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More cynically: Roughly 2.4 tons of fuel, equating to 16.8 tons of CO2 emissions.
Fun is a good thing to spend some of our CO2 emissions budget on. We need fun. A joyless society isn't worth saving.
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More cynically: Roughly 2.4 tons of fuel, equating to 16.8 tons of CO2 emissions.
Or the average annual carbon footprint for one person in the US.
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It took them 2 hours and 40 minutes to complete the easter egg
More cynically: Roughly 2.4 tons of fuel, equating to 16.8 tons of CO2 emissions.
Are jumbo jets being retired because of fuel economy? If so, is there a chance demand for them will return if there's a spike in passenger numbers? I would've thought a larger fleet of smaller planes would be less efficient because it increases operational cost and you have more overhead weight to move around.
> I would've thought a larger fleet of smaller planes would be less efficient because it increases operational cost and you have more overhead weight to move around. You'd be wrong. Airline bosses (Willie Walsh? Almost sure it was him) have said it literally costs less to have two 787 fly one after the other than a single A380. The fuel efficiency of twin engine planes compared to 3 or 4 older engines compensates for…
Makes me think of the famous "707 Barrel Roll" story from its initial testing: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/60-years-ago-the-f... “You know that. Now we know that. But just don’t do it anymore.” Edit: forgot the barrel roll was on a 707 - not a 747
there's film of Tex Johnston's Dash-80 barrel roll https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaA7kPfC5Hk many years later, Boeing Chief Test Pilot John Cashman stated that just before he piloted the maiden flight of the Boeing 777 on Jun. 12, 1994, his last instructions from then Boeing President Phil Condit were “No rolls”. -- anecdote from https://theaviationgeekclub.com/that-time-tex-johnston-barre... I wonder why "the suit…
The Fairchild B-52 crash isn't really comparable to the 707 roll. That was at a much lower altitude and a far more aggressive maneuver.
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It took them 2 hours and 40 minutes to complete the easter egg
More cynically: Roughly 2.4 tons of fuel, equating to 16.8 tons of CO2 emissions.
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It wasn't even a 707, it was a prototype model 367-80. There were some unusually significant structural differences between the prototype dash 80 and production 707's, for example: > The 132 in (3,400 mm) wide fuselage of the Dash 80 was large enough for four-abreast (two-plus-two) seating like the Stratocruiser. Answering customers' demands and under Douglas competition, Boeing soon realized this would not provide a…
They added 26 centimeters. Just barely enough to fit another person. Seriously, what were they planning to transport? Pixies?
Any flight buffs know the estimated cost of doing something like that? I’m all for having fun, and I love that they spent the money to do it
For comparison the average US household produces ~7.5 tons of CO2 emissions every year so that's ~2.24 years of the average household's emissions
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More cynically: Roughly 2.4 tons of fuel, equating to 16.8 tons of CO2 emissions.
I have no clue what I'm talking about but this piqued my interest. If I ask WolframAlpha: Q:how many carbon molecules in 2.4 tons A: 1.092×10^29 molecules X molecules of pure carbon carbon would theoretically require 2X molecules of oxygen to turn into CO2 Q: how much does (10^29)*2 molecules of oxygen weight in us tons A: 5.827 tons So 2.4 tons of Carbon + 5.827 tons of Oxygen = 8.227 tons of CO2? Maybe? What am I m…
Avogadro's number is the conversion factor between grams and "atomic mass units", 6.023e+23†.
1.102e-6 is the conversion factor between grams and tons.
The atomic weight of carbon is 12.01 amu.
So 2.4 tons of pure carbon should contain 1.312e+30 atoms of carbon. The concept of a "carbon molecule" is not well defined; theoretically you could arrange all of these into one big diamond, or a bunch of graphite, or whatever.
The atomic weight of oxygen is 16.00 amu. If you're making carbon dioxide, every 12.01 units of carbon mass will correspond to 32.00 units of oxygen mass, so 2.4 tons of carbon would require 2.4 * (32.00/12.01) = 6.4 tons of oxygen.
There are a few comments we can make:
- "What you're missing" appears to be that the emissions are described as "equivalent to" a certain amount of carbon dioxide by some metric, not as actually containing that much carbon dioxide.
- Wolfram Alpha, at first glance, does not appear to be capable of answering your question correctly, but it's also in the right ballpark. Something is up.
- Could be that your question is posed too poorly to get a good response.
- Could be that the mass of a carbon dioxide molecule is greater than the sum of the masses of the one carbon and two oxygen atoms that it contains. I am told that in fact these two quantities are not equal - there is energy in the molecular bonds which ultimately equates to mass - but I don't know whether the molecule or the independent atoms should be heavier, and I feel sure that, if it's the molecule that's heavier, it is not heavier by a factor of 12, which is what the WolframAlpha answer requires.
- Your second question, "how much does 2e+29 molecules of oxygen weigh in US tons", is perfectly well defined, although it is incorrect given your goals. One molecule of oxygen contains two oxygen atoms, so you only need one molecule of oxygen per carbon atom to make carbon dioxide.
But WolframAlpha should have been able to answer this one unambiguously, and it couldn't. The correct result:
2e+29 molecule_O × 2 atom_O/molecule_O × 16.00 amu/atom_O ÷ 6.022e+23 amu/g × 1.102e-6 g/ton_US = 11.71 US tons
Something went very wrong in the WolframAlpha answer. Mostly it seems to have mistaken molecules for atoms, but I can't explain the difference between 5.855 and 5.827. On the other hand, that difference is small enough that if you said it was the effect of the "mass" of the molecular bonds, I wouldn't just dismiss the idea out of hand.
A larger lesson here might be that just because an automated system (or a human!) claims that it understands you, that doesn't mean it actually does.
† I just checked wikipedia and they have 6.022e+23. This doesn't make a significant difference to this calculation, so I'll ignore it.
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I think it's more that most people are basically trying their best and that includes managers and top brass. Sometimes we get a glimpse when that shines through from the whole group.
I find it highly unlikely that any manager would have anything to do with easter eggs.
Also relating to easter eggs, anecdotally I think there are far fewer of them in software these days for just that reason: when a developer puts in an easter egg, it's hard to prove categorically that its addition wouldn't have some unintended effect, and possibly very embarrassing to the company if a major issue was traced back to some joke added by a developer for lulz. Uncomfortable questions would be asked. Imagine if adding an easter egg to Windows ended up leading to the grounding of all flights, or caused a life support system to behave improperly. etc.
I know MS specifically banned easter eggs a long time ago on these grounds, I think it's a fireable offense but could be wrong.