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A friend of mine who works out on Sea Launch from time to time was telling me that insulation has been falling from shuttle booster rockets since day one, and most of it a lot bigger than the piece that damaged Columbia.

It's a shame the insulation issue wasn't nailed a long time ago, but just like building crosswalks on our city streets it often takes a couple of fatalities to make something happen.

Boeing reports:
Accidents by primary cause
Hull loss accidents - worldwide commercial jet feet (incl. Airbus and others):
56% aircrew
17% aircraft

The following eight examples graphically illustrate this.

a) Boeing 737-2A8 16 AUG 1991 "The accident occurred by reason of a grave error on the part of the Pilot-in-Command .." Fatalities: 69

b) Boeing 737-2A8 26 APR 1993"Pilots' error in initiating late rotation and following wrong rotation technique .." Fatalities: 55

c) Boeing T-43A (737) 03 APR 1996 ".. combined with errors made during the flight made by the aircrew" Fatalities: 35

d) Boeing 737-4Q8 07 APR 1999 "..crew failed to recognize the cause of an erratic airspeed indication" "crew failed to use other cockpit indications for control and recovery of the airplane" Fatalities: 6

e) Boeing 737-204C 31 AUG 1999 ".. crew tried to take-off without selecting the flaps .." Fatalities: 64

f) Boeing 737-2A8 17 JUL 2000 "The cause of the accident was loss of control of the aircraft due Human Error (air crew)"

g) Boeing 737-3Q8 16 JAN 2002 "The flight crew's reported actions to restart the engines and APU however, were contrary to the procedures contained in the Boeing 737 Operations Manual"

h) Boeing 737-2T4 06 MAR 2003 ".. and the Captain, the PNF, taking over control of the airplane before having clearly identified the problem" Fatalities: 102

From http://aviation-safety.net/index.php

Well, you are welcome to. I asked my friend Mr. Google about your biased and obviously informed 'facts', he seems to think differently. I found several places that had accident statistics, including one from Boeing. You might not believe the numbers they have, but some research on my part tells me the numbers are reasonable. If you can find reputable numbers that say otherwise please let me know.

The net result is that Airbus most certainly does not make the safest commercial airlines (I only included the lowest numbers):
Hull Loss Accidents 1959-2004 (loss per million departures)
767: 0.34
757: 0.34
737-400/400-500: 0.36
A320/319/321: 0.42
747-400: 0.75
A300-600: 1.06
727: 1.1
737-100/200: 1.31
A310: 1.60
A300: 1.68

So, Airbus certainly makes good dependable airframes, but 10-20% better then Boeing or other US made? Please, keep your FUD and rhetoric under control.

~nate

Where is the plane?

A key part of the 777 systems is a Boeing-patented two-way digital data bus, which has been adopted as a new industry standard: ARINC 629. It permits airplane systems and associated computers to communicate with one another through a common wire path (a twisted pair of wires) instead of through separate one-way wire connections. This further simplifies assembly and saves weight, while increasing reliability through a reduction in the amount of wires and connectors. There are 11 of these ARINC 629 pathways in the 777.

According to this, a 737 contains 36 miles of electrical wire. So it probably would be a fairly significant weight savings. I woudn't want to put my life on the line on that airplane though, at least not until they can demonstate that the safety is the same or better than a conventional one. Give that the FAA implies that a passenger accidentally leaving his cell phone on is enough to make a conventional one go slamming into the ground in a firey ball of death, I'm not sure it's as difficult as it sounds...

The boeing 747 is composed of roughly 6 million parts.
http://www.boeing.com/news/feature/747evolution/74 7facts.html

I can't find a cite, but I'd guess you are off by an order of magnitude on the car as well.

Oh! Right! We can test out space systems that would be useful for the real missions later on. Except that the station STILL relies on a bunch of Russian hardware that we already know is a smidge clunky.

The problems began on 19 April 2006, when the Russian Zvezda service module's main engines failed during a test. The failure may have been due to a sunshade cover that was not completely open, according to a station status report.

When deployed both [trusses] have a set of three radiators that is about the size of a tennis court. Each set of radiators has the cooling capacity to chill four 2,000 square-foot houses on a hot summer day and consumes the equivalent power used to cool and light eight houses.

Yes.

Hmm, the Boeing 777 requires up to 15000 feet for takeoff (see page 8) depending on flaps, takeoff elevation, and loadout. So you're right, 15000 feet isn't so absurd at all. Though at some point, why not just taxi the plane to your destination?

Sorry but your argument simply doesn't hold up. The market will go wherever it is most profitable to go... this has always been true and always will be true. Just look at some very succesful companies and tell me there's no profit in killing people.

The market is least trustworthy option when it comes to policing.

If you'd actually had to deal with unions, you wouldn't be so gung-ho about it. You also wouldn't be living in the fantasy world where all the things you say would come to pass under a union.

From my experience with unions, the good far outweighs the bad. High salaries are a good thing for employees. My uncle, who never went to college, has always made more than my mom, who has a master's degree in nursing. Why? He's always worked a blue-collar union job while she worked white-collar non-union jobs.

Further, the average Boeing machinist makes $62,500, excluding overtime and shift premiums and all the other benefits they receive. These are jobs that don't require a college degree. Why do they get so much? The union. The average salary for computer science jobs: $60,000.

Unions only work 40 hour weeks. Software engineers?... Maybe 60 hours a week?

And when was the last time a union worker trained his Indian replacement? Damn, I've never even heard of that...

When unions were first started in this country, they served a useful purpose. That has long since passed.

Riiiight... Like companies aren't taking advantage of their workers any more. Granted, it is not as bad as it was back then, but the average worker is still getting raped by corporations.

If you're not getting raises and bonuses, then you're in the wrong job...or you're not doing yours as well as others are.

That's not the problem. The problem is that all our raises and bonuses aren't even keeping up with inflation. After being adjusted for inflation, wages are lower than they were 30-40 years ago. The peak was actually in 1968. What happened? Nixon opened up China and all our manufacturing started moving there, diminishing the power of unions to keep salaries up. Then, Reagan came in and further weakened unions and the American economy overall. Then, Bush Jr came in and further raped the economy and workers. Now, you have to have two salaries coming in where one salary was sufficient before.

Perhaps you should take a closer look at the Delta IV Medium configuration at http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/delta/pr oduct_card/pc_d4_tech_print.pdf (PDF) There are no solids there, on the low end model.

Why indeed would a chinese person or an Indian buy an american product?
What kind of products are you talking about?

Here's some products that you cant buy from non american companies

http://www.beckman.com/products/instrument/automat edsolutions/biomek/biomekfx_inst_dcr.asp

http://www.boeing.com/commercial/

There are more products out there than tennis shoes and bubble gum, and these products have a much higher profit margin than the 10 cents a chinese company makes per pair of shoes.

Americans have been benefited from the price of chinese manufactored goods for decades.

Here are some fun statistics. I love the GDP per capita sections.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/ranko rder/2001rank.html

I'm sure that this has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Boeing (their main competition for the F-35 contract) is getting most of the press with its UAV fleet, and manned fighters, under the current Pentagon brass, are going the way of the dodo.

Nothing at all...

An upgrade of the leaflet idea is actually in the document. There is a requirement for a precision-guided leaflet canister. (That's easy to do. The "smart bomb" kit, the Joint Direct Attack Munition, is actually a strap-on unit for dumb bombs. All that's needed is a compatible leaflet can.)

"This message has been delivered by a precision-guided leaflet bomb aimed at you. If this had been a real bomb, you would now be dead. If you want to surrender, drop your weapons and walk east. Have a nice day."

Turbo-Jet (same turbo jet power as turbo-prop, but little or no "bypass" air. The main purpose of the intake fan is now to pressurize air at intake for combustion with jet fuel. Thrust comes from) can provide substantial power at high velocites. TurboJets are the big muscular loud as hell engines used on fighter planes.

Turbojet engines don't have any fans, so there is no bypass at all. They only have compressors and turbines. Probably the only aircraft the Air Force still flies with turbojets are T-38s and (maybe) some KC-135s that haven't yet been retrofitted with turbofans. (I thought the B-52 was still flying on turbojets, but this page and this page say otherwise...you learn something new every day.)

Turbofan engines have been used in fighters for at least the past 40 years. Fighters don't get the same high-bypass engines that you'll see on an airliner due to size constraints, but turbofan engines with smaller fans go back in fighters to at least the F-111, if not earlier. Current fighters powered by turbofans include the F-15, F-16, F-22, and F-117. The F119 engine used in the F-22 is even capable of supercruise.

Development for what? Their internal accounting systems?

Er no. All kinds of interesting things... like this:

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/unman ned/scaneagle.html

The software for this is in Java.

Java's license currently says that it can't be used for certain systems, including nuclear power plants and avionics, so it can't be in airplanes.

Wrong. The license on Sun's implementation of Java says this. There is nothing to stop others writing their own compatible implementation which they do certify for this use.

Guess what? They have!

No one cares what some web application is written in, and since it can't be used in anything where someone's life might be in danger (Sun's license won't let you), I fail to see that being really all that interesting.

They don't use Sun's VMs for this, so your point is irrelevant.

Java is a language, not a product. Not all implementations certified as 'Java' come from Sun.

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/propul/S SME.html SSME has ~12 *million* horsepower. If you scaled up the ESA's labscale engine - its about maybe a tenth of the size - you are talking about 1,400 horsepower. There is no comparison.

However in interplanetary space this method of propulsion shines since it is very mass efficient. You can grab a stable fuel source like a noble gas and a long-term energy generator like a nuclear power plant and have a long term voyager-style mission, whereas with conventional chemical propellants that would not be an option.

-everphilski-

SSME Incredible Facts

When the hydrogen is burned with liquid oxygen, the temperature in the engine's combustion chamber reaches +6000 degrees Fahrenheit - that's higher than the boiling point of Iron.

Guess that answers that question. That was one link away from the first result in a google search for "space shuttle main engine exhaust temperature" and very obvious. You lose! :D 6000 F is 3588 K.

For comparison, the sun's surface temp is 6000 C (6273.15 K) and the core is 15 million kelvins. So it's a little over half the surface temp of the sun, and nothing close to the core. Everything in between is, well, in between...

I think "long-range energy directed devices" could be something like this http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/ if it has enough energy to punch up through the atmosphere (afaik it doesn't but I wouldn't know - it might fly high enough and be strong enough).

Then again "long-range energy directed devices" is sufficiently diffuse to reference just about anything from a golfball to a deathstar :)

GPS is not an approved method of navigation for aircraft, it is only intended as a supplementary navaid to VOR/NDB, your charts and of course the compass.

GPS is most certainly approved for navigation on aircraft. It's much more accurate than a compass (what with the errors depending on where you are over the earth). Boeing released an update called "FANS" (Future Air Navigation System) back in 1995 that added GPS navigation capabilities to the 747.

The new standard -- Future Air Navigation System 1 (FANS-1) -- allows the 747-400 to make primary use of Global Satellite Positioning System (GPS) equipment for navigation and a datalink system which uses VHF radio or satellites to communicate with air traffic controllers.

Interestingly, the Wikipedia article was deleted:
22:14, 13 October 2005 DragonflySixtyseven deleted "Boeing Everett plant" (content was: '{{deletebecause|Content pilfered wholesale from [http://www.boeing.com/commercial/facilities/].}}' )

Nice to see that someone is standing up against plagiarism, no?

Just a thought: Generating a KW of electricity to keep ISS in orbit will require solar panels, or enough fuel on board to keep a generator or fuel cell going. Having dabbled in Amateur Satellites, the most precious thing aboard a satellite is power. Based on reasonably current solar technology available at my local marine store, it takes about a square foot of solar panel to generate just 10 watts. To generate a thousand, it would take a solar panel the size of three sheets of plywood. In the vacuum of space the output would be higher, and NASA might use more efficient panels, but during eclipse periods, the panels produce no power. I did a bit of research into the capacity of ISS's Solar Arrays and found that it takes 9,600 square feet of solar panel to provide an average of 78,000 watts. A KW or so would amount to a couple percent of the station's capacity, and could probably be spared for emergencies. The panels themselves deteriorate as they become bombarded by micrometeorites, etc, so output drops over time.

Rigging the station for survival mode to slow orbit decay may very well mean pointing the panels edge-on in the direction of travel, sacrificing power production by about half.

Using a gasoline generator analogy, I burn about 1 liter of gasoline an hour to generate about 2,000 watts of electricity with my typical portable gasoline powered generator here on earth. A fuel cell will be more efficient, by perhaps a factor of 3, but it will need to consume both oxidizing agents as well as fuel. To run a fuel cell for a month at 1KW, it will consume on the order of about a ton of fuel and oxidizers in order to generate that much electricity on a sustained basis. This fuel will have to be rocketed into space and stored. LOX containers are heavy and bulky in their own right, and depending on the fuel, the fuel storage containers are quite considerable in bulk and weight as well.

Also, there are no Shuttles ready that could boost the orbit either, so the Russians are the ONLY method right now. I'm not sure how fast the Russians can send up another Progess if the one currently docked can't get the job done. This IS a serious risk to the station and crew, but it's not panic time.


Using the Progress is only one way to do it, they could always fire the engines on the Zvezda Service Module

There is an obvious problem with the Progress, but I think they only use the Progress reboost because otherwise it's propellant (used to rendezvous, dock and de-orbit) is wasted. The Progress refuels the SM from seperate tanks.

This "new" thruster sounds an awful lot like an Ion Engine. Not to discount this or anything. But theoretically, the ion engine can propel a craft to near the speed of light, it will just take it a few thousand years to get up to that speed. I think one engineer refered to it as "acceleration with patience." I guess I'll be more impressed when I see one of these things used in a vehicle launch situation.

In the long run, Boeing is in better shape than Airbus since Boeing is diversified and Airbus is not.

http://www.airbus.com/en/
http://www.boeing.com/flash.html

Go to Boeing's products heading, defense systems, space systems, commerical aviation, military aviation.
Airbus builds commerical airplanes, that's it.

I have the opposite opinion on the relative value of the solid boosters and SSME's. Both are proven designs, but the SSME are extremely elaborate pieces of equipment. A better choice would be the RS-68 IMHO. It has similar performance (more power, slightly better ISP at ground, slightly worse ISP in vacuum), and it's cheaper and simpler. IMHO, the perils of the solid boosters are overstated. They are well-developed, stable technology.

From Boeing's web site:

It takes about 60 gallons (227 l) of fuel per passenger to get from New York to London on board a 767-400ER. The same volume of gasoline would propel an economy car about half of that distance.

Well, let's try it. The following values were obtained via, well, Google: :)

Number of volumes: 22,000,000 (from the Harvard & University of Michigan collections)

300 pages per volume

Average image size of a page scan: We'll say 1MB.

Top speed of a Boeing 767: 850 kph (the Boeing website lists the value in nasty British units)

Distance from LA to New York: 3960 km

52,800,000,000,000 kilobits / 16,770 s =
  3,148,479,427 KB/s or 3.15 terabits per second.

Damn.

We just wonder when private industry will put Nasa out of the game.

I recommend picking up a copy of SMAD and reading section 11.4 starting on page 407. Pay real close attention to table 11-33 which compares current power technologies. Also check out section 10.3 on design budgets, including the power budget. You'll see that the power budget is where all the "heavy lifting" is done when it comes to power management. Building a slightly larger set of solar panels doesn't help you at all on deep space missions. It all depends on the power budget, and the Shuttle and ISS have done nothing to help us understand how to better manage power budgets. In fact, with 36KW (Shuttle) and 110KW (ISS) systems, there's even less need to manage a power budget as tightly as they did in Apollo at levels as low as 43 amps, or about 2800 watts (more than 40 times less than IIS).

The cryogenic fuels are pumped through the collar of the engine to keep it cool, so I don't really think that you could get it too cold. Too hot maybe, but IANASSMEE

http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/propul/S SMEamaz.html

http://www.optipoint.com/far/turbo.htm

Now using Google Calculator:
7 * 7774 lb to kg = 24 683.5896 kilograms

So yeah, it is a bit more, but not that much.

You missed gcj, which eliminates both the VM and runtime compiliation overhead.

Might as well screw deterministic memory- something more than necessary with realtime embedded systems.

This problem is eliminated with gcj, as long as you know what you're doing regarding GC. There is also a real-time specification for Java, which was apparently used to program a sophisiticated Boeing drone. This was announced at JavaOne earlier this week. Finally, the Javolution library is a useful tool in this area as well.

Maybe JIT moved Java from being fully interpreted, but it's still interpreted and "compiled" at runtime making it theoretically (a.k.a Javaly) and realistically on average always slower and more of a memory hog than unnamed alternatives, that's all. But, sometimes that's ok right?

Apparently, in the case of VB, Perl, Python, Ruby etc. etc. etc. Besides, as I pointed out above, there are ahead-of-time Java compilers. (JET is a commercial alternative for Windows.)

Look at how Java has taken over the desktop application market where that least matters. How many Java desktop applications do you run?

Several.

Can you tell it's Java?

No, not in the case of Eclipse, Azureus or RSSOwl. Can you? (BTW Azureus is one of the top applications on Sourceforge.) Others are minimally identifiable, but their interfaces are no stranger than Winamp or many other current applications.

If programming will always be hard, one might wonder what skeletons in the closets Java fanatics have at the price of conformity to an interface. Java version incompatibilities, buggy VMs, oh my.

As opposed to (just to pick my favorite whipping boy) C++ compiler incompatibilities, memory issues, third-party library incompatibilities, and fragility?

Java isn't perfect. I'm personally interested in seeing a truly open language developed which is more suitable for HPC, numerics and realtime, and leverages the best features of Java and C#. Until then, however, I think Java is a very good alternative for many projects, large and small.

Does the Boeing V-22 Osprey fit the bill? It uses helicopter-like rotors for VTOL, but then these switch to be forward-facing to provide it with conventional airplane capabilities. Although its hover capabilities are pretty good, it won`t replace the harrier-style entirely. The harrier-VTOL concept makes the VTOL part very inefficient, because the use of that vehicle requires it to be high-speed in other circumstances (harrier is twice as fast as the Osprey). It`s all engineering trade-offs.

Does the Boeing V-22 Osprey fit the bill? It uses helicopter-like rotors for VTOL, but then these switch to be forward-facing to provide it with conventional airplane capabilities. Although its hover capabilities are pretty good, it won`t replace the harrier-style entirely. The harrier-VTOL concept makes the VTOL part very inefficient, because the use of that vehicle requires it to be high-speed in other circumstances (harrier is twice as fast as the Osprey). It`s all engineering trade-offs.

There are many small and medium innovations in the design and building of transport category airplanes.

The use of composite materials is starting to surpass the use of aluminum. Take the Boeing's 787, most of the fuselage will be made of composite materials (see http://www.boeing.com/commercial/7e7/flash.html). This will result in a much lighter airframe. Excess weight is the enemy of any airplane design, since more weight means less fuels which means less range, and also means less payload.

There have also been many innovations in engine design, that have reduced weight, increased fuel efficiency and decreased engine noise.

The Commercial Aviation industry is very conservative and that is mostly due to the costs associated with designing and building large commercial transport category airplanes. Airbus estimates that it will cost then between 12 and 15 Billion dollars for the development, fabrication and support of the A380. Not chump change. Also, the regulatory requirements are very stringent and consequently very costly.

Finally, the look of an airplane is a function of its mission, and the ease and cost of fabrication. Long tubes are simpler and cheaper to build that other shapes.

Next time you are at an airport, compare the cross-sectional shapes of the fuselages. The ones that look like circles are cheaper and easier to build than does that have an elliptical shape. But, a circular shape or less efficient, since there is more wasted volume than an elliptical shape. It all about making the right compromises for an airplanes stated mission.

They look pretty much the same as the dated old jets from the 70s...

More like the 50s.

While it's true that the Atlas 5 uses Russian motors, the Boeing Delta 4 uses American-designed and -manufactured RS-68 motors. The RS-68 is a brand-new, simple, relatively easy-to-manufacture engine with reasonable performance. My neighbor across the street had to come out of retirement to help build it, as there just aren't young people today with the skills and experience necessary to build state-of-the-art rocket engines.

Thad Beier

The Enabling Technology
Connexion by Boeing uses a worldwide network of geostationary satellites and ground-based receiving stations to relay data between aircraft and the global information network. An advanced-technology antenna designed and built by Mitsubishi Electric Co. enables aircraft to maintain high-quality connectivity, even at high latitudes.

* LockMart CEV proposal

* Big Gemini

* X-20A Dynasoar

* Russian Kliper

Of course, reusing good ideas is a good idea, IMHO. Still, even though the sexiness of wings certainly looks nicer, I'm thinking that the capsule-based proposals by Boeing/Northrop-Grumman and t/Space will be more cost-effective and reliable. Spacecraft need wings about as much as an aircraft needs to float.

nope, Delta IV heavy launched in December of last year. You can watch rollout videos on Boeing's website. It's um.. very big.

A quick google reveals:
http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/bls/d4he avy/flash.html

(warning: there's a lot of flash on "flash.html")

Deltas (II and IV) and Atlas (V) are still much newer and going strong. I don't think there will be a shortage of rockets for military satellites in the near future.

Boeing's presales of the 787 have been quite strong. I think it is Airbus that has made the big bet. The vast majority of the world's airports are not compatable with the A380 either at the gates, or with the required strength of runways. Airbus has made the real gamble. As with the Concorde, Airbus's (Europe's) desire to trump Boeing (US) may be clouding their business judgement.

"Reconnaissance satellites are steerable...to be over a specific point"

Can you post some sources backing this claim? Satellites are highly unlikely to be capable of being steered to a specific point over the globe. Satellites have very limited room for propellant/reaction fuel. You could only change a satellite's orbit, a little bit, a few times, before running out of fuel.

A satellite's orbit is mostly determined by it's launch trajectory. The fuel required to significantly change its orbit would be enormous -- a radically different orbit would require more fuel than it took to get the satellite off the ground in the first place. The ISS can't even carry enough fuel to boost it's own orbit, and it has way more room for spare fuel than a spy satellite.

Now, you may be able to steer the angle that the camera is looking at, but I highly doubt the entire satellite can alter its orbit, significantly, more than a handful of times. Most satellites have only enough fuel for attitude control, and even that tends to run out after a few years.

Again, if you can post some sources supporting your claims, I will gladly admit that I am wrong. But it seems awfully unlikely to me.

Actually it is not as bad as you think. I was working with the government to help outfit their AWACS and they were using off the shelf laptops and servers (Tier 1 brands). They were also loading Linux on them. I've also worked with their testing labs, and they all run Linux too. Now, I'm sure they over paid for it all, but that is a different story.

And if I'm not mistaken, KC-135s at the Boeing Aerospace Support Center in San Antonio:

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=29.375060,-98.56934 7&spn=0.005654,0.009066&t=k&hl=en

STS was originally conceived in the 60s

So why, WHY are we launching people into space with a program older than I am?