School Bus Hero

Some say the days of superhero's and legendary figures like John Wayne and George Patton are over. That is true, we no longer have many of our legendary figures, and never did have anyone flying in tights and a cape; withouth the help of a Boeing anyway.

However if we look just a little closer we realize that we don't need a cape or big name to be a hero. This woman simply did her job, and 6 lives were saved. She took her job as a school bus driver and her position as a public service vehicle operating license seriously. She was responsible for the souls in her bus, and she did her job in removing them at the first sign of trouble. At this point I am unaware of what caused the combustion, or whether it was preventable, but she did the right thing at the right time, and for that she should be commended.

We don't need capes and tights, we need sound brains that think in action. We need common sense. We need people who are willing to stand up and fight for what they believe and for other people who are unable to protect themselves.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/09/us/north-carolina-bus-fire/index.html?hpt=hp_bn1

Robot vs Bird

Some may remember the Alfred Hitchcock horror film entitled "Birds", but in the airport industry it seems that this is more than a vague memory of a classic! Every year there is damage, not extensive per say, to many aircraft due to birds on the airstrip being hit by the airplane. For years, birds have been attracted to airfields in the same way a duck is attracted to water: open space. They enjoy strutting along the tarmacs, or maybe they just like hanging out with the newer "breed" of motorized birds.

In answer to these feathered pests, Korean designers engineered an automatic robotic vehicle to roam the airport and scare away birds. Not such a big deal, just design it to go in a pattern to cover the most ground and stay out from under the airplanes. Bingo.

But no, the Koreans wanted a smarter robot than that. This robot is controlled from a central station and not only scares the birds away, but listens for the birds and records any information that it can glean from them. Such as where they hang out, what times are they around, and what are the most effective ways of getting rid of them.

There's a problem, its not programmed to drive around by itself, someone has to sit in a simulator and drive it virtually, and control which 'noise' to use when to scare the birds away. So an airport needs to buy the robot, all the charging equipment and fuel, then a whole additional 'space station' to run it. All to keep birds away from planes.

Here's the kicker, according to an International Civil Aviation Organization study, only 420 aircraft were damaged since 2003. That's almost ten years. So every year, 42 airplanes are damaged. Now that doesn't sound like a small number until you put it into perspective; that's less than half of an incident every year per country. Statistically speaking, of modern countries, any one country will only ever have 1 damaged airplane every other year. Yet they will spend how much money to buy this robot to run all the time and maintain to stop 5 incidents in ten years? Seems a long ways to go to just keep a few feathers off the field.

See original article on CNN World News:
http://www.cnngo.com/seoul/visit/birdstrike-robot-779434?hpt=hp_bn8