When I tell you that aviation can be seen everywhere in society, I am not joking. Sure, if I asked you to look for an aircraft and you looked down, I would be seriously worried for your health and would probably take you to the emergency room. My point is that even though humans outnumber aircraft by about 300,000 to one, nearly every person in the world interacts with an aircraft daily, whether they know it or not. I don’t know if you want me to elaborate any further, so I am going anyway. Overnight shipping? A truck driver may drive like mad for 8 hours to get to one location and deliver a pair of shoes or whatever. OR, one of Amazon’s 75 Boeing aircraft can transport 23 tons of whatever shit we may buy from San Francisco to Philadelphia in 6 hours.
Ok, ok, I’ll forget about the business side of aviation and leave that for the Smeal kids. Let’s go on a trip to California (not actually, just in our minds). The climate is undeniably changing, and the land is being engulfed in flames. I would love to throw in a Billy Joel “We Didn’t Start the Fire” joke right here, but I’d be lying. Gender reveal parties setting off fires has somehow become a little trend. Nonetheless, the problem has got to be fixed. But it’s an impossible job for land-based firefighters. The blaze can be thousands of acres wide, progressing at swift paces. When fires get this wild, we call to our friends in the sky. Over 60 airplanes and helicopters are in the air daily, extinguishing fires and stopping the spread.
Sorry sorry, I ranted there for a minute; why is this cool? Because some BATSHIT engineer decided to strap 163,500 pounds of water to the bottom of an airplane and send it over a fire. How do I explain this using anything but the metric system? I guess we don’t do that here in America. Imagine an airplane flying with TWO Sperm Whales strapped to it. These marvels of engineering are saving the homes of Californians every day, the animals, and the people.
ART! I love art, you love art, we all love art. Aviation has encapsulated the art community for centuries, even millennia. Just the other day, I was eating in Pollock commons and looking at all of the photographs in the dining area. Lo and behold, there were two photographs of a sleek silver engine, complete with matte black propellors. I pointed it out to my friend and asked her to explain why she thought it was beautiful or ugly. She commented on the symmetry, the complexity, and the possible stories behind the aircraft. Of course, being an aviation nerd, I had to snowball into analyzing the picture and identifying the airplane as a B-17.
This is the sad one, the not-so-cool part- the luxury that comes with aviation. We’ve all seen it- the first step to every celebrity’s stardom- a private jet. Airplanes and helicopters have become the quintessential “I’m richer than you, so I’m better than you” symbol in the modern day. Now don’t get me wrong, I love aviation, but I know the environmental impacts it can have. But chances are your favorite singer, favorite social- media influencer, or favorite sports superstar has their own private jet or charter plane. We’ll review the environmental effects in a later episode. But right now, I hear an airplane flying overhead, and I need to go look at it.
Thank you so much for this picture, Aubrey Graham. We really needed to see this.