Boeing 787 capable of carrying 300 passengers lands in Antarctica in world first | Hacker News Reader

Boeing 787 capable of carrying 300 passengers lands in Antarctica in world first

news.sky.com

78 pointsaustinallegro25 comments

A tiny bit misleading really: it's only the "first" and "groundbreaking" to Troll airfield, not Antarctica as a whole.

An A340 which is longer, wider and heavier than the 787-9 has been flying down for at least two years now, but to a different airstrip.

The A340 can carry more passengers than the 787-9, and ironically the 787-9 in two-class configuration can only actually seat 290 people.

"ironically"? What am I missing?

It’s like rain on your wedding day.

Or like too much air in a balloon.

You don’t want planes breaking ground in Antarctica.

This would generally be very bad news.

what do you mean?

Most of Antarctica covered by thick ice. To break ground one had to go through ice first.

I mean another day, another terrible news headline. The metaphor is exactly the opposite of what you want to happen with a lane on a glacier or on permafrost.

“A tiny bit misleading”

This is Sky News’ bread and butter.

Don't forget: it's also their Nutella and Marmite.

It is a first as in the first 787 has landed in antarctica. What is not clear about this?

It's not clear in the same way as if the title had been: "pilot idbehold lands plane carrying 300 passengers in Antarctica in world first"

People are assuming the "world first" to apply to everything after "pilot idbehold", not exclusively to it.

That’s the issue with only reading the title (a bad one admittedly). It’s stated clearly by the airline in the article:

"A historic moment for Norse," the airline said. "The first ever B787 Dreamliner to land in Antarctica!

Many kinds of aircraft have landed in Antartica, the largest of them being C5 Galaxy:

https://nara.getarchive.net/amp/media/a-c-5b-galaxy-aircraft...

A private tour company has been flying an A340 down there for a few years https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CBRX3QJJ0Jg

That's perverse.

South Africa gets a lot of A340s, for some reason. Beautiful planes!

Here's the flight on FlightRadar24: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/ln-fnc#32d90c2c

Now they just need to invent thermal yoga pants and Instagram will be filled with pictures of Antarctica.

Methinks that already exists as cold-diving neoprene-like soft and flexible but skin-tight high-tech foam.

If you're interested in general with life and challenges of the Antarctica, I recommend this excellent blog: https://brr.fyi/

Brr.fyi is like reading Instagram. What you really want to read is Big Dead Place by Nick Johnson.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-04-30/big-dead-place-the-wi...

https://web.archive.org/web/20201116183654/http://www.bigdea...

It's a much different story. And way more depressing.

Are you implying that the author of brr.fyi is being disingenuous? I've enjoyed the writing, and I didn't take it as an objective documentary of a place, just somebody's subjective journal.

It's possible for different people to have very different experiences in a similar context for a variety of reasons, no?

That said, it's indeed been a while since the last update...

Just what Antarctica needs, more tourists.

Did they bring any weapons along with the scientific equipment?

You never know when you are going to break ice on the Alien/Predator site! We know what happened with the Thing...

I’d prefer to leave the place un touched by humans, even if it means I never visit.

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