Apollo. The only thing I never understood

On Wed, 1 Sep 2004 09:01:50 -0400, (Peter Stickney)
wrote:

In article ,
Mary Shafer writes:
On Mon, 30 Aug 2004 09:30:36 -0400, (Peter
Stickney) wrote:

It's really a matter of basic politeness. The lower handle is
conveniently located at the front of the seat pan, between the
occupant's legs. One shouldn't offend unnecessarily, after all.

Which is how one pilot managed to eject himself from a working F-16
while using a piddle pack. With the inclined F-16 seat, the lower
handle is almost above the seat, not slightly below as in other
aircraft. It's a very convenient location most of the time.

Oooh. I'd love to see the Incident Report on that one.
"There I was, flat on my back (pretty much true for an F-16) at
30,000'", when suddenly..."

Even worse if you're the USAF Public Affairs Officer who has to write
the press release. It was all done very tactfully, but explicitly. I
really had to laugh when I read it.

That sounds like the hard way to get a personal call name assigned.

It was, according to friends.

Mary

--
Mary Shafer Retired aerospace research engineer

Peter Stickney wrote:

It must of been - in my late teens and early 20s I was very Freudian.
Which allowed me to do things I couldn't get away with when I was
Jung.


Yeesh! You should be Skinnered alive for that one...
Give that man a phallus...I mean a cigar! :-)
Pat

(bob haller) wrote:
Well take the cost of every road safety upgrade, plus all the systems built
into cars each year. from airbags to safety belts to mundane things like
rounded corners in dashboards and safety glass in vehicle windows, plus stop
lights and the electricity to run them. add this all up and it must be a huge
number....

Is being that stupid painful?

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

Is being that stupid painful?

D.
--

I dont know, just answer your own question.

we were discussing the costs of safety systems,
HAVE A GREAT DAY!

(bob haller) wrote:

Is being that stupid painful?


I dont know, just answer your own question.

we were discussing the costs of safety systems,

No, we weren't.

We were discussing the public perception of safety.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

Derek Lyons wrote:
"Christopher M. Jones" wrote:
To be fair, plenty of people care about it. Hundreds of
billions if not trillions of dollars are spent each year
on roads, cars, and laws in efforts to improve automotive
safety.

Hundreds of billions? Not in this ficton.

Do the math. "Safety" is often rated as the most important
concern in choosing a car by buyers. Then there's gas taxes
and other funds used on roadwork and automobile
transportation. Add it up worldwide and take a sizeable
slice as "safety" and you've got a hefty chunk of change.
New auto sales in the US alone are over a hundred billion
dollars a year.


At any rate, you missed Mary's point. If 50 people die in an
aircrash, it's front page news across the country. When a thousand
times that many dies... It's hardly noticed.

I dispute that. Automotive fatalities are generally
well reported locally. And general issues of
automotive safety (road safety, speed limits,
car impact test results by make and model, etc.) are
fairly well covered nationally and internationally.
I don't think that counts as "hardly noticed". You
can argue about the news media's tendency for
sensationalism, but I think that's beside the point
here. Which should be that automobile use is a
risky and sometimes fatal activity, one that warrants
spending a substantial amount of time, effort, and
money in ensuring improved safety, but one that is
nevertheless worthwhile despite the risk. We
shouldn't be pining, or seeming to pine, for the day
when space related fatalities are unnoticed. Rather,
we should be looking toward the day when people will
have a more mature understanding and acceptance of
the risks associated with various activities and the
appropriate levels of effort and spending to curb
those risks.

Mary Shafer wrote:
{...]
and I'll continue saying it for decades more.

And I hope to be listening to you for decades more!

And I think, based on previous discussions and what I've encountered
in the literature (a post-9/11 issue of American Scientist has a
discussion of this, for instance), that a key emotional factor is the
difference between the perception of auto accidents and of plane
accidents: the sense of being in control.

As a passenger, or as a witness on the ground in Seal Beach 2 months
ago, people feel absolutely helpless when something goes wrong with a
plane. On the other hand, people feel absolutely in control of their
cars up until the moment they wrap around the light pole at 90+.

Train accidents often have the same perception as airlines, btw. Look
at the headlines when Amtrak discovered the hard way that someone had
messed with the trestle in Alabama (well, a southern swamp; I'll
eventually look up the actual incident).

/dps

P.S. I bet 1 out 55 trips to the beach from Jamestown ND involves
some sort of auto accident.