patndoris TechnoGeek

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Think about it...if something happens while you're at cruising altitude you're so far up, the air is freezing. Assuming you got anyone to let you open the door (which by the way is highly unlikely), you'd likely freeze to death before you could contemplate opening a parachute. And besides - who wants to jump out of a plane miles up in the air?? Not to mention, tho I've not done the intense calculations necessary, but with acceleration being 9.8 meters per second squared...and as you need to be a certain distance from the ground before you open a parachute...would you not reach terminal velocity by that point? At which time, I seriously doubt opening a parachute would be of any help.

Let's contemplate it a little closer to the ground. On takeoff you'd crash back down so fast a parachute would be of no value. Are you gonna deploy it while you slide down the nifty blow up sliding board? And forced to jump without the sliding board? Well, there's no chance a chute's gonna help you there if you're that close to the ground. If you're already landing chances are it's too late to use one as well.

Truthfully, the flotation device is not likely to be of much help either. On land it's obviously worthless. And over water? Well assuming the plane manages to hit the water in such a way as not to either dive nose first in, or blow apart on impact, perhaps there would be a minute value in being able to hold onto something and float around - if of course you were able to have the presence of mind to figure out how to actually retrieve the device.

So, my conclusion is - the aeronautics engineers who design planes were quite correct to eliminate parachutes as a possibility. The flotation device - while not terribly useful in my personal estimation - probably cost little and provide some measure of (possibly false) peace of mind for passengers. So the point to ponder really isn't a very valid one - perhaps I need to figure out just who I can tell about that!

And - as many of you know - I don't like to fly. Most accidents occur on takeoff and landing - where any device is unlikely to help. I think I'll just stay on good old Terra firma for the time being and this whole thing will be irrelevant.