Story time. In the last total eclipse, I was commuting from Boston to San Francisco a bunch and planned my flight to coincide with the path of totality. I brought enough eclipse glasses for the entire flight. The flight attendants were kind enough to distribute them and even gave them to the pilot and copilot. The flight crew was excited about it and actually got approval a change to their flight plan so that they could bank the plane so that people on both sides of the plane could actually look out the window to see the eclipse. This is back in the days of Virgin America, and as a thank you they sent me a little desk statue of a Virgin America plane. I keep it on my desk in fond memory of my favorite airline. Also got some cool photos of the flight crew and passengers all wearing eclipse glasses. (https://mackman.net/va.jpg)
Banking the plane for people to see is a safety thing.
If people think they won't get a chance to see, they might all crowd to one side of the plane, causing enough weight imbalance so as to cause a crash.
It's a big problem on boats, and there are countless stories of someone on a crowded boat seeing a dolphin, shouting about it, everyone crowds to one side to get closer, and the whole boat capsizes.
Regulations now require that boats stay afloat if everyone stands on one side, but the regulations aren't perfectly adhered to and that still doesn't prevent people crowding to one side enough to push/knock others overboard.
Side to side weight balance of passengers is not a major factor in any plane I have ever read the manual for. They are too close to the centerline to impart much force. The pilots might notice it and trim it out, but I doubt they would have to do anything beyond that. Fore and aft balance is critical, but still unlikely to be an issue with passengers at cruise speed since the elevator has a lot of control authority at 500mph.
A 737 can fly fine with a completely empty wing tank on one side and a completely full wing tank on the other. The wing tanks of some models can carry 4,500 kgs of fuel in each side, so that amounts to a 9,000 kg imbalance outboard of the fuselage. That is the equivalent of about 111 "standard" passengers' weight on the wing that can be handled with trim alone, and 737s are capable of safely landing in that configuration.
Boats are different because as they heal farther and farther the righting moment diminishes (for conventional monohull powercraft at least), and the passengers are able to get all the way to the extreme.
Planes on the other hand have the same "righting moment" no matter how far over they bank since it is a function of airflow over control surfaces rather than buoyancy and gravity.
It's a math/engineering joke. A control system is considered unstable if there is a pole (a mathematical singularity, not Polish person) on the right side of the plane (the complex plane of the Laplace transform of its closed loop transfer function, not an airplane).
>> causing enough weight imbalance so as to cause a crash.
So I was on a flight from London to Vancouver, which had us approaching Vancouver from the north. It was December but a sunny day. Half the passengers were on ski holidays. We had to delay our arrival a while so the pilot said he was going to bank the plane to the left and do a circle, which would put the Whistler-Blackcomb ski resort in view out the left side. In unison, seatbelts be damned, everyone on the right of the plane got up and moved left to get pictures. About half-way through the turn, the pilot came back: "Um, we felt that up here. When you return to your seats can you please do so slowly, at least slower than how fast you moved to the left." Pre-9/11 was a simpler time.
I took a sightseeing flight around Mt Everest (within the last year). The flight crew explicitly told everyone to move to one side of the plane while we were in the air.
I doubt everyone moving side to side when the plane isn’t taking off or landing is going to automatically cause a crash.
Not a crash, but having a few thousand pounds of cargo shift from side to side will be noticed. But what can actually cause a crash is moving front-to-back. Shift 200 people, say 40,000lbs of cargo, front to back can disrupt the cg enough to cause real trouble.
>If people think they won't get a chance to see, they might all crowd to one side of the plane, causing enough weight imbalance so as to cause a crash.
Flight plan approval was because controllers and airlines are expecting you to travel on a straight line between points, and not fly circles unexpectedly in controlled airspace.
> everyone crowds to one side to get closer, and the whole boat capsizes.
Sounds like it might be something that they should tell people about, I guess they don't because when there's enough people in an airplane people either tend to (1) behave according to rules or (2) just not be a significant amount of people to cause the plane to {{do funny things}}.
...but in any case, I can imagine being a pilot and hoping/trying to/prayin for people to stay in their seat regardless of whatever is happening outside...
That's a great story. I was on a flight during the eclipse of 2021. It was hard to see the eclipse from the plane, you had to lie down on the floor and look up thru the window. You were very lucky for the pilot to bank the plane.
Anyway, stories like this where strangers help everyone around them experience something great always warm my heart. Kudos to you!
Paula Poundstone: Pshk - people on the left... We HATE the people on the right. We are purposefully flying so you guys see all the cool stuff out your window...
Any worry about counterfeit glasses? I recall during the last eclipse it was a bit tricky: product detail pages would often list some ISO numbers or whatever, but no reason to trust that, so instead you could find a short list of manufacturer names on some highly reputable website (maybe a government or health site?) but then don't use Amazon due to the commingling problem...
Because of commingling, anything shipped by amazon might be a fake, even if the seller is legit. Basically if two people (claim to) sell the same product, they get thrown in the same bin in Amazon's warehouse. When you order it you get whatever the worker happens to pick from that bin. Amazon can track it internally by the labels, but have little inclination to do so.
Yeah, I did worry. I told the flight crew people were at their own risk. I don't remember where I bought them from. Might have been B&H photo which sells their own branded ones in bags of 100 cheap. Maybe from aas.org. It's been a long time.
Their return policy isn't great by any means. I buy a $2000 49" Monitor that arrives not working and I can't return it because I opened and tried to turn it on? Yeah, ok.
Opened TVs, combos and monitors 37" and larger — original packaging cannot be unsealed
Opened computers and computer software — original packaging cannot be unsealed
Electronic software downloads
Opened consumable items (e.g., film, tapes, paper, bulbs, CD, DVDs, ink cartridges, etc.)
Any computers built or modified by B&H to customer specifications
Select special-order merchandise, or any item indicated on the website as nonreturnable
Underwater equipment that has been submerged
Opened or unwrapped educational tapes and books
> A US Labor Department lawsuit filed in 2016 accused B&H, the largest non-chain photo and video equipment store in New York City, of heavily discriminating against Hispanic employees by forcing them to use separate, unsanitary bathrooms.
Man, I had no idea. Forcing an ethnic group to use separate bathrooms? Whoever thought that was a good idea?
> Their return policy isn't great by any means. I buy a $2000 49" Monitor that arrives not working and I can't return it because I opened and tried to turn it on? Yeah, ok.
I know some consumer protection laws aren’t as strong as others – I’m blessed to live in Australia in this regard – but surely this just isn’t legal?
Which is bad, from a consumer protection perspective.
The retailer should absolutely be on the hook. They are the ones with a working relationship with the manufacturer, and hence are best positioned to be able to hold the manufacturer accountable.
As an Australian who lives in the US atm, they are right to be grateful for the ACCC (consumer protection watchdog). I certainly am now. In the US you have to rely on retailers who treat good consumer protection as a competitive advantage like Costco, REI, Best Buy, sometimes Amazon, etc. In Australia you can easily hold any retailer accountable (and they’re all just generally better behaved with this stuff anyway, so you rarely have to force them).
> In the US you have to rely on retailers who treat good consumer protection as a competitive advantage
For the most part, credit card chargebacks serve a similar purpose, though of course the retailer may ban you from their store afterwards.
Absolutely agreed that the retailer is on the hook. The customer is not making a deal with the manufacturer to buy the good; the customer is making a deal with the retailer. Along the same line, I dislike it when retailers try to weasel out of shipping issues by blaming it on the parcel carrier. That's only valid if the customer went to ups.com and created and paid for a shipment themselves!
Bestbuy etc take opened items like that back up to 30 days. I think it used to be much longer in the past but I would 100% expect to be able to return a dead tv/monitor/electronic of any sort to a big box store take my broken item back even if I opened it and plugged it in to use it.
I rarely buy from box stores but when I do that and being able to test things in person is the only reason I ever go near a bestbuy/etc.
Opened software such as Microsoft Office, Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows Server, and Microsoft Windows Server clients
Electronic software downloads
Point of Sale Activation Cards that have a dollar value
Micro Center Gift Cards (except as required by law)
Products with customer-induced damage such as, but not limited to, aerial drones with damage due to pilot error. So let’s be careful out there!
Microphones and microphone accessories *
VR Headsets, Headphones, including AirPods, Earbuds, and Over-the-Ear Products
* Hardware items deemed defective are eligible for exchange
newegg shipped me six 16TB hard drives that were garbage. Some looked like a claw hammer ripped through their soft aluminum shells. Some had no connectors.
I actually just did some clicking through from the AAS vendor list that smashed offered, and B&H certainly has a strong entry in the reputable-and-cheap category! Less than $1/ea [0].
You might have to if they look sufficiently weird on the scan. But your end of the conversation is unlikely to be much more involved than "Yeah, that's my bag", "It's a bunch of eclipse viewing glasses".
I once brought a carry on full of random electronics/cables, including a partially disassembled desktop power supply in a "custom made modular plastic enclosure" (read: box made out of Legos, complete with a Lego door for the cables to pass through). To make matters worse I was in a rush while packing so the cables were a huge tangled mess.
They flagged it for further inspection, unsurprisingly, but the agent was pretty amicable, I didn't really get any grief
Hah, well, yeah. I did learn in high school that if brought Starbucks to the front office staff and my first period teacher nobody ever marked me tardy :-P
I know you're being snarky, but yes. Having money and being genuinely generous towards people will put you on good terms with them. Just like being nice and polite and friendly and considerate, same thing.
If you can be on the ground in the path of totality, I highly recommend it. Especially go someplace with more nature. The birds and bugs will change their behavior as totality happens. Very cool experience that really tickles basic human instincts.
Agreed! Last eclipse turned me into an umbraphile. I’ve had friends since the 2017 American eclipse say things like “I’m in an area with ~80% - 90% of totality.”
It literally isn’t the same thing at all. The moment of totality is just unreal and has me wanting to chase total eclipses.
Awhile back, I argued to our school district to move spring break for 2024 in order for families to potentially travel for this year’s total eclipse (I live in California), but they wouldn’t consider it. Sadly, I’ll miss it this year.
Also, think for a moment how crazy this is: our moon is exactly the right size to cover the sun exactly (coupled with being exactly far enough away) that we can see this beautiful ring of fire with flares emanating from the sides during the moment of totality.
Absolutely, we saw the eclipse in rural oregon, near Bend, and it was life changing. I still remember the moment quite vividly and I totally got why people chase eclipses all around the world.
My parents home is almost directly in the very center of the totality. The kids will miss that day and the next as we drive 10 hours back home. Definitely looking forward to it and glad they are in grade school so there is no concern about the trade offs of their school assignments to the experience.
I am taking kids out of school for a few days and driving 13 hours to a cabin that I rented on a lake on the centerline. It helps that my 40th birthday is within a couple days of the eclipse.
So our local school board is closing schools for the day - but check out how they communicated it:
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On Monday, April 8, a total solar eclipse will cross North America, passing over southern Ontario. The City of Hamilton is expected to experience a deep partial solar eclipse, with the timing of this event presenting a concern for school dismissal. The solar eclipse will begin at approximately 2 p.m. and end around 4:30 p.m.
A total solar eclipse happens when the moon passes between the sun and earth, completely blocking the face of the sun. The sky will darken as if it were dawn or dusk. These events can pose potential risks and severe damage to eyesight if proper precautions are not taken. Viewing the sun directly during an eclipse can permanently damage the retina's light-sensitive cells.
In addition to the physical risks associated with directly viewing the solar eclipse, a period of increased darkness will occur. The peak period of darkness (referred to as the mid-eclipse) will occur at approximately 3:20 p.m. This aspect of the eclipse can present safety concerns for students, staff and families during dismissal time.
Hamilton Public Health Services (HPHS) understands that there are significant risks associated with the unprotected viewing of the solar eclipse and is supportive of HWDSB’s desire to mitigate potential risks. Shifting the P.A. Day is a proactive measure to support the safety and well-being of students, staff and families.
HPHS is working with HWDSB to provide information for families and staff regarding safety considerations. These resources will be shared closer to the P.A. Day on Monday, April 8.
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I sent them a letter in response:
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I fully support changing the PA Day so that children have a once-in-a-generation, highly educational opportunity to view this incredible celestial event. Describing it as risky and dangerous is just plain weird! There are plenty of dangerous natural phenomena (e.g. the lake that we happen to be situated next to, in which many people drown each year), but rather than frighten people, we educate them on how to safely enjoy them. This is an incredible opportunity to teach kids about solar cycles, space, etc., and something we should all be excited about.
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I didn't a response. I'm still completely baffled by this!
I am as modern and jaded as the next person, but yes, absolutely - if you can be in the 100% totality, get there. It is incomparably awe-inspiring - it is immediately apparent why this sort of thing was seen as an omen from the gods to be respected. You will feel small.
Agreed. I just had this overwhelming sense of powerlessness. It’s the only time in my life I have felt the fact that we’re just standing on a rock hurdling through space.
>Those of us in a rural area of 100% totality thought it was magic. Pure, real, magic.
Hell, I saw it at a library in small town SC and it was still primal and surreal. The birds got quiet, the crickets started chirping. You really felt a direct link back to prehistory and you understood why it affected ancient people the way it did. There a small, tickling sense in the back of your mind that what you're seeing is profoundly wrong. The closest I can describe it is low grade existential terror, in the biblical sense of awe.
The last one I did on a butte, even more highly recommended, being able to see far out in the distance in every direction during an eclipse is mind blowing. I can't imaging having to experience it through a tiny airplane window.
Do or ... don't! Perhaps there's value in feeling the world around you change so quickly, even when it's uncomfortable. Allowing that discomfort may help anchor the memory as novel for those newbies you sneakily didn't tell to bring a sweater. ;-)
Is it about light pollution? About being somewhere quiet? Is it about a field specifically or about being away from road traffic? Like is a park OK? Is the beach OK?
Or is it mainly just being in 100% and you usually have to go somewhere rural for that because statistically it doesn't pass directly over major cities?
We were within the area of total eclipse, but as you can see from the map, there wasn't much area to choose from. Other than the towns and cities on the coast it counts as rural for England. (Plymouth is largest, 300k people; eclipses certainly do pass over cities.)
We stood on a hill, along with probably 30 other people who'd chosen the same place, just above a village. It went completely dark, and quiet (except for the people), the street lights on a road in the distance came on. We could see sunlight far to the north and south, yet ourselves were in near-total darkness (like overnight twilight at high latitudes).
Then it started to get light again, and the birds starting singing. It was mostly overcast, but with some glimpses of the occluded sun at every stage of the eclipse.
It wasn't a profound and spiritual experience, but it is one of the things I remember clearly from several holidays to that part of England with my family. Maybe being alone would make it different — there'd have been no-one else saying "isn't this amazing!" to their children. But more realistically, English families on holiday aren't looking for profound and spiritual experiences, we leave that to the Americans.
We couldn't see the corona, due to the clouds. Maybe that's important.
I think being on a small hill helped, and not being within an urban area.
Rural areas' cricket population adds to the experience, but if you have to choose between rural and totality, choose totality.
It goes from quiet sunny day, to an insect rock concert, and back again. And if you're outside, you feel the temperature plummet, adding to the experience. All in under 4 minutes.
In the city you'll likely still hear some of that, so... whichever you do, it'll be great.
Temperature drop, and shift of wind too. Amazing to experience the solar radiation difference directly. And the brightest stars, and planets, coming out.
First there is the experience of watching the darkness descend on you. It's like you can see a wall of it coming at you from a distance.
But viewing the corona of the sun... wow! I cannot begin to describe how cool that is. You don't get to see it in 99% totality. Only when the sun is completely blocked from space. It's remarkable and beautiful and impossible to capture the light on camera and you only get to see if for maybe a couple of minutes in your life.
It's entirely a natural lighting spectacle, so it's hard to capture the size and dynamic range on an LCD screen.
The pictures make it look like some sort of lens flare, but it looks nothing like that in real life. You can actually see the vapory tendrils of the suns' plasma making stringy loops around the sun in the pattern of the magnetic waves. There's a lot of detail.
Again, it's something you have to see for yourself. If you lived an entire life in a cave, me showing pictures of the sun would not have the same effect as actually feeling the light.
I was a skeptic when I went to the 2017 one. I've booked flights to go see next month's.
I had always assumed that corona photos like this are heavily processed in order to maximize the effect and that seeing one in real life would be more like "Eh, there's a sort of little ring thing in the sky."
Nope. During totality, the whole sky goes dark and you look up and there's a fucking ring of fire in the sky.
It looks exactly like these photos, just sitting there up in the sky. It feels like you got teleported to another solar system onto the surface of an alien planet.
Totally. The second I experienced totality, I instantly understood how it would have been a religious, cosmic experience for early humans who didn't have a scientific understanding of what's going on.
Imagine just going about your day as normal and all of a sudden the sun does that.
Seeing it is amazing, some of the photos are better than what you can see with your naked eye.
The feeling though, is very hard to convey. Everyone I was with confirmed that they felt it. Very primal to me. It was clear that my body (and the natural world around me) was unsettled or could tell that something was disrupted.
I'm not a "vibes" person, but for sure this was felt.
It's not a linear "eclipesness" where 99 or 95% is close enough.
It's a binary 100% or not experience. Even 1% sunlight is enough to wash out the entire experience and you must keep the glasses on the whole time. At 100% you can take them off, and see the most incredible sight you might ever see.
Adding on to this, I'd recommend getting to totality and not thinking "99% occlusion is probably 99% as good."
For the 2017 one, we went to a field about 100 miles from where we were staying and compared our experience to our hosts who stayed behind because of cloud cover forecast for the day. Clouds cleared for both of us, but from the discussions, it was worth going that 100 miles.
I will also dogpile on this and add my own experience and enthusiastic agreement - 100% totality in a big open field is absolutely mind-blowing cool.
Some friends and I did this for the 2017 eclipse in Nashville. We drove 30 minutes north and happened across a huge group of nerds in a big green park and the moment of totality was absolutely bonkers.
It gets true twilight dark, the birds and crickets start going wild, and you see this glowing reddish sunset color perfectly evenly along the base of the horizon. That part was the most fascinating to me, because I realized that comes from the diffraction (diffusion?) of the light from above and all around, and NOT from the “edge of the sun below the horizon” as we all kinda assumed.
(Note I am likely very materially wrong about that explanation so I’d love to be properly corrected.)
Anyway, regardless, go experience 100% totality on the ground!
Seconded! Also check out a complex shadow (like that of a bush) just before or after totality. The camera obscura effect will generate many images of the eclipse crescent, it's really uncanny.
Yes! This was absolutely surreal - one of those weird little things that all of the sudden your animal brain is pegging as "Something's amiss." Really helped the build-up to the totality.
In fact, I have a relative whose rural house was in the path of totality for 2017, but it was not centered on the path. That relative and I went to her friend's rural house on the centerline.
It was by a field too, and yes, the animals went weird.
I guess I'll be the contrarian, I've seen a total eclipse and it was ... something I guess? I was not overwhelmed. Not something I would make any extraordinary effort or spend a lot of money on to see again. I think a nice sunset over the water is much more enjoyable.
Another vote for 100% if possible. I drove my camper van from Portland to national forest land in eastern Oregon (largely desert and open land) for the 2017 total eclipse. From the cast of the light, to the birds, to the way my dog started getting ready for bed at nine in the morning, to the whoop I heard across the canyon from someone else watching, it was life-changing. Such a special event. Anyone I talk to who stayed in town and got the ~99% treats it like any other day.
Right, I Have family living in Wyoming so took the opportunity to see the 2017 eclipse there, amazing sight, totally worth it, But those poor Wyoming roads, completely packed for hundreds of miles, gas stations overwhelmed, with them still open having a correspondingly high price. If I did it again I would plan to spend 4 hours after the event just hanging out, rather than join the traffic.
Had that in 1999 in the UK, despite the complete overcast sky, it still went dark, and the birds and bugs still did stuff, and there was a general feeling of "something is wrong"
Did this in France when I was younger. We were on a hillside and could see the darkness coming in very quickly and everything going silent. Not only bugs, birds also went silent for a moment.
The most amazing thing I experienced during the last annular eclipse was the thousands of crescent-shaped shadows from wherever a pinpoint of light shone through, say a pair of tree leaves. It was legit astonishing; literally every surface was covered in these crescent refractions of the eclipse.
I doubt very much you'd experience anything like that on an airplane, but possibly that's just me having sour grapes this time.
I thought the same thing! Even cooler was that I noticed them before the eclipse and took a picture. Walking back to my car after the eclipse, the crescents had flipped!
Thank you!! I haven't seen this and was having trouble picturing it, now it makes perfect sense. It's not the edges of the leaves but the pinholes between overlapping leaves that allows the shape through.
Yeah, I was amazed to learn that dappled sunlight is actually thousands of pinhole images of the sun, and during an eclipse all the little circles turn into crescents!
Last eclipse I was similarly fascinated to discover that the lens flare on my iphone timelapse showed the same crescent, and turned the timelapse from boring to worthwhile.
Good choice in aircraft for the flight. The Airbus A220-300 windows are a little bigger than 737s and at a better viewing height:
> Another passenger experience factor determined by the manufacturer is the aircraft window. In this case, the 737's windows are smaller - 10" x 14" (25.4cm x 35.56cm). The A220's windows are a bit larger at 11" x 16" or 28 x 40.6cm. In addition to a difference in window size, the position of windows is different for each type as well. Window-seat passengers on the 737 (the MAX, but also all others) will find that they have to bend down slightly to look straight out the window. For those who love to get a good look out at the horizon or the world outside, the A220's windows are preferable.
I lived in the UK when there was a total eclipse there. BA flew a Concorde (at speed!) to chase the shadow for as long as possible. It was still not that long ~30 minutes or so? and the windows were tiny and thick, so I heard it was not that grand. Of course, those on the ground had the typical cloudy weather. Where I was it was 98%, which was still "dusk". It was still neat!
There's an excellent book [1] about this adventure written by its senior scientific advisor (Pierre Léna). The flight went under the shadow of the moon for 74 minutes !
It was 1999. I slept outside on the grass the night before, down at Lizard's Point. Where I was, the weather was also great and got a clear view of the eclipse which was fantastic.
I checked the family video, and it was actually fairly overcast on Dartmoor, with just some brief and tiny breaks in the cloud — enough to see the total eclipse, but not the sun's corona.
We’re all pretty lucky to live on a planet where the moon the the right size and position so this can happen.
Have to mention the famous Connie Willis eclipse short story “And Come from Miles Around” (it’s collected in “fire watch” and I won’t spoil it for you).
I figured out an odd place in the path of totality last go around that would have nobody present, ran my plan a month beforehand. It was a dried-up mine tailing lake, so it is more or less a patch of desert, about a mile long and a quarter-mile across. Even the locals forgot about it. I must have been the only person for a couple of miles. Had everything timed to the second, even the soundtrack. Aside from the obvious songs, every solar eclipse is a new moon, so Duran Duran's "New Moon on Monday" (it was a Monday, and will be this time as well) fit for the trip down. "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" played faintly just as the sun started coming back.
I think I’d lose important things seeing it from an airplane.
One of the things I love about an eclipse is how the world around me reacts to it. I saw one in the middle of Wyoming in 2017, in the middle of the day. Every animal seemed to think it was night. Wolves started howling, moths came out of the grass and flew around, daytime insects disappeared.
I saw a partial eclipse in New Delhi in the 1970s, and it was very different. The city was a ghost town — everyone was inside waiting it out. It was hard even to find a taxi, in one of the largest cities in the world.
So yeah, seeing it from an airplane sounds cool. It wouldn’t capture everything I’ve loved and enjoyed about eclipses.
But maybe it counts as some new experience? Wyoming was different from New Delhi which would be different from a plane
Until someone tries it, we won't know if it's worthwhile. Even if it doesn't live up to a "better" experience, we will know more about those experiences than we did before
Trying new things is the whole reason for existing
In India eclipses were considered a bad omen until recent times and people would hide themselves indoors during eclipses. With education and progress it has improved considerably and such superstitions are dying fast.
OTOH you might be able to see the dark circle as it streaks across the ground, something you can't see from most places at ground level. (Maybe on a mountain I guess)
I think this airplane is not the best way to experience full totality—especially if it's your first time seeing a total solar eclipse. There still should be plenty of opportunities to see the eclipse from the ground in April!
i imagine that either the magic that provides the plane this ability can magically duplicate the light, or the sufficiently advanced technology also has cameras to view the light and a way to mimic it on the interior of the plane
Surely (I am not a physicist) one kind of an invisible plane
Would be one where all the light that hits it is absorbed - comes into it but does not Reflect off - so the light would be incredibly bright inside.
Or would that be just a hole in the sky?
I mean that would be a radar invisible plane. Would the scattering of the light around the rest of the sky be enough to occlude your “hole” ?
Although my first thought was also the climate emissions, we have to be careful with these numbers, as 1kWh of electricity in Sweden is very different from 1kWh of electricity in Poland.
Poland is about 30x dirtier than Sweden. World numbers vary all over the place.
Similarly for beef - are the cattle raised under conventional agriculture (with maximum emissions) or regenerative agriculture (with minimum emissions)?
By my rough count, an example round-trip flight for this trip is about 2600 miles (~4200km) with an approximate climate cost of about 1100kg per person. This accounts for the fact that airline emissions do roughly 3x the damage as expected (compared to ground transportation) as contrails form cirrus clouds which "are too thin to reflect much sunlight, but ice crystals inside them can trap heat. Unlike low-level clouds that have a net cooling effect, these contrail-formed clouds warm the climate... A 2011 study suggests that the net effect of these contrail clouds contributes more to atmospheric warming than all the carbon dioxide (CO2) produced by planes since the dawn of aviation."
We have ways to make electricity and food carbon-cheap, and potentially even carbon-negative, but the same is not currently true for flying. I think we should move to passenger ships for transoceanic trips and electrified trains for overland travel.
How do you propose society go about determining which life experiences are worth their corresponding carbon emissions, knowing that there is enormous variety in what experiences people value?
Well, perhaps you can clarify my confusion, which could be similar to the poster you are replying to:
I took your original point "caring about improving the world for others" to mean "you should make decent efforts/sacrifices to help others if you have the capacity".
That is, you should not go on this flight, because the CO2 released will make the world a worse place.
But if you have this moral obligation to help others, it seems like the much greater mistake here is to spend $1200/person on the flight. $1200 is enough to save ~240 children's lives for a year if donated to an effective charity (Helen Keller Foundation). Compared to that good, the moral harm of the CO2 released is a rounding error (someone mentioned a bit over 1 ton/person).
I've never understood the moral axiom that says "you need to make sacrifices for others, but only if those sacrifices are for carbon dioxide release. You don't have to make much smaller sacrifices which do vastly more good". That to me seems clearly absurd - can you help me understand what mistake I'm making?
To be clear, I'm not saying it's wrong to cut your carbon footprint - I'm saying that if there's a moral compulsion to do that, it seems like there's a stronger moral compulsion to donate a high % of your worth to effective charities. But nobody every seems to think that is the case!
The idea that not taking this flight is framed a "sacrifice" is kind of the point I'm getting at. It shows how inverted and skewed the framing is by default to be egocentric rather than holistic
Let me use an example from this morning.
My kids ride the bus to school. The bus stop is about 800 feet from our house and an equivalent distance to other kids' houses. That's at most a two minute walk. Almost everyday, unless the weather is basically PERFECT, there will be four SUVs running and burning gas waiting at the bus stop where the other parents literally drive 800 feet so their kid isn't mildly cold, wet etc...
This is what is confusing behavior TO ME. It's wasteful and unnecessary because the prevailing behavior for people is "do not be inconvenienced, avoid discomfort, and maximize experiential pleasure with no thought of externalities"
Why is this flight even an option to begin with? Simply because someone at Delta thought, hey this is a great opportunity to make revenue and be fun and etc...I'm sure someone even made the point that "well we buy carbon credits so that solves that pesky carbon problem." Delta used it's propaganda (advertising) to induce a novel fear of missing out in order to increase it's revenue and brand. That's it. There is simply no thoughts here other than "maximize revenue" and "have fun."
This is not "growing the pie" the people who buy these tickets are choosing this environmentally egregious set of actions, and actively crowding out more pro-social spending.
What does it take for Delta to get clearances to fly a route like this one? Can they just fly at a different altitude to avoid all the routes they cross?
Also, isn't there a risk of lots of commercial and private planes all following it together?
To fly up high (like this flight) you are required to file a flight plan, but that's about it, the FAA isn't particularly concerned with why, they just need you to tell them where and when. It's pretty easy to deconflict. There is A LOT of sky. The path of totality will be 115 miles, which means that at any given moment during the eclipse there is roughly 14k square miles that can see it. Plus planes have 20k+ feet of controlled airspace to play with.
For the smaller planes lower down, they don't even need to file if they don't want. They can go VFR and just see and avoid.
The amount of aircraft flying around NYC airspace is far higher density on any given afternoon than something like this.
I always wanted to write an app that will find flights for every solar eclipse (and suggest the seat, of course), but it never got enough priority in my backlog. Glad to see airlines already implementing this idea to some extent!
Yes, you can chase the eclipse if you're traveling fast enough. Other nice thing: no potential for your entire eclipse hunting expedition to be ruined by bad weather.
> Other nice thing: no potential for your entire eclipse hunting expedition to be ruined by bad weather.
There is definitely a possibility of there being cloud cover, even at FL300, to cover the path of that flight. Assuming they would be allowed up to fly above FL380 by ATC, even less likely, but still not zero potential.
It has other problems though. It's more like watching a video of the Eclipse from an uncomfortable seat at a bad angle.
A major part of the eclipse experience is observing its interactions with the world. There's no much world to interact with at 30K feet, besides one big shadow.
This seems like a thing where the main value is that it costs more and is less accessible, so you can brag about it.
Lots of scenarios where the pilot isn’t allowed to diverge from a flight path without getting into how freak events happen with the weather all the time.
Cirrocumulus clouds are common on that flight path and can extend up to FL450. Is it rare that they are that high, for sure, but can it happen, definitely.
Cirrostratus clouds are also a possibility and they often extend up to FL400. Whenever the sky has a soft white haze, these are a common cause.
Will either of those guaranteed ruin an eclipse, probably not. But still saying guaranteed no cloud cover obstructing the view is very much inaccurate imho.
Yeah when normal people talk (not pilots) an event with >99 percent probability should be deemed a certainty. As a pilot however i agree with you that you absolutely cannot make any assumptions about cloud cover
Depends on how you define normal people. If you are someone who is ponying up $25k+ for this flight on secondary markets you also should know that the chance is non-zero, albeit close.
If you look at a map of the "path of totality" for a total solar eclipse, think of it as a series of small time windows only a few minutes long, where one window ends another begins. I say that as if it's discrete, but really it's continuous and overlapping. Anyway, totality will begin in Texas at 1:27 PM CT and end in Maine at 3:35 PM ET, which is a little more than an hour. So theoretically you could be traveling at the same speed as the eclipse, from Texas to Maine in that hour, seeing an eclipse the whole time instead of just a few minutes!
Of course, the article makes no such claim that this is their plan. After all, planes don't go 2000 MPH. But they do go 600+ MPH, so maybe if things go perfectly you'll have 20 minutes of eclipse. Call it 10 minutes due to inability to rapidly correct for a slightly wrong departure time. Better than the 4 minutes you'd get standing still.
It'd definitely alleviate it. I'm going to Vermont to try to see it (coinciding with my wedding) and the weather is really the only thing worrying me at the moment.
Oh yeah, absolutely prepared for it haha. I appreciate it!
I was able to catch the last eclipse in 2016/17 (?) and am using the wedding to trick all my loved ones into (hopefully) getting to experience one too.
Wouldn't it be the same experience you get on a sunset flight followed by a sunrise flight? It's not like you'd see a spotlight of darkness, it's a gradient and likely too large to see moon curvature.
You're trying to conflate the sunset terminator vs the very small and well defined shadow of the moon itself. Totally different concepts. The shadow of the moon is a spotlight of darkness. This is so not the same thing as the Earth rotating out of view of the sun.
Maybe it's something about the hours of prep before and after, viewing at most half of the event through an 11 inch window, with droning noise surrounded by people climbing over you to see the window, but I think you could get a better experience watching on a 4k computer monitor with a dimming script set up for your room lights.
No actually I'm road tripping to experience the event with my friends instead of cramming it into an instagrammable tokenized experience in a cabin full of strangers
not sure what you mean by your comment. What I meant was to address the extreme negativity of the person to whom I am replying to that he doesn't have to participate in this flight that is being sold as a ticket.
