Model Airplanes

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The bacterial communities accompanying airline passengers at 30,000 feet have a lot in common with the bacterial communities surrounding people in their homes and offices, according to a new study.

“Airline passengers should not be frightened by sensational stories about germs on a plane…”

Using advanced sequencing technology, researchers studied the bacteria found on three components of an airliner cabin that are commonly touched by passengers: tray tables, seat belt buckles, and the handles of lavatory doors. They swabbed those items before and after ten transcontinental flights and also sampled air in the rear of the cabin during flight.

What they found was surprisingly unexciting.

“Airline passengers should not be frightened by sensational stories about germs on a plane,” says Vicki Stover Hertzberg, a professor in Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing and a coauthor of the study in Microbial Ecology. “They should recognize that microbes are everywhere and that an airplane is no better and no worse than an office building, a subway car, home, or a classroom. These environments all have microbiomes that look like places occupied by people.”

Given the unusual nature of an aircraft cabin, the researchers hadn’t known what to expect from their microbiome study. On transcontinental flights, passengers spend four or five hours in close proximity breathing a very dry mix of outdoor

Article source: https://www.futurity.org/airplane-cabins-microbiome-1778822/

The gargantuan, double-decker, four-engine Airbus A380 is a titan of the skies, but that doesn’t mean that airlines actually want to fly it. Reuters reports that two of the enormous craft, which only entered service about ten years ago, are about to be stripped for parts.

The two planes in question were operated by Singapore Airlines, which put the first Airbus A380 into operation in October of 2007. When Singapore Airlines decided to retire them before the end of their useful life, no other airlines showed considerable interest in buying the second-hand planes. So instead of flying again, the duo will be stripped of components like electronics and landing gear, although the German investment group that currently owns the planes will stop short of fully scrapping the airframes.

This move comes as part of an industry-wide shift away from enormous planes that allow airlines to focus on a “hub and spokes” model of organization, with planes like the A380 servicing central airports specially outfitted to accommodate its size. Instead, increasingly efficient twin-engine jets like Boeing’s 737 MAX are allowing airlines to shy away from connecting flights and run longer, lower demand, non-stop flights profitably.

So if you were hoping to see an impossible quadruple-decker monster plane in real life, don’t hold your breath.

Source: Reuters

Article source: https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/airlines/a21095395/unwanted-airbus-a380s-are-starting-to-be-stripped-for-parts/

Ben Diachun, 42, is president of Scaled Composites, the Burt Rutan-founded aerospace design and manufacturing firm based in Mojave, Calif. The company is known for creating unconventional aircraft such as SpaceShipOne, the privately funded space plane that won the $10-million Ansari X-Prize in 2004 by reaching space twice within two weeks.

Scaled Composites, which has 494 employees, was acquired by aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp. in 2007.

Growing up in Lexington, Ky., Diachun became fascinated by the spacecraft and aircraft he saw on television and in pictures. One standout was the Starship, a small, composite plane designed by Scaled Composites in the early 1980s that had a small wing toward the nose of the aircraft and a longer wing at the back.

After getting a ride in a family friend’s twin-engine Beechcraft Baron plane at age 14, Diachun was hooked. “From a very young age, I knew I had an interest in what’s possible in aerospace, what’s possible with aviation,” he said. “I want to be part of something bigger than myself.”

He got his pilot’s license on his 17th birthday and was customizing his own radio-controlled airplanes from their original kits by changing out engines and adjusting flight controls to get more performance. “There was some trial and error,” he said.

After graduating from high school, Diachun moved on to Purdue University, eager to expand his skills and get the technical knowledge needed to actually create the planes he dreamed of. While there, he learned how to tackle problems step by step

Article source: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-himi-diachun-20180608-htmlstory.html

“I think it’s only fair that all those people are dead, and we’re not.”

This was said on a recent evening by Stanley Booth, aged 76, and my friend for well more than half a century. Yes, we have outlived our share of contemporaries, but I am not quite sure how to take the remark, especially since Stanley promptly begins listing exceptions to this category of the justly deceased.

Among them are such other longtime Booth friends as Irvin Salky and Charles Elmore (the latter known as “Charlie Brown” for his roundheaded resemblance to the Peanuts comic strip character), both gentle souls, both legendary facilitators in these parts of general folk-art awareness, and both, as it happens, in on the creation of the early Memphis blues festivals. Salky died from complications of a stroke in 2016; Elmore more recently from the ravages of a beating and maiming by street toughs.

Another death to be lamented was that of Jim Dickinson, the one-man music renaissance whose legacy lives on in his two sons, Luther and Cody, both players in the North Mississippi Allstars; in the Dickinson-founded group Mud Boy and the Neutrons; and in other hell-raisers both local and in the musical mainstream at large. It has been all of nine years since Dickinson’s passing, and Booth, then living in his native state of Georgia, recalls his surprise and dismay

Article source: https://www.memphisflyer.com/memphis/lion-in-winter-the-true-adventures-of-stanley-booth/Content?oid=13700365