I made a trip to South Korea last August, and I was on a plane for 14 hours.
It is insane if you think about it. Everything. How large the plane is. The fact that you can travel half way across the world in 14 hours. How you fly through so high that you can only see clouds. How the wings on the airplane just flap back and forth to control the air zipping. How the airplane cuts through the sky. Thirty-thousand feet in the air at speeds no human can dare to ever achieve. Sometimes I think it’s bullshit. How many of the humans in existence ever got to be that high up in the air? How many would kill for the experience?
I’m still in awe of the technology. How there probably so many damn pieces that must all fit together for this airplane to function without error. Every single part and component. Every fundamental discovery on how the electron operates, and how current travels from point A to point B comes to use. Thousands and thousands of capacitors, resistors, and transistors placed by hundreds of engineers. Late hours into the night where the frontiers buckled down and explored uncharted intellectual territories. Countless hours soldering into the night and probably some zaps as well.
When I’m on thee airplane, I thought about how many people that have rode on an airplane before me, and how many will use this technology after me. How much impact technology will have on people’s lives. It will allow, for people like me, to see loved ones that are separated by thousands of miles apart.
I also get scared every time on airplanes. I know that probability wise, it’s highly unlikely I’ll get killed on a plane. The probability is crazy low. But don’t you think that everyone that got killed on a plane thought that way? Or everyone who ever died in a major accident?
“Ah it’s nothing. I’ll be fine. The chances of me dying on an airplane is super-low. Not gonna happen.”
Then bam. Dead.
<To-be-continued, because I don’t have energy =(.>
Economics, delays - probability of a delay? How no one can actually do anything if flights get delayed. Time taken to go somewhere. Energy comparison and consumption on all modes of transportation as a visual, and how much every we’d need for warm holes on plot.
The cheapness of flights. What are the margins per flight ride. How the airline company balance sheets look like.