71–80 of 372 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Space flight is the one industry with a better track record I’d say.
I wonder by what metric this is true. For instance, I’m sure the fatality per flight of manned space flight is an order of magnitude worse than commercial air flight in the US.
ATC recording: https://youtu.be/9N1gDSZJ5s0
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I wonder by what metric this is true. For instance, I’m sure the fatality per flight of manned space flight is an order of magnitude worse than commercial air flight in the US.
Easily *six* orders of magnitude. STS saw two crashes in O(10^2) flights (and SpaceX has much smaller numbers still). The US handles O(10^7) commercial flights per year, none of which crashed in 10+ years (I think). https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/by_the_numbers
For those thinking about preventative solutions, there are some existing, all very expensive of course. The simplest is placing a row of red lights in the ground at all intersections to runways. When an airplane is cleared for takeoff and until it is airborne the controller presses a button and turns all these lights red. Pilots are instructed that regardless of clearance, a red light over-rides that, and to never cr…
Why are the lights expensive?
If nothing else they need to hold up in every weather and temperature big airports exist (-80ºF to +150ºF) and get run over by airplanes all day. Already that's a non-trivial problem.
The animation in the tweet at the end of the article is something. Based on that, the deceleration looked remarkably fast. I imagine that was quite the ride for the folks in the Delta jet.
Something I realized growing up, and perhaps this is a bias for others too: I always perceived of airline accidents as being crashes where everyone dies. Hence all the conspiracy silliness of “they just want to know what seat you were in to identify the body.”
But my goodness there’s so many ways to be badly hurt without a big crash.
In a way this feels akin to the highway bias: highways are far safer than city streets but a lot of people perceive them as being so dangerous.
Is there any aggregation of near misses? How often do things like this happen?
A near miss is a collision. This was a near collision ;)
What are the likely consequences of this near miss? Is someone gonna get fired?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are the lights expensive?
Manufacturing certifications, installation and maintenance inspections and certifications, auditing, etc. To put it into some relatable context, a simple electrical switch that you might grab for a few bucks at your local Home Depot would cost at least several hundreds of dollars because of all the red tape that must be satisfied for safety reasons. Safety isn't cheap.
Maybe it's worth having a worse system that actually is there.