Think about it: Do you really want all the yahoos who cause all those close calls on the roads everyday (including myself) swooping along in an aircar, a threat to life in the skies as well as on the ground?
After many years of trial and error, it looks like hybrid cars and planes are on the verge of becoming a reality, now that a company called Terrafugia has developed the Transition.
Company representatives told Discovery News that the two-seat vehicle is both road- and airworthy with the inclusion of wings that are folded up on the ground but snap into place for air travel.
As for myself, I feel torn about that announcement — torn between the fantasy of an ordinary individual like myself being able to take to the skies at will and the possible reality of traffic jams and demolition derbies moving from the earth into the realm of the air.
I mean, really, think about all the distracted cell-phone-talking, and sometimes cell-phone-texting, burger-eating, scenery-gawking, travel-weary people who barely miss us on the road each day with their land-bound, two-ton ball of hurtling death? Do we truly feel the need to give them the opportunity to crash their vehicles into the roofs of our houses now?
I don't.
So, nothing personal against the inventive innovators at Terrafugia, I want to be the first to go on record against this particular kind of progress.
Here's my reasoning:
• Vote of no confidence
Probably the most compelling argument against drivers becoming fliers are the drivers. They provide more than enough anecdotal evidence to prove people shouldn't have aircars.
Soon after I moved to the Blue Ridge Mountains years ago, I invited friends from my hometown down to visit.
Unfortunately, one of the most vivid memories my friends have was of this decrepit little old gray-headed lady somehow managing not to get killed when she tested their brakes by pulling right out in front of their van in Carroll County and then her getting lucky again when they witnessed a tractor-trailer that barely avoided the same grizzled motorist the next day in Galax.
To this day, my friends still ask me about an old woman hazardously careening around the Twin Counties in a little blue Ford.
God wouldn't even be her co-pilot.
I'm sure that everybody could come up with an example of a driver that would fill them with absolute dread should they have access to a flying car.
• Can't trust it
The one thing you can be certain of in mechanical devices is that eventually they will become an inert piece of non-functioning matter upon which you will regret spending the initial capital investment of $71,685 to get, Hummer owners.
Difficulties such as running out of gas on the ground are often no big deal, but running out of aircar fuel over the deserts of Arizona? Now you're talking vehicle trouble.
And while I'm sure that everybody's favorite pilot, C.B. Sullenberger from U.S. Airways Flight 1549, wouldn't have any trouble gliding a Transition in for a powerless emergency landing over Topeka, I suspect few individuals can match the impressive talents of Sullenberger.
• More snarge, anyone?
Speaking of Flight 1549, birds would no doubt be on the losing end of widespread public availability of a "GM Strafe" air sedan.
When bird strikes occasionally blind pilots by becoming blobs (or snarge) on windscreens or blow out jet engines — besides being not so good for the avian creatures — that incident could be potentially fatal for whoever's inside the flying machine as well as a great many innocent bystanders along its flight path.
Put more people in the air, especially in craft that depend on jet propulsion... well, it won't just be Canadian geese that go splat.
I know that there can be happy conclusions to those sorts of things, but to underscore what I think about that, please review the preceding comment about the mad skills of pilot Sullenberger.
• The safest way?
Air travel may be the safest way to get there, but that's only because its practitioners aren't flying by the seats of their pants.
I enjoyed "The Jetsons" cartoon as a child, but I have reason to hope that the travel of the future won't be too Jetsonian.
A flying motorist won't be able to merge into dense traffic in a way that resembles a game of air bumper cars, like an irritated George does on the TV screen.
Air transportation is safer exactly because there are fewer vehicles in the sky than on the ground, and if we expect it to stay that way, we need to keep most motorists grounded.
Sure, it appears that there are real advantages to Terrafugia's Transition, like the 500 miles you could travel on a tank of unleaded gas.
Thankfully, though, this particular aircar is going to be out of reach for most people at $194,000.
Anyway, the flying car is so the 1950's vision of the future.
Can't we just skip the experimental-hybrid-aircraft-plummeting-to-earth phase of transportation and jump straight to the breaking-things-down-to-their-molecules-and-beaming-them-from-point A-to-point B-at-the-speed-of-light eureka moment?
Nothing could possibly go wrong with that.
Next week: Jousting at wind turbines.
Showing posts with label snarge. Show all posts
Showing posts with label snarge. Show all posts
Monday, January 26, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Up in the air
Like many news watchers, I found it thrilling that the pilot of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 was able to protect his passengers and spare the 9-11-haunted city of New York from another aircraft-related tragedy.
Pilot C.B. Sullenberger earned widespread praise for his masterful handling in landing the disabled Airbus A320 in the Hudson River without a single casualty after reporting the plane suffered a double-bird strike.
Quick thinking ferry and tugboat captains also contributed to the fortunate result by wasting no time in moving their vessels in to collect the 155 passengers off the wings of the sinking plane.
The excitement and enthusiasm by the major news agencies to praise a new popular hero in a time when most topics have been dismal, depressing or worse clearly showed.
Given the happy outcome, giddy and relieved reporters on NPR laughed about the work undertaken National Transportation Safety Board to confirm whether it was a bird strike that caused the planes problems, particularly about the new word they learned: Snarge.
You heard it right — snarge. It basically means the residue from the living creature left over after a vehicle/bird collision.
A smear of blood and guts, in other words, as well as feathers and whatever else may survive passing through a jet engine or smacking the windscreen at 100 mph.
Lots of bird-plane collisions occur, but because planes are built to withstand such incidents and because that it usually only becomes a problem if a pilot's sight is obstructed or unless it knocks an engine out, it doesn't often rise to the level of high drama as the one last week in New York.
Thanks to enterprising reporters, lots of information about aviation safety and bird strikes have emerged in the last week.
It's being said that a bird strike happens to about one in every 10,000 flights.
The Associated Press, after flippantly saying this bird (or these birds) won this time by taking down the Airbus, quoted University of Dayton researcher Kevin Poormon in that bird strikes have caused 200 fatalities in the last 20 years with a total of 5,000 impacts reported each year.
"Aircraft are being struck every day by birds," he told AP. "The reason you don't hear about them so much is they are designed to take these impacts. But once you get to large flocks or large birds striking at a critical moment, that's where these events hit the news."
An MSNBC article offered more details on the frequency of bird strikes, noting a quadrupling of the incidents from 1990 to 2007, when the numbers rose from 1,738 per year to 7,439, causing "3,094 precautionary landings, 1,442 aborted takeoffs, 312 engine shutdowns and 1,162 minor negative effects," based on information from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Such collisions are most likely to occur at low altitudes, as when a plane is taking off or landing.
The researcher that MSNBC asked about the increase, Richard A. Dolbeer, a retired ornithologist with the Department of Agriculture at the Wildlife Services in Sandusky, Ohio, explained the phenomenon is a result of better environmental practices.
Populations of larger birds that cause the most damage to engines, like great blue heron, osprey, snow goose and Canada goose have rebounded in the years since the U.S. passed the Clean Water Act and outlawed the pesticide known as DDT.
It also seems like an increasing number of flights or the birds being pushed into areas that are less desirable because development is crowding them out of their element might also be factors in this safety issue, but I'm just a layman.
The conventional wisdom is that flying is the safest way to travel, and as proven last week by Sullenberger — a gifted practitioner in his profession — a few pilots have the skills to turn what could be a massive calamity into a safety triumph.
The National Aircraft Controllers Association reports that there are 87,000 flights in the air each day, about 30,000 being commercial airliners. It's too much to hope for that each and every one has a pilot aboard as talented as Sullenberger.
When it comes to safety, keep in mind that flights originate out of airports where planners can exert control over safety issues and take corrective action against more bird strikes happening, forensic bird identification scientist and snarge expert Carla Dove pointed out to NPR. Identifying the bird helps planners avoid future incidents by letting them understand the species' behavior and showing them what they need to prepare for.
What's needed occasionally may be as simple as cutting the grass to prevent birds from taking cover there, or maybe moving a pond that might be attractive to waterfowl.
"If you think about pest management, and that's really what this is, it's like a safety issue," she told NPR. "You can't really do anything about the problem until you know what the species that's causing the problem is."
Experts acknowledge, though, that they can't control every variable in birds versus airplane troubles.
So it seems logical to conclude that an increasing number of airplanes in the skies alongside more birds means more problems in the air, more opportunities for strikes to cause an engine flame out.
So what's that mean for the vaunted dream of personal flight? The idea that everyone who needs to get from point A to point B will do so in a personal jet or air car?
Stay tuned for next week's column to look at more closely at human technology-bird conflicts.
Pilot C.B. Sullenberger earned widespread praise for his masterful handling in landing the disabled Airbus A320 in the Hudson River without a single casualty after reporting the plane suffered a double-bird strike.
Quick thinking ferry and tugboat captains also contributed to the fortunate result by wasting no time in moving their vessels in to collect the 155 passengers off the wings of the sinking plane.
The excitement and enthusiasm by the major news agencies to praise a new popular hero in a time when most topics have been dismal, depressing or worse clearly showed.
Given the happy outcome, giddy and relieved reporters on NPR laughed about the work undertaken National Transportation Safety Board to confirm whether it was a bird strike that caused the planes problems, particularly about the new word they learned: Snarge.
You heard it right — snarge. It basically means the residue from the living creature left over after a vehicle/bird collision.
A smear of blood and guts, in other words, as well as feathers and whatever else may survive passing through a jet engine or smacking the windscreen at 100 mph.
Lots of bird-plane collisions occur, but because planes are built to withstand such incidents and because that it usually only becomes a problem if a pilot's sight is obstructed or unless it knocks an engine out, it doesn't often rise to the level of high drama as the one last week in New York.
Thanks to enterprising reporters, lots of information about aviation safety and bird strikes have emerged in the last week.
It's being said that a bird strike happens to about one in every 10,000 flights.
The Associated Press, after flippantly saying this bird (or these birds) won this time by taking down the Airbus, quoted University of Dayton researcher Kevin Poormon in that bird strikes have caused 200 fatalities in the last 20 years with a total of 5,000 impacts reported each year.
"Aircraft are being struck every day by birds," he told AP. "The reason you don't hear about them so much is they are designed to take these impacts. But once you get to large flocks or large birds striking at a critical moment, that's where these events hit the news."
An MSNBC article offered more details on the frequency of bird strikes, noting a quadrupling of the incidents from 1990 to 2007, when the numbers rose from 1,738 per year to 7,439, causing "3,094 precautionary landings, 1,442 aborted takeoffs, 312 engine shutdowns and 1,162 minor negative effects," based on information from the Federal Aviation Administration.
Such collisions are most likely to occur at low altitudes, as when a plane is taking off or landing.
The researcher that MSNBC asked about the increase, Richard A. Dolbeer, a retired ornithologist with the Department of Agriculture at the Wildlife Services in Sandusky, Ohio, explained the phenomenon is a result of better environmental practices.
Populations of larger birds that cause the most damage to engines, like great blue heron, osprey, snow goose and Canada goose have rebounded in the years since the U.S. passed the Clean Water Act and outlawed the pesticide known as DDT.
It also seems like an increasing number of flights or the birds being pushed into areas that are less desirable because development is crowding them out of their element might also be factors in this safety issue, but I'm just a layman.
The conventional wisdom is that flying is the safest way to travel, and as proven last week by Sullenberger — a gifted practitioner in his profession — a few pilots have the skills to turn what could be a massive calamity into a safety triumph.
The National Aircraft Controllers Association reports that there are 87,000 flights in the air each day, about 30,000 being commercial airliners. It's too much to hope for that each and every one has a pilot aboard as talented as Sullenberger.
When it comes to safety, keep in mind that flights originate out of airports where planners can exert control over safety issues and take corrective action against more bird strikes happening, forensic bird identification scientist and snarge expert Carla Dove pointed out to NPR. Identifying the bird helps planners avoid future incidents by letting them understand the species' behavior and showing them what they need to prepare for.
What's needed occasionally may be as simple as cutting the grass to prevent birds from taking cover there, or maybe moving a pond that might be attractive to waterfowl.
"If you think about pest management, and that's really what this is, it's like a safety issue," she told NPR. "You can't really do anything about the problem until you know what the species that's causing the problem is."
Experts acknowledge, though, that they can't control every variable in birds versus airplane troubles.
So it seems logical to conclude that an increasing number of airplanes in the skies alongside more birds means more problems in the air, more opportunities for strikes to cause an engine flame out.
So what's that mean for the vaunted dream of personal flight? The idea that everyone who needs to get from point A to point B will do so in a personal jet or air car?
Stay tuned for next week's column to look at more closely at human technology-bird conflicts.
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