japascoe

To the best of my knowledge a QAR only records flight data, not any recordings of the pilots (although you can of course see in the recordings what commands they were giving the plane). Currently only the pilots' voices are recorded, and that happens on the CVR, which is only accessed after an accident, and in most countries there are strict laws about who is allowed access to those recordings, and for what purpose they can be used.

As an Aerospace Engineer I'm going to have to add to that '... unless it's aerospace engineering'. Maybe it's different in the US, but here in the Netherlands as aerospace engineers we haven't noticed the crisis one bit. All the people I know who graduated in the past couple of years got a job within one or two months, and that's if they didn't already have one lined up before graduation. Plus as an aerospace engineer you are qualified for many other fields of engineering as well.

What if I don't prefer either manufacturer? My favourite plane is the A330, but that is just based on the shape. I think both Airbus and Boeing make great planes and I don't mind being on either one. That said I picked Airbus on the basis that they gave me pieces of one of their planes (well, they were always intended as test specimens, not as actual flight hardware) to break for my MSc thesis.

Presumably they reckon it helps them speed up boarding times.

I don't have any experience with it, but Steam has this thing called Steam workshop which allows you to distribute / install (free) mods via Steam. The game has to be set up to support it, but it could potentially offer a very easy way to share freeware. Go to Steam Workshop, pick out add-on you like, click 'install', done.

Well given that YouTube measures the popularity of your video by the number of ratings, and not by the combined 'score' of those ratings, you're right. It works that way for comments at least, and I think for the videos themselves as well.

The tweet was sent to Southwest, not CBS, and it's of course quite possible that he announced to the gate agent in question and/or other SWA staff that he would be tweeting. Though that's speculation on my part (about the announcing that is, the tweet has been saved, because nothing on the internet ever truly disappears).

About 20 times as safe as a DC-8 and two and a bit times as safe as a 744, according to page 20 of this pdf: http://www.boeing.com/news/techissues/pdf/statsum.pdf. Though it's worth bearing in mind that other things (ATC, training of pilots, crew resource management) have also seen a lot of development between when the DC-8 first flew and when the T7 first flew, so it's not just down to aircraft type. Also these numbers don't include either of the Malaysian crashes. This also has some interesting stats: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr61/nvsr61_06.pdf. 26,000 people died of falls in 2011, 34,677 died in motor vehicle accidents, and 'only' 1,467 in 'Water, air and space, and other and unspecified transport accidents and their sequelae' The Israeli company Elbit sells a system designed to protect airliners from shoulder launched missiles. I think it's been fitted to El Al planes: https://www.elbitsystems.com/elbitmain/area-in2.asp?parent=399&num=400&num2=400 Won't help much against a radar guided missile of course.

Hmm, a cubic metre of air at sea level has a mass of 1.225 kg. Clouds float at a fixed height, so they must have roughly the same density as the air. That means a metric ton of clouds is about 1,000 m^3 at sea level, or in other words, the amount of cloud that fits in 10x10x10 metres... not really that much actually This has been your nerd post of the day... please continue business as usual.

DCS World has been on Steam for a while now, as have a couple of train simulators, so getting serious sims via Steam is not exactly a new thing.

Who needs a network when you have YouTube? There's a whole bunch of YouTube channels that produce content that's better than 95% of what's shown on TV and on an equal footing with the last 5%. For those who like science I can highly recommend checking out the following YouTube channels: SmarterEveryDay MinutePhysics Veritasium ChrashCourse TheBrainScoop

I stand corrected

A320, you can tell by the wing-tip fences, the shape of the engines and the shape of the nose.

What were Cessna and Beechcraft competing on? I though their lines didn't really overlap?

Thanks for posting that, good find!