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johnldean0 commented on UA 1093   windbornesystems.com/blog... · Posted by u/c420
dlcarrier · 5 months ago
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.
johnldean0 · 5 months ago
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.
johnldean0 commented on UA 1093   windbornesystems.com/blog... · Posted by u/c420
modeless · 5 months ago
> The system is designed to not pose a risk to human life in the worst case event of a collision. This is what the FAA 101 and ICAO weight limits are for. And indeed, there were no serious injuries and no depressurization event to my knowledge as a result of the collision.

This seems close to a worst case scenario for this failure mode, and everyone is still OK. I consider that good engineering.

johnldean0 · 5 months ago
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.

u/johnldean0

KarmaCake day39October 21, 2025View Original