WindBorne cofounder CEO (John Dean) here -- Thanks, indeed I think that a strike to the cockpit glass, in the corner where there is more stress concentration, is one of the worst places to hit for human safety. And indeed the system was designed to be safe in the event of a collision.
But still, in light of this I think we can do better. I think it's possible to operate the way we do and have a the mass distributed such that the only damage is ever cosmetic. We follow FAA 101 regulations on this but I want to have better internal impact modeling as well.
Hats off to you and your company. I wish more companies could put up a notice like you did, much less show up as a CEO on frickin' HN and be willing to take responsibility as well as desire to do better. I honestly am a little confused how a person like you exists. The FAA should put someone like you in charge of Boeing.
Please put pressure on the FAA to do better too. NOTAMS, as they currently are, are pretty useless, and allowing unmanned vessels to output ADS-B could be extremely beneficial.
Yea, the FAA does a lot and I think overall they do a great job, but I wish there was better systems for communications here. I think ultimately companies like WindBorne just have to go above and beyond what is required if they want to operate at scale safely in this space. And no one else operates balloons at the scale that we do, and safety has to be built into the design and operations regardless of how the official systems work.
It’s great that you’re taking responsibility at all, but in my opinion, a better system would be not releasing balloons that could impact aircraft in places that aircraft fly.
If that means that either you can’t release balloons or the aircraft can’t fly, then that’s a discussion that we should have about which we value more.
When I buy a ticket to fly on a aircraft, I do not want to know that I’ll probably survive if my plane hits a weather balloon, I want to know that my plane won’t hit a weather balloon.
I understand there are all sorts of inherent risks in aviation, and that if I want to fly, I must accept those risks. But hitting a balloon is not an inherent risk of flying, it’s a risk imposed on by others.
It's unfortunate that this happened, but this will help drive better engineering decisions in the future for everyone. Glad everyone is mostly okay from this!
But still, in light of this I think we can do better. I think it's possible to operate the way we do and have a the mass distributed such that the only damage is ever cosmetic. We follow FAA 101 regulations on this but I want to have better internal impact modeling as well.