I’m going to post the same rant I post on every article that Jalopnik posts on large ships: THE ICON OF THE SEAS DOES NOT WEIGH 250,000 TONS!!!! It actually displaces (weighs) roughly 120,000 tons or so, which can be estimated by her length, beam and draft * a reasonable block coefficient of .7 or so for a cruise ship…

Funny I should see this now - I used these two John Maynard Keynes quotes earlier today in another context, but they’re just as applicable here:

I don’t think she has a visit to the Friars Club in her near-term future . . .

There is a little difference in how a regular passenger door opens. In that case, the door actually folds in slightly and rotates on a horizontal hinge mechanism to “de-interfere” the stop pads and stop fittings. It then hinges outward. But the basic structure that holds the door in place against pressurization is…

The door is designed just like the doors on all Boeing and Airbus airliners. You can see the design when you’re getting onto an airplane. There are 12 stop pads on the door frame that engage 12 stop fittings, 6 on each side. When the door is in place, these pads interface with each other in such a manner that cabin…

Here’s more detail than you ever would wand about Boeing 737 mid-cabin emergency exit doors - plug option from a reputable source( b737.org.uk , the best online resource for Boeing 737 technical information).

a bit belated, but somewhat applicable. https://xkcd.com/1504/

In many of those accidents, size connotes inexperience - a non-professional pilot in a private aircraft. In this case, the smaller aircraft is a military aircraft with a supposedly well-trained crew on board. I’m not saying who is or isn’t at fault, but not knowing what happened, I wouldn’t jump to conclusions quite…

But it’s better to have a purpose-built one.

(EDIT:NVM)

Do they do that genre? I thought the Sun was more the “Page 3 girl who slept with second lead stuntman in the live Kipper the Dog remake runs for MP slot in East Berkfordwestershire” types.

I admire his efforts, and am really impressed, but at no time did I look at this and think, “I wish I could do this, too.” A stock-built Revell model is about as close as I’m going to come to this ever. Even the most avid model shipbuilders are less obsessive in their pursuit of detail than this. Even the…

I realize that you were mostly talking about the first part of the book. Yeah, it was a bit of a stretch of the imagination, but still sounds plausible.

You’re right that this is not all Texas, but they still have enough of a stranglehold on the politics that we’re all still hostages to their lunacy.

Ehhhh, give 5,000 years of social rebuilding and technical development in materials and orbital mechanics, it’s easy to give them the benefit of the doubt. I mean, who could imagine where we are now 5,000 years ago? The genetics of the second part of the book were a bit more sketchy for me . . .

If one reads Seveneves, it includes a Skyhook as a method of getting to orbit and changing orbits 5,000 years from now. Hopefully we don’t have to wait so long.

Genderfluid lumberjack gets extra points.

This is more of a car-centric motor vehicle blog, and airplanes are motor vehicles, so “in scope.” They used to have a pretty good defense discussion, too (search for “Foxtrot Alpha”), but that migrated over to another automotive website as “The Warzone.”

When did the Kriegsmarine have naval superiority over the Royal Navy in WW2?! And, while there were exceptions, the Germans and British and Americans generally showed some code of conduct toward each others’ POWs, unlike on the Eastern Front.