[kragen]

a fuel-air bomb is very much more difficult to build than you think it is

it isn't going to happen by accident

right now lots of people are getting exposed to fumes from both leaded gasoline itself and the combustion products from the engines, which probably kills more people than faulty civil aviation engines ever will

[ineedasername]

Yes sure, it's not literally a military-grade thermobaric explosion. It's a few hundred lbs of fuel strapped to a 1,000lb+ airframe and I don't mind regulations and oversight of such things when people want to propel them through the air.

As for the rest, I agree...? I'm not sure how that was related. I think a dislike for leaded fuel is not incompatible with my comments indicating that some regulatory hoops are reasonable when creating customized aircraft.

[outworlder]

It is not going to explode any more than a car will.

It may catch on fire, though.

[Dylan16807]

> I don't mind regulations and oversight of such things

Do you think anyone is arguing against the existence of plane regulations?

[kragen]

surely the optimal level of regulation is not zero but in this case probably the status quo (including wrongful death torts, etc.) has killed and brain-damaged more people than zero regulation would have, by halting progress 50 years ago

compare progress in aviation from 01923 to 01973 with progress from 01973 to today. we could have ultra-efficient ornithopters, mass-produced gossamer condors (maybe electric), mars-pathfinder-style airbags, ejection seats in coach class, suborbital commuter rockets to anywhere in the world in 45 minutes, and things we can't even imagine yet or don't know to be feasible

instead we have slight variations on the 50-year-old 747 and the 85-year-old piper cub (still running grossly inefficiently on leaded avgas), dramatic regression in crewed spaceflight capabilities, plus interesting experiments in hang gliders, jetpacks, hoverboards, and more conventional ultralights that have been unable to reach mass adoption

oh and uncrewed quadcopters and stealth bombers because those were unregulated

[eternityforest]

They are trying to eliminate the leaded gas too though. No idea why they didn't just subsidize new planes that didn't need leaded gas, rather than spend decades looking for substitutes.