Years ago I got a 512mb IDE HDD either from the trashcan or a friend who worked in a computer shop gave it to me. It might have been a Maxtor, but I wouldn't bet anything on that. It would show ok on the bus but didn't spin up albeit emitting some mechanical sound. Just to give it a try as a last resort I opened the enclosure as little as possible and used a small screwdriver to spin the disks a turn or two by pushing them along the edge. After that, the enclosuse sealed again, it DID spin up and I could use it, e.g. get data from it, write to it. Not sure how it would have done in the longer run, but touching the enclosure wa suseful in this case.

Because they're worthless without some sort of, well, fucking road ???

At least the very last generation of competition sailplanes now has maximum wing loadings similar to an empty U-2, which is very roughly around 70kg/m^2...

As someone who flies, which usually implies taking off and landing as well, large span (>=80ft) sailplanes quite often I wouldn't want to comment on flying a U-2 in detail, but can comment a little on the long-wing-center-wheel-only aspects of the trade.
In fact, the longer the span of the wings gets, the more inertia you have around the roll axis. As a result you are much more likely to drop a wing on takeoff (which is 'run' by someone holding a wingtip for the first few seconds of the takeoff roll) when the span is rather short. The same goes for the wing dropping to the ground at the end of the landing roll.I reckon it'd be rather hard to run the U-2's wing by hand until the ailerons have some effect so they use those wheels that fall off after takeoff.
For landing sailplanes usually have quite effective airbrakes for glide path control (and somewhat counter the ground effect) that the U-2 lacks AFAIK. Given the length of typical military runways I honestly doubt that you couldn't get the thing down by simply letting the kinetic energy dissipate while flying in ground effect with the engine idle. It's rather difficult to float a certain time along the ground (no airbrakes) in gusty winds without ever accidently bumping into it so it's probably much better to stall the thing onto the ground in a controlled way and then use the wheel brake. Since in sailplanes one can do crosswind landings with up to 20 knots crosswind without too much hassle the U-2 jockeys probably could do the same and more *if* they had the same visibility through the canopy as we do. The trick is to fly with the planes nose into the wind along the runway's centerline and then 'decrab' the plane using a hearty whack on the rudder just before touchdown so that the wheel will roll along the runway instead of skidding... Probably not an easy thing to do with limited visibility and the intertia the U-2 certainly has.

You are aware that this is a german satellite, right ? I'd expect quite a lot of fuss being made about that fact by you know who...

The tow pilot did show up late, the flight was somewhat shortened by incoming overcast but nobody asked me to take my shoes off.

Flying gliders is very satisfying.

7) Don't tell her that *she* wanted a baby during labor pains. I did this and almost got killed on the spot...

Kinda reminds me of high pressure water cutting: it does cut steel and such easily but fails on soft (cream) cake...

What stairs ?!?

You're aware that lots of elevators have counterweights that go down while you go up, are you ?

...more precisely General Aviation and on an even narrower scale gliding (as in flying sailplanes) already has such a system. It's called Flarm (on Wikipedia) and was primarily introduced to avoid midair collisions between gliders as well as between gliders and obstacles such as powerlines in montaineous areas.

It's true P2P and works like: GPS locates itself, beacon (think garage door opener channels) sends position and some other data, receives the same from other gliders, predicts trajectories and gives alert if collision is possible. The raw number of units on the (ha!) air at the same time in the roughly same spot is rather low compared to cars. Of course you still need to look out... Openness of the standard has/had some issues, but i am not current on this one.

Sir,

your post suggests that you work as a professional (as being paid) pilot and as such should have at least a basic understanding of physics me thinks. May i point out to you that nothing will ever change the weight of a cell phone, brick, elephant or else as long as it stays in proximity to the earths surface. You are probably talking about the phenomenon of inertia which is directly proportional to an objects mass.

Oh, and please explain to us why there can be any significant danger from flying objects the size and mass of a mobile phone during a crash compared to the inherent shortcomings of the simple lap seat belts provided.

The only thing i can stand less than security theater is the people who actually believe in it.

Either you're totally kidding or insane. I'd bet my ass that (aerospace grade !) fiber is at least as expensive as the copper wires already in use. The price of copper or any other raw material like it can't ever measure up to production, quality testing etc. associated costs.

Furthermore i'd supect that it'll be much more difficult to design, produce and use properly working connectors between the different parts of the aircraft with optic fiber. IMHO it's not practical to run every length of cable/fiber uninterrupted point to point.