Are crystals needed in the sky?

Today I decided to start a blog about my journey to become a handicapped glider pilot. First of all because I would like to document the entire story. Maybe others with some sort of disability might follow this path. I would also like to share other ideas and thoughts that might describe me as a person.

I came up with the idea to name this first chapter: "Are crystals needed in the sky?". This name is related to the genetic bone disorder with which I was born. I have osteogenesis imperfecta which is commonly also known as brittle bone disease. In Spanish, which is one of my two native languages, this disorder is commonly called "Huesos de cristal" which translated means "Crystal bones".

At the same time the atmosphere contains crystals in the form of ice or snow.

Sometimes water can not crystallize and it remains liquid at temperatures below freezing. This is called supercooled water. 

You might ask what supercooled water, crystal like bones and aviation might have in common. 

Almost two years ago an Air France Airbus A330 was lost over the Atlantic Ocean. So far little is known about what happed and why 228 people were killed. There is only the certainty that the air speed measuring equipment failed for some reason.

One of the theories is that the plane went trough a thunderstorm and that there it encountered supercooled water. Supercooled water is a very rare phenomenon. Basically what happens is that the water is so pure that it can not start building crystals (ice) although below freezing temperature. When supercooled water gets in contact with dust or any other solid material it becomes ice almost immediately. This could be a reason why the pitot tubes used to measure the airspeed of the A330 might have stopped working. Although these tubes are heated the heating might not have been strong enough to handle supercooled water.

 

So in other words we could say that for safe flying we rely on impurities in the air that help the creation of ice crystals.

So why not become a pilot despite having crystal bones? Not that I feel as an impurity myself but the analogy sounds nice to me.