Nowadays, and even pre- September 11th- it is fairly complex to gain access to anywhere NEAR many of the large vehicles listed in the O.P.
You cannot start what you cannot reach.
747? Almost impossible to gain physical access into a cockpit without belonging there.
A NASCAR stock car? Most owners tend to be highly protective of their cars. They are stored in trailers, and lowered and put into use when needed. I shot a job a few years ago at Nazareth Speedway in Pennsylvania. A driver who shall remain nameless because he’s the son of a hot-shot driver and was about to run his first major race, cracked up the car on a turn. Much grumbling and dirty looks, but the kid was given the second vehicle- that was kept stored in the upper loft of the 18-wheeler that served as office and maintenance shop for the team. The kid cracked that car up an hour later, and that team was scrubbed from the race. Nobody went near the cars, and nobody was allowed to get near the broken up parts either.
Hi Opal! No comment.
A Formula One racecar? See above.
A locomotive? Not only would you have to gain access, through a secured trainyard, you cannot go very far on a train without a LOT of outside help. The movies aside, one does not have free run of the country’s rails at the drop of a lever. It takes coordination as you go, to allow a train to get from say, Boston to Washington, D.C.
A nuclear sub, Nimitz-class destroyer, or any other motorized sailing vessel? Two different questions. The world is full of marinas filled with ships. Many have little or no security, and you could gain access to a motorized sailing vessel in all likelihood, and figure out how to start it. ( Most smaller boats I’ve seen actually DO have keys that start them ). As for the sub? Your court-appointed attorney won’t even want to handle your case, bub.
Cartooniverse
…but surely commercial a/c land with some fuel left in their tanks. AFAIK they at least have to have a reserve to get to an alternate airport should their destination be fogged out for instance. They presumably would have enough for around an hours flight time when they land.
I am a commercial pilot, and you are right. Legal minimum fuel for an airline operation is whatever it takes to get to your destination, plus what is needed from there to get to the alternate airport, plus 45 minutes worth of fuel. For an airliner, You probably wont find much more than that in the tanks, But that can conceivably work out to an hour and a half or so.
However, if you are so inclined to steal a smaller aircraft, it will more often just depend on the operator’s practices. I know a couple operations that generally top their tanks at the end of flights.
M109 howitzers don’t need a key to start. They start with the push of a button. When I was in military service it occured to me that those could be stolen rather easily. On the other hand,thieves wouldnt get very far with it and the ammunition is stored somewhere secure anyway.
Lighting off a nuclear power plant and bringing steam into the engineroom on a warship is sufficiently difficult and time comsuming that it provides its own security, even if you could gain uncontested access. It’s manpower intensive, and time consuming. Further, the fewer people you have working at it, the longer it takes. Below a certain threshold of knowledgeable bodies, it can’t be done at all.
The funny part is, that some ships actually do have a key. It’s just not used for starting things up. On the Russell, we actually carried the ship’s key with us: A gigantic wrench for unlocking the screw from the propeller shaft, so big it required a crane to actually turn it. It would have been used in a remote refit (replacing the screw) scenario, a damned unlikely event.
We do this with our 172. It was explained to me that topping off the tanks reduces condensation in the tank (less airspace).
Water in tank = bad.
This seemed to hold true. We never seemed to have very much water in the tank when draining during pre-flight, but on the 150 I trained on, (which they only fueled before a flight), there seemed to be quite a bit more.
That explanation is correct. Whatever air is in the tank, contains moisture. If the temperature cools much overnight, it will condense. I used to instruct in airplanes, and I have seen as much as 5 ounces of water come out of a fuel tank in a 172. (more than that in a couple other planes).
Anyway, flight schools commonly top their tanks at the end of the day, exactly for that reason.
Tranquilis is entirely correct that the complexity of bringing the reactor and engine room online in a submarine is such that it provides its own security.
However, there actually are some keys involved. Before one can begin the start-up sequence, the padlocks on the main electrical breakers for reactor control have to be unlocked. On my sub, these keys were kept in a safe on board, and all Engineering Duty Officers were required to know the combination to the safe. Normally, however, the keys were provided by the ship’s Engineer. The custody transfer of the reactor keys were recorded in our logs.
Incidentally, there were also padlocked covers over the switches operating the main ballast tank (MBT) valves. The purpose of the covers were to prevent inadvertent submerging of the sub while pierside with access hatches open, etc. The keys to these locks were in another safe–all Ship’s Duty Officers (SDOs) knew the combo to this safe.
The keys to these locks were in another safe–all Ship’s Duty Officers (SDOs) knew the combo to this safe.