American Airlines composite rudder separation

Aircraft, aluminum for years, and now we're switching over to composites. What limited the composites was the fabricability — could they repair them? The American Airlines jet that landed in Brooklyn when it took off out of Kennedy — they had repaired the empennage. They had problems in production and they repaired the empennage, and that was actually a student's presentation. I can't remember the flight. Was it due to pilot error or due to the composite repair? People are still on both sides of that. Spacecraft, you can certainly afford composites, and you can even afford some refractory metals like beryllium that are horrendously expensive. It also depends on your economic class. Some people in the Ozarks will build their houses out of wood, and other people in the Hamptons or Martha's Vineyard will build them out of whatever they care about. There's a big example right now of people building 20-million-dollar mega-mansions on Martha's Vineyard.

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You could talk about your thesis. She made a presentation in another class and double-dips it. I don't mind double-dipping — I did it all the time. I want you to pick a topic that you're interested in. I was doing this in welding once with a bunch of Navy guys, and one guy decided he wanted to opt out of the Navy when he could, and he wanted to do masts on sailing vessels. Which is not exactly the Navy — they don't have a lot of masts on sailing vessels anymore except the Constitution. Another one wanted to do the failure of the American Airlines flight over Brooklyn that the composite tail rudder came off. What did that have to do with welding? I don't care. This is your chance to tell me something that you're interested in.