News and other tidbits that Chad Cloman finds interesting enough to share
US and Australian scientists have successfully tested a scramjet, attaining a speed of Mach 10. This technology has the potential to revolutionize international travel, should it ever make it to commercial use. I’ve read about suborbital flights in a variety of science fiction novels, and it would be neat to see it become a reality.
We’ve all seen airplane contrails, but here’s what they look like up close. Wow.
Link: http://www.airliners.net/…
(via digg)
This site has some nifty flight tracking tools. I like how it combines weather radar with flight tracking, so you can see how the flights are diverted to miss storms. Try an airport code of “KDEN” for the Denver, CO area.
Thanks to Josh for this topic.
Link: http://flightaware.com/
This site has some unique cell phone ringtones—they’re the alert/warning messages from the cockpits of various airplanes. My favorite is “Whoop! Whoop! Pull Up!”
Link: http://www.aviationringtones.com/
(via Neatorama)
Popular Mechanics got a sneak peek at the new Airbus A380—the largest passenger aircraft in the world. It’s so heavy that some airports will have to reinforce their runways and taxiways to handle the weight. There’s a short video that shows the inside of the plane, which is roomy enough to have a walk-up bar.
Link: http://www.popularmechanics.com/…
(via Slashdot)
Turns out that crossing the international date line will crash the on-board computers for the new F-22 stealth fighter plane. Oops…
Link: http://it.slashdot.org/…
This college student packed three flour-filled condoms in her luggage for a trip home. Unsurprisingly, she was detained, arrested, and held in jail for three weeks until tests determined it was only flour. Note that the linked article doesn’t give all of the information. Security officials did a field test that came back positive, so they did have cause to arrest her.
Anti-missile flares on military planes create really cool smoke “angels”. Also, here’s a video of the flares being set off.
Link: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/…
(via Nothing To Do With Arbroath)
In 1983, a Boeing 767 ran out of fuel at 40,000 feet. The pilots managed to glide it to a safe landing.
Link: http://www.teamdan.com/…
(via digg)
Link #2: http://en.wikipedia.org/…
Researchers for the Cambridge-MIT Institute’s ‘Silent’ Aircraft Initiative have developed a conceptual design for a “silent” aircraft, which will greatly alleviate airport noise. As an added bonus, the design will increase fuel efficiency by about 25%. Because the initiative has quite a few partners from the aircraft industry, I think we may actually see this plane developed at some point.
Details on how it works: http://news.bbc.co.uk/…
(via Neatormama)
Security researcher Christopher Soghoian, a Ph.D. student at Indiana University, published a web application that would generate a realistic-looking Northwest Airlines boarding pass with information that you supply. He said it would probably be possible use the boarding pass to get past security, but that it most likely would not work for getting on the airplane itself. He also stated that he had never actually used the program to bypass security. The purpose was to expose a flaw in airport security and try to shame the TSA into doing something about it. Note that this flaw is not new and has previously been “exposed” multiple times—but Soghoian is the first one to openly publish a boarding pass generator on the web.
It turns out that what he did is illegal, and he got in trouble. First, a Congressman called for his arrest. Then he got a visit from the FBI, with an order to take down the site. Then he got another visit from the FBI, but this time they confiscated his computer equipment. As one slashdot user states in his signature: “Civil Disobedience, it’s not just a good idea, it’s illegal.”
Soghoian has a blog, slight paranoia, where posts the latest news about his situation. He’s also taking donations for his legal defense fund.
UPDATE: The charges have been dropped [link2] [link3] in this case. All is well.
UPDATE #2: Okay, all is not well. The Transportation Safety Administration has opened an investigation into the matter. They could levy a big fine, but not criminal charges.
This man traded 2 million frequent flier miles for an upcoming Virgin Galactic spaceflight in 2009.
