On: Armed with traffic cones, protesters are immobilizing driverless cars

[bradgessler]

These bozos should see what happens if they put “just one road cone” on an airport runway and it gets ingested by a jet engine.

“One of these 15 million dollar jet engines, just being disabled by a common traffic cone”

I can think of a lot of really expensive equipment that can be destroyed or disabled by a common traffic cone.

[woodruffw → bradgessler]

One salient difference is that the jet engine isn’t autonomously cruising around a major city center.

[slt2021 → woodruffw]

it does cruise almost-autonomously above the city center though

[woodruffw → slt2021]

I’ll let you be the one to try and put the cone in the engine at 35,000 feet :-)

[nomel → slt2021]

Related, they’ve been able to taxi for some time now, and full automation has just finished testing: https://www.businessinsider.com/airbus-completes-autonomous-...

[lstodd → bradgessler]

Actually, no. What is the cone made of? LDPE most likely. Soft, easily melted, easily shredded, easily burned.

So a gas turbine most likely won't even notice a cone.

Besides in a modern high-bypass turbofan about 80% of it would just get shredded by the fan and fly around the delicate parts, which aren't that much delicate.

[itsyaboi → lstodd]

What the cone is made out of is irrelevant. Any sort of FOD ingestion will lead to downtime and inspection/rebuild depending on severity of the damage found.