There are basically two classes of fixed-wing aircraft: those where the controls are physically connected to the flight surfaces, and those that are controlled entirely by hydraulic pressure and/or electronics. The latter is increasingly common in large airliners, but has been around for decades (a DC-10 was infamously controllable only by the wing-engine throttles after the tail engine shattered and took all the hydraulics with it - roughly half the people on board survived the "landing").

Both of them are easily capable of landing after all engines fail at cruising altitude. Electric power, where necessary, is generated by a small windmill which extends from the body of the plane when needed.

Only the directly-connected type - which (conservatively) includes pretty much anything up to about corporate-jet size or built before 1970 - will be able to continue flying in a controlled fashion if the electronics are destroyed by a large EMP. Some of the hydraulic indirect types will probably fly too, depending on how independent the controls are of EMP-sensitive electronics and whether a source of hydraulic pressure remains. You do *not* want to be on board *any* Airbus if an EMP goes off within range - they are entirely computer-controlled, and the pilot's joystick inputs are merely suggestions.

Whether the navigation equipment will still work is, frankly, unlikely. The pilot will have to find his way to an airport the hard way.

Going back to the original subject, all cars certified for road use have a physical link for steering (usually with power assistance these days, but this does nothing at highway speeds), and two braking systems that can be applied by human effort alone (both hand and foot brakes, though the footbrake is usually power-assisted too). That's enough to easily retain control in the face of total electrical failure and engine cutout.

But it is worth noting that a lot of old cars have engines, with carburettors and distributors, that would not be affected by any kind of EMP. At worst, it would induce a momentary misfire and fry the radio. If you look in the right scrapyards, you can find Renault and Volvo engines that have outlived their vehicles and are robust enough to withstand quite a lot of boring and boosting... so serious criminals who put some thought and effort into preparing their crime can avoid being stopped by the EMP and still have a fast enough car to keep ahead of the chase. But high-speed chases are usually the result of insufficient planning anyway...

Unfortunately Cringely has overlooked the principle of conservation of momentum.

Once each piece of junk lodges permanently in the net - assuming for the moment that the net is a good solution - the whole ensemble will by definition have the total momentum vector that the spacecraft+junk had beforehand. No amount of clever angling will help that.

Now, if he instead said that he was going to bounce off each piece of junk so that the junk was sent into the atmosphere and the spacecraft was also redirected usefully, then that would have been more plausible - except of course that he would then need to make the spacecraft itself pretty damn robust.

No, I'm much more inclined to consider small drones which can drift around with a little ion drive and attach to a few bits of junk each (at near-zero dV), and then deorbit themselves.

Funnily enough, that bag was released in LEO... and will therefore eventually decay of it's own accord. He'll have to be quick if he wants to snatch that up.

The most obvious place to start is Suomenlinna, the Fortress of Finland, which is built on an island complex just outside Helsinki. There's a regular ferry between there and the mainland, and it's big enough to be worth spending at least an entire day there.

The museums there cover everything from pre-1800 (when Finland was part of Sweden rather than Russia) to at least WW2, and many of the 19th-century Russian howitzers are still in position, though unusable.