Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Monday October 22, 2007 @03:35PM
from the wtb-better-drugs dept. 

rabble writes "According to a report out of Washington, NASA wants to avoid telling you about how unsafe you are when you fly.  According to the article, when an $8.5M safety study of about 24,000 pilots indicated an alarming number of near collisions and runway incidents, NASA refused to release the results.  The article quotes one congressman as saying 'There is a faint odor about it all.'  A friend of mine who is a general aviation pilot responded to the article by saying 'It's scary but no surprise to those of us who fly.'" 

> pilots said airlines were unaware how frequently safety incidents
> occurred that could lead to serious problems or even crashes,

> The survey's purpose was to develop a new way of tracking
> safety trends and problems the airline industry could address. 

> revealing the findings could damage the public's confidence
> in airlines and affect airline profits. 

So NASA, worried the industry could be overlooking some bugs, initiated a code review with the intent of creating a bug-tracking system.  Four years and $8.5 million later, the project presumably completed, they didn't release - because it would expose bugs? 

I wouldn't have thought it was NASA's role to cover-up airline industry problems.  I'd expect airline industry non-sequitors like this to have been performed by the FAA and NTSB.  NASA should restrict itself to losing their own design plans, and occasionally mucking up english-metric conversions. 

But given the performance of a sturdy, dense, streamlined 1.5 ton automobile put up against primary jet engine exhaust [metacafe.com], and the fact that cessnas and sailplanes rely on large, weakly loaded wings + control surfaces in order to generate their lift... I would feel pretty confident in predicting that attempting to enter a turbulence cone a half mile (perhaps significantly more) behind the 747 in these planes would result in a large "snap" followed by a plane chassis that has lost interest in the 747, and is now pursuing horizons that are more firmly grounded in stiff reality. 

I would venture that most cars are designed to fly/drive at 0 ft AGL (Above Ground Level).  On the few occasions I have strayed from this altitude, either I, my passegngers or my cars suspension have been sorry. 

For the record I've done -1 ft AGL more often than +1 ft AGL.  And for all you neigh sayers, I welcome you to help winch/shovel my car out of the next mud puddle I get stuck in.