Monday, October 9, 2023

Insane Mechanical Complexity

 


17 comments:

  1. Insane mechanical complexity. Indeed. And STILL there is a need for 'no step' signs.

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    1. Military training is based on the idea that the enlisted have, at worst, an 8th grade education. And having served in the Army, it is known that if something is not expressly forbidden, it is allowed. And Joe's can break anything that is made by the lowest bidder.

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    2. Rotor blades are incredibly delicate, they are made of layers of aluminum or kevlar that are bonded together, pressure on one point from a boot heel can bend the layers causing disbonding at which point the blade is unairworthy, hence the No Step warning. I've seen a brand new blade ($52K IIRC) returned to Bell because of a .003" deep scratch that made it scrap according to Bell's own manual.
      Al_in_Ottawa

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  2. A million moving parts flying in close formation

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    1. Rotating at high velocity around an oil leak.

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  3. Far easier to fly it than to design it and build it, but flying it is way more fun. Is that a Blackhawk?

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  4. A jet fighter is a million parts in close formation, a helicopter is LOOSE formation!

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  5. UH-60 Main Rotor Head

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  6. When did they stop using BIM indicators on the blades? I have not flown one since 1990

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  7. You'd think you could cram all those blades on and hold it with a single Jesus nut.

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  8. Uh huh.
    Insane mechanical complexity.

    Meanwhile, the average human uses 130,000,000 photo receptors for vision to look at that picture, which transmit electrical impulses in a chain reaction of hundreds of enzymatic processes to move 8,960,000 individual bits of visual data per second, the failure of which process at any single point would induce not a reduction of vision, but total blindness, and "educated" people think that entire chain reaction just spontaneously assembled itself over time, which random chance dictates would be about as likely as winning the Powerball Lottery 3,000,000 times per second forever, or tossing a penny in the air and having it land neither heads nor tails, but on edge, 20,000,000 times in a row.

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    1. biology is ALWAYS more complicated than the machines it designs. Though the latest in silico efforts are coming close....

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    2. Power Ball drawing tonight is $1.55B

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    3. Indeed. Almost as if we were created.

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  9. ‘H-60. Best medium helicopter made.

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  10. I used to enjoy doing negative "G's" in the Blackhawk. I could put up with the dirt floating up from the floor as long as my helmet visor was down. I found it cool to see the checklist floating by...or a 60 lbs tool box hover at 2 feet. One day I pulled out my survival mirror and aimed it out the upper plexiglass at the rotor...... Hollllly Fuck! I never did negative g's again btays2000

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