Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now I wonder who invented wheat, or sugar (used to make cake)? Also hotdogs are made with Wiener sausages, which are from...
beef or pork if you’re lucky
Das Auge ist (man) mit.
Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July
51–60 of 420 posts
Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah not sure why that changed, when I was a kid you could only get sparklers and small stuff that stayed on the ground. Today I could get everything for a near-professional show if I wanted to spend the money.
Did you move? There are huge differences between states in what’s available, all the way from “just sparklers and other tiny stuff that doesn’t fly” up to “anything that doesn’t require an explosives license”, and within states areas near cities often restrict fireworks sales.
Some places, I’m pretty sure they just waive the explosives license too.
Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Today I could get everything for a near-professional show if I wanted to spend the money. Not unless you're purchasing on the black market or (illegally) manufacturing it yourself.† The professional stuff is substantially larger than anything sold on the consumer market. † Which is surprisingly trivial to do BTW but please be extremely cautious and very thoroughly master the underlying theory if you decide to go th…
I'm not sure if being homemade was the reason, but I just heard about a medflight for somebody hit by a homemade firework. I say this as somebody with a book on how to make them, but I've always been a bit too scared to try.
Being homemade is (almost) never in and of itself a reason. A lack of knowledge or judgment certainly can be. However often the motivation for DIY is to circumvent regulations to go big but of course one of the primary reasons for such regulations is that the associated consequences when things go wrong are dire. The story could well have turned out the same even if the item had been purchased from a reputable vendor. There's a very good reason the professional shows use barges or large fields and set up a huge exclusion zone around them.
Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July
#54Am I the only one who thinks the risks are worth the reward? People are celebrating, kids are having fun. Yes a few people blow their hands off, but are we going to remove everything, one by one, in the name of safety?
Come on, it’s not a choice between complete anarchy and complete restriction. It is very, very fair for society to be like “hm I think X activity is easy to abuse in a way that hurts innocent bystanders,” and then limits the activity to people with licenses and training or things like that. Like no, it’s totally not cool to give a free pass to people who are putting other people’s lives and homes at risk. How would y…
> How would you feel if your house burned down because your neighbor did something stupid?
Probably the same way I'd feel if it burned down because my neighbor did some other stupid thing, like drive into it with a truck or try stealing electricity. There would be many feelings probably, but none of them would be "trucks/DIY should be illegal".
Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah not sure why that changed, when I was a kid you could only get sparklers and small stuff that stayed on the ground. Today I could get everything for a near-professional show if I wanted to spend the money.
When I was a kid you could get actual m80's that were like a quarter stick of dynamite. Now you can only get little firecrackers that don't even blow up little green army men. It's really dependent on your state laws. My state allows fireworks, so you can get most things but they are very limited in size and explosive content. What it amounts to is that most cities/counties don't enforce their existing laws in this a…
> actual m80's that were like a quarter stick of dynamite
Not even close.
A military M80 [0] is ~5g of flash powder, an inconsequential amount of low-explosive albeit enough to seriously injure yourself. The consumer "M80" are even weaker. These are used to simulate real explosions by the military.
The smallest standardized military demolition charge contains ~110g of TNT, in a similar small cylindrical format. There are multiple orders of magnitude difference in power between an M80 and these demolition charges.
A "quarter stick of dynamite" isn't a standard thing. But if it was, it would probably come in around 50g of TNT equivalent.
Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July
#56Delta said Sunday a post-flight inspection showed no damage to the aircraft. Not surprising, as a firework is designed to disintegrate and the outer surface of a plane is not flammable. Bird strikes are probably a higher risk.
Many fireworks are designed to explode at altitude . The biggest risk is probably if the firework is ingested into an engine (also a major risk for bird strikes).
Given the sheer quantity of energy that's already being continuously released in an engine would a small firework actually pose more danger than a bird? There's no bones in a firework after all.
Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
I concur, this would be good for developing cheap drone warfare capabilities. I mean, I love loud explosions and the sound of freedom because I'm not a wuss, but we need to get our drone game on China's level.
Get the drone show up and open it up to amateurs trying to shoot down the drone show for maximum adversarial drone warfare preparedness!
That would unironically be an amazing festival activity. A drone lightshow open to public participation where the different colors are tied to swarms engaged in a battle royale.
I also can't wait for the return of traditional blood sport events with bipedal robots as the contenders (but I digress).
Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July
#58They really should be controlled a lot more - a nearby house was hit by some sort of Roman candle thing and completely burned down the other night. There was at least a lot less "illegal fireworks" when people had the drive two states away to buy them.
Rather than regulate fireworks out of existence wouldn't it be better to fix the problem at the root? Why do we permit such fire prone housing to be built just to save a few dollars?
Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July
#59They really should be controlled a lot more - a nearby house was hit by some sort of Roman candle thing and completely burned down the other night. There was at least a lot less "illegal fireworks" when people had the drive two states away to buy them.
Rather than regulate fireworks out of existence wouldn't it be better to fix the problem at the root? Why do we permit such fire prone housing to be built just to save a few dollars?
What alternative do you propose?
Re: Delta flight hit by firework while landing at Midway Airport on Fourth of July
#60Anti-aircraft artillery...