The Single Nut That Keeps a Helicopter in the Sky

What keeps a 10,000-pound military helicopter from falling out of the sky?
You might think it’s a complex array of hundreds of bolts, but on classic helicopters like the UH-1 Huey, it all comes down to a single piece of metal. Officially called the Main Rotor Retaining Nut, Vietnam War pilots gave it a much darker nickname: The "Jesus Nut." The dark joke was simple—if this one nut fails in mid-air, the entire rotor rips off the aircraft, and the only thing left to do is pray. Discover how aerospace engineers design this single point of failure to be the strongest, most heavily inspected piece of metal in aviation history.
When your life hangs by a single thread, it better be made of titanium.
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