Turbine blade failures are something which simply has to be accepted as a statistical likelihood. They're going to happen, because we're building machines that push materials and physics to the limits of endurance.
If you're uncomfortable with it, don't step in a machine that relies on something rotating at 20k rpm.
What's going on? Why is this happening now?
Uncontained engine failure on an 8 year old aircraft.
A turbine blade detached upwards, punching a hole in the wing.
Happens. Atlas is probably skimping on blade inspections.
Turbine blade failures are something which simply has to be accepted as a statistical likelihood. They're going to happen, because we're building machines that push materials and physics to the limits of endurance.
If you're uncomfortable with it, don't step in a machine that relies on something rotating at 20k rpm.
Admiral Cloudberg recently covered the Qantas 32 incident (also an uncontained disc failure, but on an Airbus A380):
“For engineering purposes, disk fragments are assumed to have infinite energy at the moment of release; they will cut through any reasonable material and cannot be contained.”