Hasta La Gadget!

Ben Huh is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Cheezburger. He will be speaking at Expand NYC this November.

Unidentified internet humor company founder planking during a flight.

Plenty of people travel more miles than I do, but in 2012, I spent 171 days on the road. 2013 so far? 120 days. When I started Cheezburger, I didn’t expect to travel this much, but my role has increasingly become chief evangelist, recruiter and promoter.

Technology’s impact on travel can be felt every step of the way, starting with weight-saving undergarments to the constellation of GPS satellites we take for granted watching over us. Everyone is used to complaining about air travel: Food is terrible (if there is any); the TSA is getting worse; seats feel smaller; we’ve suffered a string of computer-system-generated delays; horrific crash photos make the rounds on social media like wildfire; and airlines are charging fees, fees, everywhere.

Having traveled intensively pre- and post-9/11, the air-travel experience has actually gotten much better. Yet we live by the Louis C.K. Rule: Everything’s amazing, and nobody is happy. Let me count the ways from front door to hotel door.

Filed under: Transportation

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What you see here is some of the best footage shot from the front and back mounted cameras on one of the P-3B aircraft that runs NASA’s IceBridge missions. These vistas are from the spring mission over Greenland and the Arctic, but NASA’s going back for more this fall.

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Fact: turbulence is no fun at all. Aside from the brief moments of bone-deep terror it can cause passengers, clear air turbulence (CAT) can also prove costly for airlines in terms of damages. To help pilots deal with difficult-to-spot areas where CAT is likely to occur, the German Aerospace Center (DLR) is spearheading a new joint European project known as DELICAT. Essentially, the DELICAT program calls for planes to be equipped with a light detection and ranging instrument (LIDAR) that emits short-wave ultraviolet lasers. Radiation then bounces off oxygen and nitrogen particles in the air, indicating fluctuations in air density that signal the presence of CAT pockets. Until the end of August, the DLR will run test flights in a specially modified Cessna Citation plane to both show off LIDAR’s capabilities and to give researchers invaluable data on CAT patterns. Though the system is still in its infancy, the folks at the DLR hope that the technology will one day become a standard part of commercial air travel.

Filed under: Misc, Transportation

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Via: Gizmodo

Source: German Aerospace Center

You may remember the urban legend that claimed that American Airlines saved $70,000 per year by simply removing one olive from each of its salads. It sounds too good to be true, since the airline made a change that passengers wouldn’t notice that would save thousands of dollars. However, United Airlines is making a similar breakthrough that isn’t an urban legend.

United Airlines has installed split scimitar winglets to its Boeing 737-800 plane and took it for a test flight. It was a successful run and the airline has decided to implement the winglets on all of their Boeing 737 planes. The winglets are designed to improve aerodynamic efficiency by routing air around it, thus cutting down on drag and using less fuel.

Boeing says this will cut fuel costs by 2% when factoring in only the 737 fleet, but along with their Boeing 757 and 767 fleet (who already have last-generation winglets installed), United Airlines says this will save them $200 million per year in fuel costs. That’s an incredible savings for just a little bit of added metal to the airplane wing (although that isn’t counting the money spent on R&D for the new winglet).

Of course, winglets have been around for awhile now, and several airlines use them, but this new split scimitar winglet is said to be much improved over the current models, providing even more efficiency. The winglets essentially add another fin to the plane’s wing that faces downward, adding to the current winglet that points upward on the plane. The added winglet further reduce the vortices formed behind the wing, which increases performance even more than just having the upward-pointing winglets.

The new winglets will begin to roll out to the Boeing 737 United fleet starting at some point early next year, as further testing is still needed, as well as approval and certification from the FAA is still underway.

SOURCE: United Airlines

United Airlines Boeing 737 fleet getting new winglets to cut fuel costs by millions is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.

In another streak of bad luck for Boeing, the first of the 50 or so 787 Dreamliners was cleared to fly again by the FAA. The Ethiopian Airlines 787 successfully completed a test flight the first time around, but it seems trouble struck again, as a fire broke out on the plane at London’s Heathrow airport. Luckily, no passengers were on board.

Boeing is obviously aware of the issue and has provided an official statement on their Twitter account, saying that they’re “aware of the 787 event…and have Boeing personnel there.” The company is currently “working to fully understand and address this.” The cause of the fire is currently unknown at this point, but it’s said that the situation is similar to that of what happened at Boston’s Logan airport when the planes first started catching on fire.

This is obviously terrible news for Boeing, and it seems like a incredibly bad luck on their part. Again, the cause of the fire is currently unknown, but we have no reason to not believe that the fire could’ve been cause by another failed battery. The 787 was initially grounded by the FAA back in January after problems with the battery caused fires on several of the planes.

From the photos taken by onlookers, there doesn’t appear to be any noticeable damage to the outside of the plane, although you can clearly see fire-retardant foam covering the ground around the plane. It’s possible that the fire was concealed inside of the aircraft where the battery compartment is located.

Arrivals and departures were temporarily suspended at Heathrow while emergency crews attended to the situation, but Heathrow officials recently lifted the suspension after the situation was brought to control. At the time, the 787 was parked on a remote parking stand, so it was out of the way for the most part.

VIA: BBC

IMAGE CREDIT: Boeing

Boeing 787 Dreamliner catches fire after being cleared to fly again is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.