Feeding the gators seems like a really bad idea. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was illegal but who knows. I did a tour in Florida and we had to almost drive the airboat over one before they would move.

That sounds much better! I don’t actually know if there are gators there but living in the PNW has taught me that gators exist in any southern body of water, regardless of size. Your bathtub? That’s a gator hammock.

Louisiana Alligator swimming pool.*

Not how it would be handled. It sounds plausible in theory but in practice it wouldn’t work.

Fan blades in the various compression and exhaust stages were bent, chipped, and otherwise destroyed. Slowly restarting the engine would just cause further damage to the unit when these broken parts start moving. The forces exerted on the blades when spinning would cause them to start coming apart and potentially exiting the engine as shrapnel, although this is unlikely (engines are designed to contain a catastrophic failure to prevent this exact scenario).

There are basically two options at this point. The first is disassembling the engine and assessing the damage to determine the cost and likely hood of repairs. Something the size of a human body is going to wipe out basically every piece of internal hardware.

The second option is to just write off the cost of the engine as a loss and scrap it.

I saw photos of the accident and my money is on option two. There was literally nothing left larger than the size of a 50 cent piece. You wouldn’t even know what happened based on the photos unless someone told you.

Very sad situation and sad remind of the dangers planes pose on the ground. She didn’t suffer, death would have been instant.

This is my field of work and basically correct. The issue right now is the specific inputs for the process and sourcing them. Flocculant, potash, and catalyst for reactors have all been problematic over the past few years. Potash in particular because Canda and Russia are the biggest producers. If these inputs can be reliably sourced, production and distribution are relatively stable, just more expensive. Most of it is done by rail which is less prone to issue than freight or air.

One thing that does worry me is equipment longevity. Fertilizer production is very caustic and produces a lot of corrosive byproducts like phos-acid, sulphuric acid, etc. This requires constant maintenance using specialized and very difficult to procure parts. There are many critical components with no replacements on hand. Some of these parts are back ordered for a year or more with no alternative supplier(s). Unless we can rebuild or fabricate a solution, any one of these critical components can stop production.