Curious too to learn more about what data, if any, is shared with ATC on the location of these balloons. Airspace is regularly blocked off for rockets and other use, but for many weather balloons the theory is 1) the sky is big, and 2) designs are meant to be that a strike with an aircraft wouldn’t cause significant damage. If this was an impact with a balloon payload then “2” looks problematic.
At any particular and above a certain flight level maybe.
This seems close to a worst case scenario for this failure mode, and everyone is still OK. I consider that good engineering.
And yes, this is good engineering, but through decades of learning crowdfunded with tax dollars.
You can argue that is not effective enough perhaps, but the mechanism itself exists.
An agency can remove a regulation it created. Congress (via the linked law) can also remove a regulation. Congress can also create regulations via legislation (though they typically don't go to that level of detail).
And we have to remember, at one point, every regulation that exists was created to solve a problem / prevent a harm. The cost of removing that regulation prematurely is reintroducing that problem / harm.
In addition to the sibling comment's mention of the Congressional Review Act for agency oversight, there is a US Office of the Law Revision Counsel [2]. It has an official website [3] which is beautifully old-fashioned, but looks to be purely a resource for accessing the letter of the law and doesn't recount its volume of repeals in the same way.
None of this matters if the insane or counterproductive regulations are deliberate and desirable for the current lawmakers, of course.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_commission [1] https://lawcom.gov.uk/repeals/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_the_Law_Revision_Cou... [3] https://uscode.house.gov/
https://www.redbull.com/int-en/vincent-reffet-and-yves-rossy...
Somehow that rings some faint bell but can't quite put my finger on it...
(399 points, 2 days ago, 222 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45636285
(35 points, 2 days ago, 55 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45633191
Related: It was a weather balloon, not space debris, that struck a United Airlines plane (12 points) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45652120
wonder if things would have been different if it hit the center of the window
At this point, I'm pretty confident that NOTAMs exist as a way relegate all liability to pilots. Really it's 14 CFR 91.103, which opens with "Each pilot in command shall, before beginning a flight, become familiar with all available information concerning that flight", that allows NOTAMS to transfer liability.
Theoretically CFRs are limited to powers specifically authorized by congress, but in practice, they are full of overreach that is only limited when it becomes case law, but the FAA is so powerful that it can effectively shut down any organization trying to dispute them in federal courts, so there isn't really any case law limiting the scope of their CFRs.
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/31058/are-weath...
There REALLY needs to be a unified ATC system that incorporates NOTAMS, traffic, and live position of whatever unmanned stuff is moving around. We have most of the tech deployed already. We have to integrate it.
I don't think any company would want this record. I am very glad the pilot and the souls on board are safe.
TechSquidTV•2h ago