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From: doug@terak.UUCP (Doug Pardee)
Newsgroups: net.misc
Subject: Re: $1288 ashtrays
Message-ID: <677@terak.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-Aug-85 13:00:32 EDT
Article-I.D.: terak.677
Posted: Thu Aug 15 13:00:32 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 20-Aug-85 02:25:40 EDT
References: <6400034@hp-pcd.UUCP> <717@vortex.UUCP> <2608@amdcad.UUCP> <1052@mhuxt.UUCP>
Organization: Calcomp Display Products Division, Scottsdale, AZ, USA
Lines: 30

> > ...But I must conclude that
> > coffee pots on airplanes are much more complicated than the kind that
> > K-mart sells and that's why they cost so much more.
> 
>      Of course, Delta has to serve coffee to a few hundred passengers out of
> their coffee pots.  I guess the military has some transport jets which can
> carry similar numbers of passengers but seriously doubt if the $7200 number
> is referring to such a coffee pot.

You may laugh, but a couple of years ago a corporate biz-jet was nearly
lost (with all aboard) because of a coffee pot.

I wish I could remember the story clearly, but it had to do with the
built-in coffee pot shorting out and catching fire.  Because a coffee
pot is a high-power device, it was located right at the main electrical
busses, and the fire burned through all three power busses.  Control
over the pressurization system was lost, and the plane depressurized.
The pilot had to manually shut off the oxygen supply to prevent oxygen
from getting to the fire.

With no pressurization and no supplemental oxygen, a "crash descent" was
needed in order to get to a "breathable" altitude before everyone on
board blacked out.

Speaking of airborne coffee -- if you want some excitement, take a
thermos of coffee aloft and open it.  If you'd rather skip the
excitement, calculate the boiling point of coffee at 20"Hg and
compare that with the temperature that a thermos will hold coffee at.
-- 
Doug Pardee -- CalComp -- {seismo!noao,decvax!noao,ihnp4}!terak!doug