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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.
A big, really nice plane. Will wonders never cease? Oh yeah, FP.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
My confidence in the airframe is low.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
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.
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
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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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?
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
Boeing can demonstrate that the plane is safe, but they can't prove it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
GGOD TO WRITE YOU paranoid conspiracy
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'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.
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.
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.
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
Digg, 4chan, reddit, CNN, Fox news.
The entire Internet awaits you, son.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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?
BULLSHIT
If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t really understand it.
Richard Feynman
I'll take Richard Feynman's view over yours any time.
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."
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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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 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)
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).
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.'"
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.
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.
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!