alt Hacker NewsI misread “uncrewed” as “unscrewed” and for a moment this became a much stranger, better aerospace story. Not autonomous aircraft, but aircraft apparently liberated from screws. A future of pilotless aircraft is plausible enough; a future of screwless aircraft is much weirder.
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Gravityloss • today at 5:42 AM
Not as weird as one might think, fasteners produce local loads and require holes, so designing without them would be much better. It has been a goal for decades but progress is slow! Maybe uncrewed vehicles can be iterated on more rapidly.
alephnerd • today at 5:48 AM
> a future of screwless aircraft is much weirder
This is actually an important part of what makes a stealth airframe "stealthy", along with other stuff.
Much of the aircraft is rivets, not screws.
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/6312/why-are-ai...
"Airplanes are riveted, not screwed because they are the product of engineers, not lawyers."