Air Traffic Safety

Gary C Gibson. - 01:27pm Mar 17, 2005 EDT (#71 of 71)

It may be that there is a coinciding interest of terrorists and authoritarian governments in limiting the availability of air travel to those on politically correct lists. Terrorists seek to intimidate 'corrupting' foreign elements from interfering with their national or tribal sovereignty, and neo-Corporatists wish to limit the opportunities for dissidents and the uncoopted to conduct business in a rival form. Gosh, it could even be that Satan seeks to extend his realm from broadcast spirits and cohort brainwashed minions into physical air travel roster selections. Life has so many possibilities!

Yet airlines burn jet fuel and increase oil company market size, they will thus be around long after they could have been replaced by faster ground traffic in electro-magnetic arrays I should think. Like fossil fuel engines they are a vital sales and profit outlook for the oil ex officio zaibatsu or shogoshosa if that word is spelled correctly.

When I attended an air defense school some years ago learning to identify Migs as old as Fitters and Fishbeds to the post-modernists and French air vehicles from U.S. aircraft I realized that the wild blue yonder doesn't provide much cover for aircraft from direct ground fire. Not only rockets like stingers or direct fire weapons like the Vulcans existed, but commercial jets and even military jets that haven't a VTOL capability might utilize regular landing takeoff and approach patterns. They present regular and fairly simple targets to innovative hunters of the big birds unfortunately. It is an ironic fact that a new generation of very advanced direct fire weapons based on electro-magnetic accelerator technology has found its way into weapons such as pistols and rifles, ship cannon and SDI rail guns yet not into peaceful high-speed ground transportation.

It was Robert Goddard that first invented the idea of building an EMG subway from Boston to New York early in the 20th century to be turned down by the Federal Government. Even Popular mechanics has ads in the back selling EMG accelerator kits for 120 dollars for experimental purposes. The simplicity of emgs to build and exist conceptually seems to offer the inference that over time they may be fielded by terrorists with or without covert government support to assault aircraft as the political utility of such to elevate the prospects of political beneficiaries indicates.

The Bush administration isn't helping to grow a non-war ethos in the world. While conflicts may arise ostendsibly for good reasons there should still be intelligent and aggressive pursuit of rational macro-social alternatives to conflict that are cognizant of the economic, energy and environmental limiting factors that could by-pass the stupid and blundering ways of inertial invention and application sloth. The world is of a limited extent, and the physics of it are understood fairly well by some at least, it will be a good day if the nation ever returns to a leadership with intelligence, and one that isn't some sort of a Spanish C.W.style P.O.U.M. character.

It should be able to work in the existential-environmental fields with scientific intelligence, instead of with discordant off-pitch tweakings. If only President Bush had learned to play the guitar, instead of being a sort of Carlos Hathcock snipping up environmental policy. Yet like General George Washington, who could have been shot by a snipper at Brandywine Creek but was spared because the Brit would not back shoot GW riding away mounted, the environment too may be honorably addressed and remediated by objective souls unto a sustainable course. Will SEN. Hillary or S.S. Condi start using steroids in 2006?