First Pat looks into recent news about Michael Rapaport’s mile high heroics and asks “could someone really open an airplane door mid flight?” Next the crew introduces a new crossover podcast with Stuart Robbins called “5 minutes with an astronomer” with an episode about parallax. Subscribe and leave a review! Last, Adam looks into headlines that the United States is the 10th most dangerous country to be a woman.
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Open A Plane Door Mid Flight?
Fortune: Open Airplane Door Mid Flight
Nat Geo: Airplane Door Mid Flight
Live Science: Open Door Mid Flight
Gizmodo: Flush Toilet On Airplane
5 Minutes With An Astronomer
The U.S 10th Most Dangerous Country To Be A Woman?
The world’s most dangerous countries for women 2018 – Thomson Reuters Foundation
Experts say U.S. among 10 most dangerous nations for women – CBS News
India the most dangerous country to be a woman, US ranks 10th in survey – CNN
After listening to your segment about toilets on airliners, I must confess that I regularly peed into the sky while flying over the southwest USA.
Yes, it’s true. My urine went directly into the sky while flying over California, Arizona and Oregon.
It was 1972 and I was a student in USAF navigator training assigned to Mather AFB in Sacramento, CA. We flew in the T-29 trainer airplane (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convair_C-131_Samaritan). The “relief” facility for urine was a bowl-shaped receptacle located on the aft bulkhead of the passenger cabin. The drain from the collecting bowl led directly to a small, red-painted pipe that protruded from the underside of the fuselage. What went in the top, came out the bottom…
We were prohibited from using the “relief tube” on the ground.
Feces were collected in a plastic bag that lined the primitive, no-flush toilet also located at the rear of the cabin. In the 20 training missions I flew, I never saw that system used.
I suspect that “facilities” like those installed in the T-29 were not uncommon in airplanes built during the era of propeller powered aircraft. They were simple and highly effective for their purpose. They also reflected an attitude that is still shared by many, “The solution to pollution is dilution.”
Truth to tell, I wasn’t concerned about using this equipment. Even though my wife and child lived below our flight path, vaporizing 6 ounces of pee at 18,000 feet didn’t seem to me to present a hazard to my loved ones.
BTW, if you’re upset about this practice, it’s probably best that you not research what happened when people flushed the toilets when riding aboard a train.
Thanks for this, Larry. I’d say I’m not terribly surprised to hear of your experience. Having spent a fair amount of my youth in a van as a touring musician, sometimes you need to get creative 😉 Alright… I’m off to research what happened when people flushed the toilets when riding on a train!