Ironically, it did get broken up a long time ago.

In 1934 it was forced by changes in law to split into Boeing Airplane Company, United Airlines, United Aircraft Corporation and Pratt & Whitney.

No, no ones saying that...

ISS is at approx 51 degrees inclination.

Columbia was in an orbit at approx 39 degrees inclination.

That difference doesn't sound like a lot, but it is.

People have asked the same questions as you for the past 21 years, and each and every time the answer has been the same - the math just doesn't work out, there was no way for Columbia to get to the ISS or for something to get from the ISS to Columbia. Those ~12 degrees difference in orbital inclination takes a *lot* to overcome - people just never understand the amount of energy needed to do things in space, its not like Star Wars where you point and go.

Columbia was in an "ideal" orbit for a space shuttle, because it was just carrying out a science mission and not visiting anything.

ISS is in its own orbit.

Sure, a Soyuz from the ISS could have lowered itself to the same height as Columbia (ISS is at 400km, Columbia was at 170km), but they are still going in very different directions.

Its the change in direction that needs the energy here - and neither Columbia nor Soyuz has the required energy available to make that change.

So lets say that you manage to lower the orbit of a Soyuz to the right level, and you are lucky enough that you cross paths with Columbia on your current orbit...

Without changing direction, you are trying to jump on a train which is going through a station at full speed without stopping. And you might get *one* chance at that because on the next orbit your paths wont intersect at all. Theres no prospect of docking or anything, you are going too fast in different directions. And even if you do jump correctly, you are going to go splat against Columbia because of the speed difference.

Columbia wasn't too heavy to reach the ISS, it was just less desirable because of its weight.

In fact, if it hadn't been lost when it did, Columbia would have been fitted out for STS-118, which was intended to deliver a truss and stowage system to the ISS in November 2003.

The *only* reason Columbia couldnt have used the ISS as a refuge was because it didnt have the fuel to change orbits by that much.

Tell what to the FBI? The fact that I said that not everything needs to be treated the same?

Sure, the failure of a door plug a few mere weeks after the aircraft was delivered is *entirely* the same as the failure of a cowling latch on a part which is opened several times a week by airline maintenance personnel on an aircraft which was delivered many years ago...

One falls within Boeings remit, the other likely does not, and even if it did it would result in a minor AWD.

People need to stop over dramatising everything in life. This is one example. The door plug failure is an example of when some things should be treated differently.

I think you forget the amount of publicity that Airbus received for the AF066 uncontained engine failure - it was significant, especially given the fact that this was the second uncontained engine failure of an A380 during the A380s operational life.

But why didnt it reach the epic proportions of scrutiny that Boeing received after the MAX issues and the subsequent Alaska Airlines door blowout?

Because both A380 uncontained engine failures were fully investigated and no evidence of either poor culture, cover ups or a manufacturing decision based on cost alone was uncovered. Each engine failure was from a different engine manufacturer, and in both cases the root cause was identified and rectified, with an appropriate course of action implemented for airlines.

It wasn't because it was an Airbus that it was largely ignored by the public, it was because there was no scandal around it.

The issue with Boeing wasn't that an incident happened, it was the subsequent investigation which lead to the uncovering of systemic issues within the manufacturer that was newsworthy.

Every aircraft has whats called a "Minimum Equipment List" that an aircraft can operate with - which means that things can and do break and so long as it doesn't violate the MEL then operations can continue.

Its perfectly possible that you pointed out something that the pilot was either already aware of or that they could diagnose from the cockpit and a brief visual inspection when next on the ground.

If the issue didn't violate the MEL, then the next flight can go ahead without concern.

Southwest Airlines operates nearly 820 Boeing aircraft and has more than 3000 flights per day. And they *only* operate Boeing aircraft.

I don't at all find it surprising that if you actually looked you could find incidents for Southwest pretty much any day of the year, at that operational tempo - and of course all of them are going to be involving Boeing aircraft....

Engines are the responsibility of the engine manufacturer, but often cowlings (which is what failed here) are not. These are highly optimised coverings for the engine which have a big effect on airflow efficiencies, and are often designed by the aircraft manufacturer rather than the engine manufacturer (the engine manufacturer often designs the intake, as that has a lot of effect on the engine efficiency itself).

But this is a 737NG, been in service for years, so its probably a maintenance issue or failed part rather than a design defect.

People need to stop highlighting every failure of a Boeing aircraft now, the vast majority of the ones we have seen talked about this year have nothing to do with Boeing or its culture, and instead are pretty normal failures that wouldnt have been talked about prior to the MAX issues. There are thousands of flights a day, sometimes shit does happen a few times a year - the last time this type of failure was featured on a prime time news segment it had nothing to do with Boeings culture, and it doesnt this time either

Just because a part failed does not mean there is an inherent culture or cost cutting issue, in either the construction or maintenance.

XP64 here. Same philosophy. Block the garbage, don't be stupid, glory in my lack of visitors, and remember that attack vectors are mostly discovered by reverse-engineering the patches. No patches, way fewer clues.

Whatever small risks are well offset by an OS that doesn't continually make me long to reach through my monitor and throttle a UI developer.

California brings water from a lot farther than that -- the Aqueduct runs about 500 miles to service Los Angeles. (And has turned the formerly-lush Owens Valley into a desert.)

Destroying the first dam was environmentally catastrophic, and produced a massive fish kill. Ooops.

https://californiaglobe.com/ar...

You forget that Boeing (and Lockheed) both got quite a way down the path of designing supersonic passenger aircraft to rival Concorde, only stopping when government money dried up.

Of course, the American alternative needed to be better, so it started iff as a swing wing mach 3 design which vastly increased costs and complexity - ultimately, the final Boeing design looked surprisingly similar as Concorde and had pretty much identical operating specs.

Concorde was designed for a purpose, and so was the 747 - as such, you cant really compare the two without taking the design considerations into account. No supersonic aircraft is going to be as efficient as a subsonic one, thats just basic physics.

Sure, theres a lot of info about it, but...

How much of that info is both:

1. Cutting edge technology, and
2. Detailed enough to actually help assist in reproducing the design

Next time you fly, take a look at the engine on the commercial jet aircraft you are about to board. Look hard at the intake, Its just a round hole, right? Wrong - lots of cutting edge design and engineering goes into each generation of jet engine aircraft around the intakes, as its one of the key areas where you can gain or lose performance in the engine.

Often when an aircraft manufacturer offers two engine options for a commercial aircraft, both engines will use the same intake design, and there are differences when it comes to who designs the intake - if the aircraft manufacturer designs it, the efficiency is midpoint between both engines, but sometimes one of the engine manufacturers gets to design it. When that happens, the efficiency is always skewed toward that manufacturers engines, and the other engine option is slightly less efficient as a result.

During its day, Concordes intakes were actually cutting edge - to the point where the Tu-144 didnt have intakes anywhere near as good and as such the Soviets tried several times to steal the plans. So yeah, Concordes intake design was a closely guarded secret for many years during its early service.

No ones really that worried about China having 1970s tech, its China getting hold of 2020s tech which is the issue.

Not all jets, just supersonic ones, which tends to be military so these sort of things tend to be restricted as a result.

The difficulty for subsonic flight is different to that of supersonic - with commercial subsonic, you want a smooth flow of air into your fan and compressor stages, where its actually accelerated in order to compress it, and it needs a wide open intake to accomplish that for high efficiency . With supersonic, the engine still has to do its thing, but it cant do it with supersonic airflow, so it needs to slow it down in such a way that the airflow isn’t turbulent by the time it reaches the fan and compressors.

So the issue here is to do what is done on military aircraft, without being able to lean on a lot of the practical and up to date knowledge that those military aircraft use, because you also dont want China to have that knowledge.

Will be interesting to see how the US government handles this as an export.