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....

Anything that goes slow enough to be captured into an orbit will eventually spiral inwards.

Well, most of it (when we're talking matter not already in another black hole). Ordinary stuff orbiting near a black hole gets torn apart by the enormous tides and forms a disk-like structure similar to a gas giant's rings. Interactions among it and with the black hole's magnetic and gravitic fields can eject a bit of it in a pair of jets out along the axis of the disk, powered apparently by the rest of the stuff falling in.

These two black holes wouldn't stick to each other, but start swirling around each other and eventually merge together.

This is partly because of friction with and among other stuff in orbit around the black holes in their "accretion disks". (Black holes experience friction by eating the stuff in the other hole's disk of debris, with the momentum of the black-hole-plus-dinner thus being different from the black-hole-before-dinner.)

It's also partly because the rapid acceleration of things passing near a black hole or orbiting it causes the emission of gravity waves to be strong enough that it carries off substantial energy. (In less extreme environments, like suns and planets, the waves are not detectable by current instruments. In the case of two black holes,orbiting each other, they're detectable from across pretty much the whole universe.) This loss of energy amounts to "friction" that eventually causes co-orbiting pairs of black holes to spiral in and combine.

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.

They're listed in Article I, Section 8.

general welfare of the nation.

Delivering wads of cash to some random non-profit organization does not fit that description.

Even presuming that your premise is correction (which non-profit organization would that be?), a large portion of the electorate and a string of court decisions say otherwise, so you'll just have to ineffectually rage at the country for "doing it wrong."

Where does the federal government get the legal authority to "invest" in "clean energy?" I'm pretty familiar with the constitution and I don't see the word "invest" in Congress' enumerated powers.

You're not very familiar with the Constitution if you don't see the words "provide for the... general Welfare of the United States" and understand what it means. If your argument is as basic as "Congress can spend money," hence that part of Article I, section 8, clause 1 being known as the Spending Clause, "but it can't invest money in technological development through spending," then you're going to have a bad, bad day in court.

Could bullshit like this be the reason we're $30 trillion in debt?

No, that's attributable to Republicans' near religious belief that wherever we are on the Laffer curve, the optimal tax rate is still lower than it is now. Of course, the very notion of the Laffer curve belies that argument, because at a tax rate of 0 you collect, get this, 0.

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.

This reminds me of the sentencing of the "January 6 insurrection" guilty pleas. As I (a non-lawyer) understand it...

Regardless of whether you consider it an insurrection or a protest march petitioning the government for redress of grievances...

In the wake of the events, the fed busted a bunch of the participants and left them rotting in prison for months (over a year), with no end in sight. In many cases this left families with no breadwinner, enormous legal costs, and expectations of losing all their property as part of some eventual conviction.

Then the prosecutors offered some of the defendants a plea deal; Plead guilty to a misdemeanor or short-sentence felony and we'll drop any other charges.

Rule of thumb: a misdemeanor generally is a crime with a max sentence of no more than a year in prison, a felony more than a year - which is why you see "year and a day" max sentences on some crimes. An accused person already in prison for over the max sentence would expect that accepting the deal would result in immediate release with "credit for time served" (and others near the max might expect release much sooner). So some of them went for it.

Came the sentencing some judges applied a two-year sentence enhancements for "substantial interference with the 'administration of justice.'" OOPS! No release for you.

I'd expect them to pull the same sort of thing on Assange if he were foolish enough to plead guilty to anything, no matter how minor.

(By the way: This particular form of the practice, as used on the Jan6 participants, was just recently struck down. But the decision was based on Congress' certification of the presidential election not qualifying as "administration of justice.'" So this wouldn't apply to whatever enhancement trick they might pull on Julian.

I don't know what you heard, but baby cells can only stay baby cells, they can't become mommy cells,

Sez who?

There's been evidence for some time that post-pregnancy mothers often have clones of stem cells derived from the previous foetus. Sure such a clone would likely start out with its epigenitc programming set for whatever function it had in the baby's development (unless, say, some error in its differentiation is what led to it migrating to the woman's body to set up shop). But once established on the mother's side of the placental barrier, and especially after the birth, the stem cell clone can be expected to continue to run its program under direction of the growth factors in the mother's blood.

That amounts to a transplant of younger stem cells which could be expected to produce differentiated cells for tissue growth and replacemtnt,, with the aging clock set farther back and with some genes from the father to provide "hybrid vigor", filling in for defective genes in the mother's genome or adding variant versions of molecular pathways.