You mean the fiscally mismanaged country willing to repeatedly issue bonds and within only a few years decide to make them worthless, attempting to force bond holders into a pennies-on-the-dollar deal multiple times, only to reissue new bonds and do the same thing over again?

Argentina deserves just as much fault in that series of events.

Airlines are required to tell you in the EU of your EU261 rights.

And the offer they have to make includes either a refund or rerouting at the earliest opportunity via a comparable means, which includes using competitors.

The compensation is in addition to the refund or rerouting.

That is why its not “automatic” in the EU - you still have the right to choose the option, the airline cant simply dump you and give you your money back, if you insist on getting to where you need to go then they need to book you on a competitor to get you there.

EU261 is easier to enforce in Europe, as their national enforcement bodies usually have direct ability to enforce, rather than having to rely on the ability to sue to enforce (which is how enforcement is often done in the US by government bodies).

Which means that yes airlines can attempt to get out of it, but the enforcement body can just say “no, pay up” and its the airline that then has to sue the enforcement body and prove its case in civil court. Which means that EU261 court cases are few and far between.

In general, EU261 has been a massive positive for the public travelling by air in the EU, despite some attempts to get around it.

The one I refer to in my original post went through an extended period of time where it was very obviously anti-government, and covered a lot of negative stories about the then current government.

So the bias isnt always "pro-owner" - and in this case anyway the funding doesn't come from the government, just a mandated license fee (which kinda lets the cat out of the bag as to whom Im talking about).

Regardless of which way you want to push it, the BBC at its height was both more independent than most other media outlets in the UK and was higher quality.

It has fallen a long way since then.

Airbus has assembly plants in the US.

My favourite news outlet has been publicly funded for its entire life, and that funding model hasnt changed.

20 years ago it had extremely high quality journalism, and an award winning website.

Today, its quality is through the floor and its website is shite. Most of the stories are reposts from other sites or “feel good” stories that should not be on a news site (and this site has its own “magazine” section, which is where those stories should be).

The problem in today’s journalism is not money, no matter what they try and tell you.

No.

Ok, I see where you are going wrong.

Under newtonian physics, a body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, except insofar as it is acted upon by a force.

The moment you thrust in a particular direction away from your direction of travel, that is the "acted upon by a force" - your direction changes.

The moment that thrust stops, the change in direction stops, and you revert to "in motion at a constant speed in a straight line".

Your thrust needs to be constant to fully change direction, until you have reached the new direction you want.

There wasn't enough fuel between Columbia and Soyuz to continually thrust enough to both end up going in the same direction.

Its the constant thrust that you are missing - newtonian physics dont help here because thats oriented around continuing in a straight line, whereas for this orbital change you need a curve, and that needs a constant force for the duration of the curve.

Again, no one is saying you cant.

But you consistently seem to avoid the answer being given to you.

Its about the change in energy involved. Which means thrusting in a particular direction for a particular amount of time.

And none of the elements involved in this thread has the energy available to make the change in orbit. If they had more fuel, then they could have thrusted for longer and changed orbits. But they didn't have the fuel available. So they couldn't meet the energy requirements. So they cant match orbits.

It cant come from nowhere.

You cant throw a sail out and catch the wind.

You have a fixed amount of fuel on board, with no way to refuel and no sources from which to refuel from.

Imagine you are on a boat heading toward Niagra Falls - you are in the centre of the river, and need to make it to the bank before you go over the falls. If you have a powerful motor and a lot of fuel, you will probably make it. If you have a feeble motor and a lot of fuel, you might not make it. If you have a powerful motor and a thimble full of fuel, you arent going to make it. If you just have oars, you arent going to make it.

Same deal. You need a certain amount of energy to do these things, and that energy wasnt available.

The "olden times" arent exactly perfect in that regard however.

More than one show has latched on to an idea generated from fandom - hell, in Battle Star Galactica (2003), the concept of the Final Five wasn't even a thing until the show runners cottoned on to the amount of fan speculation around the remaining unnamed human-form Cylons, but they quickly pivoted to it becoming central to the show and ditched their original concepts.

Orbital mechanics is a mind fuck all in its own.

Even if you are in an identical orbit to the ISS, and 500km behind it on the orbital path, how do you catch it up?

Well, you have to slow down.

By slowing down, you put yourself in a lower orbit, which actually is a shorter orbit, which means you orbit faster, which means you catch the ISS up. You then speed back up to slow down to match the ISS orbit.

If you thrust yourself toward the ISS (ie by firing your rockets behind you), you slow down in relation to the ISS because you move yourself into a higher orbit, which is actually a longer orbit, so you take longer doing it, so the ISS speeds off into the distance.

All of that is just assuming you are matching perfect orbits and are trying to catch up with the object in front of you. You burn fuel changing orbits twice.

Changing the direction you are heading takes even more fuel. A lot more.

Neither Soyuz nor the Space Shuttle have that sort of fuel on board. Their manoeuvring systems is for small adjustments to catch up with something as described above - they depend on the big ass rocket or fuel tank they rode to orbit on in order to get them into the right orbit.

Well, the MAX isnt the most popular commercial jet ever. That would be the A320NEO family.

Currently the NEO stands at 10,350 orders and 3,200 deliveries.

The MAX meanwhile stands at 6,200 orders and 1,400 deliveries.

In fact, for an aircraft family that was launched nearly 20 years after the 737 family, the A320 family will this year surpass the 737 family in total number of sales - the NEO is that popular.

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.