Air Force One

Directed by well-known action director Wolfgang Petersen ("The Perfect Storm", "Troy", "Outbreak", "Das Boot"), Air Force One is a movie about the US president's airplane. This movie came out in 1997 and starred Harrison Ford; it won two Academy Awards.

On the way home from Russia, the president's plane is hijacked by Russians posing as reporters. The president pretends to escape in a pod but remains hidden on board.The president was in Russia to outline the USA's new "Zero-tolerance" policy with respect to terrorism. So now his wife and daughter are in danger and the US is not supposed to respond to the terrorists.

Planes are featured in many ways in this movie. Air Force One is the best equipped plane in the world and it is interesting to see it shown. The plane has to refuel midair and the viewer gets to see that process...it looks tricky! A KC-10 refuels AF1. A F-15 escort plane follows Air Force One trying to help out. In the end the president is rescued by a C-130 Hercules on a zip line mid air! Not a maneuver I want to try.

Being a pilot has many career paths. From the military helping out to flying for the President of the United States, this movie showed many of the options available to a pilot.

Unrestricted Aerospace

Pappalardo, Joe. Unrestricted Aerospace. Popular mechanics. Aug 2008.
In the Mojave desert a private company, XCOR Aerospace is hoping to build a space craft to take paying customers into space. Other companies also are working in the desert. Scaled Composites is the company that invented the first aircraft that flew around the world without having to refuel. SpaceShipOne became the first private craft to take a pilot into outer space. This ship won the Ansari prize of 10 million dollars!

Aerospace history takes place in secert areas where designs can be tested without people spying and where if a mistake happens the craft will not crash into a shopping mall.The US Air force base was at Groom Lake Nevada; here is where they tested planes for defense contractors. Some tenants work on 'black' projects, this means they are top secret.Mojave is called the New Area 51 - the old Area 51 is where our government is supposedly hiding alien aircraft they captured.

Mojave's first airport was built in 1935. The government took it over in WW II to use as a Marine air station. In 2004 the FAA certified Mojave as a spaceport. This means private companies can launch people into space from here. New Mexico is also building a spaceport.Plenty of jobs exist here from both military and private contractors.

Would You Survive

Segal, Gregg.Would You Survive. Popular Mechanics, Aug. 2005.

As a nice follow up to my last chapter in flight school about airplane collusion avoidance, I'm doing this article about surviving in the wilderness if your plane crashes. Guess he didn't study the aircraft collision chapter very well!

This article is about Scott Thurner who was driving his Cessna 172 from Nevada to Colorado when it iced up. Scott did not file a flight plan and survived the crash landing but was 15 miles from the nearest road. The weather conditions were bad and freezing. Not filing a flight plan was stupid and nobody knew where he was.

The article goes on to say that statistically people are found in 3 days, dead or alive.
It says what you need to pack for survival and constructs a eight piont plan to make it through the first 72 hours. Caleb Randells, a instructor in the Air Force wrote a book, the Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive. It tells how to stay alive until help comes.

Scott Thurner is still alive today. he dug a snow cave and used the plane door as a roof. He set off his emergency beacon and rescuers found him in 24 hours. The strategies recommended are: stay with the plane and signal for help. Drawing a X on the wing can help.

New Dawn for electric rockets

Author: Choureiri, Edgar Y.
Source: Scientific American; February 2009

I wonder if I'll ever fly an electric propelled plane? right now electric plasma engines are only fueling space probes but, I predict, this technology will soon fuel all aircraft.

Burning chemical fuel is how rockets generate thrust. electric rockets generate thrust by applying electric our electromagnetic fields to charge particles, also called plasmas, to move them. This next point is why rockets, not airplanes are using electricity... electric rockets offer much lower thrust power than fueled rockets. Slowly they reach greater speeds, their officiant use of propellant makes them best for deep space missions.

Whether you use chemical or electric propulsion systems depends on the type of mission. Chemical rockets make lots of thrust so they get to high speeds fast but they burn a lot of fuel. Chemical rockets are good for short range trips. Electric rockets use plasma that doesn't generate much thrust, but its so efficient it can operate for a long time. As space is frictionless a small force is all that is needed. plasma rockets are best for deep space missions.

Electric rockets have been in the works since 1903 since Konstantin Tsiolkovsky when he invented the "rocket equation" which said how much fuel is needed for deep space missions. In 1999 NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab showed the first use of a ION or electric engine. I hope i get far enough down the path of being a pilot to see this technology being used.

Quotes

"The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. " by Doug Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy


You haven't seen a tree until you've seen its shadow from the sky. ~Amelia Earhart

The engine is the heart of an airplane, but the pilot is its soul. ~Walter Raleigh

In the space age, man will be able to go around the world in two hours - one hour for flying and one hour to get to the airport. ~Neil McElroy

The Wright Brothers created the single greatest cultural force since the invention of writing. The airplane became the first World Wide Web, bringing people, languages, ideas, and values together. ~Bill Gates

When you think about flying, it's nuts really. Here you are at about 40,000 feet, screaming along at 700 miles an hour and you're sitting there drinking Diet Pepsi and eating peanuts. It just doesn't make any sense. ~David Letterman

I think it is a pity to lose the romantic side of flying and simply to accept it as a common means of transport.... ~Amy Johnson

Aerodynamically the bumblebee shouldn't be able to fly, but the bumblebee doesn't know that so it goes on flying anyway. ~Mary Kay Ash

Watching Top Gun

The movie is about these two fighter pilots who have been in the same fighter jet their whole career and have a big history together. they get into a military program called Top Gun which is the highest level of flight training for fighter pilots. During this time they pass many hard test and have to be able to be better than everyone El's but near the end of the movie Tom Cruise's (Maverick) co-pilot is killed in a freak accident when they have to abort the plane because it was going to crash. Then they all graduate from Top Gun and do their first real mission after their training. The mission is a success after winning a "dog fight" 3 against 6 or 8 enemy planes. in the end I learned that this is a very rewarding career but you can suffer major losses in it, including losing your own life. But to me that's just part of life is to take risk and live with the consequences.

10 Disasters that changed Aviation

10 Disasters that changed Aviation
By David Noland
In the September 2007 addition of Popular Mechanics

At first I didn't know if a disaster article was the best thing to read for my WISE bibliography as I'm flying now and don't want to fill my head with disasters. But as I read the article I realized that it was understanding how accidents happen that makes flying so safe today. Air accidents are heavily investigated and lead to safety improvements. today's flying is actually the safest type of transportation.

In 1956 a TWA Jet crash with a DC7 after they had both taken off from LA 3minutes apart about 90 minutes later out of contact with ground control the aircraft collided. It seems that both pilots were trying to show their passengers the Grand Canyon and the crash killed everyone. This crash started a 250,000,000 to the air traffic control system (ATC) it also led to the start of the Federal Aviation Administration that watch's air safety. The improvements worked there hasn't been a collision between two air liners since.

Some accidents brought about some simple fixes. in 1983 a DC9 Filled with black smoke and although the pilot could land the cabin caught fire and everyone died. The FAA then required smoke detectors and automatic fire extinguishers in the bath room, (were the fire started). Jets also have flour lighting to passengers can see the exits.

Other disasters are also mentioned. some results are better air planes and other results are better training. crashes have led to new rules like the 1996 Miami fire that stopped allowing hazardous cargo on aircraft's. Pre flight checks are added to when accidents teach pilots new things to check. and 1980 MAUI flight lost a large section of fuselage leading to more inspection and maintenance.

These corrections work. No jets have crashed into each other inspections have stopped corrosion damage. Our air traffic control system watches out for jets and smaller planes like mine. It was a result of an accident that led to small planes having to use transponders. transponders that are electrical devises that broadcast where you are in the air. No small plane has ever collided with a jet in the US and that makes me relieved

Flying a Legend by Jeff Wise

Flying a Legend appeared in August 2009 Popular Mechanics. The author talks about how he first put on a parachute and learned how to pop the top of a canopy before he climbed into a vintage World War II fighter plane. Stallion 51 is a company owned by Lee Louderback that gives flight experience to pilots who want to try flying a P-51 Mustang. The P-51 Mustang was designed in 1940 by the North American Aviation Company which later became Boeing. The British needed planes to fight the Nazis and Mustang pilots destroyed nearly 5000 German airplanes. The P-51 Mustang has a maximum speed of 437 mph and can go as high as 42,000 feet. It's described as a rocket. The author has been a pilot for seven years and never flew a plane like this. He loved it and when I get my license I'm heading to Kissimmee, Florida to try it out.

Small Airports still flying

3/10/10 Journal 16

This Article was in Nation and World in the Ithaca Journal is about Ithaca's small airport still growing in the business. These past couple of years has been great for them, they're boarding numbers are the highest they have ever been in years. Even airports in Elmira and Syracuse have been booming. But even though these times now are good it doesn't look like the growth will continue for long. The prices all over the U.S have gone way accounting to gas prices for commercial jets. In the bigger airports prices are rising rapidly and there is no sign of slowing down. They have seen loses of 7 to 9 percent in numbers of passengers in the past two years so every time the prices are kicked up the demand keeps decreasing.

Research Article #1

3/10/10 Journal entry 15
I used this article for my bibliography for my wise class for information on the new technology behind flying

Title: POINT CLICK KILL

Authors: Hagerman, Eric

Source: Popular Science

This article is about taking unmanned air craft and replacing them with armed air craft. These are drones that are controlled in Indiana Springs Nevada and flown in Iraq and Afghanistan. These planes are making triple the amount of missions they did in the past and are a lot easier to train then, training a person to fly it. At first these planes were only used for spy planes (M-1 Predator) now they have the (M-9 Reaper) which is equipped with missiles. Unlike fighter jets these planes can stay in the air for 24 hours.

These planes are taking jobs from pilots who would original be doing there missions. Pilots are upset about this because one they don't think a drone can do what a person in the cockpit. Also the number of pilots that have started to learn how to fly these drone has double in the past couple years.