Other than wings, flaps, elevators, ailerons, rudder, wheels. Notice that none of those items requires engine input to function. The major difference between powered aircraft and glider is the powerplant.

If you look at this POH (pilots operating handbook) for a Cessna 182T, you'll see on page 3-23 the power-off glide as slightly more than 11 nm from an altitude of 8000 feet AGL. Yes, that's not as good as for a glider, but it is hardly the " AerrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRRR... CRASH!" that you seem to think it is.

That kind of ignorance about airplanes is not uncommon. It's exacerbated by bad science in movies where crashes are exciting and safe landings are not. I surprised the heck out of a friend of mine who was obviously worried about our flight over the local mountains -- if something went wrong we'd certainly AerrrrrrrRRRRRRRR CRASH! I pulled the power back and he noticed that there was no significant change in the flight other than a slight downangle.

Well, "meticulously preened" is rare, but roads make good landing spots, as do regular fields. And even when the airplane catches a wheel and flips it isn't unusual for everyone to walk away from it.

On a commercial air carrier flight, I know that the pilot has been to recurrent training within the last six months (I think it is, maybe 12), has had a check pilot evaluate his performance within the same time frame, and has a second fully qualified pilot sitting in the other seat. He's had intensive simulator training to deal with a vast number of potential in-flight emergencies. I know both of them are fully IFR qualified in a fully IFR capable aircraft in case the weather deteriorates enroute. Both have 1st Class medical certificates which involve a lot more than "kicking the tires and peeing in a cup".

On a private flight, I'm pretty sure the pilot has had an hour of flight sometime in the last two years (a biennial flight review) and has made three landings that he could walk away from in the last 90 days (or heals really quickly). The airplane has probably been inspected sometime within the last year for airworthiness. But there is little overview by the FAA for those requirements. If he owns his own plane nobody really checks until the NTSB does the investigation after the crash. If he's renting then the FBO will probably make sure he's met the legal minimums. There's no easy way to tell rental vs. owner. And the medical? The last time the pilot may have seen any doctor was a decade or more ago*.

I fear this kind of ride-share is going to make the FAA look closer at the requirements for private pilots, not simplify them.

* sport pilot rules. All a pilot needs for a "medical" is a driver's license as long as he's not had an application for a medical certificate denied, revoked, suspended or withdrawn.

I thought the purpose of the Raspberry Pi foundation was for education, not to produce embedded hardware for industrial control developers. Yes, the latter was a side effect of the former, but this new board is hardly an educational tool anymore.

The Supreme Court has ruled otherwise. Guess who is the Constitutionally appointed authority on the Constitution?

GigE uses 8.

You need a ticket, but only a one-way.

And you'd totally miss lap kids.

Those rules do NOT override my decision that there are too many risks to make a flight. Any pilot who says "gee, the FAA thinks it will turn out ok because the rules allow it" is a moron. And any passenger -- i.e. YOU -- who tells me "we should go anyway" is going to be ignored.

And the entire argument is whether it is ethical (not "legal") for one-way missions. Those "safety criteria" can be changed.

So change the limits. The current argument to the contrary, it is quite ethical for NASA to do that.

That happens all the time. And the final question is still based on an opinion. Is it worth exceeding the "objective limit" to fulfill the mission? And I hate to have to keep pointing out, that when the mission design includes a foreknowledge that the crew will not return, is it ridiculous to try use "crew will not return" as a hazard in the planning. It's like using "will not land with the aircraft" as a hazard when planning a skydive.

You can lie about my stated position if you want. I'll just "put you down" as one of those self-important folks who thinks that anyone who doesn't do things your way has ignored all the reasons they ought to do it your way, instead of considering those issues and making a different decision. I've not said once, and I've been explicit in saying the opposite, that risks should be ignored. I've said that the people who are subject to the risks make the decision, not you, and not me.

Not my choice to make. Not your's either, unless you're one of the people going.

Such inflammatory rhetoric is not productive. Nobody is killing anyone. Some people will weigh the risk of death on such a mission and decide that the benefits are worth it and decide to go. Just as some people weigh the risk of death while skydiving and still decide to go skydiving. And some of them have come damn close to dying and still go again.

As a pilot, if I take someone up to skydive and their parachute fails, and their backup fails, and they die, did I kill them? Don't be stupid. We both knew it was a hazard but we both participated.

Since I'm guessing that by "success" you mean "everyone survives" and not "the mission meets the design goals", I'll fold this answer back into the previous one.

No, WE don't. The people involved in the danger do.

I'm a pilot. I have to make that kind of decision every time I go flying. What are the hazards? (That's what most people refer to as the "risks".) What is the probability and severity of loss from those hazards? (That's the real "risks" part of Operational Risk Management.) How can they be mitigated? With mitigation factors considered, is the benefit still greater than the danger? That final question, that's an OPINION. And guess what? Unless your butt is in my airplane, your opinion doesn't count.

Who said anything about ignoring anything? You are one of those people who think that because I don't accept your opinion as the rulebook for my life that I'm ignoring you? You think that if someone evaluates the hazards and risks and mitigation factors and still decides to take some action that he's ignoring the hazards and risks?

The safest way to operate a huge SRB is to never light it off. The safest way to deal with a huge tank of oxidizer and propellant is to never fill them up and light them off. The safest way to deal with a pressure hull is to never expose it to a differential pressure. The safest way to explore space is to film a mockup on a soundstage. Yes, let's always choose the safest way because the risks are NEVER worth the benefits ever.

The entire phrase was "not taking risks seriously enough". Nobody can claim that someone who chooses to go on a one-way mission (to alpha centauri, e.g.) and knows he won't be coming back hasn't taken the risks seriously. It's the people who claim that he isn't allowed to make that decision because he didn't take them seriously ENOUGH (in their opinion) that are the problem.

And with explicit knowledge that everyone "behind them" was human and subject to making mistakes.

Perfect is the enemy of Good. As I've already pointed out, given that we are humans and that some missions are inherently "one-way", and that them being "one-way" is not a sign of failure but part of the design, if you want perfection and believe it is unethical to do anything where someone is knowingly going to die, then we might as well stop all space exploration now and just have a beer and watch TV.

No, I don't agree at all. The claim was that the people who risk life and health for the Olympics and X Games do so for the entertainment of the OP. That's a pretty clear claim. "for my entertainment". Tell me how I misread that.

Even if there are no cameras. There are no ESPN cameras and announcers telling us in breathless voice "we're at the summit of Mt. Everest where Billy Joe Bob Smith is about to become the 3,487th person to reach the peak." Yet he tries. And you have to realize that there are more competitors in the Olympics than just the few that make it onto your TV screen. Those 14th place finishers are risking just as much and they get very little TV time to "entertain" you. They clearly can't be doing it for your pleasure since they know you'll never see them.

And just because there are cameras doesn't mean they're doing it "for my entertainment". Cameras means records. It means video proving "look, I did that". It has nothing to do with your entertainment, it has to do with that person having documented that he did something that most people will never be able to.

That is what Operational Risk Management is all about.

When "success" includes "the participants don't come back" as part of the mission, then it isn't a risk management decision anymore. Saying "it's too risky" because "they won't come back" is meaningless.

It's fatalism at its worst. Nobody will come back from any of the first 100 manned missions to other star systems. We better not do them, it's "too risky" and we might "fail" because people will "die" doing this. Let's just sit back and relax and have another beer.

Of course you can. This whole argument is ridiculous. YOUR ethical system may not allow YOU to voluntarily go to your death that way, or YOUR ethical system may not allow people to be forced to go, but MY ethical system says if they CHOOSE to go KNOWING the danger then let them. Why should you make that choice for them?

The risks they will be facing on that trip are TECHNICAL issues, not ethical ones. Whether they want to risk it and whether we want to allow them to risk it are ethical issues, and it is reasonable to allow grown adults to make choices that allow then to face risks they freely accept. Remember that the next time you get behind the wheel of a car, or maybe decide you want to go skydiving. People DIE doing both activities, and can we ethically allow you to choose that you want to do either one? According to you, no, we cannot.

That task belongs to the persons taking the risks, not you.

Things like Challenger can always happen. We're not perfect. Everyone on that vehicle knew there were risks. But we're not talking about accidents, we're talking about a deliberate decision to send someone where we know they won't come back. Guess what? We KNOW for a FACT that everyone we send on a long-term mission to another star system will die before they get back to Earth. If we cannot send out such missions when they become technically feasible then we might as well not bother making them technically feasible. Just stop right now. Resign ourselves to never going anywhere but to the corner grocery store for another six pack and then sit back and watch "I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here" on the telly.

The participants in the Olympics are not there for your entertainment. They're there because they want to excel and need to compete against others to do so. There are many other events that they compete in that aren't globally televised, and their chance of death or injury is just as great for those.

You clearly have no idea why people strive to be the best at something, or to do things that others cannot.

So you do actually know that private pilots can and do fly "large iron", and your presumed limitation to "50-year-old Cessnas" and 4 seats was fictional.

And I said no such thing. I said you have "some indication". You are probably going to know if Uncle Bob has gotten his fourth DUI and his license is suspended, and even if you don't you'll probably know that Uncle Bob is a lush who is lax in following the law. You have NO such clue about that taxi or "ride-share" driver who just pulled up. If Uncle Bob gets into a wreck with you in the car, you're probably going to know where to find him when you sue for damages, and even if he moves, someone in the family will probably know. That cabbie -- you don't know where he lives, and you may not even know his name. (The one time I was in a cab wreck -- he ran a yellow and got t-boned -- I have no idea who the cabbie was or what company.)

In any case, Uncle Bob isn't giving you a ride to make money so he's got no incentive to give you a ride despite mechanical troubles with the car, where that taxi driver has a boss who likely will tell him to keep driving and his hack will be fixed next week, maybe, if there is a problem.

And I said no such thing yet again. It doesn't matter what the majority of private pilots fly, it has to do with what ALL of them are AUTHORIZED to fly. Yes, I need to have a multi-engine license to fly a multi-engine aircraft, but just a logbook signoff for complex and high-performance. And I'm still just a private pilot after getting all of that. I still can't charge anyone for my pilot services, even just one.

You are simply wrong. There is nothing in the FAR for private pilots that limits the number of passengers. Nothing. John Travolta doesn't have to say "I can only fly four of you" because there is some "four passenger limit" on his license. The differentiation between "private" and "commercial" is pretty clear from the name -- "commercial" is done "for compensation", and it has nothing to do with how many people are involved. A pilot who charges just one person for a ride needs to be operating under a commercial license.

I know of no state that issues driver's licenses without any kind of test, nor do I know of any state that does not have some standards as to mechanical function of licenseable vehicles. My state does not have mandatory inspections (although the Portland/Metro area does), but it does require testing to get a license in the first place. While it doesn't require much for a renewal, that is a FAR cry from "no standards".