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watched the terminal

just watched “the terminal”, movie directed by Steven Spielberg with Tom Hanks playing a guy stuck at NY airport for 9 months.

we checked a little and found the true story aspect at this nytimes article and a nice wikipedia entry about Merhan Karimi Nasseri, who still lives at Roisin Airport in Paris. The wikipedia entry says that this is still true on 17th July 2005, so probably the web keeps this story alive.

Funny thing, somebody has to have checked this and entered it in wikipedia. this alone is a weird fact, but also giving me a feeling of security: when I want to know something like this, many many other people write stuff down.

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do battle tanks fly?

yesterday we had a vivid discussion if the US army can airdrop battle tanks on kaiserslautern, using the aircraft that fly over kaiserslautern during landing approach to Ramstein.

My argument was that a usual battle tank (like the Leopard II used in many european armies, weights about 62 tons) could not be dropped. A kindergarden mathematical approach based on a 80kg person with a 24 sqm paraglider brought us to a 160x160m parachute for a 70 ton tank.

but surely, tanks can fly:
flying tank
http://www.waffenhq.de/panzer/m551sheridan.html

the M511 sheridan can be airdropped, but it is a very light battle tank with 16 tons weight. It is not armored and above article says that this was a problem.

so yes, humans can do it and if somebody airdrops a tank, it would be a frightening thing, even if its not a leopard 2.