Ryanair Boeing 737 MAX plunges 2,000ft in 17 seconds
standard.co.uk
standard.co.uk
But the incident of this post here really sounds concerning, according to The Aviation Herald [0]:
> The aircraft accelerated and climbed through about 4000 feet at 197 knots over ground when the aircraft began to rapidly descend to 2175 feet MSL (1825 feet AGL) within 17 seconds accelerating to 280 knots over ground, climbed and descended a second time reaching a minimum height of about 1700 feet AGL. The aircraft subsequently climbed to and stabilized at 3000 feet, positioned for another approach and landed without further incident about 12 minutes after the initiation of the go around.
> The British AAIB reported they have opened an investigation stating: "High speed and high nose down pitch attitude during go-around, London Stansted."
I’m as much of a 737 MAX critic as anyone, but nothing indicates the aircraft is the cause as of now.
Humans perceive acceleration. You will experience the same acceleration at terminal velocity that you do on the ground: none.
The main thing you would perceive at terminal velocity is wind. There will not be wind in the cabin, even in these flight conditions.
That's correct and all but the lizard part of my brain would be _far_ more concerned with the sudden change in direction/speed and not super concerned with "at least we're not continuing to fall faster!"
(assuming I wasn't standing by the bathrooms and thus thrown into the ceiling; then who knows what i'd be thinking)
1. The start of the drop. This will feel briefly like freefall.
2. The end of the drop. You recognized the gravity (pun intended) of this.
3. Turbulence. The plane will be experiencing terminal velocity wind. I assume this will shake stuff up a bit more than usual inside the cabin.
Using V = sqrt(2ma/pAC) you'd get:
V = sqrt(2(80000 kg)(9.81 m/s^2)/((1.225 kg/m^3)(210 m^2)(0.03)))
V = 451 m/s
Note this assumes an aerodynamically favorable configuration (e.g. nose pointed down) which is not how planes are typically flown.
https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-terminal-velocity-of-an-ai...
Newly fitted engines have moved the center of thrust far away off the center of mass. This creates huge torque; especially as is it often done in emergency situations: stalling avoidance advises to push thrust to the maximum. If you've practiced a bit with plane simulators (the ones where you design your planes), you know these things are uncontrollable.
And us software engineers should know better: software-patching design errors sometimes just doesn't work. You can't just "polish it". Without active control you can't do it (which by law is reserved for the military casualty risk tradeoff)
MCAS-patching it yet another time isn't the answer.
Perhaps so. Do you have any evidence that leads you to think that that's related to this incident?
For those who only casually followed the maiden manned spaceflight of the Boeing Starliner, the astronauts barely made it to the ISS after numerous malfunctions, the exact sort of malfunctions that have been repeatedly cropping up in literally every single testflight, but NASA gave them the green-light anyhow. The astronauts were scheduled to return on June 16. That was delayed to June 26th as Boeing tried to figure out a way to make their craft safe to fly in. And their return has now been delayed indefinitely. [1] There's a real chance either SpaceX or Roscosmos will need to come rescue them.
I just think the government actions following these degrees of ongoing and serious failures would be so starkly different if it was a company other than Boeing.
[1] - https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/06/nasa-indefinitely-dela...
It also sounds like you are misinformed as to why the astronauts have not returned. Granted, the media is not really doing a commendable job explaining it, because clicks matter more. But it has been discussed accurately here on HN a few times. Spoiler: the astronauts can leave anytime they want, on the Starliner, and nobody (aside from laypersons unfamiliar with the situation) thinks otherwise. Nobody is going to need to 'rescue' them, because they are staying voluntarily.
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Just a few days ago, on Tuesday, officials from NASA and Boeing set a return date to Earth for June 26. But that was before a series of meetings on Thursday and Friday during which mission managers were to review findings about two significant issues with the Starliner spacecraft: five separate leaks in the helium system that pressurizes Starliner's propulsion system and the failure of five of the vehicle's 28 reaction-control system thrusters as Starliner approached the station.
The NASA update did not provide any information about deliberations during these meetings, but it is clear that the agency's leaders were not able to get comfortable with all contingencies that Wilmore and Williams might encounter during a return flight to Earth, including safely undocking from the space station, maneuvering away, performing a de-orbit burn, separating the crew capsule from the service module, and then flying through the planet's atmosphere before landing under parachutes in a New Mexico desert.
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NASA is understating everything because this flight should never have been greenlit in the first place. It's Challenger all over again. Nobody has died and for that we should be thankful, but NASA is behaving in a way that will result in deaths if they don't fix whatever is going on over there. It's like the most safety conscious culture from the outside, and then they just greenlight flights that are leaking like a sieve in every test, failing to properly deploy parachutes, and more. But Boeing always gets the 'special' treatment from the government.
They won't stay that way if this attitude becomes more prevalent.
But it's anecdotal, I mean, realistically, the plane is still better for long distance.
You can sort by journeys, vs, km.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20010907173322/http://www.number...
[2] https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...
Edit: Very good analysis done by another user, over here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40822484
The railroad experience is usually much better though, I agree (compared to economy class).
https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/home-and-community/safety-topics...
This owes to the fact that the stat compares deaths per mile, but the real risk in a plane is not measured in miles, but in takeoff/landing/pressurization cycles. Whether the plane then flies for 10 miles or 5000, the risk is pretty much the same. And so if you mask out the danger by looking at deaths/mile then yeah - they're safer. But if you look at it in terms of 'what are my odds of dying on an average trip' - then they're much less safe than driving.
You can really intuit this by imagining some ultra-high risk interstellar starship. If it traveled quadrillions upon quadrillions of miles, but 99% of them randomly blew up and killed everybody on board, then it'd still be far safer than driving in terms of deaths/mile. The deaths/mile datum is not really very useful for modes of transport where the risk models are very different, and that's very much the case for driving vs flying.
> But if you look at it in terms of 'what are my odds of dying on an average trip' - then they're much less safe than driving.
But is that an interesting stat to look at? You would need to multiply that number by the number of trips, to get a useful measure of risk.
On a first level analysis, vehicles are already slightly safer than jets on a trip for trip basis. But this dramatically understates the actual difference, because the mortality numbers I'm using for vehicles are per person, not per fatal incident. In other words 1 PERSON dies per 5.17 million vehicle trips. And I'm comparing that against one entire JET 'dying' per 4.94 million flights, which is generally going to have tens to hundreds of people on it. If you do an apples to apples comparison in terms of trips (as would be the case if somebody just replaced their car with a private plane), vehicles would be orders of magnitude safer than jets, trip for trip.
[1] - https://www.iata.org/en/pressroom/2024-releases/2024-02-28-0...
[2] - https://newsroom.aaa.com/2015/04/new-study-reveals-much-moto...
[3] - https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state...
I've flown first class and it is still a miserable fucking experience. I hate airplanes.
I used to live in Japan and I'm intensely jealous of the high-speed trains there. A bullet-train equivalent in the northeast corridor, or between LA/SF would be a dream. I can't imagine that it wouldn't pay for itself in under 10 years and reduce air traffic considerably.
There's a train between Miami and Orlando with an average speed of 69 mph. My guess as to why it happened there instead of in the northeast corridor is that the costs of procuring rights of way were significantly lower.
The French TGV has hit 574 km/h (356 mph) nearly 20 years ago. I can’t immediately find the average speed of the TGV, but considering there’s hundreds of km between stops, and that the cruising speed is just over 300 km/h (186 mph), I’d wager it’s significantly higher than the 111 km/h of the Brightline.
In Europe, the high speed rail standard dictates 200 km/h (124 mph) for retrofitted rail and 250 km/h (155 mph) for dedicated high speed rail.
It really depends. Often, on the same line, you will have at least 2 TGVs: one with a single stop midpoint(or none), and another with multiple stops.
Rennes-Paris (330 km train station to train station) could take me as low as 1h10, and as high as 1h55 depending on which train i took. So the minimum seems to be 165 km/h (sightly more than the Brightline) and the max around 280.
Once again we have a non-story overflowing with hyperbole. These types of articles increase unreasonable fear and do an injustice to journalism. I am flat out done with bad journalism that gets its viewership by hyping fear. 'The Standard' is off my list of credible news outlets.
Why since a few month are they a lot of problem with them ? Why did these problems not appear before ?