I'm pretty fucking cool with death to the airline industry.
hey hold on wait where are things at with boeing and the 737-MAX...
Allow me to introduce you to the M561 Gama Goat. They were... not great. Read just some of these comments. At some point, the Army realized how hard the Goat sucked. As a consequence, they completed the contract and shipped them off for scrap without so much as wiping off the cosmoline. If I recall, the last 8,000 or so (of 15,600 contracted) were never driven - they went from raw materiel to parts to vehicles to raw materiel without so much as being assigned to a unit. There will come a time when Boeing lobbies to write down every MAX they own (which is all of them) in order to save the company. Boeing will be permitted to do this. People will gripe but it will be a national emergency - if Boeing is not allowed to do this, commercial air travel will be a European monopoly for all intents and purposes. And such, an entire generation of aircraft will be chewed up for scrap, and the taxpayer will foot the bill. Mark my words. And watch what they do with the F-35.
Things are at a ratio of eight for Boeing’s total debts over annual profits. And that was before covid.
Kinda same, but one of my besties is a pilot. It sucks for him now, but I think in a couple of years there will be some job openings, as the older generation of pilots, um, "retires". In the meantime, we really should have a discussion about whether or not air travel is sustainable, and if we really need to travel so much. It's a luxury that Earth may not be able to afford. Carbon emissions are much worse from global commerce via boat. Not sure how to solve that one without uprooting the entire global econo-... Hey, wait, we're already doing that. Even though the coming months are a golden opportunity, I have the utmost faith that we can completely squander affecting change in the right direction. We can debate things here in a pseudonymous forum, and that'll be about the end of it. It's shitty, because at a personal level, my loved ones and I are mostly going to be fine. My nuclear family (two entire people & two kitties) are going to be fine no matter what. Feeling some guilt, but also like, "OK 'Boomer, you did this to yourself. Sleep in the bed you shat."
Short answer: prooooobably not. Long answer: lots of math followed by a proooooobably not. kb did some math a few weeks back but I am terrible at finding things on Hubski. https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-49349566 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_aviation but then again, what modes of travel involving fuel aren't bad for the environment?In the meantime, we really should have a discussion about whether or not air travel is sustainable, and if we really need to travel so much. It's a luxury that Earth may not be able to afford.
I, too, have failed to find that thread which is a drag because a lot of effort went into it. So in the spirit of "lot of effort" and to lighten the mood a little let's look back to this awesome thread where we all dunked on Spinlaunch 'cuz that was fuckin' fun.
God that was so fun. I sent that to my other grad school space peeps, and none of us can explain how SpinLaunch could ever work.
I dunno, but I suspect “sheltering in place” for most of 2020 is gonna make me wanna burn somethin’, goddamnit.