ATC is hundreds of functions and dozens of responsibilities like checking that the runway is safe to land. "Clear to land" is not just a turn of phrase, it is a check and verify that an aircraft with hundreds of people is relying on.

Air traffic is not a deterministic system, it is squishy and significantly more complicated because it involves humans, complex mechanical systems, and weather floating on top of a sea of limited resources.

Automating just the error prone radio calls would be a massive start.

Those could be sent as short text messages that appear on a screen in the cockpit, for the pilots to acknowledge receipt of with a limit set of responses, and would give ATC a lot more time to focus on their other duties.

So like texting and driving, but in the air? Flying is hard, I don’t think an automated text based system would be safer than what we have now.

Try responding to the strongest possible interpretation of what someone says.

Anyway, this wasn’t my idea, it came from one of the handful of active / recently retired commercial pilots on YouTube.

This is already being done at many major airports through the FAA Data Comm program.

https://www.faa.gov/newsroom/data-communications-data-comm-0

Thanks for linking that, I wasn’t aware it was that far in to development / production.

Automating various functions seems like a good idea. But it's not going to remove the humans from the loop in the event of a future government shutdown, which is what the original suggestion seemed to be.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controller%E2%80%93pilot_data_...

Thanks, appreciate a good rabbit hole.

So leave the stuff that it suitable for humans to humans and automate everything else.

The general experience from the last 50 years is that reducing the human capacity for error by automation was mostly helpful in air traffic safety.

At the very least, safety mechanisms such as TCAS should be introduced where possible [1], to act as a protection of last resort when humans fail.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_collision_avoidance_sy...

Also remember that ATC is vital for emergency situations. "Your distress call is important to us, please continue screaming into the void and hopefully a miracle happens.

The bigger comment is that these people are not documented or undocumented. To be either would require due process where such documents could be produced.

There are vastly different scales where the approximation is correct for newton vs general relativity. Perhaps you can define the scales that you are calling relevant so we understand what you mean.

The scale of galaxies? Which the original article is about? I feel like I need to spell out everything, but ok:

The article is about modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND), which is a theory that modifies Newtonian gravitation to fix some observed differences in galaxies' motion, without invoking dark matter. The original commenter then proclaims "haha, MOND cannot be right, because we know that Newtonian gravity is incorrect". Yeah, no shit Sherlock; it is "incorrect" because it is just a limiting case of general relativity. But that's completely besides the whole point of MOND, which tries to "fix" gravity at galactic scales, which is a Newtonian regime even with general relativity. MOND is trying to tweak the Newtonian formula at those extreme distances, and if it works, then maybe it can be worked out to be a limiting case of a "modified general relativity", just as Newtonian gravity is a limiting case of GR. Got it?

So spacetime (interactions between mass, space, and time) are required for any sort of precision explanation. If "extreme" means planet size masses, I guess, but I generally consider our solar system pretty normal. However we cannot explain the planetary motion of mercury without relativity, so define your extreme.

But sure, newton is good enough to handle most ground based scenarios where we only care about forces at low precision.

The Roberts court is fine with compelled speech, so long as it is as antiabortion. So I assume the same can be applied here.

And never forget excelsior geyser (crater) just up the road.

What is the accuracy of the mapping you do and is it destructive? Do you deal with hot systems (steam/water equilibrium matters)?

Honestly, I would be more worried about an elephant rampage, as it is significantly more likely.

Sheesh! Now I definitely won’t sleep, house as I am in this flimsy house, not in any way robust enough to withstand the inevitable rampaging herd.

I think they may still have a few tickets to go visit the ship while she is in drydock (as in walk under the ship).