The space shuttle Enterprise is scheduled to , on 23 Apr 12,
fly low over New York city mounted atop a modified Boeing 747. The flight is scheduled
to take place between 0930 and 1130 AM, weather and other conditions
permitting. The low altitude flight over the Hudson river will bring it the past the Statue of Liberty .
After landing at JFK, the shuttle will be transferred aboard a barge for a
second trip along the Hudson to its new
home at the Intrepid Sea, Air and space Museum.
National geographic is hosting online a ‘gigapan” views
featuring ultra-high resolution pictures of the orbiter. The interface allows visitors
a chance to view and virtually wander unobstructed across the
space station, in detail, no fee required.
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It is the Orwellian era. Although some thirty years have
passed since the gloomy scenario portrayed by George Orwell in 1984, the
mushrooming presence of surveillance cameras and security procedures have invaded
our privacy to an extent never foreseen by the author. With the increase in
security threats due to religious and ethnic terrorism, we have all but acquiesced
ourselves to this privacy invasion with mute protests.
A new entrant in the surveillance area is the UAVs. After
having been successfully deployed over the mountains of Afghanistan to counter
the Al Qaeda threat, the US government is mulling over the feasibility and
acceptability of a programme that would allow unmanned aircraft to fly beside
commercial planes in the US airspace.
The Sterile Cockpit Rule is a regulation requiring pilots to refrain
from non-essential activities during critical phases of flight, normally below
10,000 feet. The FAA imposed the rule in 1981( and adopted by most regulatory
bodies) after reviewing a series of accidents that were caused by flight crews
who were distracted from their flying duties by engaging in non-essential
conversations and activities during critical parts of the flight. One such
notable accident was Eastern Air Lines Flight
212, which crashed just short of the runway at Charlotte/Douglas
International Airport in 1974 while conducting
an instrument approach in dense fog. The National
Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded that a probable cause of the accident was distraction due to
idle chatter among the flight crew during the approach phase of the flight.
As we move towards an era of diverging job
functions assigned to cabin crew and flight crew, a single barrier that
catalyses this divide is the cockpit door.
Increasingly, this door has served to alienate and undermine the bonding
that existed between the two sets of operating crew on board. During pre-flight
briefing we go through the motions of communication and cockpit access protocol
during normal and conditions where security of the cabin is breached.
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| Bombardier Cseries |
With the rapid advancement of technology, automation in cockpits have made rapid strides and have successfully made tasks of pilots easier.Crew of the modern generation aircraft have had to put considerable effort and time in trying to understand the automation modes and remain engaged appropriately. As much as comfort the flight crews would derive in normal flight operation with the automation,the questions that all of us pilots tend to ask ourselves is what would be one's reaction if it were to degrade or fail totally. That brings out various scenarios and challenges in dealing with the failures.
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