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Joined 23 days ago
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Cake day: May 20th, 2026

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  • There are ways to non-destructively test for cracks and voids in various structural elements. Planes already go through very stringent inspection and maintenance cycles so various physical factors will already have a well-established baseline to compare to.

    Some speculation; the damage may be far less than you’d think. Aircraft are (generally) designed to fail gracefully and the front landing gear is a mechanism that sees a lot of force during landing. I can’t tell if the assembly folds back into the landing gear bay or if it penetrates the fuselage without collapsing.

    A whole sack of shit went wrong if the fuselage fell directly onto the gear assembly but if the landing gear “simply” folded back into the bay it could be a relatively easy repair. Airframe loading is extremely well-characterized and engineers are already running the numbers on what forces went where.

    All that said; fuck McDonnell-Douglas. Boeing “acquired” them back in the 90s. Somehow the MDD board of directors (comprised of businessmen) took over leadership roles formerly held by people with engineering backgrounds. A lot of the failures and poor reputation Boeing has suffered in the past few decades are very likely related to that leadership change.




  • Fortunately* you don’t live in Wisconsin.

    Born and raised there; a DSA governor is a fucking fantastic step in the right direction. I’ll mention her to my family but…

    Wisconsin is the south of the north. I regularly drove past a Confederate flag. Milwaukee is the most segregated city in the US (or was, havent checked recently) and the GOP leans into that with a lot of ugly rhetoric.

    This article is getting a little long in the tooth but is a quality deep dive into some of the very thinly veiled (or outright) systemic racism in Wisconsin.

    Also; rural Grindr made me sad for queer men raised in that environment, including myself.