As a Pratt & Whitney brat who grew up in Bellevue, WA when it was still a Boeing suburb in the ‘60s, I can’t resist pointing out how those fuselages remained pretty much intact despite the tremendous forces unleashed in the derailment.
That’s because of good design; design that saves lives. When people survive an horrific plane crash, it’s not a miracle, or direct intercession by the Hand of God; it’s the result of a lot of very skilled, very intelligent people working diligently to give passengers the best chance of survival when things go terribly wrong.
When I saw that photo, the first thing I thought was that a lot of proud engineers are emailing it to each other with congratulations. We see something that’s amusingly out-of-place in a river with rafters; they see work that stood up splendidly under a real-world hazing, just as it’s designed to do.
Of course, they also think it’s a terrible waste of very expensive resources.
That’ll buff right out.
They are unlikely to develop to full maturity because of the dams blocking their passage to the ocean.
Hahaha…Awww. I just made myself sad…
It’s a weird feeling when it comes to dams. I’m proud to live in the Northwest, where the significant majority of our power comes from hydroelectric sources. They’re zero emission, pretty low maintenance, and 100% renewable (as long as it snows in the mountains every winter). Then again, hydro dams block salmon runs, and even with fish ladders, and active management (putting the fish in barges and transporting them upstream of the dam) there’s still a lot of fish loss. And there’s also the fact that a lot of land is permanently flooded when a dam goes in. We end up altering the ecosystem of the river with little chance of knowing what the full consequences will be until years later.
And with global warming, hydroelectric is going to become less viable too, as the glaciers that feed the rivers melt away and never come back during the winter.
I only see 3.
Where are the other 734 of them?
Silly planes. You can’t swim. Get out of the water!
They can fly to the Southern Ocean.
I thought maybe Boeing should invest in a different train for every aircraft, to minimise the loss in the event of an accident. Trains are dangerous. All it takes is a crowbar in a switch point…
They’re so cute in the larval stage before they get their wings.
Are we sure Charles Widmore isn’t trying to hide something?
There’s also cases where one country dams a river to the detriment of another country downstream. Kenya and Ethiopia are in dispute over Ethiopia damming the Omo river.
Dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t…
Boeing now considers entering the submarine business.
I was also thinking there is a lot of valuable data in those wrecked fuselages. It may not have been flight conditions, but it was impact on hard objects on the ground, which you don’t get in a lab.
When I saw that photo I thought it looked like a picture made by aliens of a disaster on earth described to them on the telephone. It has something to do with mass transit, but the details are a bit fuzzy.
Relax, all right? My old man is a television repairman, he’s got this ultimate set of tools. I can fix them.
(Also, those are 737s. 747s have that upper deck hump.)
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