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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.
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.
the A380 was delivered 2 years ahead of the 787
Yeah. Airbus runs a flawless operation.
"The first A380 was delivered to Singapore Airlines in October — 18 months behind schedule after billions of dollars in cost overruns for planemaker Airbus."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23689448/
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.
The issues with composite materials are not with their strength or reliability during normal operation. The issues are predominantly with their failure modes. Much effort goes into detecting cracks and flaws before they become catastrophic. In aluminium spars and panels there are several good ways to detect cracks before their size becomes structurally significant: MK 1 eyeball, xrays, ultrasonics etc. The same tools for large composite structures are less developed in commercial circles, but they will get there. Boeing, and Aérospatiale, are acutely aware of these weakness in inspection ability and have done a lot of work to fill the gaps.
Not getting on an aircraft containing composite structures because of a perceived danger of composites is irrational if you then get in a car and drive home.
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button