Sunday, October 07, 2007

Highway to the Danger Zone





The Blue Angels are in town this weekend so we went and saw them yesterday. Their top speed is 1.7 times the speed of sound and when they fly overhead it sounds like the very heavens are being torn in half. Quite impressive. I checked online to find out what their fuel consumption is since SF is all about conservation. Of course it's classified but the FA-18 Hornet has a 1000 mile range when carrying 1200 gallons of fuel so I did a little math and figure they burn about 500 gallons an hour, in the city, not sure what kind of highway mileage they would get but there are 6 of them so lets be conservative and say yesterday's 45-minute show was 3,000 gallons so they will blow 9 or 10 thousand gallons over the weekend. God Bless America, if that doesn't support our troops fighting for oil then I don't know how to be American.

2 comments:

Rachael Ann said...

Amen brother...it sure is a tangled web we weave wasting that much fuel and mourning the loss of an 18 year-old soldier all in the same moment.

Unthawed Alaskan said...

Those guys have to practice every day too. Think about the fuel that wastes.

Just like every other horrible vice in the world, if you forget about the costs, it can be pretty impressive.