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Comment by spankibalt | Hacker News Reader

Concorde, Tu-144, L-1011 TriStar, Il-62, Tu-154, SE 210 Caravelle, de Havilland DH.106 Comet and Vickers VC10 are all much sexier. Just for starters.

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You just seem to have a fetish for aircraft with fully or partially rear-mounted engines. I prefer 747 over all of the above, although 757 is my favorite.

IL-62 I particularly dislike. Sitting next to those big engines would suck, especially after reading on multiple accidents where they exploded and killed or nearly killed everyone onboard.

> "You just seem to have a fetish for aircraft with fully or partially rear-mounted engines."

Hey, what can I say? I'm more of an ass man.

> "Sitting next to those big engines would suck, especially after reading on multiple accidents where they exploded and killed or nearly killed everyone onboard."

I fail to see what this has to do with visual aesthetics, but the safety record of the 747 was not so hot; already excluding the malaise brought on by the fetishes of terrorists and the Evil Empire, of course.

Maybe the Concord and Comet. For the rest of the list I think you'd spend a very long time finding people to agree with you. The soviet ones are even more complicated, the Tu-144 is basically an Ugly Concord.

So or so, Bogost's statement is akin to describing the Amiga 500 as the only beautiful home computer. And that's obviously ridiculous. As for your statement, nah, I won't have to search very long for people agreeing with me on many of the aircraft listed; whole coffee table tomes have been published specifically dealing with the subject of Soviet, French and British classic, especially narrow-body, airliners.

I'm reading through the comments here before reading the actual Atlantic story, so I didn't see the author's name until you mention it:

> Bogost's statement is akin to calling the Amiga 500 the only home computer to be called beautiful.

Oh! That's Ian Bogost, who is a great writer of how our relationship with technology can evoke truth and beauty. The canonical work is his deep dive on the Atari 2600 and the early 1980s revolution "Racing the Beam":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racing_the_Beam

Bogost wrote a number of books while working with MIT, arguing that video games were a new medium of communication back when that was a controversial point of view.

(I will need to re-subscribe to The Atlantic at some point. It seems churlish, but it's been an expensive year...)

Of course, none of the airplanes you listed are still flying passengers today. That is why I will always love the 747.

> "Of course, none of the airplanes you listed are still flying passengers today."

The Il-62 and the Tu-154 are still in limited service, for example. Not that it does your pseudoargument any favors anyway, as service history plays obviously absolutely no role in evaluating a design purely on its visual accumen.

Oh, you misunderstand--I'm not arguing anything. What planes you love in the confines of your own mind is none of my business. It's a free country!

I'm just sharing my love of the 747, since that's what the article is about.

Someday, when they write a glowing retrospective of the Il-62, I promise not to post about how it's one of the ugliest jets I've seen.

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