Sunday, April 26, 2009

Bird Strikes

Bird strikes are in the news again. I saw an article in the Corvallis Gazette Times and on the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.

There are 1/2 million bird strikes a year or 23 a day. The majority of bird strikes (birds that fly into the engines of jet planes) don't cause a safety hazard. JFK is built in the middle of wetlands. Canada Geese brought down Flight 1549. Is the answer to get rid of birds? NO! NO!

The answer is to solve the problem. Everyone I've talked to said it is impossible to solve the problem. What kind of thinking is that? I don't believe that any problem can't be solved. There should be a covering over the engines to prevent the birds from going inside the engines and disabling them. With all the new lightweight materials created for large aircraft and all the gifted engineers out there, someone should be able to come up with a solution.

I bet that if there was a competition with the science stars from different high schools working with university engineering students and their professors, viable solutions could be found in every state of our nation.

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