Tag: airplane

FAA nonsense

Turns out the FAA, just like the TSA, is in the fear-mongering business, with just as much evidence behind their rules, ie none

The agency has no proof that electronic devices can harm a plane’s avionics, but it still perpetuates such claims, spreading irrational fear among millions of fliers.

2013-03-29: Ground regulations

Some FAA rules don’t make sense to us either. Like the fact that when we’re at 11900m going 640 km an hour, in a plane that could hit turbulence at any minute, (flight attendants) can walk around and serve hot coffee and Chateaubriand. But when we’re on the ground on a flat piece of asphalt going 16 km an hour, they’ve got to be buckled in like they’re at NASCAR.

2014-12-15: These new drones are amazing, but sadly not in the US because the FAA is confused.

Those cool nighttime drone cam shots from your local news networks? Illegal. Those YouTube hobbyist flyovers of Apple, Inc.’s (AAPL) headquarters? Illegal. Amazon.com, Inc.’s (AMZN) wild Prime Air delivery drones? Illegal. Google Inc.’s (GOOG) internet drones? Facebook Inc.’s (FB) WiFi-providing fliers? Likely illegal. Hobbyist drones, like the Da-Jiang (“Great Territory”) Innovations (DJI) Science and Technology Co., Ltd. Phantom? Likely illegal too, unless you have experience aboard a real airplane.

2015-09-02: and it is going to be a Zoo

security risks mean everyone from your city’s taxi commission to the federal Department of Transportation, will want to get involved in AV regulation. With costs likely to fall between 50% to 90%, a consumer could increase VMT by anywhere from 2X to more than 5X.

2016-09-04: Pilot grift

Drones only become truly disruptive when they don’t have pilots at all. Yet, the FAA is regulating them in a way that forces drones to have pilots.

Let me put this in terms of work. Drones without pilots make the following things possible (none of which are possible with pilots at the controls):

Tireless. Accomplish tasks 24x7x365.
Scalable. Billions of drones can be used at the same time.
Costless. The cost per minute for drone services would drop to almost nothing.
If these capabilities are unleashed, it’s possible to do for drones what the Web/Internet did for networking.

2023-05-01: Flying is still far too regulated

Contrary to the narrative that today’s airline industry is a deregulatory success story, commercial air travel remains one of the most highly regulated industries in the country. Effectively what changed after 1978 was that the federal government no longer told airlines where they’re allowed to fly, and how much they can charge. That’s no small deal. However, nearly every other element of the experience continues to be dictated—and even directly managed—by the government.

We can have a future where travel is an easier, cheaper and more pleasant experience—where we’re delayed less often and where commercial airlines genuinely compete with a host of different products so we can buy the one that suits us best instead of one size fits all. But to have this kind of abundance, we need a more open and competitive system that focuses on passengers and their needs rather than existing airlines and other special interests.

Airplane Graveyard

The first thing to know is that the Mojave Air and Spaceport, as it’s officially known, isn’t just a graveyard for inactive planes. It’s an active airport, home to one of the nation’s only civilian test pilot schools, and most famously the place where Space Ship One was developed and performed the first privately-funded human spaceflight in 2004. But it also functions as a giant parking lot for 100s of jets owned by 10s of different entities, from major airlines to private individuals. If an airline doesn’t anticipate needing some of its planes for an extended period of time, it’s much cheaper for them to park those planes in the desert and have maintenance crews check them out once every few weeks than to keep them active.

Some planes have been there only a few months — some have been there for years and years, owned by companies that rent space at the boneyard by the km2.

The most fascinating part of the facility, to me at least, is the boneyard itself. This is where planes that are no longer valuable enough to be repaired and put back into service — totaled, as it were — are cannibalized for spare parts. It’s not a delicate operation: the planes are ripped apart by big machines, torn into piles of fuselage that look, standing amidst them, like the aftermath of terrible crashes.

Reforestation

Reseeding forests from airplanes, at scale.

The process Alamaro advocates places trees in metal pods that rot on contact with the ground, instead of the low-tech and less sturdy plastic version. The process can be adapted to plant shrubs, and would work best in places with clear, loose soil, such as sub-desert parts of the Middle East, or newly habitable Arctic tundra opened up by global warming. “What is needed is government policy to use old military aircraft” adding that 1000s are in hangars across the globe. Although the original pitch failed, the growing CO2 market is creating new interest, and he hopes to find funding for a large-scale pilot project soon.

2023-07-31: Lots of progress on drones and ingenious ways to ensure the seedlings get into the soil.

Restoring forest worldwide will require a gigantic effort, a challenge made doubly hard by the fact that many sites are inaccessible by road, stopping manual replanting projects in their tracks.
Manual planting is labor-intensive and slow. Drone seeding uses the latest in robotic technology to deliver seeds directly to where they’re needed. Drones can drop seeds along a predefined route, working together in a “swarm” to complete the task with a single human supervisor overseeing the process.
Drone-dropped seed success rates are lower than for manually planted seedlings, but biotech solutions are helping. Specially designed pods encase the seeds in a tailored mix of nutrients to help them thrive. Drones are tech-intensive, and still available mostly in industrialized countries, but could one day help reseed forests worldwide.
Scientists are designing novel approaches to increase the germination rate of seeds dropped by drones. Yao and her team at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a self-burying seed carrier that after dispersal by a drone can gently drill each seed into the soil. Inspired by the structure of seeds from Erodium plants, the carrier requires no battery pack; the burying action is generated by the shape of the materials themselves.

“The coiled body will extend in rain, which creates a downward thrust force that allows the tip to self-bury into the soil”. Burying the seed, rather than leaving it atop the soil, can protect it from the wind, drought or birds.