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A problem the much safer Lockheed L-1011 solved by only putting the air intake on the leading edge of the rear stabilizer and putting the third engine down in the fuselage and more in-plane with the two wing engines.

The DC-10's name was changed to the MD-11 in order to distance itself from the hugely bad reputation the DC-10 had earned.

The safety statistics quoted above are bogus as they count a single death the same as this infamous one of Flight 191 which killed everyone on board when an engine fell off the plane during takeoff from O'Hare:

http://www.super70s.com/Super7...

Don't think it was that - I'd have remembered that the pilot was letting his kids fly the plane.

I was probably thinking of this one.

>Dams prevent catastrophic, uncontrolled flooding by buffering the surge in a lake and letting it out slowly.

As long as they're big enough. If they're not, a rapidly increasing flood of water, that if left uncontrolled might rise at 2 feet an hour, flooding many houses, could be turned into a 20 foot high wall of water, debris, and rock from washed-out dams that kills 145 people rather than just destroying a bunch of houses.
Every "flood control structure" on that river got ripped out. A flood that had almost the same rainfall 40 years earlier didn't kill anyone because it took two hours to go from heavy runoff to full flood. My friends that were down in the canyon in the 1976 flood said the front wave of the flood was moving at about 60mph and consisted mostly of a mass of mobile homes (with the occupants still in them.)

The vast majority of plane crashes occur while the planes are flying.

Whilst the above is true, it's worth noting that the most deadly aviation disaster occured on the ground, at Tenerife's Los Rodeos airport where two 747s collided, killing 683 people.

It's like the $20,000 Pyramid gameshow, but without the $20,000.

Wrong. My site's prominence at Yahoo is ZERO right now because they are demanding payment - TO BE INCLUDED AT ALL! Thus, if I give in to their extortion, I will be boosting my prominence. Slashdot got it right.

I suggest you get your own facts straight before questioning their Slashdot's journalism.

I put together a pair of nostalgia sites (Super70s.com and Awesome80s.com). The eBay and AMZN ads I've put up have never come close to paying for even the ISP charges, but that's okay as it's a labor of love. However, it's really frustrating to create this site (thousands of pages) and then have the likes of Yahoo refuse to index it (any or it) without a big cash contribution.

Independent sites not backed by corporate dollars are the ones significantly hurt by Yahoo's unethical* approach. It is either a form of censorship or extortion to keep sites like mine from the results of a search of the Internet.

I NEVER accept questionable ads (porn, gambling). I do not do popups and never have. I do not run banner ads on the top of pages (and never have). I've never spammed nor will I. In short, I've played by the rules.

Similar sites who have broken all those rules (and more) will have no trouble writing a check and those who don't know the difference between Google and Yahoo will, unfortunately, end up on those sites instead.

Yahoo will gladly take all this into account, so long as I write it on the back of a yearly check.

Yahoo is ten times the threat to sites like mine than M$FT ever thought of being. It's extortion and I can only hope there will be enough backlash to make them rethink their plans.

Those of you here at Slashdot have influence with your friends, coworkers, and family. PLEASE, for the sake of us independents, get them off Yahoo and on to Google!

I'm sorry if this sounds like whining to any of you. I just ask that you put yourself in my place and then ask yourself if you wouldn't feel the same.

Thanks for "listening",
Patrick Mondout

-- *They have spent a decade building up a positive reputation with netizens and do not do nearly enough to inform those who use their search that their search results are merely ads for the sites that paid to be there.

Now, if you could hook one of those Duracell indicators up to your date for the evening...

I'm a huge fan of 'stuff that's already been done decades ago'...
SST
And of course, for sheer brilliance and awe, the XB-70 Valkyrie can't be beat.
All this technology exists and is scumming away in museums, or even worse, in old magazines in disused libraries.

Pet Rocks?

The Pet Rock was pretty damn innovative. The only thing since that has sold that insanely well were beanie babies (yes, I have some too).

Yeah. That's why it looks IDENTICAL.

History lesson.

The drooping nose, ogival wing, four engines in dual pods...there are lots of ways to solve each of these problems. It's not a coincidence that the Russians used /precisely/ the same solutions as the British/French engineers.

Too bad they couldn't come up with engines that didn't need to be overhauled after each flight.

Russian coppied version was faster than Concorde:
Tu-144 aircraft

and also here some not far past details about this thing:
Tu 144 in nasa

Can you imagine sitting in that thing as it tracked a frisky storm with shifting winds? In the right conditions you'd be doing 360's, perhaps with significant centrifugal accelerations at the ends. OK, maybe you'd turn off "free swivel" mode at this point (stripping the gears) as you woke up, screaming, but what if you weren't home to do it?

BTW, a typical jet is not intended to be operated in a hurricane. The folks who study hurricanes use Orions, I think, and are very respectful. Of course, glued to the ground structural failure is not your main concern -- a wing can fall off for all you care -- but that gimbal, well...

Your front door would always be in a different place? A 727 is pretty long (~150') and that could mean long walks with the groceries (the 727 does have that unique "air stair" in the tail, a la D.B Cooper). Maybe you can rotate it on demand.

Yes, safeties could be designed for most of these things, but no safety is a match for human error or bad luck.

OK, I've heard of dumber ideas, but this one is a contender. They auctioned off a small square piece of cardboard recently, and it did quite well.

Here is the state of the art in this business - Sone Walkman WM-1 from 1979.

Here is the state of the art in this business - Sone Walkman WM-1 from 1979.

You may think it looks like the Concorde, but that is just a coincidence. No espionage here; move along...

Seriously, the article mentions that after the thawing of the cold war, there was an exchange of info between the TU-144 designers and Boeing/NASA. If the Buran is so faboo, why aren't we rushing to incorporate it's technology?

If anything, this kind of mondernization would be a great crusade for Senator John Glenn. No one would argue if he had to go up against a bunch of unions, as he is the ideal poster child for such things.