Train Derailment Dumps Two 737 Fuselages Into Clark Fork River 187
McGruber (1417641) writes "Boeing builds its 737 airplane fuselages in a Wichita, Kansas factory. The fuselages are then shipped on top of railroad flatcars (as shown in this photograph) to Boeing's Renton, Washington plant, where assembly is completed. Unfortunately, a train carrying two fuselages to Renton derailed approximately 18 miles east of Superior, Montana. The 737s slid down a steep embankment and ended up in the Clark Fork River. That'll buff right out."
Re:It is safer to fly (Score:4, Informative)
I assume they only do that when behind schedule, same as the GE jet final assembly plant in Peebles, Ohio does. Truck or rail if on schedule, big honking cargo jet if behind.
Re:Only in America (Score:4, Informative)
The government doesn't insist that they add anything to alcohol. I can go to the store and buy as much alcohol as I want. It is even legal for me to get a massive buzz from drinking it. Problem is that a lot of people do a lot of stupid things that are costly to society while drinking alcohol. So the government does insist that if you drink something that may end up costing society some money that you help to pay for the damage through increased taxes. The only problem there is that alcohol does have a lot of industrial uses. So if you are going to use your alcohol for something other than drinking then you shouldn't have to pay taxes to cover the cost of stupid things people tend to do while drunk. No problem. If you make your alcohol impossible to drink (but still usefull for industrial activities) then you don't have to pay taxes on it. The government only insists that if you do something that costs us all more money then you should have to pay some of it back via increased alcohol tax. Seems pretty reasonable to me.
Re:Only in America (Score:5, Informative)
You're petrified of a guy who finds a tax on alcohol reasonable? And who can explain why that tax is there?
Re: Why are the fuselage apple green colored ? (Score:5, Informative)
Boeing green is a standard anti corrosion paint they use. Most parts are green under toe topcoat.
A much better picture of the fuselages (Score:5, Informative)
http://i.imgur.com/EJVBCzL.jpg [imgur.com]
Re: Why are the fuselage apple green colored ? (Score:5, Informative)
The picture of a fuselage on a railcar and the two fuselages that fell into the river are all apple green colored
Why is that?
The green is a protective coating. It's removed with a solvent before painting. The yellow around the wingroots is zinc-chromate anti-corrosion paint, which is permanent. Most of the interior metallic structure is covered in chromate.
How did this get modded up (Score:3, Informative)
I love how on Slashdot how threads frequently go, Poster A:"Well, this is true (with not citations)" Poster B: "No, that is wrong (with no citations)." Poster C: "No, B is wrong because they provide no citations (still no citations for A or C)". No one is providing concrete numbers or citations. You chew someone out for not being concrete, but then turn around and still are no concrete yourself, making vague comparisons because the word "argument" gets used in a lot of places that have no relevance to the issue. I would assume that most people who actually cared about the subject would take a quick Google search because it is a heavily researched topic.
But of course, since people around here can't look things up for themselves, and assuming that the posts they like are right without proof but posts they don't like must be wrong without proof... you can try looking at studies like this one [resource-allocation.com] and compare it to totals of alcohol tax revenues here [taxpolicycenter.org]. Now of course the revenue from tax is not the total cost, because there is a lot of money spent on enforcing laws, economic impact on businesses dealing with the laws, and people finding ways around the laws (even legal ones like driving to a different location, with impact on local business). But the result is that throughout the US $4 billion gets collected in alcohol taxes in the 90s, when estimates of cost impact show the vast majority of impact is on non-government individuals who do not get help from the government with the collected taxes. And the vast majority of those impacts (71% in the US study cited in the study) are from lost work because people miss work or become injured in a way that doesn't contribute to work, or that government gets less tax revenue when someone dies. The actual direct impact to government programs is estimated at under a billion dollars. And that is using numbers that are said to be over-estimated when looking at what happens when people actually stop drinking.
And this still doesn't address the issue that most of the taxes are collected from people not contributing to the problem, with a quarter if the people causing half the problems (e.g. a citation [oxfordjournals.org], more give numbers all over the place on this, so exact numbers are not available, but agree that most damage done by small portion). Some of this should be obvious considering how many people drink but do not drink and drive, have liver damage, etc. Nor does do the numbers change that the government isn't applying the money in a way to stop damage. If the societal damage were taken serious, there would be a lot more research and implementation of programs to stop people from drinking too much, and actually fixing problems... but that is not how government works except the most obvious cause-effect problems.