If you’ve got $80M for a “flying car”, then yeah, that v-22 would be badass. And imagine the future Jalop articles: “Help me fly my $500 Osprey to Moab!”

Pawns?  I mean, I know I'm old, but when did D&D become a miniature game?

Pawns?  I mean, I know I'm old, but when did D&D become a miniature game?

I’m not sure about these days, but back in the TSR years, the more time a DM spent with expansion books, maps, etc., the less fun the game. You just can’t buy storytelling abilities.

I’m not sure about these days, but back in the TSR years, the more time a DM spent with expansion books, maps, etc.,…

Yeah, I never said my tastes in entertainment were logical....

Oh, totally - the Thor/Loki dynamic completely carried Dark World.

I was with you on that - I loved the first Guardians, but nothing else grabbed me. I tried watching Captain America and Thor, but they just seemed too silly to sit through. Then my kid got into them, and I watched as a family experience. And, in that context, I enjoyed them.

Exactly. I met a former A-10 pilot who'd had to eject. Spent time in the hospital, and said that he is now some measurable amount shorter, all during to the force of the rockets.

Perhaps, and I see mention today that they’d left the throttle at full, which presumably was not part of the procedure? IANAP, but I agree with the summaries I’ve read that, while the pilots’ actions may not have been exactly as expected following the avionics failure(s), those actions are not being cited as the…

Yeah, I’m not expecting a super-detailed photo like that simulation above, or like something out of Interstellar. But as the entire purpose of the project was to get some sort of visual evidence of an event horizon, any groundbreaking results seem likely to be visible.

Speaking as an open-minded skeptic, I would love to see them demonstrate those capabilities, so that they may be reproduced by other scientists under controlled test conditions.

Well, I know what I’m going to be doing next Wed at 9!

Oh, man - I’ve been checking up on this every month or two, just hoping that the whole thing doesn’t end up being some kind of flop. Of course, it would be a worthwhile attempt even if it didn’t work, but... “a groundbreaking result”? Now I feel like a kid counting down the days to my birthday!

Fair point, but only if the pilots (or by extension, Ethiopian Air) had received any additional procedures beyond what they had attempted (like cutting electrical power, as D Flower suggested). Based on earlier reports, it sounds like Boeing withheld some shutdown procedures from the standard training, and if that was…

That sounds plausible. It will be interesting to see the details when they become available.

Perhaps there is still some procedure that the flight crew could have done differently (whether or not it was communicated to them by Boeing), time will tell. But, hopefully, this preliminary information will squelch some of the “It was pilot error, nothing to see here...” posts, which almost sound like Boeing PR bots.

It is not proven to be pilot error, and reports are now suggesting that the pilots deactivated the MCAS system multiple times. Perhaps the conditions were different than in the earlier cases when pilots corrected for the error (pitot sensor failure, for one).

Hmm... So, perhaps all the cries of “the Ethiopian Air pilots were clearly untrained if they couldn’t handle a trim down condition” were premature? I’m sure there are a lot of questions remaining, such as why American pilots were able to successfully disengage the system on the times when the MCAS problem first…

I suspect because the FAA certification was done with the MCAS system in place. The flight Dynamics of the MAX are compromised due to changes in the engine positions, which makes stalls more likely in some situations. If they disabled those systems, they would presumably also risk losing their airworthiness…

With a Sawzall, sure.  I've been tempted :)

You have a point. As a Pilot owner, I was thinking about the Gladiator (manual Sport, just like David specs out) for my next vehicle, as the Honda is just, so... blah. But then I got to looking at the specs. Cargo capacity (weight and volume) is about the same as the Ridgeline. And towing capacity for the RL is 500lbs…