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Slo-Tek posted:I saw STS-2 from the VIP causeway. Dad was friends with some local politician. I've seen most of them from Melbourne and Satellite Beach, over 30 miles away, and they're still audible.
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Feb 14, 2012 18:25
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I got to see STS-135, and thanks to some goons, I got on the NASA causeway. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ2RwYX0Xxs Video started at the end of the literally last-minute delay.
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Feb 14, 2012 18:29
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BonzoESC posted:I saw the first two Delta III launches (expensive fireworks), dozens of shuttle launches (including the Challenger disaster and John Glenn's shuttle flight), and dozens of other unmanned launches; all part of growing up in the Space Coast of Florida Good lord, the Challenger disaster? What was that like?
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Feb 14, 2012 18:34
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I got to watch STS-135 from the big countdown clock: http://arst.ch/q6e http://youtu.be/a0vbDFKa1oQ It was the first time I realized it takes sound about 5 seconds to cover a mile.
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Feb 14, 2012 18:36
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Nebakenezzer posted:Good lord, the Challenger disaster? What was that like? dunno, four year olds are dumb as hell
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Feb 14, 2012 18:39
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Slo-Tek posted:
Penn Jillette observed this phenomenon as well. It's been linked here before, but worth a repeat: http://symftr.tumblr.com/post/5987695109/nasas-successful-quantifying-of-comedy-timing-by-penn
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Feb 14, 2012 18:53
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Nebakenezzer posted:Good lord, the Challenger disaster? What was that like? I saw the challenger explode as well, but I was also pretty young (4th grade I think?) and I didn't really register the horror that the entire crew was incinerated. I basically just thought that it didn't go up like it was supposed to, with a faint recognition that everyone must be dead. Our whole class was actually watching it, as we were outside and had a decent view of the launches from our school. As far as watching the launches from up close, I think the best part isn't the roar of the engines, but feeling the thrust resonate through your whole body. I get as close as I can when I go for the launches for exactly that sensation.
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Feb 14, 2012 19:38
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Mr.Peabody posted:I saw the challenger explode as well, but I was also pretty young (4th grade I think?) and I didn't really register the horror that the entire crew was incinerated. I basically just thought that it didn't go up like it was supposed to, with a faint recognition that everyone must be dead. Our whole class was actually watching it, as we were outside and had a decent view of the launches from our school. I was in grade 7 and it's probably one of the first things that really got etched in my mind. I can remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when we got the news and remember watching the debris splash down in the ocean via high zoom from the TV camera.
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Feb 14, 2012 21:35
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ACHTUNG ZEPPELIN! The story of German airships in WW1 A man named Zeppelin * The laughing stock of Deuchland * The Hero of Deuchland * Success and military interest * an unfortunate event * another unfortunate event * into the great war During the first world war, Imperial Germany embarked on the world's first strategic bombing campaign. This campaign was carried out by Zeppelins, rigid airships. Being a big airship nerd, it's already a fascinating subject to me, but it was rendered doubly so when I found a book in the library called “The Zeppelin in Combat”, a incredibly detailed account of this campaign. I thought I'd write up a condensed version of the story to share with everyone here. It's about a time of flight now beyond living memory, about aircraft that often really did resemble ships. It's also a story filled with brave men discovering things the hard way, the frontiers of science, and, it must be said, some incredible accidents. Like NASCAR, we know you are not entirely here for horrible accidents...they just constitute a nice bonus. Part 1: Pre-war The place our story starts is with the man Zeppelins were named after: Ferdinand Adolf Heinrich August Graf von Zeppelin, or Count Zeppelin to his friends. He was a German aristocrat who was born rich and married richer, and had until 1890 been a General in the Kaiser's army. Count Zeppelin was a patriot and decorated war hero, with a reputation for bluntness. This bluntness one day managed to annoy the Kaiser himself, and Count Zeppelin found himself prematurely retired. Denied his passion for the Army, Zeppelin turned to his other great passion: airships.  Count Zeppelin and his astonishing mustache. Count Zeppelin was convinced Germany would need 'sky-crusiers' (as he called them) if she was to continue to rise in greatness. During the American Civil War, Lt. Zeppelin had served in the Union army as a Military Observer, and had been greatly impressed in a balloon ride he took in St. Paul, Minnesota. His first proposal in 1895 to the military was a balloon-train type thing, propelled by ludicrously heavy gas engine making about as much power as a VW Beetle. This was rightfully rejected by the military, but sympathetic men on the review board connected Zeppelin with engineers who could help him refine his idea. The first craft made by Zeppelin and his engineers was rather impressive. Launched from a specially constructed floating hanger, LZ 1 took flight in July 1901.  LZ 1 was 126 m (420 ft) long, and displaced 400,000 cubic feet, and weighed some 13 tons. Even more impressive, it actually worked, sort of. It made two flights and didn't kill anyone, but the gas engines made all of 30 hp, making LZ 1 more of a 'balloon with ambition' rather then a proper powered craft. After this, Count Zeppelin was struck with a string of accidents. Successor ships ran afoul of high winds, or ran afoul of high winds and then caught fire. Having spent his last Deutschmark on the ship that caught fire, Count Zeppelin was saved by the public; Zeppelin's persistence in the face of failure had turned him from a national laughingstock to a national hero. The ship that was built with that money, fortunately, neither ran afoul of high winds nor caught fire, and landed Zeppelin funding from the German military, which was his goal from the start. The design Count Zeppelin had refined partially through experience and partially by his engineers was fairly simple. The cigar-shaped hull was made from thin aluminum struts. Inside were the hydrogen lifting cells, which were made of something called gold-beater's skin, a very fine leather usually used for making gloves. Two central gasoline engines drove four propellers. There was a central cabin near the engine room, and fore and aft gondolas. Initially, these gondolas were open to the wind, kind of like twin aluminum boats under-slung the fuselage. Control surfaces were fairly primitive, having rudders and elevators, but not in the cross shape you may be familiar with.  Creative solutions to problems not fully understood. In the background is the floating hanger. The idea is that the hanger could rotate easily, so airships wouldn't have to deal with a crosswind when exiting and entering the hanger. The military, especially the Navy, was interested in Zeppelin's skyships for several reasons. The rigid airship as it was forming could climb faster, and fly higher then aircraft of the day, a fact that remained mostly consistent throughout WW1. They had already shown a capacity for enormous range, and could carry radios, which is something airplanes at the time couldn't do. In addition to that (and this is possibly the most important detail) airships were considerably more forgiving of mechanical breakdowns. Engines, for example, could be fixed “on the fly.” This forgiving nature had considerable appeal at a time when flight itself was still a new endeavor. The single exception to this forgiving nature was of course, the hydrogen lifting gas. Hydrogen, despite what you may think, is actually very difficult to ignite in it's pure state. As we will see, airships were frequently riddled with bullets to little ill effect. It's when hydrogen mixes with oxygen that you get, well, the Hindenberg. In Zeppelin's experimental days - despite all the accidents - nobody was injured, let alone killed. This is somewhat remarkable as Zeppelin used his leftover experimental airships to form the world's first airline. Both a practical use of resources and a calculated ploy to cultivate the airship as a national symbol, DELAG was entirely successful. Germany was a power on the rise, thanks to education and technology, and the airship had become a potent patriotic symbol of this.  The first military airship was made for the Navy was creatively named L 1. She was 518 ft long, displaced nearly 800,000 cubic feet and had a crew of 14. She also had 20 tons of useful lift, and featured 3 centrally mounted engines of 180 hp driving the four propellers. Made with everything the Zeppelin company had learned about airships, she was state of the art. The Navy wanted L 1 and her sister ships for a number of reasons, mostly for (if you will pardon the pun) a pilot project regarding big rigid airships. Aside from actual Naval reconnaissance abilities, this commissioned series of airships would hopefully give engineers and planners a good idea about what capabilities the next class would require. This was especially important as if the new, hypothetical ships were substantially bigger, it would require new, larger hangers, and larger sheds at the factory. Launched in late 1912, L 1 was a success, showing every intention of being all everyone hoped. She made shakedown and training flights almost every day into 1913. The Imperial forces made plans for 2 squadrons of 5 ships each. L 2, an improved, L 1 was taking shape at the Zeppelin company.  L 1.  L 1's Control Car. Note the integrated handles for the ground crew. The big box at right is a radiator.  Grand Admiral Tirpitz. You've probably figured out by now that everyone involved with Zeppelins had amazing facial hair. L 1's success then caught the eye of the head of the German Navy, Grand Admiral Tirpitz. He ordered the L 1 to participate in the annual fleet exercises of the Imperial Navy, scheduled for August and September, in the North Sea. True to form, L 1 proved to be an excellent scout: it could spot and report the 'enemy' ships even while surface scouts were still arriving in the area. The end of all these accomplishments came on September 9th during one of these practice maneuvers. Heavy weather was reported incoming to the area. The Captain of L 1 abandoned his more ambitious flight plans for the day, and stayed close to the squadron of destroyers he was escorting. Just before L 1 returned to base, the storm hit. A torrent of rain was followed by a violent updraft, throwing L 1 to 6000 feet, considerably above her 'pressure height' of 2000 feet. This caused L 1's fail-safe valves to vent gas. Suddenly much heavier, She was then was hit with a violent downdraft, and as the crew frantically dropped ballast and reversed engines for more lift, L 1 plopped into the sea. The crash killed or knocked out the men in the gondolas; they were never seen again. The only survivors were from the mid compartment. Even though a passing tramp steamer was close at hand to the crash site, only 6 out of the crew of twenty survived.  The end of the L 1. The crash created a bit a of a shock throughout Germany. As said, these were the first deaths involving airships. The Zeppelin company blamed the military for 'overloading' L 1, and predictably, the military blamed the company. What had really wrecked the L 1 was simple ignorance: meteorology was in it's infancy, and the updraft/downdraft action of a storm front was unknown. While the early Hydrogen aviators knew “lightning = bad” more complex phenomena would remain beyond them, sometimes with disastrous results. L 2 launched on the 6th of September 1913, just two days before L 1 met her demise. The same basic design as L 1, L 2 was about 200,000 cubic feet bigger, and had several aerodynamic tweaks. The gondolas were now enclosed (over the objections of Count Zeppelin, who insisted that open gondolas allowed the crew to 'sense the air') and the support struts to the propellers were enclosed in triangles of canvas. She made ten shakedown flights without incident, and then on October 17th , a simple altitude test was scheduled. It was, however, to be a red-letter day. On this flight, L 2 would have a number of top brass along for the ride: several engineers, including her designer from the Zeppelin company, and the head of the new Naval Aviation department.  The L 2.  Background: L 2. Foreground, AI 1913 The morning of the 17th was a sunny and warm, a perfect fall day...and then, embarrassingly, a delay. One of the engines would not start after L 2 was brought out of her shed, and some two hours were spent rebuilding the engine, presumably as officers scowled at the mechanics. At 10 am, all was put right, and L 2 took off, circled the field, and then began to climb. It's around this time observers noticed large jets of flame shooting out of L 2's exhaust ports. This was shortly followed by an explosion that blasted flame through the airship's length. Set ablaze, L 2 fell, her frame buckling with an explosion that broke windows a mile distant. The glowing skeleton of the L 2 fell to earth near some laboring Army engineers. The engineers rushed to help, but the wreck was so hot that they were repulsed. When the fires were out, they cut into the wreck to search for survivors. Three men were found alive, horribly burned. Two of these men died at the site, and a third lingered till nightfall in a Berlin hospital.  The L 2's final flight was the result of two factors, the first being the delay on the ground. While the mechanics tinkered, the sun warmed the lifting cells, causing them to expand to full “pressure height.” (In WW1-era German airships, lifting cells were trimmed before flight to a certain altitude. As a ship rose, the cells would inflate as air pressure became less. When they reached 100% inflation, they have reached the pre-set pressure height. From this altitude and below, an airship can fly without risking venting the hydrogen gas. Above pressure height - in an extremely dubious safety feature - valves would vent gas, both to prevent cell explosions, and to slow the ascent on an out of control airship.) So, when L 2 took off at 100% pressure, her increasing altitude caused hydrogen venting. In what I think I'll characterize as a design flaw, the second factor was that the valves were on the bottom of the pressure cells, and flooded the gangway with hydrogen. Some of this volatile mix of hydrogen and oxygen got sucked into the rear engine, which ignited, which in turn ignited the entire gangway, and, well, downhill from there. These two accidents were a sore blow to the German airship program. Though not quite as bad as the “Nedelin catastrophe”, several key personnel as well as virtually all of the trained airship crews were dead. This also saw the end of Count Zeppelin having anything to do with the actual design of airships. Not that he had made any design changes that caused the L 2 disaster; but as mentioned before, the Count was blunt. So it's no surprise the Count started a public argument with Adm. Tierpitz about who was to blame for the L 2 disaster. During the state funeral of the men who died in the L 2 disaster. From this point on Zeppelin was in charge of his company, but as a figurehead, and a increasingly distant and bitter one at that. Despite all this, the military, especially the Navy, were still interested in rigid airships. With greater control over production, the Navy could now commission the much larger airships that it felt would be capable of long range scouting. (Count Zeppelin had the capitalist’s preference of using existing capital instead of building newer, larger factories. This limited the size, and thus the capability, of the airships produced.) And the U.K. was definitely scared of airships; when the L 1 first took flight, it resulted in a rash of UFO-esque 'sightings' of airships gloming over the British landscape. And a rival firm had emerged for the Zeppelin company. In 1909, an engineering professor named Dr. Schutte set up the Schutte-Lanz airship works. As Dr. Schutte was an actual engineer, he had no problem with applying science to some of the, ah, idiosyncricies of the Count's designs. He was the first one to test out airship designs in a windtunnel, for example, a suggestion that would have caused Count Zeppelin to bristle his mustache. (As it turns out, symetrical front and rear airships have drag issues that a tapered rear end does not have.) All these good ideas would create the old-timey airship as you know it, as when WW1 broke out, the German Government became the sole posessor of all Schutte-Lanz's patents, allowing Zeppelin company to borrow whatever good ideas they wanted. One idea that went distinctly un-borrowed was the trademark of Schutte-Lanz airships, a rigid frame constructed out of plywood. This plywood had a tendency to soak up humidity in certain environments, (IE the North Sea) and weigh the airship down. At any rate, the SL airships, as they were designated, never performed as well as the Zeppelin designs. Usually SL type airships were shuttled off to less demanding work, usually in the army. At any rate, the government, pleased to foster competition, immidiately placed lots of orders with Schutte-Lanz. The Imperial Army took advantage of this new souce of hydrogen floaty-things. Now that the concept of airships had been shown to have military uses, the Army (the eternal dickish big brother to the imperial navy) bought most of SL's output. Thus, at the start of the great war, the service with most of the airships was the Army, not the Navy, despite the Navy having much greater need for them, as we will see. It's here we must end, with the introduction of a new character. The new commander of the Naval airship division was a man named Peter Strasser. In the souce I'm getting most of my info from, he is desribed as 'one of the outstanding naval officers on either side of the first World War.' In addition to being a leader of men, he also had a keen technical mind that grasped the new technical challenges that operating airships brought. Well loved by his men, he also became an advocate for the use of airships, especially for bombing Britian. When the war actually dawned, this activism and energy set him and the naval airship division apart from the rest of the German Navy. While surface fleet was doomed to passivity, the Zeppelin crews were determined to attack as much as possible.  Peter Strasser, commander of airships. Think of him to airships as Grover is to 5th generation fighter planes.
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Feb 14, 2012 21:40
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Nebakenezzer posted:ACHTUNG ZEPPELIN! Also: quote:Creative solutions to problems not fully understood. In the background is the floating hanger. The idea is that the hanger could rotate easily, so airships wouldn't have to deal with a crosswind when exiting and entering the hanger. 
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Feb 14, 2012 21:47
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Nebakenezzer posted:ACHTUNG ZEPPELIN! This rules, you rule. You going to keep on going with Hugo Eckener and the interwar American/Italian/Etc stuff?  [edit] Floating hangar on the Bodensee in action.  Via shorpy, which has a decent collection of high-res olde tyme zeppelin photos. Slo-Tek fucked around with this message at 22:53 on Feb 14, 2012 |
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Feb 14, 2012 22:40
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BonzoESC posted:I saw the first two Delta III launches (expensive fireworks), dozens of shuttle launches (including the Challenger disaster and John Glenn's shuttle flight), and dozens of other unmanned launches; all part of growing up in the Space Coast of Florida Seen a Delta IV? I'm wondering a HLV compares to STS as far as watching from across the river or causeway.
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Feb 14, 2012 22:59
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slidebite posted:Awesome post! More! Slo-Tek posted:This rules, you rule. Thanks! I'm hoping to post these about once a week; right now I want to cover up until the end of WW1. Post-WW1 is hazy to me, and "the end of the war" seems like a good place for an ending. Slo-Tek posted:Via shorpy, which has a decent collection of high-res olde tyme zeppelin photos. Ohhhhh! This might be useful...
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Feb 14, 2012 23:14
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Useless trivia: When the Paris gun was used to shell, well, Paris, the first assumption made by those at the receiving end was that it was a very high-altitude Zeppelin dropping bombs. Also, those shells were supposedly the first manmade objects to hit the stratosphere. Only tenuously related to this thread, but I find stuff like that interesting...
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Feb 14, 2012 23:16
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Styles Bitchley posted:Seen a Delta IV? No, I had moved to Tampa by the time those started going up. Interestingly, I did see a shuttle launch from Tampa once, but it was comically easy to miss. I never tried from Miami, which is much better for planespotting and seeing cool cars than Brevard or Tampa.
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Feb 15, 2012 00:08
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BonzoESC posted:No, I had moved to Tampa by the time those started going up. I watched two space shuttle launches from Tampa... one during the day and the last night launch (Feb 2010), which was pretty awesome even from Tampa. Got up early for that one.
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Feb 15, 2012 02:30
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Nebakenezzer posted:Airship awesomeness This was fantastic but that abrupt ending has given me blue gas cells if you know what I mean. You need to drop whatever you're doing and get to work on part II immediately. Tell your boss or whatever that a guy on the internet told you to get your priorities straight, s/he'll understand. Nebakenezzer posted:Thanks! I'm hoping to post these about once a week Now this is just unacceptable. Is there some way I can pay you to hurry up?
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Feb 15, 2012 02:58
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A bit late to the last round of A-10 talk, but here's about as close as I'd ever want to get to the receiving end of the GAU-8. And by "close as I'd ever want to get" I mean watching this video. The guys in it are entirely too close. 30mm pyrophoric DU rounds are goddamn terrifying, especially since they're blowing the gently caress up around you well before you hear the roar of doom that is the GAU-8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhKp6B7Ktpw
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Feb 15, 2012 05:19
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Sounds like a god drat dragon or something in the distance. Glad nobody seemed to get hurt. Might have had to change their shorts though.
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Feb 15, 2012 05:30
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Regarding Airships... Uh, hello, airplanes? Yeah, it's blimps, you win, bye! This whole thing's a bomb!  But seriously, that post was really cool.
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Feb 15, 2012 09:27
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Imagine if you woke up for work one day and one of the things on your day's agenda is to go manually open a door to an airlock. When you open it, there will be a spaceship there because some other guys flew it to you. A spaceship. It's also your ride home to earth. I have a hard time getting my mind around this. There's people living in a big expensive machine in outter space. When you look out of the window you see a planet. Nice 720P tour of the space station: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8lFhaMihTg&hd=1 Aerospace Insanity: send space toilet repair instructions, thx Edit: Also Cady Coleman is a SPACE MILF  darknrgy fucked around with this message at 12:09 on Feb 15, 2012 |
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Feb 15, 2012 12:01
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darknrgy posted:Imagine if you woke up for work one day and one of the things on your day's agenda is to go manually open a door to an airlock. When you open it, there will be a spaceship there because some other guys flew it to you. A spaceship. It's also your ride home to earth. I have a hard time getting my mind around this. There's people living in a big expensive machine in outter space. When you look out of the window you see a planet. there are so many things with sharp corners and edges my scalp would be covered in scars after a week up there... Also, 10 minutes of floating around and nobody else around? Kinda creepy but nice... Also, holy loving wow.
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Feb 15, 2012 16:28
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Linedance posted:there are so many things with sharp corners and edges my scalp would be covered in scars after a week up there... Also, 10 minutes of floating around and nobody else around? Kinda creepy but nice... Also, holy loving wow. No doubt! holy loving wow it is. You see pictures and some of the little clips but seeing a tour like that is amazing. I really want to go through and just open up some of those packages to see what is in them.
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Feb 15, 2012 18:58
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Tindjin posted:No doubt! holy loving wow it is. You see pictures and some of the little clips but seeing a tour like that is amazing. I really want to go through and just open up some of those packages to see what is in them. They're probably told that some of them are filled with 30 pounds of cookie crumbs and playground sand just so the temptation isn't there.
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Feb 15, 2012 21:55
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Butt Reactor posted:SLC and SFO have free wifi. You have to renew it every 45 minutes and deal with stupid Amex popup ads, but it's worth it over Boingo So does Tampa International and Sacramento. Sign in once, no renewal.
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Feb 16, 2012 01:05
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BonzoESC posted:They're probably told that some of them are filled with 30 pounds of cookie crumbs and playground sand just so the temptation isn't there. cant vacuum that up easily
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Feb 16, 2012 04:11
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Have some GoPro footage from an F18: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qf_hdFSnOEI
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Feb 16, 2012 05:06
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Ok, that was pretty awesome.
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Feb 16, 2012 05:21
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darknrgy posted:Aerospace Insanity: send space toilet repair instructions, thx Played a flute duet with Ian Anderson...from space. http://pcsedu.com/blog/?p=1440 cool meter=pegged
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Feb 16, 2012 05:44
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darknrgy posted:Nice 720P tour of the space station: It's a little creepy how many dead pixels that camera had. I assume that's all from cosmic rays wrecking up the place.
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Feb 16, 2012 06:45
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Bringing things back down to Earth, check out the glass cockpit in the C-17 in this CNN story: http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/16/world/asia/singapore-big-jet/index.html?hpt=hp_c2 Also a nice shot of a MiG-29 rear end.
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Feb 16, 2012 09:19
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Here's something a common person can actually do: First person view rc planes. With the right skills someone could build a pretty high tech reconnaissance plane with range in the miles. Things are going to get interesting real fast when people start doing suspicious things with them. Meanwhile here's a go-pro on a flying wing (I think). Usually these videos are pretty disorienting and piloted by daschunds with alzheimers, but I think this guy practiced first. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgUoR_7gzzM&hd=1 I'm a bit confused how this worked because you need line of sight for the radios to work.
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Feb 16, 2012 11:57
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Anyone here going to Thunder over Louisville? They say it's going to be the largest air show in the country this year (and fireworks display but who cares). And I actually have a parking spot downtown this time around. Can't wait.
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Feb 16, 2012 13:30
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Cygni posted:I haven't flown Delta for 10ish years, but just booked 4 flights with them. Are they really any more cattlecar-y than United/American? I fly a lot with them both (fed travel, sigh) and they both shock me at their horribleness. Especially when you hop on a Virgin/Jet Blue flight afterwards. Theres no comparison. Delta is very cattle-car-y, but in my own experience, you should worry way more about a cancelled flight with Delta than anything else. I make about 20 flights a year - managed to go for almost a decade without a single cancellation, until the last 2 years, in which I have had 4 cancelled flights from Delta and Delta alone. 3 of which were due to mechanical problems - I had to beg their customer service to put me on a terrible roundabout flight plan just to get to my destination without waiting 72 hours in an airport hotel for the next flight (the consolation prize I was offered in return for my cancelled flight). This was a 72 hour wait just to make a simple jump from salt lake to phoenix (originally a layover coming from Illinois). I convinced them to fly me back to O'Hare, where I instead caught a direct flight to Phoenix on another airline (thankfully they at least paid for that), rather than waiting 3 days to take another absurd flight that would have been salt lake - minneapolis - phoenix. I do not understand how that airline operates. /rant
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Feb 16, 2012 18:22
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I was thinking about this while writing up the airship thing. Do you suppose flying in the USA could get so miserable that people would just stop flying and get there some other way?
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Feb 16, 2012 20:12
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Nebakenezzer posted:I was thinking about this while writing up the airship thing. Do you suppose flying in the USA could get so miserable that people would just stop flying and get there some other way? Doubt it. Having just done a 12 hour each way vacation drive with three kids in a Prius, even paying 5 full fairs and getting felt up by the TSA would be pretty compelling. Now, they could, potentially, price me out, but they can't/won't make security theatre such a pain in the rear end that it isn't worth a time-savings for a 800 mile trips. If they get aggressive about snorting all the data off my laptop when I fly domestic, I'll just fly without one. I already don't bring my work laptop international. Slo-Tek fucked around with this message at 20:28 on Feb 16, 2012 |
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Feb 16, 2012 20:25
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Slo-Tek posted:
I've got the exact opposite reaction; if I can drive there in a day, I'd rather drive. Especially if to fly involves a connection through someplace like ATL, where the inevitable layover means you're wasting a full work day sitting around in airports anyway. 800 miles might be pushing it, but 400? I'd rather drive, no question. In fact, right after 9/11 when everything was shut down, my NAVSEA team had to get to Buffalo to do some testing. Loaded up the van and drove up from West Bethesda, no problems. Godholio posted:I hate the hassles, inconveniences, and expenses associated with commercial flight. Driving 18-20 hours is worth it for me. This guy gets it. I've done Wilkes-Barre to New Orleans in 17 hours, and Harrisburg to Phoenix in 36 (not solo, though). The exception is I-95, gently caress that entire stretch of highway and every single toll booth and motherfucker on it. Phanatic fucked around with this message at 21:03 on Feb 16, 2012 |
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Feb 16, 2012 20:39
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I can't wait to see air travel in California in 50 years, if the train doesn't get built and these population/travel projections hold true. LAX, SFO, Oakland, San Jose, Ontario, Burbank, John Wayne, SDI, Montgomery, Gillespie... all locked for expansion barring a massive amount of island building or imminent domaining. Only airport in a major metro with any chance of expansion is Sac because they smartly built it out in the middle of nowhere. Yet they are projecting TWICE as many people flying in the state? gently caress sake... The industry will have a goddamn heart attack when LAX goes to slot auction.
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Feb 16, 2012 20:39
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Nebakenezzer posted:I was thinking about this while writing up the airship thing. Do you suppose flying in the USA could get so miserable that people would just stop flying and get there some other way? I've purchased airline tickets for exactly one trip in my adult life. Otherwise I drive 2 days each way to visit family. It's less stressful, I get to see western Colorado, I have my car when I'm there for a couple of weeks, and the gas+hotel is still about 2/3 the price of airfare alone. I hate the hassles, inconveniences, and expenses associated with commercial flight. Driving 18-20 hours is worth it for me.
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Feb 16, 2012 20:47
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| # ? May 22, 2024 00:09 |
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Every time I drive I convince myself that flying is better and then next time when I fly I convince myself that driving is the way to go.
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Feb 16, 2012 21:02
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