111–120 of 274 posts
The whole description is wordy but astonishing. It is strange that the part that strikes me the most though is this one: "The Coast Guard amphibian gained altitude and flew off. (I learned later that he headed for a squadron of minesweepers that was returning to the United States from a tour of the Western Pacific. He was unable to tune to their radio frequency for communications. But this ingenious pilot lowered a w…
Weird 1990s HTML! The document is wrapped in a and each paragraph is inside a tag for some reason. It's a lot easier to read if you add `line-height: 1.8em` to the body tag style.
This happened in 1963. Planes had only been flying for 60 years at that point; it really is pretty amazing how quickly we progressed on technology during those early years. We still fly 737s, which are descended from a design that first flew in 1967. As well as the C130, which was part of this story. And don't get me started on B-52s, which are even older. We have made great strides since then, of course, but it does…
The progress of aviation technology fascinates me. We went from the wright flyer to the B-52 in just 50 years and then in the next 70 years went from the B-52 to... pretty much still the B-52 (at least in terms of payload/range/airspeed). You could probably come up with something similar to Moore's law for for those stats over those first 50 years. Makes me wonder if/when computing will reach a similar plateau. It's…
However, there have been huge improvements in other areas, like efficiency and safety. Take a look at this fatal accident charts, and remember that aviation usage has been growing in the meantime, so rates per passenger and per passenger mile have been improving even more than this shows.
https://aviation-safety.net/graphics/infographics/Fatal-Acci...
Still not as impressive as Vesna Vulovic, a flight attendant who holds the Guinness world record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute: 10,160 m (33,330 ft; 6.31 mi) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87
Terminal velocity is terminal velocity, so the speed at which you fall tops out relative to altitude pretty quickly Water is basically concrete at terminal velocity. I'm not an expert, but I wouldn't be surprised if he survived because he fell into the water at the location of his plane, which was emitting bubbles that break the surface tension and make water safer to fall into
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wow.. so much bad luck (the original failure, ejection failure, parachute failure) countered by that much luck (not hitting the plane during "manual" eject, not bleeding to death because havin his spleen removed 4 years earlier) ..amazing unbelievable story with some good end :)
i didn't understand something. he said impact with the plane tail will usually kill someone during a manual eject, but why? the plane and the person are going at the same speed at first?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think your response was sarcastic but I actually fully agree - yes language changes, cultural & social norms change. Today in 2022, based on average of media creation & consumption, this article is wordy (or "long form", if we feel "wordy" is loaded with negative connotation:). It would not have been wordy in different times & places. I like long form. I like essays and articles and geeking out and getting in depth…
I want to believe that there is still an audience for long form. Besides, great debates can't be carried out with 20-word pieces. Long form blogs of the web 1.0 were instrumental for the tech environment we have today. I would say that "you want to make articles as short as possible, but not shorter" [0] [0] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/374887/meaning-o...
* Wordy is bad
* There's no room in this world for wordy/long-form
* I am a proponent of 20-word Facebook posts, they are awesome and a pinnacle of human achievement and we should all use them going forward
I have not made such a claim in the initial post and have made substantial effort to explicitly indicate thusly since. Lord knows nobody ever labeled me as "succinct" :-D
My old co-worker had a term "We are in violent agreement", and I feel that's what's happening here :->
Reminds me of a web page I stumbled upon many years ago. It was very much visually designed in the 90s style. The whole page was dedicated to tips and tricks for surviving falls from very high distances. I only remember 3 points: * For most of the fall, try to spread out like a flying squirrel to reduce your terminal velocity. * As you get close to the ground, rotate to take the impact primarily on your feet and legs…
That makes it sound a lot easier than it actually is.
Did the parachute not simply open before he landed in the water? He can't remember that part, and he only woke up after the parachute was under water and yanking on him. Either way, refreshing to see a well written piece.
Had the parachute opened, an unconscious water landing would not have caused such injuries. That would only happen at speed.
Am a licensed skydiver.
Still not as impressive as Vesna Vulovic, a flight attendant who holds the Guinness world record for surviving the highest fall without a parachute: 10,160 m (33,330 ft; 6.31 mi) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vesna_Vulovi%C4%87
