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Trump's Second Term

Andy_Ross said:
Completely deranged.
This isn't a parody.
He is getting obviously worse by the day, stolen elections, autopens, Obama, spied on his campaign, thugs and corruption.
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I don't see the 'worse by day' part.
It's his usual agitating propagandistic hatefull ◊◊◊◊.
He is doing it for years and years. Please don't fall into the Alzheimer's outrage rabbit hole.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
The main reason why Qatar wants to give the plane to Trump is that they don't want it and no one but Trump would, either.
It must be an utter nightmare to maintain it and due to its size, the number of places it can go to is severely limited.
You can get the same Level of luxury in a much smaller and versatile package.
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It's a 747. They've been going all over the world for more than 50 years. Size isn't a huge problem. Heck, they even operated from the field in the small city I lived in before moving here!
I lived in Everett, Washington, of course, where they were built.
i just checked Wikipedia, and it turns out they've got two of those. Probably this is the older one. Maybe it's due for maintenance or something.
 
Trebuchet said:
It's a 747. They've been going all over the world for more than 50 years. Size isn't a huge problem. Heck, they even operated from the field in the small city I lived in before moving here!
I lived in Everett, Washington, of course, where they were built.
i just checked Wikipedia, and it turns out they've got two of those. Probably this is the older one. Maybe it's due for maintenance or something.
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Isn't the current Air force one a 747?
 
carlosy said:
I don't see the 'worse by day' part.
It's his usual agitating propagandistic hatefull ◊◊◊◊.
He is doing it for years and years. Please don't fall into the Alzheimer's outrage rabbit hole.
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Oh, come on. He's always been a full-fledged conspiracy theorist, and he's always expressed himself like a fourth-grader, but you can't deny is getting markedly worse.

Like, the quoted ramble is something I expect out of a seriously mentally ill person online, like someone with psychosis or schizophrenia. Someone it's not even worth replying to, because you know you'll just get another unhinged rant, so you just have to leave them alone and hope they recover. Then there's the part that in 2016 he was high-energy, now he's constantly blinking, literally struggling to keep his eyes open, and actually falling asleep in public. He also looks confused and disoriented much of the time, like he doesn't even understand where he is and what he's doing. It's the look of someone who's been sound asleep and suddenly woke up in the middle of some situation.

This is part of the reason why I was sure he didn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of winning in 2024. Unfortunately we have a media that went all out on covering Biden's health, but looked the other way when it came to everything from Dump's declining faculties to serious threats to democracy like Project 2025 and the SCOTUS ruling of immunity for official acts. I was sure that between Project 2025 and Dump's dementia, he didn't stand a chance, but apparently the media wanted four more years of effortless wall-to-wall outrage coverage, consequences to people and democracy be damned.
 
jimbob said:
Isn't the current Air force one a 747?
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All VC-25s are one-offs. But the current Air Force One(s) are adapted from 747-200s and designated VC-25A. There are two of them. No one flies the -200 anymore, and Boeing would really like to not have to figure out how to keep supporting them. The new ones (VC-25B) are being adapted from the 747-8, which is a more modern variant and still flown by carriers such as Lufthansa. The Qatari jet is also a 747-8. That specific jet has been on the market since 2020 with no takers. But it's being peddled to other luxury customers, like other royal families who don't necessarily have the same requirements as the President of the United States.
 
Safe-Keeper said:
Oh, come on. He's always been a full-fledged conspiracy theorist, and he's always expressed himself like a fourth-grader, but you can't deny is getting markedly worse.

Like, the quoted ramble is something I expect out of a seriously mentally ill person online, like someone with psychosis or schizophrenia. Someone it's not even worth replying to, because you know you'll just get another unhinged rant, so you just have to leave them alone and hope they recover. Then there's the part that in 2016 he was high-energy, now he's constantly blinking, literally struggling to keep his eyes open, and actually falling asleep in public. He also looks confused and disoriented much of the time, like he doesn't even understand where he is and what he's doing. It's the look of someone who's been sound asleep and suddenly woke up in the middle of some situation.

This is part of the reason why I was sure he didn't have a snowball's chance in Hell of winning in 2024. Unfortunately we have a media that went all out on covering Biden's health, but looked the other way when it came to everything from Dump's declining faculties to serious threats to democracy like Project 2025 and the SCOTUS ruling of immunity for official acts. I was sure that between Project 2025 and Dump's dementia, he didn't stand a chance, but apparently the media wanted four more years of effortless wall-to-wall outrage coverage, consequences to people and democracy be damned.
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Yep. And I am not completely sure why the media has dropped the ball, it is suspicious that they profit off the controversy.
I think part of the reason it has not gotten more attention is not only the numbness factor but also the fact that for the most part it has been a slow slide. I am not an expert in dementia, but I suspect at some point we are gonna see a dramatic fall off the cliff where Trump is literally babbling about Obama stalking him on the golf course or something. And then it will be interesting to see how or if this is hidden from public scrutiny.
 
JayUtah said:
All VC-25s are one-offs. But the current Air Force One(s) are adapted from 747-200s and designated VC-25A. There are two of them. No one flies the -200 anymore, and Boeing would really like to not have to figure out how to keep supporting them. The new ones (VC-25B) are being adapted from the 747-8, which is a more modern variant and still flown by carriers such as Lufthansa. The Qatari jet is also a 747-8. That specific jet has been on the market since 2020 with no takers. But it's being peddled to other luxury customers, like other royal families who don't necessarily have the same requirements as the President of the United States.
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So one problem is that the US government didn't order a replacement when the 747-8 line was still running? How long can one extend the life? When people talk about fatigue lifetime, I guess that for many parts it is very difficult to replace. If I remember correctly, fatigue is more of a problem with aluminium than steel. And I guess that composites have completely different ageing limitations?
 
Darat said:
It seems

Does it have the important features that Trump wants I.e. gold looking stuff plastered all over it?
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They wouldn't let him have fake gold paint and tinsel. It interferes with the spooks' detection equipment or something.

Incidentally, Air Force One was a non-standard, special-order 747 body, delivered with no fittings at all. Many millions were spent adding the comms, spook and other high-tech "defence" stuff. The trim such as seats and beds and fried chicken microwaves were pretty much incidental costs and the last to go in.

So making this Qatari grift-horse into AF1 standard would mean having to strip it to the bare airframe first, then rebuilding that, then going through the complete installation as above before putting the glitzy stuff back in. Typical Trump ◊◊◊◊-up. It would be cheaper to just paint the current AF1 in gold livery and add a plastic gold toilet.
 
jimbob said:
So one problem is that the US government didn't order a replacement when the 747-8 line was still running?
Click to expand...
You don't build VC-25s on the -8 line. You take two completed -8s and retrofit them to be VC-25s using a process you kind of develop on the fly, since it's a one-off. That said, you still want access to -8 spare parts.

jimbob said:
How long can one extend the life? When people talk about fatigue lifetime, I guess that for many parts it is very difficult to replace. If I remember correctly, fatigue is more of a problem with aluminium than steel. And I guess that composites have completely different ageing limitations?
Click to expand...
Metal fatigue is more a problem for aluminum than steel, but airframe construction uses exotic aluminum alloys that make that kind of a minor concern. The fatigue modes associated with carbon fiber composites are completely different.

If you have infinite budget, you can extend life indefinitely. The Air Force has a program to keep the B-52 airframe flying until the 2060s, making some of them 100 years old at their expected retirement. But with Air Force One, you don't want long repair cycles. There are two of them, but the longer and more expensive it is to repair them, the more it makes sense to just replace them after a while in order to support the mission.

Maintenance is not necessarily about metal fatigue. It's about dumb things like cable harnesses and connectors, hydraulic fittings, valves, switches, relays, sensors, etc. These are all supplied by subcontractors initially, but when the -200 goes out of service there's no more market for those parts and they stop being made. The subcontractors have moved on to new designs for those components that support the models still being flown. You can have replacement parts, but you have to make them yourself and verify their safety and function. That gets very expensive and time-consuming.
 
JayUtah said:
You don't build VC-25s on the -8 line. You take two completed -8s and retrofit them to be VC-25s using a process you kind of develop on the fly, since it's a one-off. That said, you still want access to -8 spare parts.


Metal fatigue is more a problem for aluminum than steel, but airframe construction uses exotic aluminum alloys that make that kind of a minor concern. The fatigue modes associated with carbon fiber composites are completely different.

If you have infinite budget, you can extend life indefinitely. The Air Force has a program to keep the B-52 airframe flying until the 2060s, making some of them 100 years old at their expected retirement. But with Air Force One, you don't want long repair cycles. There are two of them, but the longer and more expensive it is to repair them, the more it makes sense to just replace them after a while in order to support the mission.

Maintenance is not necessarily about metal fatigue. It's about dumb things like cable harnesses and connectors, hydraulic fittings, valves, switches, relays, sensors, etc. These are all supplied by subcontractors initially, but when the -200 goes out of service there's no more market for those parts and they stop being made. The subcontractors have moved on to new designs for those components that support the models still being flown. You can have replacement parts, but you have to make them yourself and verify their safety and function. That gets very expensive and time-consuming.
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All that makes sense, thanks
 
stanfr said:
Yep. And I am not completely sure why the media has dropped the ball, it is suspicious that they profit off the controversy.
I think part of the reason it has not gotten more attention is not only the numbness factor but also the fact that for the most part it has been a slow slide. I am not an expert in dementia, but I suspect at some point we are gonna see a dramatic fall off the cliff where Trump is literally babbling about Obama stalking him on the golf course or something. And then it will be interesting to see how or if this is hidden from public scrutiny.
Click to expand...

My mother was fine mentally when she was admitted to the hospital for a fall, COVID, dehydration, sepsis, pneumonia, and everything else that was wrong. She was also fine when they transferred her to a rehab facility for physical therapy after she recovered. Then I went in to see her one day and she was rolling her wheelchair around the room, clutching at empty air down near the floor because she thought she was at home, picking up twigs and branches in her back yard. After that she would periodically ask who the people were walking around her house (doctors, nurses, and orderlies) or ask me to wheel her down the hall to her bedroom.
 
Armitage72 said:
My mother was fine mentally when she was admitted to the hospital for a fall, COVID, dehydration, sepsis, pneumonia, and everything else that was wrong. She was also fine when they transferred her to a rehab facility for physical therapy after she recovered. Then I went in to see her one day and she was rolling her wheelchair around the room, clutching at empty air down near the floor because she thought she was at home, picking up twigs and branches in her back yard. After that she would periodically ask who the people were walking around her house (doctors, nurses, and orderlies) or ask me to wheel her down the hall to her bedroom.
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Thanks for sharing--I had a similar experience with my father, who officially died of Alzheimers and heart disease but it accelerated after a fall made him bedridden.
 
Norman Alexander said:
They wouldn't let him have fake gold paint and tinsel. It interferes with the spooks' detection equipment or something.

Incidentally, Air Force One was a non-standard, special-order 747 body, delivered with no fittings at all. Many millions were spent adding the comms, spook and other high-tech "defence" stuff. The trim such as seats and beds and fried chicken microwaves were pretty much incidental costs and the last to go in.

So making this Qatari grift-horse into AF1 standard would mean having to strip it to the bare airframe first, then rebuilding that, then going through the complete installation as above before putting the glitzy stuff back in. Typical Trump ◊◊◊◊-up. It would be cheaper to just paint the current AF1 in gold livery and add a plastic gold toilet.
Click to expand...
but but but we still pwned the libs, right?
 
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