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The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

theatlantic.com

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Re: The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

#181

Post by tolciho »

massysett wrote: post #154

This article is but one example of a tiresome genre: the paean to the supposed glory days of aviation. Passengers dressed up, dined on caviar, and smoked cigarettes. Stewardesses were sexy, and liquor flowed in the expansive 747 lounge. These pieces then bemoan today’s bus of the sky, with the unwashed masses donning sweatpants and dragging screaming toddlers who leave orange Goldfish crumbs in the seat cracks. I am…

The "big old plane" was from the B team at Boeing, everyone with money or ambition or plain common sense then had put their chips on supersonics, which guzzle even more fuel in addition to the Operation Bongo II problem.

Re: The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

#182

Post by jquery »

dcrazy wrote: post #141
mathgeek wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is why the right gets away with saying liberals hate America. This is a form of victim blaming. The right side of American politics gets away with it not because the left complains, but because the right doesn’t get punished at the polls for doing it.

They don’t get punished at the polls because people accept, or are at least willing to entertain the implication, that the left wing dislikes America. And what sense does it make to vote for an unpatriotic politician? Would you want to work for a CEO who publicly disdains the company? (Gil Amelio’s infamous quote about steering the sinking Apple ship comes to mind.) As long as the Democratic base insists on caveating…

I looked up Gil Amelio’s “infamous” quote and it doesn’t seem incorrect given what Apple was going through at the time. Steve Jobs had just sold 1.5 million shares of Apple stock and tanked the stock, would you accuse Steve Jobs of hating Apple?

Toxic positivity is when you can’t criticize something even when it deserves criticism. Is America full of brilliant people? Yes. Is it in a steep decline at the moment? Also yes. Apple thrived because Steve Jobs did a coup and steered the ship. America needs the same, but not from an incompetent nincompoop like the current moron.

Re: The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

#183

Post by jquery »

GMoromisato wrote: post #135
throw-the-towel wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this kind of ritual flagellation supposed to mitigate Trump though?

Ironically, it's this ritual self-flagellation that helped elect Trump. Normies lost faith in the media partly because they were seen as not really loving America. And if you don't trust the media, then it's a lot easier to believe Trump's lies.

> Normies lost faith in the media partly because they were seen as not really loving America.

I would argue they lost faith because the media constantly lies and distorts the truth to promote the ideology of capital. They are elite and disconnected, absolutely, just not in a left wing way, but a corpo-capitalist way (which only looks “left” if you’re to the right of capital).

Re: The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

#184

Post by jquery »

GMoromisato wrote: post #179
DangitBobby wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless SpaceX knows something about thermodynamics that no one else knows, we can be pretty fucking sure that they have an incompetent mouthpiece or they are committing securities fraud.

I'm not sure I get it. Obviously, computers can work in space--a Starlink satellite is basically a computer with a radio attached. Satellites use radiators for cooling without violating any laws of physics. I assume you think that SpaceX will never be able to build/deploy a radiator big enough? But that's not a physics/thermodynamics question, that's an engineering question. And I think SpaceX has some pretty good en…

You could also launch people from LA to NYC via rockets instead of using airplanes without violating any laws of physics. But we don’t, because we have airplanes already. What problem are data centers in space solving? Cooling is probably the hardest issue to deal with for data centers, so why would you give up convective cooling you get for free on Earth?

I don’t know why you’re jumping from starlink to data centers in space. The utility of satellite internet has been known for decades before Starlink came around.

Re: The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

#186

Post by linzhangrun »

GMoromisato wrote: post #67

Anyone interested should read Joe Sutter's book, 747. Sutter was the lead engineer for the development of the 747 and he has some awesome stories. One interesting story is that Juan Trippe (CEO of PanAm) wanted Boeing to create a double-decker airplane. He was enamored with the idea of "ocean liners" cruising the sky. But Sutter (and other engineers) knew that it would be impossible to create what he wanted, so inste…

Highly recommended, too. I was completely captivated by this when I was an elementary school student.

Re: The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

#190

Post by sandworm101 »

SR2Z wrote: post #173
massysett wrote: post #154

This article is but one example of a tiresome genre: the paean to the supposed glory days of aviation. Passengers dressed up, dined on caviar, and smoked cigarettes. Stewardesses were sexy, and liquor flowed in the expansive 747 lounge. These pieces then bemoan today’s bus of the sky, with the unwashed masses donning sweatpants and dragging screaming toddlers who leave orange Goldfish crumbs in the seat cracks. I am…

I think the context that's missing from this discussion is just how long the 747 was in service. When it was new, pilots didn't directly control the engines - a flight engineer did. There were no moving maps and navigation was done with radio beacons and pilotage (of course, this required lots of fiddling with knobs and a notepad). There were no flight envelope protections, and we knew next to nothing about the dange…

And the context of the different regulatory environment. Those fancy cabins in the 60s/70s were because prices/routes were controlled by government. Unable to compete on price, airlines competed on luxury. Which, at the time, largely boiled down to who which had the shortest miniskirts in the TV ads.

Today's flying cattlecar hell is the result of the opposite, a dramatic market-driven race to the bottom of quality... followed by a price bounce to see how much money they can pull out of use before we give up and drive.

The day we have self-driving cars good enough that we can sleep, domestic air travel is dead. Ill take 10 hours curlled up in the back seat of my car rather than the 10+ hours it takes getting to/from airports for a domestic flight.

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