You can just imagine them swinging open those huge heavy doors after the crash, and all this ragu with bits of hair floating in it, flows out onto the ground - gross…
:barf smilie:
But hey look you could get someone with a very strong stomach to hose out the inside, dust off the outside and you could use the plane again.
: Barf smilie:
Hey, it worked for WWII tanks.
Yes, but they aren’t known for cruising at 600+ MPH at 35,000 feet.
Hmm… well, if the steel was a porportionally thick on the plane as for the black box, yes, but if the steel was only as thick as it needed to be to provide the proper in-flight structural strength…sure, it could fly. Would take a little more power than an aluminum or cloth plane, but it would fly just fine. In fact, I think there might have been a production airplane or two built largely of steel (early Beechcraft Baron? Don’t quote me - very vague recollection there).
I didn’t say it wouldn’t fly, I said it would be heavy, and expensive to do so.
But what if, in this theoretical airplane, I jumped at the exact moment of impact? Snicker.
You might be able to build an airplane of steel which will fly but you cannot build an airplane which will fly AND not suffer any damage when flown into the side of a middle sized mountain. Heck, ships are build much more solidly and they will suffer a lot of damage if they hit a rock or another ship. You cannot build a practical ship which will not be damaged in a collision, much less an airplane.
Fact remains, abuse any object enough it comes apart.
Even those “black boxes” aren’t indestructable, as has been pointed out - the WTC pair went through a crash, a fire, and a major building collapse and simply didn’t survive. Sorry, we only figure on one catastrophic event, not three in a row!