1) plane was fully loaded

2) base altitude was 6500 feet

3) hottest part of day combined with local conditions meant this was probably like taking off from 9000+ foot altitude == thin air

This is just careless piloting, not an advertisement.

Do you think GoPro said "pick the biggest effing tree you can run into at 80 mph and DO IT!" Sheesh

This is called

HIGH
HOT
AND HEAVY

==

DANGER

GoPro cameras are ubiquitous they are sold in every local department store here.

"500 metres in altitude,"
"How close is that?"
...
IT'S FIVE HUNDRED METRES FROM THE MARTIAN SURFACE! You know, HALF A KILOMETER?
The approximate height of the CN tower? A wee bit higher than the EMPIRE FUCKING STATE BUILDING?
How close? NotcloseenoughthatyouwontdiefromfreefalldespitelowgravityonMars!
Metric! For Pete's sake!
Sheesh!



/rant

> An overlay of what is taking place and maybe even some highlights
> would help this video have more general impact.

per frame altitudes and such I am sure will follow

Wow, the altitude indicator read "10" there.

But of course. Silly me. I knew that.... I was just excited.

And yeah, what is special is the altitude -- a dry place high up so not as much atmosphere between the antennae and what they are watching.

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^bareboards2:
I love that they are approaching the idea of an observatory in a different way. Not one huge telescope but an array.

The idea of antennae array has been around for a long time, so I don't know what is so special about these exactly. I mean, remember contact, when she goes to the desert...and there were like dozens of antenna? That was a antennae array, and there are several space array systems in the world...and any radio telescopes can be linked up to form an array with some effort. The real step, I'm guessing, is in the most dry desert in the world. It is compared to a mars-scape.

Edit: Grammar...sometimes I think I need a lobotomy

>> ^SFOGuy:

Very interesting---Does anyone remember the Mythbuster's episode where they tried to do this in the desert with a cooperating jet fighter? I think Adam was in the fighter and Jamie in a little shack with windows that they built on the ground...
To my recollection, the last, lowest, fastest pass busted a window in a shack too! (they should do the myth again with en entire sheet glass wall...)


I believe that the Mythbusters episode still maintained a "safe" altitude. I don't think the blue angels ever got within 100 feet of the ground for that, and those planes were about that.

idk, looks pretty legit too me. There must be a quite a lot of ground effect in play. I very much doubt you could get any kind of altitude with this.

I hear what you are saying. (but)
I'm not judging the event. This sounds fraking cool, and I'm sure it's a scientific wonder that we can now detect, analyze and examine events such as these. The science isn't lost on me or the work, study and teams that go into this sort of thing.

What I don't see is great video. I'm not asking for a cheesy edited version dumbed down for the 6-9 p.m. TV viewing public. I am expecting some explanation (as part of the footage), some commentary from the people working on the project, or some graphics explaining the likelihood, descriptions of projections, something.

If there was no description next to this, non of us would even know what we were looking at. Sort of misses the mark from the medium we are here to judge. I'm basing my vote on the video in front of me, not the event that's trying to be presented.


>> ^deathcow:

> that's a white dot on a black surface.
I missed that! I saw an asteroid, maybe 30 ft wide, perhaps showing tumbling motion, being tracked at a ridiculous custom rate of azimuth and altitude change, by a team from MIT working for NASA. Watch the stars fly by in the background.
This near earth object at just thousands of miles away from missing the Earth, is probably like missing a home run in baseball because your bat was 1/50th of a millimeter too low and 0.05 mph too slow.

> that's a white dot on a black surface.

I missed that! I saw an asteroid, maybe 30 ft wide, perhaps showing tumbling motion, being tracked at a ridiculous custom rate of azimuth and altitude change, by a team from MIT working for NASA. Watch the stars fly by in the background.

This near earth object at just thousands of miles away from missing the Earth, is probably like missing a home run in baseball because your bat was 1/50th of a millimeter too low and 0.05 mph too slow.

That was just a low overcast, the visibility was high once they got below the clouds. I'm instrument rated, and used to fly small planes, and never had any desire to fly the big aluminum tubes. I've done a few approaches down to minimums (200ft overcast 1/4 mile visibility) with no co-pilot or fancy pants autopilots or computers calling out my altitude and insulting me after landing. Believe it or not, when you have low clouds and low visibility, it's some of the best flying weather. It's calm stable air that allows for fog and low cloud formation.

if they fell, would it be a tragedy?
because to me, a tragedy is something negative, but unexpected

skyscraper construction is similar, but they (usually) plan for things like slips/falls/etc... and try to mitigate the situation through safety equipment and procedures... hopefully to the benefit of not just the worker's lives themselves, but their families and friends

that's not to say high altitude construction doesn't have it's share of deaths by accident, but those to me are actual tragedies... because most likely steps were taken to prevent whatever happened from happening

no safety equipment used by these adrenaline junkies

and when looking at the phenomenon of adrenaline junkies, I believe one must look further than just the safety precautions taken to determine whether the term "tragedy" is applicable... what is the reasoning behind taking the endeavor at hand? is it solely personal (selfish) reasoning, or are others included in the reasoning (especially friends and family who have no option but to watch and hope for the best)?

that statement is the reason that "tragedy" is applicable when a father from some tribe in africa gets attacked by a lion while hunting for game... and it isn't applicable when it's a lion tamer putting his head in the mouth of a lion for show...

in fact, the more one "tempts fate" solely for selfish/personal reasons... the less I think "tragedy" applies

these guys in the vid, if they fell, it wouldn't be a tragedy... it's kinda weird to expect people to care more about your own safety, than you yourself do... and I'm not saying people caring is a bad thing... its a good thing... in fact, it shines a more selfish light on the original person in the first place... ESPECIALLY if these people caring more than they do themselves, are known... such as friends/family

Suffocatingly-nest.

Personally I'd suspect the hell out of that air filtration system....that it's picking up something at the higher altitudes that it's not able to deal with and creates the wrong mixture and pumps it to the pilots or flat out doesn't filter for whatever it's picking up.

If you've ever driven a vehicle with a leaky exhaust, you'll notice you feel fine for a long time and then suddenly you just kind of wake up and go...something is wrong. Roll down the window and feel almost instantly better and more clear headed even when it's crazy hot or cold out because the air is not contaminated.

When I was in grade school in the 80s, they came to our town and did a low altitude pass-over that covered most of the city. No jet escort, though.

"There's one way on earth to reproduce ... weightlessness ..., and that's in this plane."

Or any other plane (or whatever) that flies a parabolic arc and drops with gravity. My dad has a civilian pilot license and was part owner of a Cessna 172 small plane. When I was quite young, I'd go up in the plane with him and he would do "zero-G dives", even taught me how to do it. Get to a good altitude, pull up to near stall, and then nose over and drop.

In a light plane with limited altitude ceiling you can't get 30 seconds of zero G, but we could get 5-6 quite safely.

pilot error. not enough altitude and he didn't execute the maneuver very well - the chopper should have pivoted around at the end of the upward curve and straighten itself in the direction of flight thus giving the rotors a chance to provide lift as soon as possible before it starts loosing too much height. altitude of the terrain was also a factor, but the pilot should have calculated that in ...