Slashdot Mirror
Boeing's 787 Dreamliner Takes Flight
Bordgious and a number of other readers sent word of the 787 Dreamliner's first flight after two years of delays. The four-hour test kicks off nine months of airborne testing. Aviation Week has video of the test flight and a timeline of the 787's development. Here is the flight path. 840 of the planes are on order now, down from a high of 910, as some customers canceled orders due to the delays.
Boring, not at all. This is a revolutionary plane, Boeing are looking at 25% less running costs and 30% less fuel than the 767 it replaces - I would say rather an achievement, if a litttle later than advertised!
I still marvel at the fact that we can pack a bunch of evolved monkeys into a big steel box, fill it up with stuff that burns, cause thousands of controlled explosions every second to rotate big spin-y things and cause the contraption to soar through the air (and actually land in a controlled fashion).
Call me old-fashioned.
If you've never had the chance to go, check out the Future of Flight museum in Everett. It's an awe-inspiring tour of the Boeing factory where you get top-down view of the factory floor. It's the largest building in the world, with enough room to fit all of Disneyland inside. (and then you'd have 12 acres for parking)
Cars are made on assembly lines, but planes are too large to use the same techniques. They do it anyway.
(Sorry about any munged text here; /. previews as one character wide, 200+ down.)
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
If you just want to watch the flight with all the blah-blah in the post, this blogs video has it without much lead-time garbage. http://www.airlinereporter.com/?p=2491
I wonder if it is light enough to make a ballistic parachute practical?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
it was pretty cool.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
They did a webcast for this and everything, with no shortage of fanfare: http://787firstflight.newairplane.com/ffindex.html It was interesting, especially with the t-33 escorts buzzing the ground rendezvousing for take off, heh. Anyways, I wanna know when I finally get to fly in one. It'd be nice to fly in a less than 10-20 yr old plane on a 12 hour flight between the US and Japan, ugh.
I'm sure they said the same thing when they started using metal instead of wood ribbing and fabric.
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
He was more in the "fanboy" column but he did like the sight of the beast in the sky.However, I have a question, with the delay and all on the delivery of the aircraft, isn't it too late relative to Airbus A350?
You're not old fashioned at all.
Now excuse me, for I must send this package via gyrocopter to the Prussian Embassy in Siam.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
It's the vibe of the thing.
Science advances one funeral at a time- Max Planck
Compared to an aluminum airframe? Are you kidding?
Aluminum has zero stress endurance limit. That means that it WILL crack eventually.
And why don't you ask Hawaii Airlines about corrosion problems with aluminum?
Composites are much more reliable and have much lower maintenance costs.
There are a lot of composite parts in the triple 7 and they are well documented to be more reliable than the aluminum ones in the 767.
Why?
Be specific, list computer modeling you have done, as well as any weakness in the chemical compounds. Please link to appropriate chemical analysis
What's that? you can't do that? STFU.
He doesn't have to. Boeing themselves had admitted to some fairly serious issues with cracking in the airframe and wings, cracking that their computer models didn't predict. We're talking about an airplane in which major sections are literally baked together in a kind of giant oven. People have every right to be concerned about this aircraft until Boeing has proved that it's safe. From finance, to climate, to aircraft design, we seem to be relying too much on computer models, and in every case, it's bitten us in the ass. Computer models are a necessary tool, but aren't the panacea you seem to think they are.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
A big, really nice plane. Will wonders never cease? Oh yeah, FP.
Cynical Slashdot nerd is not impressed, set faces on stun.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Boeing can demonstrate that the plane is safe, but they can't prove it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Now excuse me, for I must send this package via gyrocopter to the Prussian Embassy in Siam.
If you can reach the Prussian embassy by gyrocopter, then you're probably in Siam already. Oh, wait...
Gravitation is a theory, not a fact.
Even just crossing the atlantic, it lost an "I"
It has to exceed design load before the FAA will even let it fly, it's passed the design load, and they're expecting to test to ultimate load in the spring.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Avaition Week? Why, that's my faovrite peroidical!
Boring, not at all. This is a revolutionary plane, Boeing are looking at 25% less running costs and 30% less fuel than the 767 it replaces - I would say rather an achievement, if a litttle later than advertised!
Less fuel == less pollution and greenhouse gases.
Are the airlines doing this to be nice and "Green"? Nope.Were they doing it because they were legislated to? Nope. And they're (engines makers, plane makers and airlines) always pushing for more fuel efficiency and noise reduction.
Burn less fuel saves money and it just so happens to reduce green house gases.
I think there's some sort of lessen here.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
this one wasn't designed by french engineers, sorry.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Composites are not perfect but look at the alternative.
Aluminum is also pretty scary stuff. There are major issues with corrosion. Aluminum has some very funky physical properties compared to other metals. It has zero stress endurance which means that parts WILL crack eventually if they are not replaced regularly.
I thought jet engines produced something more like a continuous deflagration rather than periodic explosions.
Obligatory Louis CK.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Because it's been shown in the past that the airframe was a design failure and they had to patch it up and change the design.
I too have very little confidence in it. Until it's done with testing and proves changes are adequate.
No need to be hostile. He's voicing an opinion.
Which they've fixed.
Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner on Monday successfully completed the wing test the jet failed last May, and now looks set to fly before Christmas, according to two sources familiar with the test outcome.
Engineers are still analyzing data from the repeat test and haven't yet given the official thumbs-up, but the composite fibers in the wing did not delaminate when it was bent to the same point as in the previous test, the sources said..
Again, it has to pass the design limit test before the FAA will let it fly, so since it just flown, they've proven it's safe.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Their flight plan is complicated. They should use my optimized algorithm to get from point A to point B along a curved surface. They'll save even MORE than 25% on fuel
Actually, I can't think of a single instance of a composite wing structure failing in flight for a commercial aircraft. Aluminum, however, has a fatigue life limit, and several planes have fallen to spar failures (Boeing 707) or cabin structure failures (De Havilland Comet).
Now, there is the instance of the composite vertical stabilizer separating from the aircraft on an American Airbus A300, but that was attributed to the forces applied to it by the co-pilot and the lack of correct software control.
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
Because it's been shown in the past that the airframe was a design failure and they had to patch it up and change the design.
I too have very little confidence in it. Until it's done with testing and proves changes are adequate.
No need to be hostile. He's voicing an opinion.
You mean the design load test the FAA requires before the plane leaves the air? Yea, it passed that. They're debating on if an ultimate load test will happen in the spring.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
No way dude. These aircraft are so durable that you could hijack one and fly it right through a skyscraper!
I don't think they are a pabacea.
But when some spouts of an accusation they should back it up with SOMETHING. The poster did no such thing.
Nice making a claim and then linking to a site most people don't have access to. Bad Form.
I do happen to know about that incident.
Yes there was a design flaw, and they fixed it. Good luck and finding any vehicle that didn't have a design flaw found while building it.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The lesson is that it is spelled "L-E-S-S-O-N"
Yeah, and I won't trust that you didn't rape a 12 year old until you prove to me you didn't do it.
THAT's the logic he is using.'
Fact of the matter is I don't believe you raped a 12 year old no matter what people are saying about you~
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Engineering standards of practice require, at the very least, some rough hand calculations in order to determine if the computer is sane. If your computer is trying to tell you that the capital of France is Jupiter, you want to know that it's wrong. (First-order approximations are often sufficient. Consult a local P.Eng for details.)
Ideally, you run the simulation on two different programs on two physically separate computers using different architectures. (i.e. Intel and AMD) Normally you don't do that because it's insanely time-consuming and costly. It's also the safest way to do computer modelling. (Whenever I wonder about costs, I think about answering the question of "why didn't you spend $X thousand on the simulation?" starting with, "Well, Your Honour, ...")
Nevertheless, there isn't enough processing power on the face of the earth to fully simulate the airflow over the wings of a 747. Assumptions and simplifications are made in order to get a "good enough" answer. (One of my friends crashed what was at the time the #80 supercomputer because he tried to get too fine an analysis.)
Before the plane gets FAA approval, they have to run a bunch of test flights, including several planes that get flown to destruction (and one of them goes through a "wing flex" test to see what it takes to make the wings fall off). Now, we know that Boeing wants to make these planes as cheaply as they can. It's a fact of business. cheaper plane = higher margin. They have 840 planes on order, of which the last 740 will cancel if they shave the margins closely enough to cause lift's magnitude to drop below gravity's magnitude.
Finally, if it's not a safe plane, pilots will refuse to fly it and then you'll be sitting there with a really fucking expensive tiki hut that looks like a plane.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
ABetwen times? car to ,ist at least two times that happened?
Flight is rather an achievement , in between times airplanes aren't flying into buildings.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Which is why the A380 was delivered 2 years ahead of the 787 to great acclaim, while Boeing fucked up just about every aspect of their design work. You yanks are hilarious, if it wasn't for your massive government subsidied of Boeing through sweetheart military contracts, that incompetent company would have been out of business decades ago.
Yes, but probably not the one you think it is.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
seriously, as commercial airliner, look when it takes off - the flex of the wings - then look again at nature, an eagle or similar, there's a reason nature choose that profile.
Simpsons quotes.
Get them right or don't try.
Yes, I'd like to send this letter to the Prussian consulate in Siam by aeromail. Am I too late for the 4:30 autogyro?
Uh, I better look in the manual.
Oh, the ignorance. ...
This book must be out of date: I don't see "Prussia", "Siam", or "autogyro".
Well, keep looking!
I'll fly in when it's passed the full year of flight and safety tests the FAA requires for certification. It flew today certified as an experimental flight, which requires much less rigorous testing than a commercial flight. I have every confidence it will fly eventually, but I'd like all the bugs to be worked out.
I think you typed your response with half your fingers on the wrong keys.
Did they put a separate door for the pilots? If they would start making it physically impossible for the passengers to enter the cockpit giving each a seperate exterior door, we could get rid of a bunch of the useless security theater.
Looking at that flight plan makes me a bit nauseous. If all flights on the dreamliner go like that, I think I'll drive instead. That distance appears to be less than 40 miles, yet it took over 3 hours; I can do better on my bicycle. On the plus side the flight arrived over 2 hours early so I guess that wasn't too bad.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
He's voicing an opinion.
To paraphrase Harlan Ellison, he is only entitled to his opinion if it is an informed opinion.
No sig for the moment.
Given that this is a jet and not a piston-powered aircraft, that would be "one continuous controlled flame". No explosions involved, sorry.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
Boeing can demonstrate that the plane is safe, but they can't prove it.
And an "international consensus" of scientists can demonstrate that the planet is warming, no - cooling!, no - changing!, and that it's our fault, and that polar bears will die, and that I have to give their politicians of choice money.
But they can't prove it.
Oh wait, they don't need to prove it, all they need to do is lie and said they proved it.
Off topic?
Flamebait?
Troll?
Unprofitable Truth?
THE CHOICE IS YOURS, SLAPCHOP MODERATORS.
I think you mean "leaves the ground". The FAA don't require any tests before planes leave the air, that happens naturally.
I work across the street from Paine Field, the airport it took off from, and I can tell you that it was pretty exciting to us. We have nothing at all to do with the industry, and we were all still keeping an eye out for the takeoff. Something of an oddity for guys who are used to hearing/seeing dozens of planes take off every day, including a couple of liftoffs of the DreamLifter every day. How often do you get to see history first hand?
I know it's poor to reply to yourself (esp. as AC). But...
Way Hay! I've never joined the millions of Slashdotters, but still have a 100% record (of 4) of +5 comments!!
I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be able to fly in it until it's certified for commercial operation. Unless you're way better connected than I am. It's a pretty silly point to make.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
Like global warming, evolution is a hoax. Educate yourself.
I definitely set *my* face to stun.
With that V angle - look at them wings bending upwards during takeoff! - maintaining inverted flight is going to be no fun.
I'm not a coward by any name.
It has to exceed design load before the FAA will even let it fly, it's passed the design load, and they're expecting to test to ultimate load in the spring.
Careful.
I think there's already a movie named that.
Might as well close Slashdot.
Well, at least you agree it is a novel aircraft. Though perhaps not quite as much as you think; warplanes have been using composites for some time now, so there is good reason to believe it will work. There was a bit of scandal a few years ago when Dan Rather made some very shaky accusations about the Boeing design. Admittedly there is inherently some risk whenever you take a step forward, but that's how we progress. Personally I'll be excited the first time I get to travel on one.
Again, it has to pass the design limit test before the FAA will let it fly, so since it just flown, they've proven it's safe.
Yeah. Just like the de Havilland Comet was safe. It even flew thousands of flights with passengers before the disasters began. Metal fatigue was new then. Not that I claim that tests haven't been improved significantly since then but if you think it's safe just because it has just flown, you're nuts.
Yet more cynical Slashdot nerd demands that even more cynical Slashdot nerd turn in his nerd card for not recognising a Simpsons quote that references Star Trek...
(It's Grade School Confidential, the one where Principal Skinner and Mrs Krabapple carry on a sordid affair in school. Bart finds out about it and exposes them in front of his classmates. "Set your faces to stun" is what he says just before flinging open the door that the lovers are hiding behind.)
Just another wannabe fantasy novelist...
French planes don't fall out of the sky. They just RTB every time you turn on the auto-pilot.
Any barrel rolls?
I drank what? -- Socrates
Just because a consensus group of scientists cannot simplify a conclusion into terms that you already understand is not a valid reason for you to reject their conclusion. Attacking their methodology as being politically motivated without some concrete statement or evidence, cherry picked e-mails are not evidence. Of course, attacking their methods with ignorant, irrelevant complaints is not valid. If you want to make informed criticism of the evidence they are using, then why aren't you in graduate school right now studying to become a materials engineer or a climatologist?
Impersonating Tycho from Penny Arcade since before there was a PA.
But I have no where else to go.
I drank what? -- Socrates
Perhaps they need to do this more?
#define true false
It only takes one experiment to prove something? Mathematically, sure, but we're talking about practical safety here, which can't be proven mathematically or even using extremely sophisticated computer models.
Otherwise, I've proven that...
Windows is perfectly stable.
Linux crashes all the time.
Itanium CPUs always die within the first year.
Hopping up two flights of stairs is safe.
...
I was a crew chief on a KC-135a, back in the 80's. Ours was a pretty new plane, being put in to service in 64. Sitting on the ground, the left wing was visibly lower than the right and they still allowed it to fly. Had the most on time take offs for any of the tanker fleet at Fairchild AFB in '88. Kinda' miss the old beast. Is cool that they're still seeing service.
I drank what? -- Socrates
I thought jet engines produced something more like a continuous deflagration rather than periodic explosions.
Yep, that's right. The really amazing thing about jet engines is just the materials science we had to master before we could make turbines which don't disintegrate every time you turn them on. Try to picture 6 metal wheels splined and bolted to each other with hundreds of small metal vanes on the end of them ... spinning at about 12,000 revolutions per minute while being blasted by a continues blast-furnace of 1,000+ degrees Celsius. It makes me shiver every time I think about it.
Digg, 4chan, reddit, CNN, Fox news.
The entire Internet awaits you, son.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Dude, that'd be the most bad-ass tiki hut on the planet
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Flamebait and Troll in the same post. My work here is done.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
I live down the road from Paine Field.. I'm just happy it didn't fall in to my house.
Indeed. There's no way I'd get on a modern passenger jet if it were generating thousands of controlled explosions in the engines (or elsewhere for that matter).
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
We're talking about an airplane in which major sections are literally baked together in a kind of giant oven.
I'm pretty sure that Burt Rutan would use that same sentence as a compliment, not the "wooh, scary" crap you're trying to pull. Composites aren't something we came up with yesterday to test tomorrow; we've been baking parts together since the 50s. That part of the technology is mature. Engineering problems can come up any time novel structures are made, whether they're made from composites or metal alloys; that's why we have a test-and-review system. Aluminum has been great for us so far, but composites will continue to replace it, because our composites are already excellent design candidates (and in practice, not just on paper) and are getting better, while Aluminum technology hasn't really improved since the Eisenhower administration.
...aircraft design, we seem to be relying too much on computer models
HOLY CRAP ARE YOU KIDDING? You say it like you think computer models are some oracle we pray to without understanding. Like we built HAL-9000 and asked him, "So...whad'ya think about this new plane of ours? Oh, and we're gonna make it out of some material nobody ever saw before. Cool? OK, it's going into production tomorrow, kthxbai." Do you even fucking realize what a "computer model" is, or what engineers would do without "computer models?"
ANSWER: THEY WOULD DO THE EXACT SAME DESIGN MODELING AND ANALYSIS BY HAND, PROBABLY WITH LESS PRECISION/RESOLUTION, AND THEY WOULD TAKE THOUSANDS OF TIMES LONGER!
That's it! "Computer Models" are just a way to speed up calculations we fucking learn to do with pencils and paper when we're in engineering school!! How do you think people wrote those programs in the first place?!? And then when the calculations are done, you build and test! This is how engineers have been doing things since *math* was invented!!! So yes, they DO rely on computer models, because the alternative is to hire thousands of people to do tedious calculations, with a much higher error rate, and much longer time requirement.
I mean, really! In what way, exactly, would you have them rely *less* on "computer models?" Would you like them to do *fewer* analyses before testing? Would you like them to mock it up in a big block of clay, and then put it in the wind tunnel, and then call it good? Should they kill chickens and read the entrails? What kind of design models do you think they'd use if they weren't using software models? And what makes you think that they don't do both?
It's clear that you don't know crap about crap.
Repetition does not transform a lie into the truth. - FDR
He's only an evolved monkey, he wouldn't know the difference.
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
Maybe he was thinking about how the V1 engines worked or if you believe it exists project Aurora. (assuming it also uses an advanced type of pulse jet engine)
That's nothing. I'm amazed that we can make these monkeys wait in long lines, take their shoes off and subject themselves to numerous other forms of abuse for the chance to do so.
I'd have expected the feces-flinging to have started long before we reached this point.
Have gnu, will travel.
Not enough processing power on Earth?!?
Goodyear Aerospace Corp. in the early 1980's built a 16,384 node parallel computer system that was used in modeling laminar airflow and thermal expansion over the space shuttle air frame by NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center. The division was later acquired by Loral Space & Communications Ltd. in the 1980's, which was then acquired (piecemeal) by Lockheed Martin.
Here is a reference on the computer: http://en.allexperts.com/e/g/go/goodyear_mpp.htm
If you can model that 25 years ago, you can model a composite aircraft with modern computers today.
-- Terry
Now, there is the instance of the composite vertical stabilizer separating from the aircraft on an American Airbus A300, but that was attributed to the forces applied to it by the co-pilot and the lack of correct software control.
The A300 used hydraulic controls so there was no software involved. The pilot did, however, use the rudder "aggressively" according to the NTSB and whilst it thus was pilot error, American Airlines got a lot of the blame because he only did what he had been trained to do. AA's crew training didn't follow Airbus guides properly and Airbus had repeatedly expressed their concerns about it prior to the accident. The NTSB found out that crews had been trained in the simulator for situations which the simulator was not designed for and could not accurately simulate.
I still marvel at the fact that we can scratch a bunch of tiny lines onto a chunk of sand, connect lots of other wires to it, push electrons around billions of times every second to trip lots of tiny switches and cause the contraption to accept human input and output something intelligible (and we can actually carry them around too). And I don't even think I'm old-fashioned.
The question is if this will be a de Havilland Comet or a Boeing 707.
thats just alot of hot air!
Planes are not "flown to destruction" as part of the certification process. Pilots get killed that way. (And no, you couldn't fly these things via radio control, not until very recently, and that would probably invalidate the test.) Destructive tests are performed under very specific, controlled conditions so that the engineers know the exact point of failure.. The wing flex tests that you mentioned have already been performed in 2008, though a new round of tests either was recently done or will be done in the near future following the changes made since the weakness was discovered and fixed this year.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
But more importantly, is the "chicken killer and entrail reader" software open source ?
*ducks* (or should that be *chickens out*) ?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Turbines don't have thousands of controlled explosions every second. They don't have any. They operate in a continuous burn.
Now maybe you are confusing turbines with the pulse jet used to power the Prussian V-1 buzz bomb of WW II. But they didn't have the range to hit Siam. I suppose that's where the gyrocopter comes in.
Infuriate left and right
Tex is retired. The bean counters won.
Infuriate left and right
small warplanes, tactical fighters. The issue is the size of the components, plagued with uniformity problems for years.
And where would Airbus be without all the massive euro-subsidies?
Same place as Boeing:
Boeing could jeopardize the launch funding of the new 7E7 aircraft should it press for an investigation of government subsidies received by rival Airbus because Boeing itself has received government subsides that violate world-trade agreements, according to David Pritchard, a research associate at the Canada-United States Trade Center in the UB Department of Geography.
http://www.buffalo.edu/ubreporter/archives/vol35/vol35n40/articles/Boeing.html
No one's hands are completely clean:
http://www.google.com/search?q=boeing+subsidies
http://www.google.com/search?q=airbus+subsidies
http://www.google.com/search?q=embraer+subsidies
http://www.google.com/search?q=bombardier+subsidies
Actually, there is a computer involved that supplies the force feedback to the rudder pedals through a system called the "Rudder Travel Limiter System." In the condition of flight that the AA A300 was in, it did not provide sufficient feedback to the co-pilot as to what his actions were. It also did not prevent catastrauphic damage from occuring.
The software was incorrect because it allowed the co-pilots inputs to physically break the aircraft. Normal certification guidelines call for the ability of a pilot to be able to have full control deflections without damaging the aircraft. The maximum speed at which that can occur is called VA or Maneuvering Speed. The AA A300 was flying well below VA at the time of the accident.
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
There's a good industry-news site on the 787 (and its Airbus competitors) that I've been following for a while at http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/flightblogger/ - there's a lot of background and good technical stuff there.
The really amazing thing about jet engines [...]
I was reading some Wiki articles on Boeing's jets and saw that the Boeing 777 uses the General Electric GE90 turbofan engine. These machines are sheer marvels of technology and engineering. In addition to being the largest, the most powerful, and the longest ranged jet engine in the world, here are two facts I found particularly amazing:
And there are two of these engines on every 777. Just... wow.
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
/)
Cynical Slashdot nerd is not impressed, set faces on stun.
I suppose that's better than having a cynical Slashdot monkey set feces on stun.
[b.belong('us') for b in bases if b.owner() == 'you']
Yeah, but have they tested it on the Hudson yet?
My Grandfather worked on jet engines during WW2, his view on the technologies involved was that they had a fair idea how to build gas turbines years earlier, but amongst the development problems were that initially, they didn't have steel alloys that could stand the heat.
Are you kidding ... every time you get a bite in the ass, you will find a computer model somwhere because computers are used EVERYWHERE.
...
...
The is no other way to design now days. You can go back to pre-70s and 60s designs but they are a lot less reliable. They only got reliable because of the guinea pig method of design. Buld it, fly it. Collect the bodies. Do an investigation. Improve it
That doesn't cut it any more
G
I'm sure they could explain it perfectly well to a 6 year old.
It's the adults that wilfully refuse to understand that are the problem.
Aluminum is also pretty scary stuff. There are major issues with corrosion. Aluminum has some very funky physical properties compared to other metals. It has zero stress endurance which means that parts WILL crack eventually if they are not replaced regularly.
The difference in the public mind is that aluminum in large scale aircraft construction is a known quantity. We've been doing it for decades, and the risks are considered acceptable. Composites have never been used on this scale with a civilian airliner this size. Burt Rutan making some experimental aircraft is one thing; making an airliner out of the stuff is pioneering territory. The Dreamliner is the first of its kind, after all. In practical terms, many people will be wary of the 787 until they've seen it carry other people several times. That's the way the human mind works.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
According to Wikipedia the first gas turbine was patented in 1791.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
It came over my house on Tulalip Bay at, I'm guessing, about 700'. What an elegant craft!
I get the Dreamlifter flying over my place every few days so you have to figure that they are quite busy building 787s. The Dreamlifter is a really impressive sight at under 1000'. I use to work down in Muk and would see them everyday, lined up all pretty by the Boeing Freeway.
-- I have a private email server in my basement.
Not something that was designed 30+ years ago.
Actually, IIRC that pilot was not trained by American Airlines to wag the rudder like a jackass. That was his own dumb idea and he'd been warned about it in the past.
That's not the only issue. It flies 30,000+ feet in the air and is denser than air. That means if something goes wrong and it stops moving forward, then it's going to fall a long ways. It uses jet fuel which is highly flammable. It's piloted by human beings who are prone to error, health problems, and sometimes even deliberately crash the plane. These planes fly really fast, which on its own can kill a lot of people when things go wrong. The air pressure at 30,000+ feet is well below what humans need to survive, even a small hole can kill a lot of people. Most of these planes are operated by entities that have personal profit not passenger safety as their ultimate goal. Finally, there are thousands of similar things in the air at any given time. It's going to run into something eventually.
So why do we fly planes, if they're so dangerous? a) because we need to get where we want to go in a short period of time, and b) because flying is safer than taking a shower, that is, we've reduced the risk to a level that is both acceptable and lower than many day to day risks we take. Merely noting that there is a manufacture problem with composite materials isn't sufficient. There are problems with every technology. You have to further show that the problem in question actually materially affects the safety of the plane.
funny? wait let me think ... no, not funny, not funny at all -asshole.
You should look up some video clips of the tests that these engines go through before they're approved for use. For example, in this clip you can watch the engine being put through various non-destructive tests, such as ingesting 4.5 TONS of water in one minute.
They are truly humbling machines. The most interesting videos, though, are of the destructive tests, and of actual failures.
Less fuel == less pollution and greenhouse gases.
[...]
I think there's some sort of lessen here.
The lesson is that if we had only regulated and taxed more, this terrible thing could have been prevented.
You mean the Japanese. From what I understand most composite structures for the 787 are being built in Japan.
My confidence in the airframe is low.
So what? It's only flown once. Your confidence in the airframe should be "low". Make a guess what happens between now and when the first paying customer steps aboard? Hint: they're building three planes that will never see a paying customer.
Here, you can have my nerd card for not only summarizing the episode but also providing the title and explaining the scene....
No, really.. you deserve it!
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Not that I claim that tests haven't been improved significantly since then but if you think it's safe just because it has just flown, you're nuts.
It's too bad that we refuse to even consider this matter. You know, head in sand, ostrich-style. If only someone would consider the possibility that this plane might crash a thousand flights in. It's too bad Boeing is doing this project with merely world-class engineers, slashdot'd do a far better job.
In the long run, nothing is safe.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Your confidence in aluminum is misplaced.
Watch the stress test of the 787's wings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV_V4U0iX4w
I am an aircraft structural maintenance craftsman.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
If NASA flew 787's instead of the Challenger and the Columbia, we'd be on Mars by now.
If the Russian Navy operated a 787 instead of the Kursk, their sailors wouldn't be fish food.
If your mom used a 787 instead of a dildo, she'd have no more need for black men.
One little nitpick with your comment (assuming that the gist of it was that composite a/c aren't more dangerous than Al a/c): A pinhole, ok 'small hole', will not kill people. I've worked on aircraft of all sizes and shapes and none of them were air-tight. The cabin air system is perfectly capable of maintaining pressure despite pinholes or small leaks in the airframe. The vinyl decals applied to aircraft are even designed with this in mind- decals placed over pressurized areas are perforated to allow leaking air to escape.
Basically, unless someone in the cabin can feel the 300+ KTAS wind coming through a hole, you'll be fine.
Additionally, the pilots (especially) and the passengers (to a more limited extent) are provided with oxygen in the event of cabin depressurization. You won't die at 30k feet, you'll just wake up at 15k feet before the emergency landing that your woefully underpaid pilots managed to coordinate in the face of anoxia, fear, and task saturation.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Funny, I thought this was a continuation of an earlier thread and that Cynical Slashdot nerd had misspelled "feces".
greetings earthlings
Heh...
I've been working on military aircraft for the past 8 years or so. I have gleaned some insights that the average flyer might not have about jet engines. I was not present for this incident:
http://www.dauntless-soft.com/PRODUCTS/Freebies/AAEngine/ ...but there are things (that I can't talk about) that happen sometimes... When I fly, the more engines on my aircraft, the better :)
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
FWIW, the important parts of reentry are laminar...
They actually had to go out of their way to make it turbulent in the STS-119 experiment by attaching a modified tile to the Discovery's left wing, in an experiment last March. See:
http://spaceflightnow.com/shuttle/sts119/090329blt/
-- Terry
I'd rather have a plane that lands on-time everytime than a plane that rolled off the assembly line on-time once.
...a bunch of evolved monkeys into a big steel box, fill it up with stuff that burns, cause thousands of controlled explosions every second to rotate big spin-y things and cause the contraption to soar through the air (and actually land in a controlled fashion).
Leave Congress out of this.
Yeah I've seen that before.
The first time I looked at those pics, I thought they had the engine numbers reversed. If you look at the picture with the lodged turbine piece, it's clearly an aft view with the piece lodged on the right-hand side, which would tend to suggest that we're looking at the number one engine. It took me a good half hour of going back and forth between the pictures before I realized that the turbine piece had actually hit the #2 engine on the left-hand side, near the top, sliced through the cowling and nacelle, and then curved down and came to a rest on the right hand side. That's a hell of a weird trajectory!
...coordinate in the face of anoxia, fear, and task saturation.
I think you found an effective meme for describing daily life in a technology accelerated society.
Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.
I know you're joking, but for aerospace geeks it's a *great* news source. It's accurate, in depth, and orders of magnitude better than 'Popular Mechanics' or even BBC. Popular Mechanics isn't hard to beat, but BBC just isn't specialized for this stuff. It's put out by AIAA which is an Aerospace Engineering trade organization. For more depth, you'd need to interview the actual engineers, or read the scientific paper. -Yet another space geek.
Actually, IIRC that pilot was not trained by American Airlines to wag the rudder like a jackass. That was his own dumb idea and he'd been warned about it in the past.
Air crash investigations did an episode on this crash, and they were quite clear in saying that the pilot was doing exactly what AA had trained him to do, and airbus were horrified when they found out about it.
Wikipedia says pretty much the same thing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_587#NTSB_findings
Ok, that link does seem to have an air of truthiness to it so I guess I will have to stand corrected. At some point though I did read on one of the aviation sites (aviationweek or flightglobal or someplace like that) that the pilot in question had a habit of kicking the rudder around like crazy and was warned about it previously. If AA was actually training its pilots to do that on purpose then I'm glad they also have shitty service to go along with their poorly trained pilots and I had already given up flying with them.
Heavens, you're in rare form this evening.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vHiYA6Dmws :45 First airliner Boeing 707 does a barrel roll.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
And yet it's still more sensible and intelligent than anything kdawson, jamie, or jonkatz has ever written.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Boring, not at all. This is a revolutionary plane, Boeing are looking at 25% less running costs and 30% less fuel than the 767 it replaces - I would say rather an achievement, if a litttle later than advertised!
Unfortunately, none of those savings will be passed down to the passengers.
Except that it's aluminum typically, not steel. Except for the 787, that's composite.
"Thousands of controlled explosions a second" are what runs piston engines. These are jet turbines which actually rely on a constant stream of burning fuel -- conflagration, not detonation.
As a Long Beach, CA resident I can tell you to go there just to see the Spruce Goose. Bastards took it from the Queen Mary down here, but it deserves to be there.
The Spruce Goose was no assembly line product, I remember standing in awe of the thing when they had it back in Long Beach and it was so beautifully lit up. Wish I could have been there to see its maiden flight though, as short as Hughes made it.
Dear Sir,
Your ideas intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your in-flight newsletter.
A Concerned Chimpanzee
Old fashioned?
I'm an engineer, and a pilot. I *thoroughly* understand the forces involved. I could take a Cessna aircraft apart and identify the majority of the parts by name. I've worked on them repeatedly with an A & P. (aircraft mechanic) I can name all the forces working on a plane (thrust, drag, lift, gravity) and can explain the forces that hold a plane aloft. (Venturi effect) as well as the different types of forces. (inertia, parasitic drag, etc)
But every time I jump into a plane, and taxi to take off, I'm slightly amazed when it takes off, and I'm suspended by nothing more than the energy of the engine being converted into lift by the shape of the otherwise-level wings!
Small planes (like what I pilot) are actually very simple machines, compared to (for example) a car. Their engines are designed to be as simple as possible, with as few moving parts as can be mustered, to minimize complexity and reduce failure rates. They are air-cooled. They use tie rods instead of cables. The engine's ignition system doesn't depend on the plane's electrical system, (they use magnetos, like your lawn mower) and there are two independent ignition systems so that if either fails, the other keeps the plane safely aloft. Rather than rely on complex sensors to provide optimal fuel mixtures, the mixture controls are handled manually.
And on, and on, and on.
The result is a simple machine that manages to circumnavigate a highly dangerous environment, working with a medium that is literally thin air, with a safety record that's comparable to, or better than a modern car with all its safety technology, seat belts, airbags, crash cages, and so on.
Amazing!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The wings on this plane look to have a lot of dihedral. I'm wondering if the average person who is used to knowing what every airliner to date looks like might think "WOAHHHHH the wings look too bendy on that thing!". Sure it is part of the design, but you don't wan't to scare the public with something that doesn't look "right".
What he meant was that since it has flown, it must have passed all the required stress tests since this is a requirement for it to get off the ground at all.
I would guess the ground tests are designed to stress the materials way harder than they ever will be in the air, but of course this does not mean the plane as a whole is safe.
too soon?
That would be an aluminium tube, and usually two or four continuously controlled thermal events.
I like the fact that if you calculate it, you could strap on 20 of these on a space shuttle, and give it enough thrust to take off, until the o2 runs out at least. Any one thought of making a 20 engine launcher that detaches at 40k ft?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
"because the alternative is to hire thousands of people to do tedious calculations"
Interestingly enough, in the old days before we had these fance gadgets to do the tedious work, we used to hire a bunch of people to do it on paper... guess what we called them? "Computers!"
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!
Don't you mean IN one?
Sorry i couldn't resist. (RIP Carlin)
The 787 was actually powered by Rolls-Royce Trent-1000 engines for the maiden flight. RR currently have about 40% of the 787 engine market, apparently.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce_Trent_1000
Don't wanna brag or boast. But, our clearly subsidized aeronautics conglomerate beat your more indirectly subsidized corporation in building a plane. Pah!
Kidding aside, smooth looking plane. Well done!
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Because
- all airlines operating it will be perfectly colluding and conspiring from now on to gauge prices?
- all benefits are taxed away by the New World Order?
- FAA will mandate minimum ticket prices?
- passengers will not accept lower ticket prices?
- passengers will be getting free lunches and free alcohol again on all discount airlines operating the 787?
Or will Free Market prevail and at least one airline will try to squeeze their cost advantage in order to gain more marketshare?
The problems with the Comet I came from the fact the airframe developed cracks around the squared off windows, which caused serious metal fatigue problems, especially given the pressure differential from inside the cabin to the higher altitudes that the Comet I was flying in. That's why the Comet 4 switched to rounded off windows, which eliminated this very specific metal fatigue problem (that's why the passenger windows on all subsequent jet airliners have rounded shapes).
Another engineer and private pilot here...
Their engines are designed to be as simple as possible, with as few moving parts as can be mustered, to minimize complexity and reduce failure rates. They are air-cooled. They use tie rods instead of cables. The engine's ignition system doesn't depend on the plane's electrical system, (they use magnetos, like your lawn mower) and there are two independent ignition systems so that if either fails, the other keeps the plane safely aloft. Rather than rely on complex sensors to provide optimal fuel mixtures, the mixture controls are handled manually.
Of course, all that modern 1930's technology also requires more maintenance than, say, a modern car engine, and is less efficient to boot (because of that manual mixture control and the usual practice of using a carburetor instead of fuel injection). The biggest reason we're still using engines like these is all of the product liability suits plaguing light airplanes. When you have a manufacturer get sued for $13 million because the owner/pilot deliberately flew into weather he was not trained for (and more to the point, specifically told and trained to avoid), that kind of discourages anyone from making investments in new technologies out of fear they'll get sued, too. We can (and do, on a regular basis) make engines for cars that are highly efficient and need nothing more than an occasional oil change to run for 100k miles. It's a shame we can't adopt some of those techniques for airplane engines.
Oh, and light airplanes have a safety record closer to motorcycles than regular cars.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
There was no rudder limitation on the A300 involved in the AA Flight 587 crash, and infact there is no computer involved in the A300 as its not a fly-by-wire aircraft - the pilot was supposed to be aware that full pedal deflection was not available in flight, and full rudder deflection whilst in flight involved much less pedal deflection. The pilot involved reacted to wake turbulence through use of the rudder, which is not an accepted reaction, and he had also been criticised previously for excessive use of the rudder in flight by another pilot.
No aircraft is certified to allow the use of the rudder in such a manner by this pilot - the rudder failed well beyond the ultimate load (150% of the load the aircraft is ever expected to endure in civil operation) and could not have been prevented without redesigning every other aircraft in use today.
Actually, maneuvering speed isn't "speed at which you can slam the controls around at will". It is actually the highest speed at which the aircraft cannot produce enough lift to overstress the airframe. In other words, solve (weight*Glimit) = .5*density*Va^2*wingarea*CLmax for Va. Note that Va decreases as the airplane gets lighter.
The meek may inherit the earth, but the strong shall take the stars.
(And no, you couldn't fly these things via radio control, not until very recently,
Uh, what? We've been flying planes via radio control since 1920. I will absolutely guarantee you that we have had the technology to do this with any plane ever since. You do have to stay within range, but you can do that from another aircraft.
Destructive tests are performed under very specific, controlled conditions so that the engineers know the exact point of failure.
Which in some ways is a lot more useful than a flight test, because it tells you what the wing can actually handle, as you say. But it only gives you so much information about what the plane will actually experience...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
and can explain the forces that hold a plane aloft. (Venturi effect)
don't get too cocky, the jury is still out on the Coanda effect. Maybe we could cross a bird with a human, get them a PHd in physics, and ask them.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
American ton or metric ton? 1 American ton == 2.5 gallons or something stupid.
not any more, you haven't!
I could have phrased that better. You couldn't fly them by remote control in the ways required until recently. There's been a big difference between moving something around in simple ways via a remote control and having people actually in the plane. The pilots said in the news conference after the flight yesterday that being in the actual plane was significantly different than the full-motion flight simulator.
The static tests are done to the breaking point, and then the results compared to non-destructive dynamic tests to make sure that the results curves follow what was seen in the dynamic tests. The six 787 test articles were all scheduled to go to airline customers after the testing was completed, though based on some recent news out of Boeing, it sounds like they may be keeping them instead, possibly due to the structural changes required to fix the wing problem.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
no shit, it hasn't even been 9 years yet!~
yes it is and the mods agree :)
This is the sig that says NI (again)
A big, really nice plane. Will wonders never cease? Oh yeah, FP.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8r1CZTLk-Gk
Of course, the 777 at take off has to have enough thrust to lift hundreds of thousands of pounds into the air whereas the Titanic is a self floating hunk of metal, as long as it doesn't hit anything, oops.. Also the 777 can cruse over 500 knots whereas the Titanic could cruse probably 20 knots at best. The jet fuel weight alone for the 777-200LR model is 53,515 US gal * 6 lb/gal = 321,090 lbs
Unfortunately these monkeys have been bred for docility by those cunning Puppeteers.
Yes, it's "revolutionary". But those operational savings are bought by using "carbon composites" instead of the usual aluminum and steel construction. I'm wondering what happens when such a plane is struck by lightning. A traditional airframe forms a Faraday cage around the plane's occupants (and all those sensitive electronics and fuel); that's not going to happen if you have a non-conductive airframe. Or are the carbon composites conductive enough to do the job? —I'm asking because I really don't know, and would welcome informative answers.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Old fashioned?
I'm an engineer, and a pilot. I *thoroughly* understand the forces involved. I could take a Cessna aircraft apart and identify the majority of the parts by name. I've worked on them repeatedly with an A & P. (aircraft mechanic) I can name all the forces working on a plane (thrust, drag, lift, gravity) and can explain the forces that hold a plane aloft. (Venturi effect)
Er...I think you mean Bernoulli principle, yes?
You'd better get it right, because every time I get on a plane, I am seized by the irrational conviction that if there aren't enough people aboard who believe in the Bernoulli principle, then the plane won't fly. Even worse, we might lose a quorum at high altitudes...
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
Why do you deliberately misunderstand me? I don't doubt the Boeing engineers' skills at all but wanted to point out to the parent poster that it's ridiculous to assume that just because it has flown now, it's certain that it's safe. The materials are new and there are parallells to be drawn to the Comet, which had to be grounded because of the mysterious crashes. More parallells than could be drawn from any other aircraft.
I also know that Boeing will have a test flight programme with several aircraft in the air 24/7 since the penalties for delayed deliveries are already so heavy that it's worth the cost of staff working round the clock. However, you should consider the fact that any properly managed airline has its aircraft in the air more time than not since every minute an aircraft is on the ground, is a minute that it isn't generating revenue. So 4-5 years from now there will be plenty of 787s in passenger service with more flight hours than the total any of the test aircraft will have when flight testing is completed.
Ah, I misread his comment. Thanks. :)
"Proven" in this case means "proven" to the FAA.
That's really interesting... I know that rarefied gases are almost always laminar, but I guess I never thought about it enough to realize that space shuttle reentry was probably a laminar flow problem. Cool! That makes a lot of sense now.
Why do you deliberately misunderstand me? I don't doubt the Boeing engineers' skills at all but wanted to point out to the parent poster that it's ridiculous to assume that just because it has flown now, it's certain that it's safe. The materials are new and there are parallells to be drawn to the Comet, which had to be grounded because of the mysterious crashes. More parallells than could be drawn from any other aircraft.
You effectively moved the goalposts. He was talking about "safe" as in fixed a recent problem.
I also know that Boeing will have a test flight programme with several aircraft in the air 24/7 since the penalties for delayed deliveries are already so heavy that it's worth the cost of staff working round the clock. However, you should consider the fact that any properly managed airline has its aircraft in the air more time than not since every minute an aircraft is on the ground, is a minute that it isn't generating revenue. So 4-5 years from now there will be plenty of 787s in passenger service with more flight hours than the total any of the test aircraft will have when flight testing is completed.
How did they detect the original cracked wing problem back in July? They looked. That'll answer why your current concerns are unmerited. There are plenty of tools for searching for composite failure. They also happen to know where it's likely to occur and what it looks like.
The system you refer to is not intended to work the way you describe or do you wish to dispute the NTSB accident report on AA587? The pilot acted as he had been (improperly) trained to do and that's what caused the accident. From the A320 on, Airbus have had fly-by-wire systems, which prevent such errors from resulting in accidents and is the main reason why Airbus have the best safety record.
Evidently you wish to argue for the sake of arguing. Nowhere do I state that they don't look but rather I imply the contrary since I acknowledge their skills. However, "plenty of tools for searching for composite failure" doesn't mean that a new type of issue, which nobody currently knows to look for, won't arise because everything is so new. For instance, where else have all those materials undergone cruise altitude temperatures for such periods of time? The 737 rudder (which for several reasons is arguably the crappiest rudder in the history of aviation) resulted in a number of accidents before the reversal at certain temperatures was understood. Nowadays, the effect the temperature has on the functioning of aircraft is considered much more but despite that BA 38 happened and the 777 is supposed to have the best fuel system in the world.
So what? If there is a problem, even if hundreds of people die, the problem will be found and fixed. The plane will become even safer than it was. That's how engineering works these days. Your original statement claimed that we shouldn't think the plane was "safe" because such a problem might crop up. But Boeing already has a process in place to fix such problems as they appear. Safety isn't just a plane that doesn't crash much. It's also the process for fixing problems as they appear.
that meme only applies to stress puppies. I've noticed sales and marketing and most executives live that way, shrieking and arms flapping and spittle flying over every minute incident. sucks to be them, but then they exist solely for the entertainment of normal level-headed people.
no, the point was the particular composites Boeing has made have more problems than other smaller aircraft's.
and let's deal with your Hollywood inspired total misconceptions. the truth is, contrary to Hollywood movies, you can shoot a jet's fuselage full of holes with handgun and no one will die and the cabin won't even depressurize, the pressure system can easily compensate for that . You can shoot a window and no one will be sucked out "Goldfinger" style. That's why air marshalls use standard ammo and not frangible "safety slugs".
nonsense about the holes, the outflow valve in a 727 is a square foot, in bigger jumbo jets several square feet. you can therefore lose three or more windows and the plane could *still* maintain cabin pressure. humans can and have survived 30K feet, but most will black out without following the instructions about the safety masks.
he might have been describing a passenger piston prop plane. There is a pulse jet engine, but i've never heard of one for passenger craft, only unmanned craft
Anyway, as for the Rudder Travel Limit System, if you read 2.5 in that report, it specifically states what that system does. The report also talks about the differences between this type and other aircraft in the same category. Specifically, it shows how little pressure and how much deflection is generated by the design of this aircraft.
Now, if you read the conclusions, #11, 13 and 14 all talk about the design's contributions to this accident and that certification standards should be implemented to avoid it. A simple software change to the Rudder Travel Limiter System to change the amount of feedback (pressure and travel stops) would solve the problem on this series of aircraft and bring it in line with the way most other aircraft, including the follow on A3XX series, work.
Specific NTSB direction to the FAA on this is as follows:
"Review the options for modifying the Airbus A300-600 and the Airbus A310 to provide increased protection from potentially hazardous rudder pedal inputs at high airspeeds and, on the basis of this review, require modifications to the A300-600 and A310 to provide increased protection from potentially hazardous rudder pedal inputs at high airspeeds. (A-04-58)"
Bill
It's my Sig and you can't have it. Mine! All Mine!