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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.
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!
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.)
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
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.
Well the dreamliner is supposed to replace the 767 and compete against the A330
and the nook upwards.
It was sold to customers as being 20% more fuel efficient than a 767 and thus slightly
besting the basic A330 specs from around 2002.
But the current implementation is about 10% overweight ( seemingly for the forseeable future )
moving it into A330 ballpark figures ( Similar empty weight ). Improved engines with better SFC are
available for the A330 as well. One reason the A330 has sold quite well in the last 2-3 years
while dreamliner sales have tanked shortly after the initial rollout 2.5 years ago
( i.e. after it was obvious that the dreamliner was a potemkin liner )
Quite a lot of customers currently seem to stay the ride more for cashing in on penalties
than actually receiving any planes later on ( The current backlog will not be satisfied before
2020/2022)
The A350XWB on the other hand is not a direct competitor to the dreamliner.
It fits above the 787 and below/into the 777 space. Which is rather typical.
Neither Boeing nor Airbus stage new types spec by spec against a competitors
distinct type but try to hit the weak spots in between with the initialy
produced version.
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.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
And where would Airbus be without all the massive euro-subsidies?
The A380 is not a competitor or substitute for the 787. The A380 is Airbus's bold bet on hub-and-spoke flight operations, and most closely competes with the Boeing 747 series. The 787 is designed for a smaller number of passengers than the A380 while having long range options, making longer point-to-point routes possible. Airbus's answer to the 787 is the A350, which has been redesigned several times. The A350 has 505 "firm" orders, while the 787 has 840 "firm" orders.