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World's Largest Passenger Plane May Be Unsafe, Some Say
CNET reports (citing this BBC video account) that some aircraft engineers in Australia are concerned about small cracks that have appeared on the wing ribs of some Airbus A380 airplanes, a report says. They're calling for the whole fleet to be grounded, but Airbus says the cracks are harmless.
Shhh.... Boeing does not do this....
http://abcnews.go.com/US/southwest-airlines-boeing-knew-737-flaw-expect-problem/story?id=13300089#.TwomuU8gifg
"The aviation giant Boeing admitted today that it was aware of weaknesses in its 737 jets, but it never expected a 15-year-old Southwest Airlines jet to crack open in mid-flight. "
So why is this an issue with Airbus? One you said union, but I wonder if there is not some Boeing prodding going on here!!!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Well, except speed tape isn't duct tape...so, -1 Misleading Subject.
And if those parts are designed to experience some cracking, as part of some carefully tuned tradeoff? There was some high altitude spy plane (maybe the Blackbird?) that leaked fuel on the ground, because when operating the temperatures would cause things to expand, so it was better to have it leak on the ground than break in the air. If a layman, or even an engineer unfamiliar with the project, saw that, they would naturally assume something was wrong.
There's just not enough info in the article to argue the case either way. OTOH I doubt there's ever been an aircraft without minor design defects that are fixed as they appear.
All commercial airliners have a log book in the cabin with a list of known broken/defective bits that the pilots are supposed to read before every takeoff and where they write down any weirdness they notice during the flight. None of the books are empty, even on brand new aircraft (ask a pilot...)
No sig today...
The Ford "cover up memo" was in regards to post-crash fires after accidents involving rollovers, not anything specific to the Pinto and it's behind-the-rear-axle gas tank.
The Pinto got a bad rap -- it's actually got a better fatality record than similarly sized cars of the era.
I doubt there's ever been an aircraft without minor design defects that are fixed as they appear.
This is what happens when an airline is a launch customer (as are Qantas and Singapore I believe). When the airline is first in line to receive a new aircraft type, there are all kinds of bugs that the airline has to be willing to accept. For example, the first six production 787s are overweight in comparison with what was promised. Similarly, I've heard time and time again not to buy the first model year of a new car or significant vehicle redesign because of potential problems that will be found only after production and then fixed in subsequent years.
I reckon we'll be banned from driving in the next 15 years.
Think about it, if the driverless cars that are definitely coming are proven to be safer than human driven cars, which I suspect they will be, how will any government justify letting us drive?
Even if the governemnt doesn't ban driving, the insurance industry will probably make it so expensive that it is effectively banned.
pilot error as in hiding a bug in airbus autopilot or it reading faulty gauges.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/05/27/air-france-flight-447-crash-report-airbus-autopilot-to-blame.html
The autopilot is not bugged. The autopilot wasn't even active for over four minutes before the crash. The headline is completely misleading, as the autopilot shut down as soon as conflicting airspeed readings came in. The system recognizes that it is unsafe to have a computer flying when the computer is getting faulty data. Thankfully Airbus flight computers are pretty good about error-checking, as they detected the airspeed discrepancy and acted on it - by turning control over to the crew and telling them why.
The accident appears to have been triggered by a number of events:
- Faulty pitot tubes providing faulty airspeed indications.
- Weather radar that saw a little storm ahead, but not the big, fuck-off storm behind it until the pilots decided to fly through the small storm.
- An avalanche of data coming into the cockpit during critical moments. During an emergency, it can be difficult to avoid focusing on a few bits of data, while others slip by.
The storm was recreated in an Airbus simulator for multiple flight crews. Using data the flight computer sent back to the maintenance crews during the flight, they were able to trigger the same errors (Pitot tube failure and airspeed mismatches).
Every crew survived.
Early 747's had similar issues with cracking on the spars in the nose. Some bits of aluminum even fell off a couple of planes (was that the primary buffer coupling?).
They were fixed as the planes cycled through rehab and the rib placement redesigned. 737's had a tendency to lose roof panels because of metal fatigue from improper riveting.
This sort of thing happens. You really need more info to determine if this particular case is serious.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
That happened to my brother. The mechanic at the car dealer only put one nut on the wheel studs after replacing the brakes, and that one was on by only one turn. My brother was driving home in rush hour traffic when the wheel (left rear) came off, went bounding through the air, narrowly missed bouncing off two cars - one a cop car!, and fell off the road. My brother's truck came sliding to a sparking halt in the middle lane, blocking traffic for quite a while. No collisioins ensued, the cop never saw a thing. The car dealer repaired the truck of course - I think they had to replace the bed of the pickup.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
That's a non-sequitur if there ever was one. Yeah, small cracks have a tendency to become larger under stress. So what. They always did, and they always do, and any plane that's flying out there has plenty of small cracks. This tells us nothing. What we need to know is what is the predicted rate of growth of those particular cracks under the stresses the material at the crack tip, in particular, is subject to. Add in tasty details about expected contributions of structure (will the cracks join like in Tu-144?), corrosion, etc.
Take a close look at the skin of the jet next time you fly. You may be surprised how many metal patches you will find -- patches that repair cracks or dings/dents.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
You are correct in the case of airplanes and other macro structures...
But, interestingly the little mirrors in your TI based DMD/DLP movie projector use aluminum hinges.
They bend ~1% strain @540Hz for ~20khr before failing and that's >10^10 cycles!
Why? because the hinges are thinner than a grain size and so dislocations don't propagate. :)
Cool