RP FLIP escapes wrecker's claws
gcaptain.com
gcaptain.com
Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s FLIP vessel decommissioned after 60 years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37072588 - Aug 2023 (51 comments)
A ship that flips 90 degrees for precise scientific measurements - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15078094 - Aug 2017 (75 comments)
"Flip", the vertical ship, marks 50 years at sea - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4193185 - July 2012 (34 comments)
I felt sure there was a more recent one but I think I got it confused with this:
The Joides Resolution may have sailed its last expedition - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41785543 - Oct 2024 (3 comments)
It is sobering to know that humanity is continuing to make wholesale mistakes that are only offset by a wonderful minority. You could be the next person to save a different Flip.
Meanwhile airports haven’t gotten bigger and more people are flying.
Airbus will adjust far better than Boeing could have, had they been wrong.
It was 100% the airlines that killed Boeing's attempt to pitch them on a clean-sheet airliner. I still believe that if Boeing had a CEO who was an engineer (and not a Harvard MBA who spent two decades at GE under Jack "Company Killer" Welch) at the time they would have not made that promise, because it was impossible to get the larger, more fuel efficient engines under a 737 wing without changing the flight characteristics too much to keep the type certificate.
But... the Sonic Cruiser is a minor footnote compared to the A380. That was an enormous business disaster (if any A380 ever turned a profit on fly-away costs alone, ignoring the initial up front costs, it was only just barely). The thing about building a new clean-sheet jetliner like this is that you are betting the company's financial performance for the next 10 years on this working out. Because Boeing was actively killing people and there are only the two companies (C919 notwithstanding) Airbus came out of the era looking great, but the A380 was orders of magnitude bigger corporate problem than the Sonic Cruiser.
Muilenberg was the one who got fired- and he definitely deserves the blame for the Ethiopian Airlines flight, they should definitely have investigate Lion Air faster and better- but it was McNerney who was responsible for most of the 737 Max program. The engines and wings issues were basically set in stone by the time that Muilenberg first became responsible for the program.
Waiting for your bags on the other hand...
With newer engines and a slightly redesigned wing (if I recall correctly it was designed a bit oversized than what was needed for the -800, to be able to accommodate a stretch variant which was never introduced) it could probably be made to have 15% lower fuel burn per passenger which would make it work even better for those specific kind of routes, but it's not economical for Airbus to do that when only Emirates and a very small handful of other customers would buy it...
I know they purchased many, but how did it work out for their bottom lines? Also, are these carriers concerned with bottom lines as much as national prestige?
"Emirates reports new record profit of AED 17.2 billion (US$ 4.7 billion), up 63% from AED 10.6 billion (US$ 2.9 billion) last year."
...of course it helps to have direct access to cheap fuel. Also, if you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_airlines_in_the_world#..., you'll see that Emirates is the fourth largest individual airline in the world by passenger-kilometers, and the first three are US-based airlines with more complicated networks, while Emirates only has one major hub in Dubai and isn't really that into direct A-to-B flights (unless B is Dubai of course) - so if it makes sense for any airline to operate the A380, then that airline is Emirates.
many smaller market airports have spare capacity and point-to-point flying from one to another reduces demand on the large hubs, which is what Boeing (lol) told Airbus (i am very smart) before they even started on the A380.
Just like with wildlife charities, those dang charismatic-megaavians get all the public-attention - so the nonthreatening and cuddly appearance of the A380 gets to be on the sponsor-an-airframe marketing posters, but people need to be aware of the importance of strong aerodiversity and the need to protect and preserve smaller planes, like a Piper Club or an Ekranoplane.
I don’t think any of those ever really “took off,” so to speak.
I think they had a lot of trouble, with even slightly rough weather.
There’s a reason that every photo you see of them, has them zipping over a calm, smooth body of water, on a clear day.
They are designed to fly through an amount of water (clouds) without damage or significant performance reduction.
This was the flawed thinking that led to the production of the a380 and its ultimate demise. It turns out that people mostly don’t like layovers and more efficient mid sized planes flying between cities people actually want to go to is much better.
I don’t have to care about the capacity of ORD when I can just fly to SFO directly from the east coast. The airports with the worst capacity problems (cough LHR) generally had that issue because they were major layover hubs too. The economics will just eliminate them as a hub and life will move on.
The 777ER came in and wrecked the other pillar supporting the layover life by opening up direct long range routes from NA to Asia that would have previously made sense on an A380 to NRT with fanouts to other destinations in Asia.
The a380 is super cool, but it is not filling a need.
SFO is at the heavy capacity you are referring to, yet it still operates as a united hub and there is plenty of capacity in SJC and OAK. The area is nowhere near its ceiling.
LHR has also been at that limit for 20 years and has been shedding layovers and locals to other regionals easily. The flawed thinking is that “at max runway operations per second” implies a max capacity. It turns out a lot of that was really inefficient usage of resources.
Planes are optimal when they are full. So 550 people need to want to go specifically between two cities and at generally the same time. A similar number need to want to immediately then the other direction or onto another city.
With the aforementioned move away from huge hubs, it’s hard to find that kind of consistent demand.
Stated slightly differently, the planes on a route have to make sense for the off-peak demand. It’s better to constantly run a 777 at 90% capacity and then leave potential rev on the table a few days a year rather than an a380 at 60% to absorb those really busy times.
A larger fleet of smaller planes also gives you much more flexibility as a carrier to shift capacity around to reach regional demand shifts. The only downside is increased crew costs.
At the same time, I have seen working electron microscopes, oscilloscopes, etc just get "surplussed" but in the process of surplussing them, they are rendered inoperable. When we have a resource of such a magnitude, it is our duty to ensure that someone else uses it for its designed purpose, science.
Visions of Sealab 2020, Sealab 2021 , and Rapture all come to mind, hopefully we'll the former.
Their Career's page gives the impression it might be a start up coming out of stealth or something?
> On October 23rd, 2024, DEEP, an organization working to expand access for ocean exploration, announced the purchase of FLIP and their plans to overhaul and modernize the platform. FLIP will be a crucial asset in the DEEP fleet, offering a unique platform for ocean research. It will also support the deployment of DEEP’s Sentinel habitats, enhancing their extended research network. FLIP was transported from Mexico to La Ciotat, France where it will undergo a comprehensive 12 to 18 month long refit.
Yeah, that's my impression too. Their seeing a ship like the FLIP and spontaneously buying it speaks volumes.
Found their LinkedIn page[1], seems like they might've re-branded at some point from "Unum Sumus Mare" (We are One Sea). Maybe that was their stealth moniker.
https://www.cnn.com/science/deep-underwater-habitats-vanguar...
Is there some nautical tradition that prescribes that?
Wish I could upvote that twice.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Naming_conventions_(...
Indeed, there are plenty of longstanding nautical traditions which refer to vessels in the feminine. Popular culture and Wikipedia's non-enthusiast population tend to neuter them.
Interestingly, Christian churches are feminine as well, although English-speakers may have grown ignorant of this since 1970.
French schoolchildren seem to spend half their time learning the gender of inanimate objects. The sooner we can get rid of that, the better.
The closest equivalent time-waster we have is different names for different groups of animals (flock, pack, herd etc).
No, it's ignorance. Because English is an explicitly non-gendered language, unlike French where any child automatically knows that "église" is feminine.
The Roman Catholic liturgy was rather simplified in 1970 and included an unfortunate neutering. In 2011, these errors were corrected, and the femininity of the Church is rightfully restored. Ignorance consists in not being up to date in this regard.
Why?
Is it a waste of time or another reason?