Friday, January 23, 2009

Low-Tech Solution

We've all obviously heard about the airplane that had to ditch into the Hudson River recently and I'm sure we would all agree that the pilot did an absolutely masterful job of avoiding a total catastrophe. I guess it has been pretty much determined that what brought them down was flying directly into a flock of Canadian geese which choked both engines. Well my son, who designs jet engines for a major manufacturer, told me how they test for something like that. They have a giant tube in the test lab where they set up an engine and start it running at normal speed. Then through that tube they shoot frozen chickens into the engine to see if it will stall. They're probably generic, not Perdue or anything like that. So if you're ever flying somewhere and you run into a batch of chickens at 20,000 feed that just returned from Alaska you have absolutely nothing to worry about. Glad I could help.

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