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Animats

No big deal. External payloads seem strange, but 747s have carried much larger ones, such as the Space Shuttle.

Worse things have been carried under wings.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_United_States_Air_Force_n...

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> Worse things have been carried under wings.[1]

this one [1] was way scarier, imo D:

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash

Though interesting, this is completely OT to this discussion.

I suppose you could say the same thing about cm2187's comment from a few minutes ago about the history of terrorism.

Personally, one thing I enjoy about HN is the tangents that discussions sometimes take. If there is something I can learn from a comment, I'm not too worried about whether it is strictly on topic.

A tangent to the topic, sure, I love it. But hijacking the discussion to draw attention to something that has absolutely nothing to do with either the topic or relevant to a specific comment it almost the definition of a troll. Despite a glancing similarity to a detail not relevant to the topic, GP was not relevant to the comment he replied to.

If that’s your threshold, I suspect you find a lot of real-life trolls in everyday small talk.

“anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity” applies strongly to leeoniya’s comment IMO.

There's still a bomb deep in the muck somewhere off of Georgia (US) too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1958_Tybee_Island_mid-air_coll...

The 747 had to be adapted/modified to carry the shuttle, but the fifth pod to carry a spare engine was built in on some 747 models.

Yes but the Shuttle Transporter has several modifications and reinforcements, so it's not really a "stock" 747

Flying it is also more complicated

Upmost importance was to attach the orbiter black side down:

https://i.stack.imgur.com/vaPH0.jpg

>Flying it is also more complicated

This was something that always made me think about the difficulties of flying something with multiple sources of lift.

> W80-1 variable yield nuclear warhead, were mistakenly loaded onto a...

Imagine mistakenly loading a nuclear warhead on the wrong plane.

Imagine the other team unloading what they were expecting to be a warhead.

Or the other team that was not expecting nuclear warheads, but, say, donuts.

"Sir, I need you for a moment. It's kinda important"...

So now we consider Human Factors when designing weapons designed to kill millions. They need to be operated by the forgetful, the stressed, the young the drunk or anyone not experiencing their full faculties. Lets internalize this.

Normally not with passengers on board...

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