‘Major Component Malfunction’ Ends SLS Rocket Test Early. NASA Considers New Timeline

“NASA’s rocket charged with taking the agency back to the moon fired its four main engines Saturday afternoon, but the test in Mississippi was cut short after a malfunction caused an automatic abort,” reports Florida Today… “We did get an MCF on engine four,” a control room member said less than a minute into the test fire, using an initialism that…

Boeing Whistle-Blower Says Proposed 737 Max Fixes Aren’t Enough

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: A whistle-blower at Boeing Co. is urging aviation regulators to add additional protections to the grounded 737 Max. Curtis Ewbank, who has previously raised concerns about the plane’s design with congressional investigators, said in comments filed with the Federal Aviation Administration that a proposal to mandate fixes to the jet didn’t address multiple…

Facebook Abandons Broken Drilling Equipment Under Oregon Coast Seafloor

Kale Williams, reporting for The Oregonian: Lynnae Ruttledge was worried when she heard Facebook planned to build a landing spot for an undersea fiber-optic cable near her Oregon Coast home. Tierra Del Mar, where the 70-year-old retired government worker lives part-time, is a tiny community north of Pacific City with no stoplights and no cell-phone service. The enclave, all zoned residential,…

2009 Crash of Boeing 737 NG Now Receiving New Scrutiny

Slashdot reader JoeyRox shares a disturbing story about a Boeing 737 NG flight carrying 128 passengers that crashed in 2009, killings its three pilots, another crew member and five passengers. But “the Dutch investigators focused blame on the pilots for failing to react properly when an automated system malfunctioned and caused the plane to plummet into a field,” the New York…