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UA 1093

windbornesystems.com

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Re: UA 1093

#3

Post by JCM9 »

Interesting. The “big sky” theory has its limits.

Curious too to learn more about what data, if any, is shared with ATC on the location of these balloons. Airspace is regularly blocked off for rockets and other use, but for many weather balloons the theory is 1) the sky is big, and 2) designs are meant to be that a strike with an aircraft wouldn’t cause significant damage. If this was an impact with a balloon payload then “2” looks problematic.

Re: UA 1093

#4

Post by consp »

JCM9 wrote: post #3

Interesting. The “big sky” theory has its limits. Curious too to learn more about what data, if any, is shared with ATC on the location of these balloons. Airspace is regularly blocked off for rockets and other use, but for many weather balloons the theory is 1) the sky is big, and 2) designs are meant to be that a strike with an aircraft wouldn’t cause significant damage. If this was an impact with a balloon payload…

Isn't this pure statistics? The big sky isn't as big since planes always follow certain patterns and so do weather balloons (because wind also has patterns). Now someone needs to do some black magic with that model and calculate the arrival time distribution of accidents and you get to see if this is an outlier or not.

Re: UA 1093

#5

Post by celeritascelery »

In hindsight, the fact that it was probably a balloon and not space debris makes a lot of sense. Something falling from space would only spend a few seconds at most in the zone where airplanes cruise but a weather balloon would be there significantly longer. Makes the chance of collisions much higher.

Re: UA 1093

#6

Post by modeless »

> The system is designed to not pose a risk to human life in the worst case event of a collision. This is what the FAA 101 and ICAO weight limits are for. And indeed, there were no serious injuries and no depressurization event to my knowledge as a result of the collision.

This seems close to a worst case scenario for this failure mode, and everyone is still OK. I consider that good engineering.

Re: UA 1093

#8

Post by blackcatsec »

modeless wrote: post #6

> The system is designed to not pose a risk to human life in the worst case event of a collision. This is what the FAA 101 and ICAO weight limits are for. And indeed, there were no serious injuries and no depressurization event to my knowledge as a result of the collision. This seems close to a worst case scenario for this failure mode, and everyone is still OK. I consider that good engineering.

A reminder for those in the back, government regulation made this safe (FAA limits).

And yes, this is good engineering, but through decades of learning crowdfunded with tax dollars.

Re: UA 1093

#9

Post by blackcatsec »

celeritascelery wrote: post #5

In hindsight, the fact that it was probably a balloon and not space debris makes a lot of sense. Something falling from space would only spend a few seconds at most in the zone where airplanes cruise but a weather balloon would be there significantly longer. Makes the chance of collisions much higher.

I mean, it also makes sense considering space debris would have hit that plane with significantly more force than a busted window.
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