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Janet Airlines
- ggm 8y agoI still wonder at the Manhattan district and how they used trains to ship radioactive elements and people...
- srndh 8y agoradioactive material in trains? Have they not learnt anything from Broken Arrow?
- ggm 8y agoIt was before that. The test plutonium microgramme samples being purified by Glenn Seaborg went by train under armed guard but according to Richard Rhodes would 'wander' in the foil packaging. They talk of plutonium migrating upstream against an article even.
- Symbiote 8y agoRadioactive material is regularly transported by train in Europe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_flask https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_flask
- chris_mc 8y agoHow else do you ship it? Radioactive materials count as pretty much anything irradiated, so for a Navy nuclear plant (something they transport on trains that is radioactive) that's every pipe, valve, and metal fitting from the primary loop. You're not shipping all that by truck or plane with more security than a train, which is pretty unstoppable and it's easy to anti-air missiles and stuff to a train vs. a truck. Also, you'd need dozens of trucks or planes for one reactor decommissioning vs. one fairly compact train.
- ggm 8y agoit was a point in time. I have no problem with casks on secured trains. I've even watched the crash-test videos for amusement like everyone else. I'm talking about ancient history where they put two guys on a train with a box. This 'its the company don't ask questions' airline is much more what I would have expected, back in the day. I would have expected they detailed off a truck and some troops to do the drive. But no: they gave a suitcase to somebody and sent it on the red-eye.
- chris_mc 8y agoWell that's terrifying, I am glad they have stopped that sort of thing!
- a012 8y agoIt'd be PITA when you have to go to the air port to get in the air plane to go to the work, then get back, __every__ day.
- keymone 8y agoLA to Area 51 is 25m flight and their boarding procedures are probably quite a bit more efficient compared to normal passenger flights. doesn't look too bad compared to other people's commute in LA, i imagine.
- flurdy 8y agoDepends if they include the commute as part of the working hours. Then it is less bad. And at least on a plane, you are guaranteed a seat! :)
- garmaine 8y agoWhy? It's basically show up, park, walk on plane. No different than taking a commuter bus from SF to Mountain View. You'd obviously not be going through anything more than the usual security at a classified work site.
- amelius 8y agoReminds me of this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6617319 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6617319 https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/11/commuting-from-barcelona-a-london-worker-who-makes-it-pay https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/11/commuting-fro...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- alistairSH 8y agoThe article states there is a dedicated terminal for these flights. The passengers would have to all be pre-cleared - otherwise they wouldn't be commuting to Area 51 at all. It's a short flight, so as long as the driving portion of their commute (on both ends, Area 51 isn't small) is reasonable, the total commute time could be within an acceptable range.
- jasode 8y agoFyi... Wendover Productions made a 4-minute about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWNGAUvSyOc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWNGAUvSyOc
- BonesJustice 8y agoSo what happens if you’re running late one day? You don’t get to go into work? Or do you hold up the plane?
- kijin 8y agoProbably depends on how important you are?
- rbanffy 8y agoMaybe that's what the turboprop are for.
- JudgeWapner 8y agoat peak times they run a jet every 20 minutes. Evenings you could get delayed for a couple hours, but even then they have flights going as late as 8-9pm. you can watch the flights on https://flightaware.com/live/airport/KLAS https://flightaware.com/live/airport/KLAS, look for flights starting with WWW
- CalChris 8y agoWhy is Santa Barbara Municipal one of their destinations rather than Vandenberg?
- gedy 8y agoVAFB is fairly impractical for civilian contractors and if for daily commutes. Many more contractor offices and people live near SBA.
- dawnerd 8y agoSame reason Camarillo is on there even though it's right next to the naval/air base.
- imroot 8y agoRaytheon has/had a huge presence in the Santa Barbara area.
- CalChris 8y agoYeah, Raytheon Vision. They do satellite cameras/sensors. Northrup Grumman is there too.
- cushychicken 8y agoI bet Charles Stross could come up with a clever occult explanation of this for a Laundry Files novel.
- gpderetta 8y agoI'm sure the Black Chamber has uses for a secret airline.
- cushychicken 8y agoJust finished The Labyrinth Index on PTO this week. The Nazgul only get nastier and nastier.
- robohoe 8y agoI saw one of those airliners during my last trip to LV. Sometimes when you drive on Flamingo you can get a glimpse of them.
- et2o 8y agoMakes you think about the enormous cost of the United State's defense operations if they have come to the conclusion that it is sensible to routinely fly employees for a commute. Extravagant things like this are obviously only a miniscule fraction of the cost, but still.
- bunderbunder 8y agoIt does speak to the enormous costs, but, given the kinds of operations that they're serving with this thing, it makes some sense to me. The whole point of, e.g., the facility at Groom Lake is that it's very remote. Accumulating a large town nearby would defeat the purpose.
- wolfgke 8y ago> It does speak to the enormous costs, but, given the kinds of operations that they're serving with this thing, it makes some sense to me. Just a consideration: would it be cheaper to build and use an express railroad line between the remote facility and "the other commute destination" instead?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- ExBritNStuff 8y agoMaybe over the long term, but I wouldn't say that for certain given the insane costs of building infrastructure in that kind of environment. However, I can say that it would totally defeat the purpose of trying to keep things secret. Any tracks would be visible in satellite images and show exactly where the trains go.
- mrguyorama 8y agoplanes are not hard to track
- 8y ago
- el_benhameen 8y agoAnyone else surprised to read that the fleet is all ex-Air China aircraft? That seems like a security hole.
- gambiting 8y agoWhy? Does anyone think that those aircrafts would not have been stripped down and inspected in every possible way before going into service? Not to mention that they were purchased by a shell corporation to avoid any connection to the US government at the time of purchase.
- el_benhameen 8y agoWell sure. But Chinese intelligence is pretty ... intelligent. I wouldn't be surprised if they were at least somewhat aware of the origin of the shell corp. And the idea that one can strip a 737 down to a point that one can be certain that it contains no bugs or modifications seems unlikely to me. Doing so would certainly offset whatever discount you got by buying the 737 from a foreign source.
- lukewrites 8y agoMakes me think of Jiang Zemin's 767. https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/01/19/china-finds-bugs-on-jet-equipped-in-us/65089140-2afe-42e0-a377-ec8d4e5034ef/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ee18a5a12b59 https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2002/01/19/c...
- kirykl 8y agoThere's certainly precedent of US intelligence missing a potential device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thing_(listening_device)
- bearcobra 8y agoSatellites probably make it pretty easy to spot the runways and track the flights anyway
- golergka 8y agoReminds me of the guy who calculated that it's cheaper to commute from Barcelona to his London office than to rent a London apartment https://bestburgerinnorthwestlondon.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/cheaper-to-rent-in-barcelona-and-commute-to-london/ https://bestburgerinnorthwestlondon.wordpress.com/2013/10/24...
- platz 8y ago> During the turn the pilot suffered a sudden cardiac death. Half way through the turn the airplane began a gradual descent until it impacted the ground. The airplane broke up and burst into flames. Investigation revealed that the pilot had violated federal policy and directives, wilfully deceived flight medical examiners, suppressed significant medical information and ingested inappropriate medications for a deteriorating and dangerous health condition. The pilot had high blood pressure and failed to report it, and denied taking medications to his Federal Aviation Administration flight physical examiners. https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20040316-0 https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=20040316-...