Thunderstorm Radiation?

Interesting: http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/12/flying_through.php

If I’m flying through a thunderstorm, radiation is the last freaking thing I’m worrying about! It’s the little things, like having part of the airplane come off, that make me sweat.

The last sentence says it all:

Just more reason for me to keep my carbon footprint low by making a greater effort to find cosmic experiences right here in my hometown.

In other words, this sounds like more junk science to me. Just like the scare mongers who claim cell phones will fry our brains or those who say living near high power electrical lines will kill us.

Come on, now! Planes are made of many hundreds of parts. Does it really matter if one or two parts come off? :slight_smile:

I guess not. Happens every time we come out of maintenance. Walking through he cabin and find a couple of screws, washers, locknuts, etc…We have a drawer in the galley that’s full of these parts!

I now tell the service center that if they have any left over pieces/parts after the airplane goes back together…they can keep’em, because I don’t want to know about it. :open_mouth: :exclamation:

I think it’d be worth some more testing and analysis. The premise that significant amounts of ionizing radiation occur around thunderstorms is based on real facts and physics. For example, high-altitude sprites have been explained as an effect of radiation cast upward by the electrical discharge below. I don’t know how serious it is, i.e. how large the doses would be at what distance. For example, could you get that “400 chest X-rays” dose by flying in a commercial airliner straight over the top of a modest sized system? How much of a dose would you get if the crew diverted 20mi around it?

The dippy author clearly doesn’t have access to useful information on radiation or severe storms, nor the capacity to understand it.

It’s all good until some guy gets hit in the head with a flap track fairing while mowing his lawn…

:open_mouth: Losing parts in a thunderstorm? Are you kidding?
Cmon guys…where have you all been…

Of course…this doesnt happen to a beechcraft. :wink:

Or a tail cone.

Hey Will, what’s a conservative Texan kid like you looking at sites like treehugger.com for?? Don’t you know stuff like that will make you go blind?

Probably for the same reason I look at liberal sites. I want to know both sides of an issue before I decide what to think about something. In other words, I think it’s plain stupid to make up your mind about something unless you know all sides of the story.

Fox News tells me every side of a story I need to know.

I wonder if the Navy needed the part falling in this photo:
flightaware.com/photos/view/5651 … bsize=full

I hope I was able to make “this” as a link.

On stuff like that I can tell what is right and wrong.(for the most part) So when I read something wrong, I just don’t believe it.

What is that? A gear door? And it looks like a CG aircraft - similar to this one performing a rescue demonstration:

I know will, I’m just giving you a hard time. Still, the last place I’d expect you to start quoting information is from some Gore-ish website. And I’m not serious about the fox news quip either - I get my news from various media outlets - from Nat’l Enquirer to USWeekly.

I know. All cool. :smiley:

A Navy T-39?

Yeah you’re right. The original is a navy craft - the other one is a different jet.

I am impressed that you could tell it was a T-39. To me, it could have been the space shuttle in that shot. Here is a photo taken less than a minute earlier. The part is somewhere near the Huddle House parking lot!
flightaware.com/photos/view/5651 … 047dc1dd42

What is that door hanging down in beech’s picture, at least I think it is a door. If the nose gear goes forward, and the mains come toward each other, it can’t be a landing gear bay???