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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.
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.
I thought jet engines produced something more like a continuous deflagration rather than periodic explosions.
The A350 is still 2+ years from first flight. By that time, Boeing will have delivered a few dozen of the 787, presuming that nothing happens during flight testing and initial service to throw off the delivery schedule, and will have delivered even more by the time the first A350 has been delivered, as that plane will still have to go through its own ~9-month test plan. The A350 was largely a panic response to the 787, as evident from the dismissive attitude taken towards the 787 by Airbus early on, and then the rushed design paralleling the 787 (including the use of large fractions of composite materials) later on as orders stacked up in Boeing's corner while A380 orders languished. To this day, the A380 has barely more than 200 firm orders, whereas the 787 has well over 800. The A350 has 500 on firm order, but that may change as the 787 gets out the door.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
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.
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...
Having tried to break down the material in the 787, I can tell you that's one tough material. Compared to the 1/8th inch thick aluminum most planes are made off, I think it's a step in the right direction. And since the wings didn't fall off in flight it looks like they got the issues with the wingbox figured out by now.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
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
Bankrupt just like Boeing without massive US government subsidies and handouts. You often see them referred to as "cost plus contracts".
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!
Airbus can bet whatever they want, because they won't have to deal with bankruptcy or even losses. The governments of Europe finance them.
Oh, please, let's not pretend the US government does not subsidize Boeing through contracts that only Boeing is allowed to bid for.
There is also General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman. All can and do bid on military contracts, both in and out of military aircraft. They, and Boeing, make the Tier 1 contractors that pretty much everyone else has to go through when doing a bid, even if it's getting one of them to simply be a backer. There are very few contracts that are not allowed to be bid by more than one company - and those are usually illegal, and will almost always be contested by at least on of the other contractors. Usually a single bidder means something is wrong with the RFP, or the other players just don't care (which is rare).
Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't goin' away. - Elvis Presley (source: imdb.com)