Piper Alpha - 20 years on

Watch the memorial.

(Picture from geograph.org.uk until I get down to Hazlehead Park to get my own.)

What to be done about Heathrow?

London Heathrow has consistently been voted the worst airport through which to travel. It's terminals are old, outdated and vastly overused, making them cramped and dingy (ever seen Terminal 1?). Decades of post hoc extensions of gate peers and new lounges have turned them in a labyrinthine dungeons, which snake their way across the property like cancerous lesions creating congestion prone cul-de-sacs and a hodge podge of architectural indecision. The airport looks like it was cobbled together from scraps of other countries disused ones.

Then there's the runway situation. The airport is the third busiest in the world. Yet it must operate with only two runways on a system of alternation where only one can be used for takeoffs and one landings at any one time, limiting movements to 480,000 a year. The runways operate at 98% so any hiccup, such as a bit of fog or a 777 belly landing at the threshold of one of them and the whole system comes crashing down. Then the media recommence their obligatory Heathrow travel misery stories, featuring delayed and angry passengers huddling in tents sleeping rough on benches. It's so familiar that it's become something of British tradition.

The problem for Heathrow is that there is no where to go. The airport is surrounded by housing practically up to the fence, which makes any attempt at expansion an operation in pulling teeth. Being situated to the West of London in the first place means that arriving aircraft must fly over large parts of the conurbation to make their approach, bringing with it a massively enlarged constituency of NIMBYs (all 8 million of them!).

There is some hope on the way though. After years of dirt grinding, the new Terminal 5 will be opening in March. I've seen it (although incomplete) and can say that, while it is hardly the Palace of Heaven that BAA and BA make it out to be, it is a phenomenal improvement over what has gone before. Tourists and foreign business travellers arriving in the UK through this terminal won't be greeted by such a dire first impression of the country. What this new terminal finally does is give a bit of overcapacity to the airport, which means that finally they can close terminal 2, which is half a century old, and rebuild it as Heathrow East, a modern terminal that can replace both terminal 2 and terminal 1 (good riddance to that one too!).

By 2012, with these two new terminals in full operation, the airport will be transformed into something completely unrecognisable. The dark days of the current Central Terminal Area, will be relegated to the status of legend told around the camp fire to scare the children.

However, ultimately what T5 and LHR-E offer is a much nicer place in which to be delayed. While the inefficient designs of the CTA, with its narrow cul-de-sacs causing each aircraft to have to take their turn maneuvering in them, do play a part in some delays, the biggest problem is runway capacity. T5 and LHR-E will have a much more sensible and useable ground layout, but they will do nothing to stem problems of congestion at the holds, both in the air and on the ground. The airport needs more capacity.

BAA and the government wants to be build a third runway to the North of the airport. But this solution is just too messy. Too many houses will have to be demolished. The airport's influence will extend up to the M4 bringing in a brand new generation of NIMBYs. It will also no doubt mean the extension to the North of the London Control Zone, which will consume Denham and Elstree aerodrome. AOPA are not going to like it either. The West of London it just too cramped. There is no room for Heathrow to expand any further.

The only solution left is to make better use of the current runways. That is the introduction of "mixed mode" whereby both runways can be used to take-off and landing at the same time. This would allow theoretically 550,000 movements a year. This is actually very useful for more than just capacity. It also means that taxiing becomes more efficient. Terminal 4 is located to the South of the South runway, which means that whenever the North runway is being used for departures, aircraft operating out of T4 must cross the active South runway to get to their departure runway. This is a source of ground congestion as well as a needlessly expending fuel on taxiing. With mixed mode, aircraft could use the most convenient runway reducing taxi times and with it, delays, noise and fuel consumption.

Ah but what about those NIMBYs? How would mixed mode help relieve congestion if that extra capacity was simply translated into more movements? The answers are of course as feared. The NIMBYs would be in a strop and allowing a rise to 550,000 movements will mean the extra capacity will be absorbed by increased traffic. The runways would remain congested and the terminals put under greater strain.

But the solution to that is already in place. Currently, the airport is already capped at 500,000 movements. Even with the extra capacity mixed mode would bring, Heathrow is not allowed to utilise it to its fullest. This type of approach would reduce runway utilisation factors giving more wiggle room in the system to allow for hiccups. It would also make ground movement more logical eliminating a source of congestion that way. And a limit on movements would keep the NIMBYs from being anymore irate than they already are. Job done. Oh and Gatwick should get a second runway too.

So how does this relate to nuclear power? Er... um... Heathrow is the largest consumer of electricity in Great Britain. This electricity should be generated on site with their own nuclear reactor.

Everyone's favourite whipping boy takes one more lashing

The Usual Suspects plan more terror ops.

The corollary to freedom of speech is the freedom of the rest of us to ignore anti-social narcissists. Yet the Usual Suspects do not appear to understand that. They vandalise power stations, occupy runways, destroy farmland and yet we're supposed to tolerate it under the umbrella of free speech. Inteferring with individual's freedom of movement is a crime and if any flight is delayed as a result of this protest, the lot should be thrown in jail to think about what they've done. They probably won't learn anything, but at the very least, that's fewer of them out there trying to disrupt people's lives.

The King has finally arrived

At long last, El Gordo has taken the throne and we're all bit starstruck. It seems somewhat exciting to finally see him as the prime minister. Suddenly, the one we thought of as the highway bandit, all of a sudden seems fresh and downright loveable, Stalinism and all.

He may be a dour Scot, but he's OUR dour Scot. Teddy bear Brown.

Now let's celebrate the arrival of the new prime minister with some new nuclear power stations.

Wally Schirra has died

Three days ago, USN Captain Wally Shirra died at the age of 84. Schirra was one of the original Mercury 7 astronauts and a true man of the space pioneers, flying on all three of the great space programs: Mercury, Gemini and Apollo.

On Sigma 7, the fifth Mercury mission, he spent over nine hours in space, a record for the American space program at that point. He tested star navigation techniques and space photography and made the first ever live radio broadcast from an American spacecraft to listeners on the surface. But most importantly of all, he became the first astronaut to have a wee nip in space after smuggling a small bottle of whiskey on board. A true test pilot of the age.

Gemini VI marked another important space first for this remarkable, often underappreciated space program: the first space rendezvous. Schirra redefined the meaning of space rendezvous from the low hanging, Soviet definition of rendezvousing spacecraft passing with several miles of each other (a definition which suited their purpose so they could claim Vostok 3 and Vostok 4 marked the first ever space rendezvous), to the proper definition of coming within feet of each other and stationkeeping. With his co-pilot, Tom Stafford, Schirra achieved the first one, meeting Borman and Lovell (of Apollo 13 fame) in their Gemini VII spacecraft at an altitude of 270km.

Schirra's final flight was Apollo 7, the first manned Apollo mission and the return to flight after the Apollo 1 tragedy. During the eleven days in Earth orbit, the crew, including rookies Eisele and Cunningham, proved the Apollo spacecraft fit for purpose and laid the groundwork for its operation on the subsequent flights to the Moon. They also made the first live TV broadcast from an American spacecraft, an Emmy award winning broadcast at that. Colds struck the crew for the first time in space and only generous doses of Actifed kept them sane for the duration of the flight. Schirra went on to make some heartfelt ads for Actifed after that.

John Glenn and Scott Carpenter are the only surviving members of the Mercury 7.

Wanted dead or alive!

The recent dash of British politicians into the Green abyss was bound to have differing consequences depending on the participent. For the LibDems, they come across as a cuddly protest party. For the Conservatives, it helps them among the soggy chattering classes but hinders them among those who want a government to deal with their more immediate concerns. For Labour, it's the most damaging since they are the ones in government.

Michael O'Leary of Ryanair is not impressed.
Ironically though, the party whose Green antics are the most damaging are in fact the party currently with the clear commitment to nuclear power.

Mandate to blog

For those not familiar with affairs of B-stories in British politics, the situation is this:

• David Cameron MP, leader of the Conservative party and HM Loyal Opposition in the House of Commons, started a video blog to better communicate to the electorate without having to depend on the rather undependable mainstream media. Good idea.
• Sion Simon, labour MP for the constituency of Birmingham Erdington, didn't like it.
• Simon prepared a spoof video in which he parodied Cameron by doing a poorly written rap, which included offering to sell his children and prostitute his wife.
• Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East, prolific blogger, posted the video on YouTube.
• The video got multiple thousand hits.
• The spreading of the word that Cameron sells his children and prostitutes his wife caused massive controversy.
• Simon appeared on Sky News to answer questions about his video.

And here it is.

It wasn't the best of interviews from the perspective of the Labour spin doctors, since he came off as rather petulant. But more importantly, he said some things that were rather questionable.

Tom's a proper blogger, who's been a computer blogger for years; Britain's
first blogging MP. He's serious about the video blogging. It's a
medium he's committed to. I, for instance, am not particularly interested
in blogging. It's not my thing. Neither is David Cameron. He
self-evidently isn't. His blogs, what he talks about, is empty, is
meaningless, is shallow. It's patronising. It's just the way to turn
young people off. The idea that politicians only engage with the medium
when it's got something in it for them. If you're really serious about it,
do it properly. If you don't mean it, don't do it.

It is pretty clear Simon disapproves of Webcameron. Specifically, there are two criticisms. The first really isn't a problem with the blog itself, but with Cameron's act in general, which is faithfully reproduced in the blog. So we'll ignore that. The second is that Cameron isn't really a committed blogger, but is merely using the blog to further his own ends (which involves getting his message across to the electorate so that they might vote his party into government at the next general election).

In Simon's view this is wrong. It is apparently only right and proper to blog when the blogging is an end in itself, as is supposed to be the case with Tom Watson, rather than when blogging is purely a means to an end (such as conveying your message to advance the standing of your party), as in the case of Cameron.

I will agree with Simon that I don't think Cameron is committed to the medium and that he is only using it because he thinks it will serve his political aims. But I fail to see any problem. You don't have to be "committed" to the medium to use it. As Simon confesses, he is not a blogger himself. So I suppose we can forgive him for missing the point completely. The point of blogging is to communicate with the wider world,free from the limitations and exclusivity of the mainstream media. If you have something you want people to hear, you can blog. David Cameron is in that position. He has something he wants to say to the electorate and he uses his blog to say it.

That's what it's about. If it wasn't, then we could criticise the countless blogs, some created years ago, that have seen only one post. The bloggers who created them had something to say on that day, and then nothing after that. We can safely say they aren't committed to medium (assuming they are still alive and well and capable of blogging if they wanted). Does Sion Simon disapprove of their rather limited blogging activities?

Many prolific bloggers enjoy blogging for its own sake in addition to the message they're conveying. But that isn't a requirement. There is no obligation to say a pledge of allegience to the blogging community. No condition that you join the National Union of Bloggers. No need to get a tattoo saying, "Born to blog!"

Sion Simon seems to view blogging as some kind of after-school club that Cameron has gate crashed simply to avoid playing afternoon sports. Perhaps if he paid more attention to his friend's outreach activities, he might have understood how false this is. It is a good thing that Cameron is contributing to the alternative media, regardless of how important the medium is for its own sake in his eyes, just as it is a good thing that Tom Watson is. It's about the message, and here we have just a couple of people spreading theirs.

Another note: the growing populating of politician bloggers, particularly those "not committed to the medium", speaks volumes for the growing power of the alternative media.