Unless the Galaxy S4 comes with an ADS-B transciever, I think these flights should be OK.

When the pilots start seeing multiple odd contacts on their ADS-B display, they'll call down to Center and ask what's going on. When they do, Center will tell them that there are no contacts in their area, and the flight will continue using more traditional navigation/avoidance procedures. This isn't a "shoot down an airliner free" card.

Well, Sprint does make an effort in advertising to say that it's truly unlimited. They do require you to pay extra for tethering.

Usually I bounce people over to StraightTalk (Tracfone/Walmart), because they can bounce off just about any network if you've got a phone keyed for that network.

Down here in the states, at least in Kansas, Sprint. $80USD gets you unlimited texting, unlimited data, and 700 min/month, with unlimited calling nights, weekends, and to any cell phone on any American carrier.

Beats the hell out of Verizon, anyway.

I replaced the stock foam earpieces on mine with a nice gel set- sits way more comfortably, doesn't heat up, and blocks sound even better. Plus they don't keep their squish like the foam set did. I've worn them for hours and never had an issue. I think the set cost me $120 or so and the earpieces another $30.

Might not even need noise cancellation- a good pair of aviation headphones work great. They're designed to cut down 100db+ of aircraft engine noise into a low, dull roar. They work wonders, and you can get a decent pair for ~$100. Plus, the headset part operates on a standard 1/4in connector that's easily converted to 3.5mm, so you can listen to music, white noise, or an audiobook through them if you need to.

Three Falcon 9 launches, three Dragons delivered to station, two (so far) recovered intact. I'd say they're doing pretty good. Despite the engine failure on the CRS-1, and despite the four thruster pods failing, Dragon still made it to orbit, and is on track for a docking. Saturn lost engines during the ascent a couple times, and as I recall, Apollo wasn't exactly seamless either- one explosion, misconfiguration of landing computers, toxic gases pumped into the cabin... The fact that Falcon 9 and Dragon can experience these failures and recover from them says a lot about the system.

What does this mean? They clearly wanted it in the air? The FAA wants every aircraft in the air, as long as they can be sure that they're safe. They're not so sure about the Dreamliner anymore, so they're going back and making sure it's safe. That's what the FAA does.

And now we've dove headfirst into rampant speculation. These airliners bought the 787, whose main remarkable feature was the composite interior that reduced weight and increased efficiency. If it didn't do that, why would they have bought it?

This times a million. This is a brand-new aircraft, with fresh new avionics never flown before (hell, the Orion spacecraft is supposed to fly with a panel setup derived from the 787) and a whole new paradigm as far as materials are concerned. Teething pains are to be expected. Hopefully not "ground the fleet" teething pains, but this likely won't affect the future success of the 787.

For having a serious fire inside the container, yeah, it looks pretty good. Consider that the fire filled the cabin with smoke. If the worst damage outside the box was some soot and a bit of charring, they're doing pretty good.

Yet? The aircraft are grounded, and they will be until they're certain the problem won't reappear.

And why, exactly, is the plane "fundamentally flawed"? The experimental nature of the aircraft mainly involves the composite nature of the materials and the new avionics- nothing related to why these planes were grounded. I've heard some talk of delamination of the composites, but if that were a serious issue, then the aircraft would have been grounded for that reason instead of battery fires.

Yes, they poured tens of millions of dollars into R&D for composites and advanced avionics systems in order to produce the cheapest aircraft possible.

If they're going for cheap, they could just make more 777s. Those bad boys are cheap and super safe.

The difference is, there's no fatalities here. Plus, this is a pretty fast "recall", as these things go, and you can bet we're going to see revised designs in future.

That's a bit different. Even then, the DC-10 was very, very popular, and the method of grounding was very different. For the DC-10, they yanked the type certificate- it effectively became illegal to fly that aircraft. For the 787, it's a new aircraft, fairly experimental, and as for the grounding, it's an AD temporarily halting operations. Not quite as severe as revoking the type cert.

Hold on a sec... Can you cite your source for that? Southwest Airlines hand-flies all of their approaches, even under instrument conditions (Legal, because they have a HUD). Plus, not all airports have the instrumentation required for automatic landing. ILS cat 3 is pretty uncommon, and Cat 3C isn't in operation anywhere. I could see them having to shoot an automatic instrument approach once a month per aircraft just to make sure the system is working right, but otherwise, I've heard nothing about that specific requirement.