Much has been made of the exploding engine on a Qantas A380 Airbus, which resulted in an emergency landing in Singapore on 4 November. (For those of you not up to speed on your aviation, the A380 is the world's largest airliner, nicknamed the 'super jumbo', seating up to 850 people.)
Plenty of space has been given over to pictures of the charred engine hull (see pic - I'm not above it) and the hole that the blow-out created in the wing. These are usually accompanied by the personal accounts of justifiably terrified passengers, who invariably said they were "lucky to be alive".
Now hold on a second. Luck had nothing to do with it. Phenomenal engineering, yes. Outstanding testing, yes. Hyper-efficient emergency drills, yes. Superb crisis management by the pilot, definitely yes. That's why this is really good news. An enormous jet engine explodes at 38,000 feet, on an aircraft that is carrying 550 people, and
nobody dies. In fact, nobody is even hurt. In fact, most people were so unhurt they were able to take photos and footage throughout the entire event and blog/tweet them even before they'd disembarked.
I love science.
Science? It was God.
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