Comment by krisoft
10 hours ago
I don’t understand your point about UPS 2976. You make it sound as if people there were hurt by the engine parts hitting them. But in actuality it is the airplane crashing into them which killed those unfortunate.
Even aviation turbines are quite safe and uncontained engine mallfunctions are very rarely a problem. On top of that there is every reason to think that ground based power generating applications can be even safer. There weight is much less of a constraint, so you can easily armour the container to a much higher assurance level. The terrestrial turbine is not jostled around so you have less of a concern about gyroscopic effects. And finally you can install the power generating turbine with a much larger keep out zone. All three factors making terrestrial power generating jets safer than the aviation ones.
The plane suffered an engine mount failure, which tore a hole in the wing, sprayed shrapnel into engine 2, which caused a compressor stall reducing thrust past the survivable level. Then it crashed into a fuel recycling plant with a full load of jet fuel.
The scary part of the mount failure is that the mounts cracked in an unexposed part where visual inspection did not reveal the damage. It wasn't due for a teardown and inspection until it had traveled 25% (80% of the maintenance window) farther. That's why they grounded the entire fleet.
Takeoffs are dangerous because they run the engines hard, and parts are operating in the supersonic range.
I’m aware of the facts you say. But they have nothing to do with terrestial operations. If the same thing happened to an engine sitting next to a data center the worst thing which could happen is it knocks the neighbouring engines out too. And if you are worried about that you can add more armouring between the engines. Which you can do because they don’t need to fly. Heck you can put a row of hesco barriers between engines in a terrestial application. But either way the data center is not going to suddenly fall on a fuel recycling plant.