The thing is the IT community should know better. You know what goes in airplanes and missiles? Computers.
Not understanding how high 60,000 feet (roughly 18km) is is embarassing when you're an engineer of some description.
This phenomenon is something I've noticed with other subjects too; like a lot of the IT community not understanding how life works outside of cities when we talk about transport and infrastructure.
IT professionals affect the world in very significant ways with their engineering, but they also seem like some of the most naive/ignorant people I know of. I'm greatly interested in why this seems so.