A protester did it. We can do it better.
Oct 11, 2019
Popular Mechanics HQ was predictably spellbound yesterday when news reports trickled out concerning a protester who glued himself to the top of a British Airways plane at London City Airport.
On top of that, the protester, identified as a man named James Brown, is a partially visually impaired former Paralympic runner and cyclist. Meet your new Most Interesting Man in the World.
While we’d like to reach out to Brown to ask him some questions—actually, all the questions—what’s complicating matters is the small fact that he may or may not be in jail at the moment. Brown was acting on behalf of Extinction Rebellion, a London-based environmental group known for theatrical gestures of protest, when he bought a ticket for a flight, went through security, proceeded up the steps of the BA Embraer 190 jet, and propelled himself on top, according to The Sun.
“Here I am on top of a f****** aeroplane at City Airport,” Brown said in a video he posted online during the stunt. “I hate heights, I’m s******* myself, I managed to get on the roof. I am so shaky.”
Security soon approached Brown, and not a moment too soon. “Oh good,” Brown said after a few impassioned rally cries against government inaction on climate change, “security are coming. I hope they don’t take too long, because this is f****** scary.”
Brown was eventually removed, and we await more information about his status.
There’s lots to unpack here, like, say, how exactly a partially visually impaired man was able to climb on top of a twin-engine jet airliner. Seems pretty hard! But we were mostly curious about how you’d go about gluing yourself to a plane. Since airport security pulled Brown off the jet with relative ease, he honestly couldn’t have tried very hard.
So. Let’s say you actually wanted to do this thing the right way. We won’t ask why. But you’re dead-set on sticking to a plane, dammit, and that’s all that matters. Where do you start?
Master the Physics
“The first order of business,” says Giles Dillingham, Ph.D., the CEO and chief scientist at BTG Labs, a materials science company that performs research in surface science, surface treatments, and adhesion, “is to determine the load we are asking the bond to withstand.”
In this scenario, imagine you’re 170 pounds. This is your load. If you try to stick yourself to the bottom of a plane, you’ll put the adhesive bond (the glue) into too much tension, and the forces will probably fail it, Dillingham says. But go to the top of the plane and your weight will compress the bond instead. In that case, the only thing that could fail the bond is the shear stress that results from the drag of the airflow on your body.
our bond will have to resist the force of wind, says Dillingham, so you’ll need an estimate of that force. “A skydiver who is facing straight down has a terminal velocity of about 200 mph,” he says. “At that speed, the force of gravity pulling the body down is just equal to the force of the wind on the body.” Let’s assume, then, that your bond has to survive a speed of 200 mph and withstand a 170-pound load.
You’ll want to maximize the entire bonded area, of course. If you only glue your hand to the plane, your entire load—your weight, plus the drag from the airflow—must be supported by the spot on your skin that’s actually bonded. Bond a large area, however, and the force per unit area will be low, Dillingham says.
In other words, spread that glue all over your body, and leave no patch of skin unturned.
It’s just a shame, isn’t it? That there was no snow and bitter cold in the forecast, and a cold front swooping in from the northeastern Atlantic? That would have been awesome.
They should just leave him there for a day or so. There’s some “senior” gal in the Chicago area whose “hobby” is sneaking around security at airports and getting on planes without a ticket or passport. She managed to get to London that way, but was arrested and sent back to Chicago. Then she had to try again, and got busted at the airport, and had to spend several months in a supervised environment, and said she wouldn’t do it any more, when a reporter talked to her about it. When she was released from supervision, guess what she did?
Yep, busted again, and this time she got to go to jail again. Some people just don’t know when to quit.
Now, how do they become unglued?
If you answered “solvent”, that is incorrect.
You tell them the truth about CO2 – that it is in fact beneficial, plants love it, and we actually need more of it, not less.
That might be the thing that reglues them. Their problem is that catastrophists have driven them to being unglued in the first place.
I await for the appropriate response from the Ministry of Silly Walks.
I know his name is James Brown but how did he “Get On Up”?
All had to do was Feel Good-
Oops, forgot my pronoun. Mash me, Mosh.
These protestors need to be sued by the entities they caused harm to. The airline should sue for operational costs. The fake blood people need to be sued for the cost of cleanup. The person whose ambulance was delayed should sue for the emotional/mental trauma. XR shouldn’t be sued, because Soros will just pay for it. The protestors themselves should be taken to court. Support would dry up pretty quickly if these people knew their own money was on the line. As it stands, there are no consequences for their actions. They might spend a night in jail, but protesting is their job, so it doesn’t affect them. They might get a criminal record, but if anybody asks, they just say they were arrested protesting. There’s got to be a number of lawyers out there that would do the work pro bono or for a minimal fee. Winning a suit would be a slam dunk, as the injured party was injured while the protestor was committing a crime.
I’m personally shocked this old act hasn’t been brought up. Really, in most of the “Climate Action” events, George Carlin really covered them best: https://youtu.be/vdPy5Ikn7dw?t=186
I mean really. On or In, that’s the ultimate question on this type of thing.
He is an example of the mentality of the entire group, unhinged, , and shibboleth.
shibboleth: a word or saying used by adherents of a party, sect, or belief and usually regarded by others as empty of real meaning.
I never heard of that word but it sounded interesting.
Wonder who talked him into it. Probably while consuming Irish whiskey.
The probability of urine: Take for example, a bridge in Palembang, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra. “one of the reasons for the apparent structural deterioration was due to the frequency of people urinating on one of the steel pillars of the bridge, causing it weaken due to the corrosive forces of human urine.”
Just speculating with no evidence.
you need to read your Bible.
Regulations authorize the captain to call for ABP, able bodied passengers to help ensure safety in flight and the cabin crew is trained to spot such helpers prior take-off.
If you are about to do anything on my board, please consider that we are very honored to be accountable for the safety and wellbeing of our passengers. Which means that:
ABP’s will be solicited for help. Each and every way they know.
The captain will issue an emergency call for threat level 2 potentially escalating to level 4
The aircraft will land on the quickest to reach suitable alternate
Authorities will be involved
Further, a full legal packet, inclusive amongst a long list, the price of fuel involved in the process.
Just as a reminder, restraints are available on-board. The crew has full authority and training and the emergency flashlights are sturdy orange shock resistant quite heavy cylinders.
If the guy covered himself with super glue and could not be removed from the top of the plane, the plane could take off and climb to 30,000 feet, where the temperature is about -50 F. The glue would probably become brittle at that temperature, and the frostbitten man would fall to his death.
He should be thankful that security took him down.
Just call the de-icing truck for a fullmonty contaminated fuselage job. Hot glycol jets are known for compromising even purposely designed decorative folio.
Speed Tape.
I suspect a history of glue-sniffing.
Do it like this:
Bottom line is the UK is a travel risk country because of glue and drones.
I’ll continue with my staycation home improvement projects but not because of Greta. I bought a big, used V8 SUV to deal with her.
BTW, how do you justify ignoring a country-wide voter referendum on Brexit in a democracy? Is it secondary to the committee form of democracy or what?
The required acronym is DINO – Democracy In Name Only …
Was this designed to be the next episode on the “muppet show”?
Wasn’t that also on the BBC?
“pigs in space” starring Brown glued to the outside of the spacecraft?
In Mikado….”make the punishment fit the crime”,
so what shall we do with the gluey flier ….so what shall we do with the gluey flier, early in the morning???
Talking of which I just had an e-mail from a son, who part times at KEW…
This was a tiny extract…..(I’m not making it up!).
At least he won’t be getting a Darwin award, but things are looking up when you get a 30yr old come to their own conclusions n’est pas?
My answer HEY join the club!
Here it is:-
“I started to look back at Kew’s research on climate activity, and lo and behold the IPCC are in every bibliography, so the data manipulation has seeped into a huge amount of the scientific community as reference material………”
AND!
“Science itself has been undermined, that the scientific consensus that everyone talks about these days is just a corrupt racket of ideologues manipulating the data to serve their narrative.
I’m extremely disturbed by all of this and it has shaken me to my core, it has made me feel extremely isolated from my peers.
These people who I considered friends turned on me for having “the wrong opinion” when trying to explain that CO2 cannot be the sole cause for differences in climatic activities they turned around telling me the science is settled, when it actual fact science is about being sceptical and not settling for quick answers but trying to find instead the correct ones.
Also when I asked people to cite their sources, I found most of their sources were either poorly written grad papers on how to deal with coping knowing the planet is going to kill us all, or dogmatic IPCC “papers” using the same hockey stick graph of a very short period of time claiming that were arriving at boiling temperatures.
People have been calling me climate change denier, I don’t deny the climate changes, I do deny the premise that we are the ones causing it to do so, CO2 cannot be the cause for it, nor can humans be influencing it to such a degree either.
And for thinking critically, applying logic to my independent research and daring to question the current rhetoric, I’ve been demonised and vilified over it.”
Yum! Nice..
Should have left the stupid b***tard up there! If I was in charge, I’d climb up there and add more glue . . . “Just helping you out mate! Here’s more superglue. No point just gluing your hands. You’ll come unstuck when we take off. Enjoy the ride!”
I mean, why aren’t these morons more committed to their own cause and glue their faces to things as well as their hands? And what sort of glue do they use? An easy-to-remove water-based glue, or is it really strong superglue like it should be? They’re not really committed unless they go the whole hog and do it properly.
Arrest the fool. Convict the fool. Give him a sentence long enough to discourage other fools.
And do it all quickly and publicly.
(OH! And check out just who was on security at the time at that airport. And fire them. How can a nut climb on top of an airplane unnoticed without somebody noticing without choosing NOT to notice?)
It’s worse than we thought.. seems they have been planning this for decades..
Hey wait on . . . how did he get to the airport in the first place? A fossil fueled car by chance? And did he park his (fossil fueled) car in short term parking, or long term?
Whatever. I hope that when he gets back to his (fossil fueled) car he finds another extinction rebellion nutjob glued to its roof. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?
My favorite episode of the twilight zone with William Shatner. Is nightmare at 20,000 feet.