I have to admit, I just flew Milan to Heathrow to Denver, and back, and I don't think I looked out the windows once, other than while standing in line waiting for the bathroom. Granted, I was center section aisle, and I did enjoy gawking on a recent flight across Africa, but overall I'd happily trade windows for a GOOD set of cameras.

In other news, BA finally update the entertainment system on their transatlantics to something better than 480P. Which also helps!

I live on the west coast of Italy; they do ocean refilling all the time here, as there are very few lakes. Remember that these are seaplanes; some corrosion resistance is built into the design. Also, they don't really land so much as just skim the surface for a kilometer or so, still holding a pretty good speed. I believe some also carry tanks of concentrated retardant to mix with the water.

Pretty much any cheap plane will work fine. I believe I recall a 74 being used a few years ago (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_747_Supertanker), and C130s are very common in this service.

Once you've done this with it, though, you'll probably never see it back in commercial passenger use, anywhere. Dumping 48000kg while in the middle of a dive puts some serious stress on the airframe (YouTube, not for the faint of heart).

Never, use the "shortest distance" option unless you are driving a dirt bike and want an adventure. It will use ANY road that shortens the distance, no matter how crappy that road might be.

I see what you did there.

I loathe the oil industry in all its incarnations, but 65' (would that be 20 meters?) is VERY close to operational heavy machinery in a marine environment. And yes, with a decent lens you'll be reading the "Mom & BP" tattoos on the roughnecks.

These are not the droids you're looking for.

If you don't know the field well enough to identify a good mentor in your area of interest, reading Uni web sites won't help.

Try science citation indices for your subject of interest; look for a prof at a teaching school who is well-cited and has frequent student co-authors. Avoid the guy at the giant research lab who only shares credit with other senior scientists or not at all. Student authors can usually be identified because they have few papers or no Ph.D.

Finally, if you can't identify a field of interest and good papers in that field, you're not ready to be so picky. Get a Masters degree at a good school, attend a conference or two and call back in a few years.

A better solution, remove those pesky devices altogether, then you'd have NO security risk at all!!!