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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

#231

Post by zz0rr »

anonymars wrote: post #161
WalterBright wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it was just about four-engine planes becoming too expensive to run Four engines are also less safe than twin engines. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but Boeing did the math and made the case.

Can you link to the source?

there's a book on this, "How Boeing Defied the Airbus Challenge: An Insider's Account"

I don't know if it lays out the safety math but it goes very deep on twin engine safety and some of the fights over the a340 vs. 777 regulations

Re: The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

#233

Post by s1artibartfast »

jquery wrote: post #115
Leonard_of_Q wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Atlantic writes for its owners as well as its readership, both of whom consider it unsavoury to compliment their homeland without adding multiple caveats.

Considering who the current face of the country is and how we are acting on the world stage, it’s the least they can do.

To pile on, it dont think this attitude is productive. For every person that finds it motivation for positive change, there are two that take the criticism as face value and g8ve up or lean into it.

It is like basic child psychology. It is hard to get child to develop constructively by telling them they are awful and worthless.

Re: The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

#234

Post by boxed »

jquery wrote: post #183
GMoromisato wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

> constantly lies and distorts the truth

sure

> to promote the ideology of capital

eh, no that's false. They promote the ideology of ad revenue at most, which causes audience capture, which on the left means anti-capital crazy talk like pro-theocracy, anti-growth and other weird shit.

Re: The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

#235

Post by kelnos »

dcrazy wrote: post #120
jquery wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering who the current face of the country is and how we are acting on the world stage, it’s the least they can do.

This is why the right gets away with saying liberals hate America. Because as long as there is anything to criticize about America (which there always will be), some people simply cannot make a single truly positive statement about America, or even things that happened in or came from America. Slate is even worse than The Atlantic in this regard.

> This is why the right gets away with saying liberals hate America.

The right gets away with it because they are disingenuous children who argue in bad faith. Don't blame the people criticizing the US; those criticisms are usually valid and reasonable. The right needs to remember that being able to criticize the government/country was a founding principle of the US, and that just because someone says something critical, it doesn't mean hate. Seriously, it's like they have a child's level of discourse.

(In reality, they know exactly what they're doing, of course. The hypocrisy and simple ragebait is entirely the point. It's just bad faith bullshit.)

Re: The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

#236

Post by boxed »

rootusrootus wrote: post #94
Rover222 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad to see your sentiment. I’m so tired of the reflexive self flagellation of a lot of Americans. It’s often based in ignorance.

It is very tiring. I get why Europeans might enjoy taking shots at us (though at one point I'd have said it was more of a good natured ribbing, given that Europe's history is also many Americans' history), and I fully understand the armies of bots spreading invective ... but the constant dogging on America by our own citizens is sad. I'm sure a lot of this outcome is intentional, but nobody fights back. America is ma…

> I'm sure a lot of this outcome is intentional, but nobody fights back.

Well.. some people do in fact fight back. You'll hear it on the Waking Up podcast for example. The issue is that Trump is also, on the surface, fighting back. Except he's destroying America instead of making it great.

Re: The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

#237

Post by tonyedgecombe »

schainks wrote: post #133
ceejayoz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Concorde wasn't made in the US. It was a UK/France partnership.

The US was still very much involved in its development and testing, so I think we can still chalk it up as a win for multi-country collaboration, eh :3

The biggest impact the US had on Concorde was banning it from flying supersonic overland.

Re: The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

#238

Post by microgpt »

nehal3m wrote: post #227
chrisss395 wrote: post #156

I know less about the airframe differences across the -400 and -8, but I can say the 747-8 represented a major upgrade in Flight Management Software. I re-wrote the Central Maintenance System (portion inside the FMS) in C from scratch because no one had the original detailed design documents. The original -400 code was written in Pascal if I'm remembering correctly. I gleamed what I could from the source and relied o…

I hope you replied something like 'No, meeting this project deadline is more important than YOUR child dying, to me this is a paycheck.' That's what I would've been thinking in the shower 2 days after the conversation, anyway.

Plot twist: manager's child flew on a 737 MAX that crashed

Re: The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

#239

Post by microgpt »

eichin wrote: post #191
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…

I had a round trip BOS↔LHR that was 747 eastbound, 777 westbound; I ended up on the upper deck of the 747, which was fascinating as an otherwise casual flyer. One especially memorable bit was landing - you're basically three stories up and suddenly the wheels are on the ground, and you're still three stories up :-) (I'm still happy to have traded that for planes with a much higher cabin pressure-altitude - and would…

A higher pressure-altitude or a higher pressure? Can't imagine what's good about a higher pressure-altitude. Less creaking making you less worried the plane will explode?

Re: The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

#240

Post by kelnos »

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…

> what sense does it make to vote for an unpatriotic politician?

I really dislike the concept of "patriotism". What does it even mean? I think you'll get different answers if you get different people.

If people think that being critical of the US makes someone "unpatriotic", then that's their problem. If that makes a critical politician less electable, so be it. The alternative -- politicians censoring themselves and pretending everything is amazing -- is much worse.

And I'm not sure where the right is coming from anyway. The whole concept of MAGA is that the US kinda sucks right now and Trump is the savior who will fix it. If anyone has been critical of the US, it's been Trump and the MAGA crowd. But of course hypocrisy is never a problem for the right.

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