BAMBAM BlackBird

Space travel. The last frontier. From mystical dreams to conspiracy theories, space has held the awe and attention of people world-wide ever since the space race began. As these dreams start to become more attainable, commercial space tourism became a rapidly growing industry in the hopes that there would be an ease of traveling to the moon as there is to go to the bus stop and get across town. While we now see how far space travel has come, to truly understand it, we must understand where it comes from. Peter Wainwright, who discusses the long and somewhat bumpy past of commercial space travel, has recorded several of noteworthy events along the space travel quest. In my opinion, one of the first major accomplishments was “First of a series of papers on 2STO HTOL vehicles for space tourism published by David Ashford of Bristol Spaceplanes in England” (Wainwright, n.d.). This event shows that the science community was taking the possible space tourism industry more seriously. This wa...

UAVs have begone a new era of transportation and thrill seeking in the civilian world. While there are now toys and camera drones for the fun seeking drone user, there are also starting to show a more commercial application. These drones come in handy when the operation would be dangerous for humans to undertake and by using a drone, the operator can cut down on time, costs, and man power for the job at hand. According to Divya Joshi, a business enthusiast holding an MBA and working on her masters, commercial drone usage has expanded to include: “Aerial photography for journalism and film, Express shipping and delivery, Gathering information or supplying essentials for disaster management, Thermal sensor drones for search and rescue operations, Geographic mapping of inaccessible terrain and locations, Building safety inspections, Precision crop monitoring, Unmanned cargo transport, Law enforcement and border control surveillance, Storm tracking and forecasting hurricanes and tornad...

The Colgan air accident that occurred in 2009 spurred a new push for changing flight and duty hours. It was believed and revealed that the flight and duty hours, as well as the safety culture of the regionals at the time, were huge contributors to the cause of the tragedy. Some of the changes include clarifying “Fit for duty” to having pilots sign paperwork affirming they are “fit for duty” and placing more clear-cut methods of solving the issue. Another change was giving reserve pilots a 10-hour rest period instead of the older method of 1 day every week. A third change is a little smaller but no less important. A pilot is required to have a “10-hour rest period with at least 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep” vs “a rest period of 9 hours that can be reduced to 8 hours” (Houston, 2017). These are just some of the changes from the new flight and duty regulations. The current flight and duty limitations for cargo carriers are “during any 24 consecutive hours the total flight time of t...