Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders ID'd in WA plane crash
fox13seattle.com
fox13seattle.com
He took the Earthrise photo, which Nature photographer Galen Rowell described as "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthrise
Circumference is 24,901 - so about 1000 mph at equator.
1000 mph / 3600 s / h = 0.27 mps
0.27 * (1/250) = 0.001 miles?
Doing this math on my phone but am I missing something here?
Earth's orbital speed: 66,200 mph
66,200 mph / 3600 s/h = 18.38 mps
18.38 * (1/250) = 0.07 miles
$ units '2 * pi * earthradius / day * (second / 250)'
Definition: 1.8532517 m
360/86,400=0.0041667deg/sec
0.0041667 * 0.004sec = 000016667degR
circumference:
2pi * 6371km = 40,030km
land covered by rotation:
40,030 / 360 = 111.194km/deg
0.000016667deg × 111.194 km/degree = 0.001854 km
km to m:
0.001854km × 1,000 meters/km = 1.854 meters
more like 0.001 miles. ... oh, woops. I see your answer is in kms.
it was something like 0.46km/s.
$ units "2 * pi * moondist / (27.3 day) * (second / 250)"
Definition: 4.0958765 m
Or if the orbital velocity was 17,000 mph and neglecting the height of the orbit, 17000 / 3600 / 250 = 0.018 miles.
So either way, about 100 feet.
Heh. I'd never read/heard that quote before. But no one's photos have touched me more than Galen Rowell's, so it bears an incredible amount of weight to read.
Thank you for sharing it.
https://www.coquelicot-translation.com/picture-earth-earthri...
Great lyrics
That's a fun listen.
Godspeed, Bill. :salute:
Not sure what would be fitting to be honest.
He's slowly deteriorating from Alzheimers. He won't acknowledge it and has become seriously grumpy. He used to know everyone in his town. He was a good guy. Now, everyone thinks he's an asshole. Everyone who didn't meet him before he started this decline has had a terrible time with him. He curses all the time.
Last week, he forgot to shut off the gas and was found unconscious by the fire department. Now, he will be in a care home against his wishes until the inevitable. This is not the first incident where police had to be phoned, either.
So he's gone from a week liked, active member of the community to being the grumpy old guy that the authorities have to be phoned about in just a couple of years.
I'm going to go see him for a final farewell later this month, I hope he recognises me.
Back in school I had an art teacher whose father went that way, and it was clear that he was extremely traumatized by witnessing that.
My condolences.
I think you’re projecting. I didn’t know him obviously, but from what people who did have said about him, that doesn’t seem like the way he’d go out.
Not that I don't want to live, but I don't fear death and would take the plane crash over wasting in a hospital any day. I have a DNR registered with the health service in my country to make sure that never happens.
also wonder whether a seasoned pilot with lifetime experience, and a space time... screams at challenging times in the air.
If you’re going to die a “fitting” way, it’s going to be because you took your life passion to the extreme.
The risk of dying from a light plane crashing into you while you are on the ground is negligible.
Yeah doesn't work does it.
Or maybe have an aneurysm trying to remember some latex command.
Whatever they liked doing? Being an astronaut at that time implied that he was an aviator. Keeping his licence to fly into the old age of 90 means he most likely loved flying. That is why it is a “fitting way to die”.
I don’t know the cook you mention. Maybe they loved cooking for loved ones. In that case a fitting way to die would be while they are doing that. But maybe it was just their profession, but what made them enjoy their life was watching musicals in the theatre. In that case a fitting way to die would be them dying after watching a great performance on their way out of the theatre.
Maybe it would help if we would contrast this with an “unfitting” way to die? Let’s take the same cook who loves musicals. If she were to try to climb her roof to fix a leak (something she never before professed to care much about) and they slip and fall off the roof. That would be an unfitting way to die.
Dying is probably painfull, scary and confusing in many cases. But the circumstances surrounding it can make it worse or better. Dying in an accident doing something you always hated is worse than dying in an accident doing something you loved.
Dead is dead, though. I do not think the final moments matter as much as all the years before them. So even if I will one day die on the toilet being old, that would be way better, than me dying soon in an climbing accident, even though that sounds more dramatic and I am way more into climbing than toilets.
Exactly.
> It's not real.
"Just because it's made up, doesn't mean it isn't real."
> It’s meant to be illogical.
Not at all. I have a big head, many things can fit into it at the same time. I can experience moderate amount of sadness over this specific person dying at this specific day. (Only a moderate amount because I didn't them personally, and for 90 year old dying is not that remarkable.) And at the same time feel happiness over that he kept flying that long during his life. One can experience both at the same time. If this is illogical to you wait until you taste some sweet and sour sauce.
Well indeed. How many people give up what they love because of the fear that it will kill them? This man kept his love for aviation alive until the end.
Something like cycling down a mountain and dying from a lack of decreasing elevation.
Being an astronaut that went to the moon and a pilot that dies flying at 90 will always and forever be cooler and more impressive than a cook, and most athletes too. I love this reasoning.
Which was how Gagarin died btw.
My mum was very angry with him. From her perspective her dad was “risking his life” doing what he was doing. I tried to gently point out that while she is right that staying in bed would be safer for him, wouldn’t he be one step closer to the grave if he were to give up on his favourite activities?
More than one step closer! Being bedridden is usually the beginning of the end. Once you can’t even get basic exercise done, everything starts to degrade rapidly.
It looks like he maybe only needed another 10 to 50 feet of elevation and would have pulled it off.
About the plane:
"The Beechcraft T-34 Mentor is an American propeller-driven, single-engined, military trainer aircraft derived from the Beechcraft Model 35 Bonanza."
Years ago I was making a video about describing a stone that I found on an Orcas beach, and I was consulting with geologists and biologists. I met at a local cafe with a marine biologist to get her opinion about barnacles on the stone. As we were talking, a man at the next table mentioned that he thought the stone was possibly volcanic. He also said he had a petrologist friend I should talk to.
Nice coincidence. The guy said his name was something-something... I'm not good with names and pretty much forget them instantly.
Later, I'm with the biologist on the beach, looking at barnacles when a P-51 Mustang comes screaming overhead on a low pass over the island. I lived on Orcas and I had never seen that before.
"Oh, that's Bill Anders," said the biologist. "Remember, you met him at the Orcas Hotel cafe. He was on Apollo 8."
That made a lot of sense. The Apollo astronauts were trained field geologists!
I suspect his crash was a suicide. I come from a flying family and this is how pilots commonly fantasize about dying on their own terms.
I wouldn't count on that. Most of us wouldn't do that to the aviation world. Decreases plane availability, especially for something like a T-34 Mentor, increases insurance rates, increases FAA stance on already asinine policies, etc.
occams razor - he misjudged his aerobatics.
If that “error” was intentional, it would be very hard to prove.
It's not really plausible that he misjudged the altitude. His altitude for that maneuver was about 2000 feet lower than it should have been. I've also flown a T-34 (my dad owned one on Orcas Island... I kind of wonder if Bill bought his from Dad) and did some aerobatics around Orcas. We were at much higher altitude.
i only know of two - one was a stolen plane by a mechanic or ground crew, not a pilot. the other was a mass murder, not a fantasized suicide.
The aircraft basically stalled out in a dive, and with no cohesive airflow over the control surfaces, the aircraft continued to stall to the point of impact.
What most likely happened was was a loss of situational awareness in the pre-loop dive, resulting in a steeper and faster dive than intended.
That's just... such a marginal thing. It's like complaining your supercomputer melted because the CPU got 0.1C too hot. Like - it's technically possible, but if it's that close you were already way way way past safe and sane margins.
There's control lockup, where the aircraft is flying so fast that the mass flow of air over the control surfaces is so high that the controls "lock in place" or "get stiff", meaning the force you can apply to your rudder stick in the cockpit isn't enough to overcome the forces acting upon the control surfaces.
Then there's control compression, where the airflow around the wing is so fast that the local airflow around the airfoil becomes supersonic (aircraft as a whole is still subsonic) and detaches after the point of maximum airfoil thickness, leaving no laminar flos for the control surfaces to work with. This will feel different in the cockpit, instead of the controls becoming stiff they get loose but no control authority is achieved because your control surfaces are in fully turbulent flow.
Both of these phenomenon were a big issue in WW2 during dive attacks, since enocuntering or even going beyond the max aircraft speed was common during dive attacks, you wouldn't be able to pull out of the dive and go straight into the ground at very high speed. Either of these could've been an issue for Anders.
TLDW: the likely cause of the crash was low-level aerobatic maneuvering at an altitude of 700 to 1,000 ft, which is too low for such maneuvers. The pilot may have attempted a split S maneuver (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Split_S - aileron roll followed by a half loop) without getting the nose up high enough, ending up too low. It appears that the pilot had control of the airplane on the video, it wasn't stalled.
Besides making history as the first human expedition to the Moon, Apollo 8 produced not one, but two future CEOs of Fortune 500 companies: Anders (General Dynamics) and Frank Borman (Eastern Airlines). Jim Lovell "merely" survived Apollo 13.
Also as a WA native: screw those DC assholes, why are we the only state that have to append "state" to our name?
(Also, New York has to append “state” too.)
Rest in peace: https://www.instagram.com/reel/C8K9qAIy770/?igsh=MzRlODBiNWF...
Godspeed.
Many of the best partiers I know are on the spectrum.
Now picking on a particular model distinction or something like that I could get on board with.
What kind of pilot would be taken seriously if they mix up such a basic aspect of professional knowledge? Jets and prop planes are very different beasts.
I can't think of any job where you can just casually mix up different classes of objects and not eventually have it result in some significant failure.
"Why did you feed the mules and not the horses?" "Don't be so autistic. I bet you're a blast a parties"
"Why did you give me cheeseburgers? The customer ordered plain burgers." "Don't be so autistic. I bet you're a blast at parties"
Yes, being specific about the things you work with is generally a sign that someone is good at their job, but it generally doesn't have much to do with autism. But I guess being condescending is what makes a good cocktail party companion?
A turbine engine may be a jet engine or it may not in the case of a turboprop.
Jet aircraft use jet propulsion not propeller propulsion.
A jet gets significant thrust from exhaust gases, a turboprop gets almost none from exhaust gases, some turboprops actually are reversed intake in the rear pushing exhaust out the front like the PT6.
Turbofans are considered jet propulsion as the both the exhaust gas and fan gas are pushing though an exhaust orifice rather than the fan being in open air as is the case with a turbo-prop.
- first crewed flight of the Saturn V.
- first crewed spacecraft to leave Earth's orbit.
- first crewed spacecraft to enter Lunar orbit.
- first humans to see the far side of the moon.
- most watched (at the time) live TV broadcast.
Those guys had balls of steel, and I'll be pouring one out on the stoop for Bill Anders and the crew later today in memory.
I am not taking anything away from William Anders but 91 might have been just too old to be responsibly flying a jet.
Not a jet. The T-34 is a propeller aircraft, used for training.
Some gas turbines drive a propeller (turboprop).
Its hard to describe how I feel about it, its just so deep and profound...
Consciousness itself, as apart from the behavior and computation that goes on in the brain, is a mystery of neuroscience. So maybe somehow it persists after we die? NDEs kinda shed light on that
RIP up in the stars man
As far as I can see all you can explain is that its there, but can't understand why, which suggests its transcendent over what we can see and measure
And what we can see in terms of the physical world is not proof that there isn't more to existence
Take the plant that gains sustenance from the sun and the earth, yet the fact that it has no faculties of perception that allows it to understand those processes is not proof that they don't exist
So perhaps we are like plants in a greater universe? Again, NDE's (near death experiences) are also suggestive of this
And also looking at how Baha'i taught equality of women / men, and the need for independent investigation of truth, and dedicating one's self to helping the poor etc... coming from 19th century Persia that was pretty barbaric and fanatical where women couldn't even show their faces in public much less get educated, and where plundering each other and favoritism was literally the primary engine for their economy... kinda shows that perhaps there is insight in the original Baha'i teachers
Its good to keep an open mind about stuff, and recognize that knowledge of all kinds is only tentative
All of us are finite and ignorant
Perhaps we can someday identify physical artifacts of conscious awareness, but how does that explain the root of conscious awareness? There is a difference between that and showing that conscious awareness is physically plausible, and perhaps even likely, according to experiment alone as opposed to our own personal experiences
Perhaps if we understood more about the brain, that would open our eyes to something we cannot even imagine today that would shed light on this issue
Perhaps science alone has capabilities that are more profound that we can see today, in being able to delve into such issues?
we can measure and calculate the effect, but we can't explain it. at least some attempts to explain it call for particles like gravitons that haven't been found yet. this seems to me just like looking for pixie dust to explain consciousness.
that can only be true if our consciousness does indeed survive. because if we are not conscious of who we are and what we learned during our life on earth then what would be the point of reflecting and meeting others there?
Not only by religions; also by Philip José Farmer in his Riverworld series of SF novels.
Flying is a specialized skill, but once you learn it it’s not especially difficult and requires less sustained focus, reflexes and reaction time than driving.
It’s not as if there’s any chance you’ll run over a 6-year-old who jumps out in front of your plane at 7,500 feet.
Respectfully disagree (as a 40-something year old aerobatic pilot) with the less sustained focus part, not the specialized skill part.
The average flight deck is a hell of a lot more complicated than the average driver's seat in terms of things the operator needs to pay attention to, so I'd definitely say that flying requires more sustained focus. However, during routine flight (not counting taking off and landing, because I know those are very high workload periods?) pilots have a lot more time and space than drivers do to recover from a situation before it becomes a catastrophic failure, especially when it comes to danger to others outside the vehicle. So I'd also say that driving on average requires better reflexes and reaction times to prevent accidents.
Take collisions for example; as GP alluded to, a driver's window to recognise and start responding to a developing problem is often mentioned in fractions of a second or a few whole seconds at best, because they can come out of practically nowhere. On the other hand, my impression of warning systems like TCAS and EGPWS is that the pilot has several seconds or more to start responding to the initial warning and still safely execute an avoidance/escape manoeuvre.
Technology is increasingly mitigating these risks, but as of now, they contribute to general aviation being significantly more risky, statistically, to its participants than driving, even when taking into account the prevalence of bad driving. On the other hand, it is considerably less dangerous to non-participants than driving is.
I am aware of this (and as I already said this is why piloting requires greater focus), but I don't see how that changes the fact that there actually is a transition that takes a heck of a lot longer than going from a completely safe (given all available information and proper operation) to a completely unsafe situation takes on the road.
Furthermore, I feel you did not fully comprehend what I was trying to say here, which is that there are certain scenarios where, if you have partially lost this "focus", you can suddenly find yourself in a situation where an immediate response of the correct kind (and one which is sometimes profoundly counter-intuitive, as in spatial disorientation) is required. The transition may have taken some time (not necessarily "a heck of a lot longer", though), but when this has occurred without the pilot being aware of the developing situation, then in practice it is no different than the sort of road situations you are thinking of.
Note that this is not a claim that the cruise phase of a flight is just as prone to sudden surprises as any phase of driving; it is a explanation that equivalently startling scenarios, without any perceived transition period (and perception is what matters), can arise in the cruise phase of flight (and that's even if we exclude sudden equipment failure.)
And I'd flip it and say that you don't understand what I'm trying to say, which is that while flying routinely you would have to lose focus in order to end up in a situation where you are blindsided by a signal and need to act on it immediately, while when you are driving routinely you can be doing everything completely right and be paying the utmost attention and still need to react near-instantaneously to prevent disaster on a routine basis.
In fact, bringing up sudden equipment failure just sort of reinforces my point. The response to the vast majority of failures, even stuff as critical as an uncontained engine failure, is not to fast-twitch take some reflexive action, it's to work through a checklist (even memory items are still a checklist) to be sure you're actually taking the right action - and there are tolerances built into both internal and external systems to give pilots time to do that.
Or to put it another way, flying prioritises a slower and more methodical approach to operation than driving does - prioritises conscious over unconscious decision-making. I think this article by a pilot (https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/1994/june/pilot...) explains my point quite a bit better than I can.
What I am saying is an addendum to that broad point: situations do generally develop more slowly in the cruise stage of flight, but in those cases where they develop without the pilot being aware of that happening (which they can, and do in a small but not trivial number of cases), then they can present a situation requiring a near-instantaneous reaction to avoid disaster (if that opportunity has not already passed.)
By excluding takeoffs and landings, you are, of course, stacking the deck towards your point, especially if you take this to include flying in congested terminal airspace, particularly in IMC. By the time we exclude cases where the pilots are not doing everything right (and we had better exclude cases where other pilots, ATC and other external persons whose actions or failure to act could create a dangerous situation, and mechanical or systems failures that affect airplane controlability or structural integrity - all of these have led to disasters or near disasters), we have a point that is well-nigh unassailable, but bearing little relevance to the question of why airplanes crash.
The same goes for the linked article: it is is mostly right but there are exceptions. Given that it is from AOPA, I think it is worth noting that the aphorism (as stated from time to time by general aviation pilots) that "the most dangerous part of flying is driving to the airport" is statistically false for general aviation itself (it may well be true for airline flight in many parts of the world.)
Let's see, a pilot flying in the yellow hits turbulence followed by a wind shear, and pulls up...
Some people were asking about the details, so maybe this will show what went wrong.
Don’t run out of gas and don’t tangle with weather beyond the ability of the airplane and pilot, and you cut out around 60% of the risk.
has anyone made an updated version?
"The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision."
According to the FAA airman registry he was flying on BasicMed (less strict than third class, but comes with loss of certain privileges).
WILLIAM ALISON ANDERS
Airman opted-out of releasing address Medical Information: Medical Class: Third Medical Date: 10/2013 MUST HAVE AVAILABLE GLASSES FOR NEAR VISION. NOT VALID FOR ANY CLASS AFTER 10/31/2014. BasicMed Course Date: 3/22/2023 BasicMed CMEC Date: 3/22/2023 Certificates
"Old guy crashes airplane" is a somewhat common occurrence that leads to obvious question if they really should have passed their medical. There's a tendency to not want to be the one to say no, especially if you've known the doctor signing the forms for decades... or if you were a fricken astronaut.
not screaming in terror like his passengers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beechcraft_T-34_Mentor#Civilia...
I hope to be 91 myself one day - nevertheless, I remain suspicious.
From the Los Angeles Times, 1988 <http://articles.latimes.com/1988-12-08/news/vw-1384_1_speake...>:
>Woody Allen was once asked what he would like people to say about him 100 years from now. He said: "I would like them to say, 'He looks good for his age.'"
I wouldn’t be surprised if he was in very good mental+physical condition though. The crash might have nothing to do with age.
And even with BasicMed, your primary doctor has to certify that you are fit to fly. It's less rigorous than a full FAA flight medical by design, but it's not a rubber stamp. (You're also limited to smaller aircraft that are unlikely to do much damage on the ground.)
Lots of old pilots in the general aviation community are on BasicMed.
https://www.faa.gov/sites/faa.gov/files/data_research/resear...
What gives you this idea?
>no knowledge of any particular reports.
Correct
>every possible red flag
Hahaha, believe whatever you want to believe. What possible motivation could I have to make this up?
I mean I asked about this, and at best you are playing coy games by kinda-sorta implying knowledge without owning it when specifically asked.
>Hahaha, believe whatever you want to believe. What possible motivation could I have to make this up?
I can only say I'm profoundly disappointed on how this response reflects on your information literacy.
But then again, if it’s someone’s own plane and there’s little risk to anyone but themself, then maybe fire in. But wow should the insurance be through the roof.
Until we properly take care of our elders, I don't know what else they can do.
Meals On Wheels, et alia are saviours, imho.
In all likelihood he hadn’t had a physical in 8 years. He still would have had to have passed one in his eighties, but he probably hadn’t had an FAA exam in a while.
Source: I’m a private pilot and my dad in his 60s is as well, he flies on BasicMed because he hates going to the doc.
Edit: someone actually had mentioned BasicMed a few minutes before I started typing, but I’ll leave my comment up.
This is also a matter of public record, you can look up exactly what medical class he's operating under and when his last physical exam was on the FAA website. There no need to speculate.
Edit: I just looked it up. He had his last BasicMed physical from his primary doc last year, so he was current.
Yes, you could lie... but the documentation for the physical is part of your logbook and subject to audit. If I were a CFI, I would be checking that before signing off anyone's BFR. You can't really get away with this for long.
My memory may be faulty ... I offer this in case someone knows better.
it's worth keeping in mind that the sky is a big place. so is the ground when you're not driving a car. it's not a great idea to keep flying in your 90s, but it's extremely unlikely that anyone gets hurt who didn't choose to be in the plane.