Boeing Boeing - part the tenth

Did you see the early reports about the 10? They stretched the tube once again, so much so that the dang thing couldn't takeoff! Those stubby legs meant that if the plane tried to rotate in the standard way, it would bang the tailcone on the tarmac. Every time!! "Nice plane you've got there. Too bad if something bad happened to it?"

So the early report I saw told how the Boeing engineers came up with this neato solution to the problem: a telescopic strut for the wheel truck. Aha! thinks I. Here's the solution to the Worst Case Scenario. Mostly. This strut adds 9.5 inches of distance off the tarmac, so they don't have to redesign the entire wing (they've done so, more or less, a few times before). All they need is a lowered pylon for the LEAP, just enough that the nacelle gets below the top of the wing, and so the thrust vector off the bottom. No more need for MCAS with an aerodynamic fix for the problem.

But... Then I saw an animation of how this neato new strut works. From the first report I saw, it sounded like the strut collapses when stowing the gear into the tube, but is locked extended otherwise. Nope. The strut extends during rotation only, allowing the tailcone to clear the tarmac. It wasn't clear whether the strut extends in a positive fashion, i.e. pushes up on the tube or simply releases allowing the tube to 'float' above the trucks during takeoff. Either way, dang.

So MCAS is still needed to keep the plane flying. Sort of.