A report on CNN this morning has the French version of our NTSB saying that AF447, the Airbus 330 that went down into the Atlantic last month, did not break up in mid-flight as was theorized.
The Air France plane that crashed last month with 228 people aboard “did not break up or become destroyed in flight,” the French air investigation agency announced Thursday.
“The plane went straight down … towards the surface of the water, very very fast,” air accident investigator Alain Bouillard said.
Based on visual study of the physical remains of the Airbus A330 that have been recovered, “we were able to see that the plane hit the surface of the water flat. Therefore everything was pushed upwards — everthing was pushed from the bottom to the top” of the plane, he said.
The 228 people killed in the crash “had no time to prepare,” he said.
There’s something missing, here. Aircraft do not simply vertically sink, bottom-first, through thousands of feet of air. They are designed in such a way as to make that nearly impossible. They’ll engage in what’s called a “flat spin” in certain circumstances (none of them good for healthy flying) but there’s no mention of that in this report. In fact, the statement of how they saw “everything was pushed upwards” makes no sense if they actually hit the water flat – unless they were inverted, or upside-down, when they hit. If they were in a normal attitude and impacted the water flat, the resulting deceleration vector would have been down, not up, and everything would have been squeezed onto the floor.
Had an aircraft of that size been in a flat spin, the forces would have increased the further from the center of the plane you go. Those near the ends – the cockpit and the tail – would have been forced out against the surfaces of the plane and leaning in the opposite direction of the spin. The pilots would likely have been pinned against the instrument panel and the aft flight attendants against the rear bulkheads. Passengers would have been pinned against the fuselage or been folded over into the aisle depending on where they were sitting. As you get nearer the center of the spin, the force becomes weaker until it’s just a rotational feeling without the G-force effects. Aviation engineers will need to weigh in on this but I doubt a ship the size of an Airbus 330 could sustain a spin rate sufficient to stabilize the plane in a flat spin without the forces tearing off parts of the plane and possibly even cracking off the nose or tail. Less than that spin rate would have allowed the design of the plane to begin to “nose over” and turn the flat spin into a diving spin, something that would at least allow some air to flow over the control surfaces and offer the pilots a chance to recover.
Even during the descent if the plane had been in a flat spin it would not have been falling at faster than terminal velocity. That means the passengers and materials in the cabin of the plan would have remained on the floor or in their seats, even if the falling would result in a less than 1-G environment. A 25-pound bag might have weighed 10 pounds during the fall, but that 10 pounds isn’t going to be floating to the ceiling. Only if the plane was falling faster than the bag can go (and Galileo’s experiments proved that doesn’t generally happen) would the bag be pinned to the ceiling all the way down.
Too many unanswered questions, here.
July 2nd, 2009
Posted by
ricjames |
Aviation, Human Interest |
2 comments
Read all about it over at Hot Air but the short story is this: the Washington Post is presenting a new service wherein they will “facilitate” private, off-the-record meetings between “lobbyists and association executives” and powerful members of Congress, the Obama administration, and even its own reporters and editors. For a modest fee, of course. Somewhere between $25,000 and $250,000, dependent on which of the “powerful few” you’ve got a yen to meet with.
And just how critical of the administration will the Washington Post be – how dogged their investigations into the government – now that they’re selling access to members of that administration when that access could be pulled at any moment over something in a WaPo story that the government didn’t like?
A supposedly unbiased news organization is selling access that they need to stay in the government’s good graces to be able to offer. No further arguments accepted for so long as this service remains available: the Post is officially a propaganda arm of the Obama administration.
July 2nd, 2009
Posted by
ricjames |
Politics, The Media |
no comments
For a guy who practically trademarked the word “change” and who ranted on continuously over the 2008 election campaign about open and honest government, Obama isn’t practicing much of what he preached. Those of us paying attention to what he was really doing and saying during the campaign noticed that literally the year before but others did not. Well, there’s no real hiding it, now, and even some of his cheerleaders in the MSM can’t avoid noticing.
Obama’s “town hall” meeting on health care yesterday was already being panned by such MSM members as Chip Reid and Helen Thomas (of all people) and Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tried to ridicule them for not waiting for the event to wrap up before they called it for the fake it was clearly turning out to be. The Washington Post reported on the event and not even they, Obama-minions that they are, could buy into the notion that this wasn’t a staged event:
In the stage-managed event, questions for Obama came from a live audience selected by the White House and the college, and from Internet questions chosen by the administration’s new-media team. Of the seven questions the president answered, four were selected by his staff from videos submitted to the White House Web site or from those responding to a request for “tweets.”
The president called randomly on three audience members. All turned out to be members of groups with close ties to his administration: the Service Employees International Union, Health Care for America Now, and Organizing for America, which is a part of the Democratic National Committee. White House officials said that was a coincidence.
Get that? The event was supposedly a town-hall meeting, open to anyone who asked, and out of all of those people the President “randomly” selected 3 people who just happened to be Democrat organizers. All of them. Explanation? “Wow, what are the odds?” the White House says. “Yeah, nice try,” WaPo replies. No one’s buying that story yet the White House continues to peddle it. They don’t think much of your intelligence.
And about that health care, remember back when Obama was stumping for the office and he brought it to everyone’s attention that McCain was going to tax their health benefits? At the same event, Obama is now refusing to rule that exact same action out. It was, at the time, a plan “so radical, so out of touch with what you’re facing, and so out of line with our basic values” that there was no way a sane person could vote for his opponent, John McCain. Now that Obama is President, however, he’s OK with inflicting that same “out of touch” plan on you. If that’s one of the reasons you voted for Obama then he’s pretty much smugly saying you’re a rube.
But please, don’t take my word for it. Guy Benson at the NRO’s Media Blog has a write up and the video of the events where Obama showed he was definitely against it before, you know, he was for it. Now. Bonus video is included of Obama advisor David Axelrod trying to provide cover for Obama’s about-face on the issue.
Why is all of this important? Well, it goes beyond the health care issue – which is certainly important on its own – and centers on the notion of whether we can trust this guy with anything now. Jim Geraghty, also at the NRO, brings clarity to this situation:
Flip-flops are nothing new in politics, but every once in a while, a president breaks a promise or an important pledge on such an epic level that it defines him, at least in part: “Read my lips: No new taxes.” “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.” “We did not — repeat — did not trade weapons or anything else for hostages — nor will we.” Even “I will never lie to you.”
Barack Obama’s sudden about-face on taxing employer-provided health insurance deserves to rank among these classics. Not because it’s as laughable as Bill Clinton’s, or as emphatic as George H. W. Bush’s, but because it takes a certain moral venality to casually adopt, as president, a position that was a dominant theme of your argument for why your opponent should not be president.
Emphasis mine. Exactly so. And to do so without even a passing acknowledgment that your opponent was right and you were mistaken is just insult on top of injury. The members of the left who were so obsessed with President Bush’s admission of mistakes should be loudly up in arms over this, either because Obama’s not admitting it was an error to vilify McCain over his position or because Obama’s doing what he specifically promised he would not do. I leave that task to them. The issue for all Americans is whether you should be trusting anything this man has to say. Until he starts showing the change he’s said he’s bringing, honesty cannot be counted among his policies.
July 2nd, 2009
Posted by
ricjames |
Medicine, Politics |
no comments
Another month into the gotta-pass-it-now-or-unemployment-might-go-above-9% “stimulus” package and the performance of the economy with respect to jobs – you know, the jobs the stimulus package was going to “create or save” by the millions – continues to degrade. Thanks to the folks at Innocent Bystanders we have this wonderfully concise and easily-understood graphic to display the situation:
As was done in their graphic last month, the maroon dots represent the actual unemployment figures while the blue lines were trends plotted out by the Obama administration. That blue line arcing way up there to the top was what Obama & team said would happen to unemployment if we didn’t pass the $800 billion Dem-supporter payoff “stimulus” bill.
You will note that the actual numbers are higher than that trend. Which means that the situation is worse than what Obama’s team suggested would happen if we did nothing. Which, by the way, is what several reputable economists were suggesting at the time – that we let the market handle the recovery and not screw things up attempting to fix our previous overspending by… well… overspending.
It’s pretty clear from the actual numbers that so-called “stimulus” package is not having the effect it was advertised that it would. Saddling our future with the massive debt that it calls for when it’s obviously not having the beneficial effect that was promised is foolhardy. Congress should cancel any remaining spending called for in that package and look, instead, to proposals that have histories of actually performing the tasks required.
July 2nd, 2009
Posted by
ricjames |
Economy, Politics |
one comment
Man, it seems we’re losing well-knowns from Hollywood by the minute these days. Thanks to a reference at Instapundit, I see that Karl Malden died yesterday at the age of 97.
Oscar-winning actor Karl Malden died today, July 1, of natural causes at the age of 97. Born Mladen Sekulovich on March 22, 1912, the bulb-nose character actor was a star of both stage and screen. Raised in Gary, Indiana, Malden briefly attended a teacher’s college, then enrolled in Chicago’s Goodman Theatre Dramatic School. Following World War II-era service in the Army Air Force, Malden’s career took off with the role of Mitch in the 1947 Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire, opposite Marlon Brando.
Malden’s movie career is impressive and the list I’ve linked doesn’t include his TV appearances. It’s been a sad couple of weeks.
July 2nd, 2009
Posted by
ricjames |
Entertainment, Human Interest |
no comments
An American soldier has apparently been captured by “insurgents” in Afghanistan:
Spokeswoman Capt. Elizabeth Mathias said the soldier went missing Tuesday.
“We are using all of our resources to find him and provide for his safe return,” Mathias said.
Mathias did not provide details on the soldier, the location where he was captured or the circumstances.
“We are not providing further details to protect the soldier’s well-being,” she said.
Understandable. Now, spare nothing to find him. And send a message that trying this again isn’t in our enemies’ best interest.
July 2nd, 2009
Posted by
ricjames |
GWOT, Military |
no comments
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