs may be technologically more advanced, solid fuel missiles can be set up and fired off very quickly. Who cares if they don’t have precision accuracy? With horseshoes, hand grenades, and especially MIRV nukes, close enough is more than good enough.
Posted by Drew458
on 02/17/2020 at 05:32 PM
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Permalink • Thursday - December 19, 2019
random turbo thoughts
It seems like more and more vehicles are moving to much smaller engines equipped with turbochargers. As long as they last 200,000 or more miles, I’m pretty much for it.
But I think there is a great application of turbocharging/supercharging that is going unused. Ok, perhaps it is slightly addressed by this HCCI engine that Mazda keeps teasing us with; that thing has a small supercharger on it that provides just a little boost, enough to give their 2.0 liter HCCI engine nearly the same power as their standard, normally aspirated 2.5 liter engine.
You see, any kind of piston driven internal combustion engine has to draw air into itself. Suck it in, add some fuel vapors, squeeze it up, light it off, take the power, then pump out the exhaust. If you provide just enough boost pressure, then the engine doesn’t have to waste energy ( pneumatic drag ) sucking the air in. Just open the valves, and in comes the appropriate standard amount. And the less energy you waste, the more efficient the engine becomes. So turbo engines should have an Economy mode.
Also, since just about every engine has a rev limiter on it these days, and all of them have fairly sensitive knock sensors, and most of them have touch screens, making a car with a 4 or even 5 mode turbo shouldn’t be that hard.
C Concierge Mode: no boost at all, engine limited to 3000rpm. LeadFoot the parking lot boy can’t thrash your vehicle.
E Economy Mode: just enough boost to let the engine breath freely, engine limited to 4500rpm. Adequate performance and maximum mpg.
N Normal Mode: a few pounds of extra boot and the normal engine redline. Makes it a bit zippy but still gets decent mileage.
S Sport Mode: even more boost, perhaps the standard redline or a bit higher. Probably hooked into the dynamic suspension control for a firmer ride for better handling.
R Robust Mode (because the lawyers won’t let us say “Race"): maximum boost, maximum redline, firmest suspension settings.
All of these would be dominated by the knock sensor, which would back off the spark advance or even downgrade the mode if excessive knock happens. Obviously, you’d want to use high octane gas for the top 2 modes.
And I’d design it so that the touchscreen / joystick / voice recognition (with password?) would allow the modes to be changed while the car is moving, walking up or down the modes as necessary until the speed and rpm was within the proper limits. That way you couldn’t go from Robust Mode to Concierge Mode at 130mph and 8000rpm. You’d have to drop down through Sport and then Normal first, perhaps Economy too.
A little 1.6 or 2.0 liter engine can get you 40mpg or better on the highway, yet with a potent turbo those engines can churn out more than 300hp. But you can’t have it both ways. Why not?
Posted by Drew458
on 12/19/2019 at 02:36 PM
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Permalink • Tuesday - December 17, 2019
Up In The Air Day
Today, December 17, is the 116th anniversary of powered human flight.
Orville and Wilbur Wright made the first successful flight of a self-propelled, heavier-than-air aircraft on December 17, 1903. Orville piloted the gasoline-powered, propeller-driven biplane 120 feet in 12 seconds near Kitty Hawk, NC.
...
Three more tests were made that day, with Wilbur taking the last flight 852 feet in 59 seconds.
The first flight achieved 6.82mph. Their last flight that day managed 9.85mph. So their airplane flew about as fast as a horse going for a spirited walk.
The development in flight went slowly in the first few years; it wasn’t until 1908 that Bleriot developed an airplane that could reliably fly 200m up in the air. By 1911 most airplanes used ailerons to control roll instead of wing warping. Bleriot had put the up/down and left/right control surfaces at the back of the plane years before his amazing flight across the English Channel in 1909, but the whole panels moved; there was no vertical stabilizer and rudder, it was all rudder. Same for the horizontal stabilizer. Effective but very abrupt. This stabilator idea didn’t last long, but has resurfaced again with modern fighter jets. All it takes is computer control and powerful hydraulics to make it work smoothly.
Flaps weren’t invented until until the middle of WWI, first seen on the Fairey Hamble Baby. Flaps provide extra lift at slow speed.
So in less than 15 years the various powered flight ideas had coalesced into the form we recognize as conventional airplanes today. Sadly, within 7 years of it’s invention, the airplane had also become a weapon.
Posted by Drew458
on 12/17/2019 at 12:14 PM
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Permalink • Wednesday - December 11, 2019
Chile Aircraft Vanishes
C-130 Missing, Not Much Hope
President Sebastián Piñera of Chile confirmed reports early Tuesday of the disappearance of a Hercules C-130 military aircraft en route to Antarctica, describing the incident as an “accident.”
The Chilean military, with aid from neighboring Uruguay, Argentina, and the United States, has begun a search of what officials consider the likely crash site of the plane. There is not at press time any evidence that the plane crashed, but its sudden disappearance off of military radar and complete lack of communication with the air traffic regulators monitoring it suggests the plane fell somewhere along its path to Chile’s Antarctic scientific research site.
Authorities in Santiago confirmed 38 people, about half members of the crew and half soldiers, were onboard the flight, which departed Punto Arenas, Chile, at 2 p.m. local time on Monday. Three passengers were identified as civilians. It was expected to land at Chile’s Eduardo Frei military base in Antarctica at about 7:30 p.m. local time, the armed forces confirmed in a press release, but disappeared about an hour before. By midnight on Tuesday, military officials declared that the airplane had likely crashed and launched a search and rescue operation in the Drake Passage, the waters in between the southernmost continent and South America.
The Argentina outlet Infobae described the aircraft’s mission as one of “supply and logistics support,” ensuring that the military base was both fueled and properly furbished in light of the difficult conditions on the continent.
The flight was from Punto Arenas to the airstrip on King Georges Island in the Southern Shetlands. This is only about 750 miles, in an airplane that usually flies about 300mph. But way down at the bottom of the world the weather is extremely unpredictable and can change drastically in an instant. The Southern Shetlands are a group of smallish islands at the north end of the great Antarctic Archipelago, that spit of ice covered land that juts northward towards South America. King George Island is home to the research bases of many nations, because one small area on the west end of the island is ice free for most of the year. The landing strip is gravel, which makes it a lot nicer than the typical ice strips on the rest of the continent. It’s late Spring there right now, and at this time the wind and wave conditions in the Drake Passage are relatively pretty mild, with waves only 10 feet high. The water is deadly cold though, as always. The C-130 aircraft is a sturdy and reliable design, a tough old workhorse from 1956 that is still in production.
Sad update 12/12/19: all 38 aboard are lost. The plane crashed into the ocean. Hard.
Posted by Drew458
on 12/11/2019 at 10:42 AM
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Permalink • Tuesday - August 16, 2016
Bigger Red Is Extra Green
Crowley Maritime Corp. took delivery Friday of MT West Virginia, the fourth new Jones Act product tanker built for the company by Philly Shipyard, Inc. (PSI). Crowley will christen the West Virginia on Tuesday at a ceremony at Philly Shipyard.
The LNG-ready West Virginia can be converted for propulsion by liquefied natural gas (LNG), joining sister ships Louisiana, Ohio and Texas, which were received by Crowley in 2015 and 2016 as the first-ever tankers to receive the American Bureau of Shipping’s (ABS) LNG-Ready Level 1 approval.
Like its sister ships, West Virginia is 50,000 dead-weight-tons (dwt) and capable of carrying 330,000 barrels of product. The new tankers are based on a Hyundai Mipo Dockyards (HMD) design that incorporates numerous fuel efficiency features, flexible cargo capability and the latest regulatory requirements. Thevessel is 600 feet long and is capable of carrying crude oil or refined petroleum products, as well as various chemical cargoes. Marathon Petroleum Corporation is the charterer.
If converted to run on LNG, then this ship would have practically no carbon footprint. Well, “no footprint” relative to 600’ cargo ships of 50Kdwt. But aside from a sailboat, that’s as clean and green as it gets.
The Jones Act is a 1920 bit of protectionist legislation properly called The Merchant Marine Act of 1920 that says “keep American shipping American”, from the beginning to the end. It’s all about “cabotage”, a most excellent and rare word, that means the exact opposite of “NIMBY”. It’s total “IMBY”: it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that there’s a paragraph in there requiring the steel used has to be mined and refined here, and any wood grown and worked within our borders. Jones Act, Fuck Yeah!
Super Patriot John McCain tried to nullify the Jones Act in 2015.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/16/2016 at 01:13 PM
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Permalink • Monday - August 15, 2016
Big Red
Ain’t she a beauty? That’s a Lockheed 5B Vega from 1928. This the 22nd model 5B Vega built, and it became an unique variant when the wasp B engine was replaced with a 420hp supercharged Wasp C engine of 22 liters displacement (1343 cu in). At the same time the engine was replaced, many of the 7 passenger seats were removed to make room for a nice big gas tank that held 420 gallons. It was in this flying barrel of petrol that Amelia Earhart set off to become the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic on May 20, 1932. She mostly made it; her intended destination was Paris, but Ireland made a great place to land when things started going wrong ...
Her plan was to fly all the way to Paris, but after her altimeter had failed, encountering adverse weather, including heavy icing and fog, a fuel leak, and a damaged exhaust manifold, Earhart landed in a field at Culmore, North Ireland. The distance flown was 2,026 miles (3,260.5 kilometers). Her elapsed time was 14 hours, 56 minutes.
A lone, astonished farmer saw her land.
Amelia cut the switches, climbed out of the plane, and, as the man approached the plane, called out, “Where am I?”
Danny McCallion replied obligingly and with excruciating accuracy. “In Gallegher’s pasture.”
Later that year, Earhart flew the Vega to another record. On August 24-25, she made the first solo, nonstop flight by a woman across the United States, from Los Angeles to Newark, New Jersey. The flight covered a distance of 2,447 miles and lasted about 19 hours.
The aircraft now resides in the National Air and Space Museum. Right click the pictures here for much larger versions.
Posted by Drew458
on 08/15/2016 at 11:39 PM
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Permalink • Tuesday - March 22, 2016
BOMBING IN BRUSSELS!! Terrorists hit the Belgian Capitol!
A few hours ago, near-simultaneous explosions tore through the Belgian capitol. It seems pretty clear- even with the sketchy information- that there were at last two targets. One was the Maalbeek Metro Station, and the other Brussels Airport. Initial reports indicate that we’re looking at dozens of casualties, including at least a baker’s dozen dead. I don’t think that number is going to go anywhere but up in the next hours. This map is the best one I could find on short notice showing the relative locations of the two.
I’ll probably put more information- pictures I don’t trust putting above the fold, my two cents, and news articles- below the fold. But let’s make one thing ABSOLUTELY clear: This Had to have been a coordinated attack, and a daunting one at that. Half a dozen miles may not seem like a big distance but it can’t be easy to coordinate this kind of attack in a densely urban area like the heart of Brussels is. Which says nothing good about our security or the enemy’s capabilities.
God be with us all… I don’t pretend to know the full story behind this but I do hope that these savages get theirs.
Posted by Turtler
on 03/22/2016 at 05:30 AM
Filed Under: • Disasters • FRANCE • Genocide • Homeland-Security • Illegal-Aliens and Immigration • Insanity • International • Military • muslims • News-Briefs • Outrageous • planes, trains, tanks, ships, machines, automobiles • REALLY WORTHLESS and PUTRID PEOPLE • Scary Stuff • Terrorists • War On Terror •
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Permalink • Sunday - March 20, 2016
Balls Up - In the Air!
Remember the billions the US Army spent designing and building a couple of super giant spy blimps? The LEMV project? How the program had to fight for years against budget termination, but still ate trainloads of cash?
Say goodbye to the Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle, or LEMV. Built by Northrop Grumman, it’s a dimpled blimp as long as a football field; seven stories high; and carries a price tag of over half a billion dollars.
Then how the Army finally built two of them and tethered them up in the air over Baltimore or DC I think, [the JLENS project] and how the super-zoot radar systems on board could watch every car on every road from Buffalo to Chapel Hill or something like that?
And then ... mostly silence. Well, turns out that one of the airbags had some kind of problem. Broken tether or something. Bit of a crash maybe? And now they’re gone, poof. Well, now they’re back. In England. Well, to be accurate, the original big one designed and nearly immediately canceled, but actually built and tested to the tune of a few billion, has been rebuilt in the UK and is almost ready to go up, up, and away. The LEMV. What the Army flew over Baltimore were a couple of smaller flying erections, more to test their radar than to test the airship design. Those were the JLENS blimps.
Story originally, and highly appropriately, published in UK Newspaper Sky News.
The longest aircraft in the world is preparing for its first test flight in a few weeks’ time.
The Airlander 10 is a cross between an airship and an aeroplane.
It generates lift aerostatically through being filled with helium, and aerodynamically thanks to its unique-looking wing shape.
Because it’s heavier than air, the 20-ton craft can land without tethers on most surfaces, including water.
Hybrid Air Vehicles, the makers of the Airlander 10 and based in Bedford, anticipate commercial uses such as leisure cruises, persistent, airbone research and for cargo to hard-to-reach places.
...
It can carry up to 10 tons and could be fitted to transport 48 passengers, flying for five days continuously, cruising at 80 knots (92mph).The Airlander 10 was originally developed from 2009 for the US Army, which abandoned the project.
The British firm have also stressed how the vessel, which is silent and emits no pollution, could be a breakthrough for air travel.
The firm is hoping to build 12 Airlanders a year by 2018, some of which can be used as passenger aircraft able to carry up to 48 people at a time, the BBC reports.
Chris Daniels, HAV’s head of partnerships, said: “This fantastic story of British innovation getting a unique aircraft fully assembled to do something both useful and commercially viable.
“We are ready to show the world the potential it can achieve in monitoring, search and rescue, cargo, aid distribution and even passenger roles.”
Well good luck to them. I love the concept but I don’t think we live in a world gentle enough for these massive flying Mobys to thrive.
Posted by Drew458
on 03/20/2016 at 09:58 AM
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Permalink • Sunday - February 14, 2016
A little wind, a little snow, a lot of mess
Blowing snow made it like driving into a white wall. “Within 15 feet it was clear to not being able to see our hood”
Fredericksburg PA, just east of Harrisburg, 90 minutes west of Clinton NJ:
A pileup involving more than 50 cars shut down a Pennsylvania stretch of highway amid strong winds and poor visibility, authorities said. Forty people were taken to local hospitals and there were “multiple” fatalities, an official told NBC News.
The accident outside Harrisburg on Saturday morning closed all lanes on both sides of Interstate 78 in Lebanon County, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation said.
Winds of at least 30 mph were blowing at the time of the crash, according to The Weather Channel, and visibility was less than 2 miles.
Earlier Saturday, the National Weather Service issued several alerts about snow squalls in the Philadelphia area. Lebanon County is about 100 miles west of Philadelphia.
Ashley Fisher told NBC News that she was driving toward Allentown with her two daughters when they got caught in a snowstorm and were turned around by law enforcement.
“The snow just started and it was a total whiteout. The car in front of us just disappeared,” she later said. “We were able to stop, but a couple cars slid and hit the shoulder.”
According to the Associated Press, Lebanon County police said the crash occurred around 9:45 a.m. in the eastbound lanes of Interstate 78 on Bethel Township. The roadway has been shut down in both directions and vehicles are being detoured around the scene.
At least 3 people were killed in the pile-up and several rescue and ambulance units were dispatched to the site, reports PennLive. Four medical helicopters were also sent, and more than 15 people were reportedly trapped in the pileup.
It just goes to show you that these things can happen anywhere. Be careful out there; always drive with an escape route in your mind, and keep some winter emergency stuff in a bag in the back seat. It won’t do you any good in the trunk.
Geex. It’s 4 here. FOUR. 4. Plus wind chill, of course. “Feels like -11”. And it’s going to get even colder. We’ll hit the subzero numbers just before dawn. Feels like a hot cuppa tea and an extra blanket. Wake me up in April please.
I sure feel bad for any outside kittehs tonight, but they do have lots of fur and we keep them fully stuffed with kibbles for heat making energy.
Posted by Drew458
on 02/14/2016 at 03:53 AM
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Permalink • Wednesday - January 27, 2016
problem avoided
When I went out yesterday morning I noticed the front tire on my old Satrun was flat. No worries; I’ve got a neato electric air pump in the car, so I pumped it right up. After work this morning I was topping off the fluids, so I figured I’d check that tire to see if it was holding air. It was ... mostly. A cracked and broken blister half a foot long had shown up on the sidewall. A blowout waiting to happen. No thanks. So I made a quick call to the local STS tire shop ... got a tire for me? Good, I’ll be right down. And I’ve been reading old magazine in their waiting room ever since. I don’t care. I’ve been through several blow outs, and I don’t want to have to endure another. So I got a pair of some basic Goodyear all season Eagle RSAs for a nice price and now I’m good to go.
Funny, the moment I start to get ahead a bit financially, all these unexpected expenses pop up.
Whatever. If this gets me another half a year out of the old red bomb, then I count it as a positive.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/27/2016 at 01:46 PM
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Permalink • Wednesday - January 20, 2016
warmer does it
If Miss Dizzy will allow it, I’d like to
Excuse me kitteh. I’m trying to put together a post here.
No kitteh, not allowed up on the #af’l;askdjffffffffffffjkklem2;m’;ml’;ml234;ml;m
keyboard.
Hey! Don’t do that while I’m ‘wemklqr/.m,qw.,m/.,mlkjlk’;
‘l;
‘,’,
Gee thanks. Kittehs are always so helpful.
I was just going to mention quickly that the old Satrun seems just fine now. I got it nice and warm before parking it earlier this morning, and when I went out around 7:45 to do my evening job she started right up. And I sat there and let the car warm up, which is something I almost never do. Got me down to Flemington, no problems, then started up again easily and got me home.
For 3 days this frozen week I had only run it for about 90 seconds twice a day. That’s how long my commute takes, including a stopover to put the cap on the electric eye so the power in the guard shack stays on once the sun comes up.
Cat is being extra helpful tonight. She’s very understanding and flexible ... as long as I understand that her needs are to be met instantly and fully without regard to what I might be doing, then she’s flexible enough to allow me to meet all her needs. Somehow an 8lb blind cat has become the boss of me.
Posted by Drew458
on 01/20/2016 at 11:29 PM
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Permalink • fingers crossed
My old Satrun wouldn’t start after work this morning. Not even the sluggish chirr-rrr-rr of a dying battery. Just silence. Starter motor solenoid not doing a thing. Hmmph, maybe the car froze to death in the cold wind. Gave it a push down the hill, got it running with a bump start. Drove it around to small local shops where I could leave it running and do a quick in ‘n out, drove it around town and then home. Got the whole engine compartment nice and warm. Right. That was 5 hours ago. I’ve got to go out to a couple other stores. Will it start here? Will it leave me stranded in some parking lot? I should surf the lots and find a spot where the car will roll downhill, just in case.
Maybe it was just a passing gremlin ... but what better time for the car to break down, when a major snowstorm is in the forecast and I have lots of little errands to run?
Posted by Drew458
on 01/20/2016 at 03:03 PM
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Permalink • Tuesday - December 29, 2015
the fix is in, mostly
I managed to “sort of” fix my power window on the old Satrun. After lots of needless disassembly to get to the rocker switch, it turned out to work just fine. I cleaned up the contacts anyway. And instead of taking apart the driver’s door to get to the window motor and the regulator, I had somebody pull on the window while i threw the switch. And the window came right up. Slowly, but it came up. The motor is just really tired. Mostly dead. Whatever. It’s up, it’s sealed, and it stays up. And I’m not going to seek medical attention if it stays that way for more than 4 hours. I’m going to get in the habit of leaving it the heck alone. Good enough, and I know that the down switch works just fine if I have some kind of emergency. But for now, I have a closed window, and that’s good enough. Especially since it’s snowy and sloppy wet and cold today.
Not that I could install a new switch if I wanted to. No such part exists any longer. Oh sure, you can find the switch to the 4 window Saturns, the SW, the SC, both earlier generations. And I even ran across the 2 window switch for the original version of the SC. But my version? The one with the power mirror control and the Instant Down for the driver’s side? Nada.
Time for a new car. Or even new-ish.
Damn, I want that new MazdaSpeed. Come on already. I don’t know if I can get another 8 months out of this old buggy.
Posted by Drew458
on 12/29/2015 at 10:29 AM
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Permalink • Wednesday - December 16, 2015
Top Row Seating
New Blister Canopy For Airliners adds extra excitement to flying. And that means extra income for the airlines.
The company says SkyDeck will transform in-flight entertainment.
Windspeed Technologies, a private aerospace engineering services company, has set out to transform in-flight entertainment with SkyDeck, a bubble-style window.
The company’s website describes SkyDeck as a “semi-external location” that gives passengers a view infinitely better than they’d get from a regular window seat. They’ll be enclosed in high-strength materials similar to those used for supersonic fighter jet canopies that will let them observe the plane’s surroundings.
The goal of SkyDeck is to provide a new in-flight entertainment option for the airline industry and “VIP aircraft owners.” As the website states, “Current in-flight entertainment offerings have not changed much over the decades. We wanted to come up with a product that would provide a higher level of entertainment to reduce the boredom of long flights.”
Passengers access the seats, either via an elevator or staircase. Once inside they can rotate the twin or single seats through 360-degrees, enjoying incredible sky vistas.
...
While the SkyDeck patent is still pending and has yet to be subjected to practical testing, Windspeed says its design is viable and won’t interfere with an aircraft’s handling.It says the canopy would be made of materials used in supersonic fighter jets—strong enough to withstand birdstrikes and other stress factors.
An aerodynamic “teardrop” shape will help reduce the drag factor.
Anti-condensation film will be applied to stop it fogging up and a UV-protection coating will stop passengers being frazzled by the sun.
No timescale yet on when—if it gets approval—the SkyDeck might begin punching its way through an airplane fuselage near you.
Until then, we can only stare glumly at the seat-back in front of us and dream.
Pretty neat. But something seems to be missing ... like a pair of Browning M2s and a big belt of ammo? Let’s face it, this is just an unarmed top turret from WWII, modernized and made swanky. But who wouldn’t want a ride in one of those?
Maybe I should think of it as an observation deck. But when I do, I think of that other famous airplane with an observation deck ....
The installation cost is estimated somewhere between 7 and 25 million. So, maybe, maybe not. Nifty graphics at the links.
Personally, I think the airlines could give every passenger 85% of the thrill at no additional cost whatsoever. Every seat has a data screen in it these days, and all of them have at least some bit in them you can watch for free. Why not install a nose cam, a belly cam, and a wide angle tail cam, and let the passenger flick through them? No inputs, no wires connected to anything. But now everyone can see where they’re going, what’s forward and below them, and the big sky ahead and above them. Seems pretty amazing they don’t have this already.
Posted by Drew458
on 12/16/2015 at 05:01 PM
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Tracked at 广告专题配音 专业从事中文配音跟外文配音制造，北京名传天下配音公司
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On: 03/20/21 07:00
meaningless marching orders for a thousand travellers ... strife ahead ..
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Tracked at Casual Blog
[...] RTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPL [...]
On: 07/17/17 04:28
a small explanation
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Tracked at yerba mate gourd
Find here top quality how to prepare yerba mate without a gourd that's available in addition at the best price. Get it now!
On: 07/09/17 03:07
DISCLAIMER
THE SERVICES AND MATERIALS ON THIS WEBSITE ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE HOSTS OF THIS SITE EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY AND ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF SATISFACTORY QUALITY, MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, WITH RESPECT TO THE SERVICE OR ANY MATERIALS.
Not that very many people ever read this far down, but this blog was the creation of Allan Kelly and his friend Vilmar. Vilmar moved on to his own blog some time ago, and Allan ran this place alone until his sudden and unexpected death partway through 2006. We all miss him. A lot. Even though he is gone this site will always still be more than a little bit his. We who are left to carry on the BMEWS tradition owe him a great debt of gratitude, and we hope to be able to pay that back by following his last advice to us all:
It's been a long strange trip without you Skipper, but thanks for pointing us in the right direction and giving us a swift kick in the behind to get us going. Keep lookin' down on us, will ya? Thanks.
- Keep a firm grasp of Right and Wrong
- Stay involved with government on every level and don't let those bastards get away with a thing
- Use every legal means to defend yourself in the event of real internal trouble, and, most importantly:
- Keep talking to each other, whether here or elsewhere
THE INFORMATION AND OTHER CONTENTS OF THIS WEBSITE ARE DESIGNED TO COMPLY WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. THIS WEBSITE SHALL BE GOVERNED BY AND CONSTRUED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE LAWS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ALL PARTIES IRREVOCABLY SUBMIT TO THE JURISDICTION OF THE AMERICAN COURTS. IF ANYTHING ON THIS WEBSITE IS CONSTRUED AS BEING CONTRARY TO THE LAWS APPLICABLE IN ANY OTHER COUNTRY, THEN THIS WEBSITE IS NOT INTENDED TO BE ACCESSED BY PERSONS FROM THAT COUNTRY AND ANY PERSONS WHO ARE SUBJECT TO SUCH LAWS SHALL NOT BE ENTITLED TO USE OUR SERVICES UNLESS THEY CAN SATISFY US THAT SUCH USE WOULD BE LAWFUL.
Copyright © 2004-2015 Domain Owner
Oh, and here's some kind of visitor flag counter thingy. Hey, all the cool blogs have one, so I should too. The Visitors Online thingy up at the top doesn't count anything, but it looks neat. It had better, since I paid actual money for it.
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