Parent is a lot of things, but "interesting" is not one of them. Let's take a closer look, shall we?
It's too bad that Macs are more expensive and less productive in an office environment than PCs
I'm sure people would welcome things like "actual data" and "research studies", but since you didn't bother providing either one in support of your "more expensive and less productive" argument -- after all, this is Slashdot, where any crackpot can say anything he wants, gloriously unencumbered by fact -- I'm betting no one is going to take you seriously.
I cringe at Macs in schools because they aren't business computers... I'd say Linux is perfect for schools.
You're utterly insane.
Linux has no place -- none -- on the desktop in schools. There's a *reason* Linux hasn't achieved the market penetration of Mac OS X, and it's not because Apple has a fancy marketing campaign and a big ad budget. It's because Linux -- and I'm being kind here -- is at least an order of magnitude less user-friendly than either Windows or Mac OS X. It's far more difficult to use a Linux machine as a desktop PC than either a Windows PC or Mac.
Even setting that aside, you dismiss Macs because they aren't "business computers". Well, name me one, just *one*, publicly-traded company in the US that has standardised on Linux as its corporate OS.
Go ahead, I'll wait.
Whew, good thing I didn't hold my breath. Linux is even less of a "business OS" than the Mac is.
[Linux will] teach students how to work with computers better than any Mac or Windows will.
Which might be fine if the class is a class about computer operating systems or programming, and probably not so fine if the class is about ANYTHING else. Schools teach things besides computer systems, you know. In fact, most K-12 schools in the US teach very little of what would be considered "computer science" aside from the AP CS course, and it's primarily a Java class. Teaching a graphic design class? Where's Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop (arguably the industry standards) for Linux? And don't tell me "GIMP", because when that kid gets out into the real world, the design house he ends up working for isn't going to have a bunch of Linux boxes running the GIMP.
When you're teaching a subject, you want any visual/aural/technological aids to put the focus on the subject, not the presentation tool. The aids are just that -- aids. They should do their job and stay out of the way. Computers have an amazing ability to be a tremendous distraction unless the subject is the computer itself, and the less user-friendly the OS is, the bigger this problem becomes. Mac OS X, for the most part, stays out of your way and lets the software Just Work(TM). Good luck doing that with Linux, unless you're trying to teach kids how to use Unix, in which case, yeah, Linux would be great...if that's all those computers are going to do. Or you could buy Macs and run Mac software, Windows software, *and* teach kids Unix basics...all with the same machines! I know using computers for anything besides pr0n is probably a totally foreign concept to you, but try to keep up.
The hardware can also be kept cheap.
If by "cheap" you mean "thrown together by some pre-pubescent 26-year-old dropout still living in his mom's basement with bottom of the barrel Chinese knockoff parts", yes. Schools want standard configurations that will have some modicum of reliability. That's not as inexpensive as you seem to think it is.
You and the people who modded you "interesting" can keep on living in your "Linux is the answer to everything" fantasy world. The rest of us will be getting actual work done and teaching our kids to do the same.
The NARA should not be considering quitting right when the Bush regime is caught red-handed deleting vast amounts of incriminating digital content that it was legally required to archive.
Am I the only one who read this story and thought that maybe the NARA isn't choosing to do this? I think it's a mighty strange coincidence that they'd be doing this on their own in the last year of a presidency that, for the past seven years, has shown a willful disregard for the law, especially when it comes to the administration's own recordkeeping. Dubya's White House has made the missing files associated with the Clintons look like a single lost receipt by comparison.
This summary is just flat-out wrong. After reading John Lilly's original post yesterday (linked above), I saw this and wondered, "Who the hell is Joe Wilcox?" Hint: he isn't the CEO of Mozilla.
He also doesn't mention a daughter. Joe Wilcox does, according to this "Dee Chisamera" person, but seriously, WTF. CmdrTaco should be ashamed of himself.
Turns out maybe those Thielert diesels aren't all that great after all. The FAA just issued an emergency airworthiness directive (AD) for the Centurion 2.0 to solve cracking in a high-pressure fuel line brought on by the intense vibration of a diesel engine. The article also explains that so far, no one has been able to mate a metal prop to a diesel engine due to early fatigue cracking in the metal, which can't take the vibrations.
I'm not sure if that's a byproduct of the Thielert's automotive-based design (it's basically a Mercedes-Benz inline-four) or if it's an inherent problem in diesels of all designs (for example, an opposed-four or V-8 might be less susceptible, dunno).
"I'm just observing that the car industry has seen lots of progress, in terms of efficiency and reliability (maintenance intervals are 10x longer now than then, plus breakdowns are basically nonexistent)"
Most routine maintenance on aero engines is undertaken at similar intervals to that of car engines, and that which isn't is usually mandated at a shorter interval by the manufacturer in the interests of safety. Oil changes in aero engines, for instance, are typically done every 50 hours. That's only about twice as often as a car would have its oil changed were the standard-since-forever 3000-mile "severe duty" interval followed, assuming the car averages 30 MPH overall in city driving. Oil changes are a fairly simple and low-cost procedure in both cars and aircraft, so I think it's valid to say this interval is "similar". Spark plugs in aero engines, on the other hand, are usually changed out every 100 hours per the manufacturer's maintenance schedule; modern cars get new spark plugs only when they're tuned up, which is often every 100,000 miles (or about 3000 hours, sticking with our 30 MPH average assumption).
One key difference between car maintenance and aircraft maintenance is that car maintenance intervals are _recommendations_, whereas aircraft maintenance intervals are _mandatory_ in order to comply with the aircraft's type certificate. If the aircraft isn't maintained in accordance with the manufacturer's schedule, it isn't airworthy and isn't legal to fly. This isn't being done to keep A&P mechanics or oil companies or spark plug manufacturers in business; it's being done in the interest of safety.
Modern cars that are properly maintained almost never break down, that's true. But modern cars aren't typically subjected to the stresses of constant high-RPM, maximum-power operation for hours on end. Aircraft engines that are properly maintained almost never break down either. (If that article requires a login, I apologize. It deals with the world record for endurance for a propeller-driven aircraft, set in 1958 by a Cessna 172 that spent nearly 65 days airborne over the desert Southwest without a landing, and -- obviously -- without shutting down the engine for ANY maintenance at all. I suspect the main reason no one has tried to break it since 1958 is because no one relishes the idea of spending two or three months living in a flying phone booth.) They do occasionally break down, at a rate that seems no worse than that of auto racing engines, which are being subjected to similar demands for peak power production. (I don't have any statistics on engine failures in auto racing for comparison, but the various classes of car and motorcycle racing I follow with a passing interest seem to experience at least one engine failure per race.)
Keep in mind, too, that *all* modern auto engines are liquid-cooled, as are the overwhelming majority of motorcycle engines. By helping to equalize temperatures throughout the engine, liquid cooling helps to improve reliability of the cylinder head, engine block, pistons, and crank, but it also introduces a great deal of complexity and further points of failure. "Further points of failure", to a pilot, mean "more potential emergencies to plan for". The loss of coolant from a liquid cooling system *will* result, within minutes, in the loss of virtually all power from the engine as temperatures soar and manufacturing tolerances are exceeded. I personally experienced this in a "modern" car, a 1992 Honda Accord that had never missed a single recommended maintenance item in the 11 years before this happened. The water pump experienced catastrophic failure, a common problem with that engine, and dumped all the coolant on the highway over the course of a minute or two. Had that engine been in an airplane, I would have been looking for a place to land immediately, and that place probably would not have been an airport.
You're still making the patently unfair comparison between
"In 50 years, car engines have on average doubled their specific power, and performance cars routinely exceed 100 bhp/litre now."
I was waiting for someone to take that bait. Comparing aero engines to auto engines isn't even a remotely fair comparison.
The typical automotive engine is built to run for hundreds or thousands of hours at fairly low power settings (idle up to about 30 percent, which is about what is required for a car's engine to propel it on the highway) before an overhaul is needed. The typical aero engine is designed to run for about 1500-2000 hours at or near its maximum power output (cruise power settings on aero engines are usually 75-85 percent power, with 55-65 percent used on occasion when trading a good deal of speed for endurance) before an overhaul is needed.
Race cars' engines are rebuilt after every race, which might be every 24 hours at the most extreme end of the road-racing spectrum. Those are the engines you're comparing to here. The peak power output of an engine can be pushed to ridiculous levels. It's just a number; that doesn't mean the output power is in any way practical.
For a good example, look at the aftermarket exhaust systems for motorcycles: you can easily bump the peak output on a litre-class motorcycle engine 10 bhp or so by putting on a freer-flowing exhaust (or straight pipes). A typical effect of that modification is to totally kill the engine's lower-end torque production. That's fine if you're racing your motorcycle and need to extract every last bit of horsepower from the engine, but if you're racing, it's accepted that you're going to be rebuilding your engine much more often than Joe Sixpack who uses his motorcycle to commute to work, and that you might experience the occasional engine failure.
"there's no technical reason a safe aircraft engine can't be made that exceeds 30 bhp/l"
Probably the closest anyone has gotten is using GM's LS1 Corvette engine in the Republic Seabee, which you'll note was de-rated to 320 bhp (56 hp/L) in the interests of reliability. What some people will accept in terms of "reliability" is much less than others, however, and with a grand total of 1800 hours of operation on the entire converted fleet (with almost 1200 hours of that on one aircraft), it's a little bit early to say whether an engine like that is reliable enough to meet the fairly high standards that Lycoming and Continental have set for themselves. Also notably missing from that page is weight data. (Presumably the LS1 engine plus its liquid cooling system is lighter than the original Franklin, but who knows?) That's critically important for CG and useful load considerations in many installations.
has a business doing installations of GM V8s in other aircraft as well. As I told the original poster, for 99% of what people use a Cessna 310 for these days, putting the aircraft on an experimental certificate and installing the "modern" engine of your choice is a perfectly viable option.
"thanks to litigation, the general aviation industry has been in the tank with no money to invest in new designs"
I'm not sure what gives you this idea. The GA industry worldwide, and particularly in the US, is healthier now than at any time since the 1970s. Cirrus went from a pair of brothers selling kits to the leading manufacturer of piston-powered aircraft in the world in less than 10 years. Cessna just bought out the assets of Columbia, which, like Cirrus, turned a kitplane into a certified aircraft that shamed most existing products inside of a decade. Why did Cessna find themselves in a position of having to do that? Because Cirrus came out of nowhere and displaced them from their longtime throne. Light-sport aircraft may yet prove to be a driving force behind new innovations in the piston GA world.
The biggest factor is probably going to be the ever-increasing cost of fuel. Tha
"A plane like a Cessna 310 twin engine airplane first flew in 1953 with engines that are extremely inefficient and underpowered relative to today's engines."
Bullshit. For all practical purposes, the horizontally opposed piston engine that's in an aircraft now is exactly the same as the one that was put in a new aircraft 50 years ago. The Cessna 310 was originally certified with Continental O-470-B engines producing 240 bhp each (31 hp per litre). The very last Cessna 310 to see production, the R model, was introduced in the late 1970s with Continental IO-520-M engines producing 285 bhp each (33 hp per litre). The only _major_ differences between these two engines are the displacement (470 cubic inches versus 520, accounting for most of the difference in power) and carburetion versus fuel injection (accounting for most of the rest of the difference).
The Cirrus SR22, by *far* the most popular GA piston aircraft in terms of sales numbers over the last three years, uses a Continental IO-550-N engine producing 310 bhp (34 hp per litre). The IO-550-N is pretty much the current state-of-the-art in terms of gasoline-powered normally aspirated aircraft piston engines, and it's making about 10 percent more specific power (power per displacement) than its 1953 predecessor was.
So that pretty much blows up your "underpowered" argument -- at least relative to the engines themselves, which seemed to be your whole point, after all -- and it's a good start on blowing up your efficiency argument.
To finish off your efficiency argument fully would require some numbers on BHP-specific fuel consumption, or BSFC, which I'm not exactly inclined to go dig up, but I do know that you aren't going to find any great gains there either. Maybe 10% or so at *best*, probably not that much.
If you want real improvements in efficiency, you want a diesel engine, and new aircraft are being certified with diesel engines all the time. There are Supplemental Type Certificates (look that up sometime; you don't appear to have any clue what it means or that such a thing even exists) for retrofits of several Cessna models with Thielert Centurion diesel engines that cut the average fuel burn in half with almost no sacrifice in performance.
The bottom line, though, is that despite what the auto companies might like you to think, there have not been any truly revolutionary developments in the design of the reciprocating internal combustion engine in well over 50 years. There's a reason most GA aircraft still use an engine design that was pioneered in the World War II era: it's the most efficient way to package that power and reliability. It has nothing to do with the FAA making certification difficult or expensive.
"Everybody (pilot, owner, passengers, world) would be better served by replacing the original engines with some that are of newer design that are safer, more powerful and burn less fuel"
I've already addressed the latter two. I'd now like to ask you what exactly you think is "safer" about a new Continental IO-550-N installed in a Cirrus SR22 relative to a new (and yes, you can still get one) O-470-B that is original equipment on that 1953 Cessna 310. They're both piston engines and they both have to be treated right or neither one is going to last until TBO.
I'll toss some more facts and figures at you, from the 2007 Nall Report (available at AOPA's Web site along with archives of past reports). For all aviation accidents in 2006 where the NTSB reached a determination of probable cause, only 17 percent were due to mechanical failure of some sort. Nine percent were "unknown", while a staggering 74 percent were the result of pilot error. Considering only fatal accidents gives an even lower percentage due to mechanical failure: just 10 percent.
Not every mechanical failure is engine-related, and of all accidents due to mechanical failure in 2006, only 44 percent were due to engine or propeller malfunctions. That means just nin
Right you are, in certain circumstances, although AvWeb (and the original article) got the magnetic tape and retrofit parts wrong too, which is why this confused the heck out of me.
is the actual rule, which explicitly does *not* ban magnetic tape. To wit, "[t]he replacement of magnetic tape flight recorders was not proposed in the NPRM and represents a significant change that is beyond the scope of the rulemaking."
The FAA also goes on to say:
Smiths [Aerospace] also proposed language that would specifically prohibit the use of magnetic tape recorders, since it was the agency's stated intent in the NPRM.
While an interesting technical consideration, the FAA did not propose a change to the TSO standard (which is based on ED-56) in the NPRM, and the process for changing TSOs is separate and complex. We also believe that a requirement for two hours of recording time is enough to eliminate the use of magnetic tape recorders for those aircraft subject to the requirement...No change to the 2-hour recording duration has been made in the final rule based on these comments.
Nowhere in the final rule do they ban magnetic tapes, although it does appear that all aircraft operating under 14 CFR Part 121 (i.e., scheduled airlines) in the US will be required to have a CVR capable of recording two hours of audio by 2012. (A lot of them already are, by the way.)
BA supposedly also regularly takes out the data packs for crew evaluation - too many ILS deviations or rough landings and it's a reprimand and back to the sim for you!
I work for a major US airline and my airline is specifically prohibited from using FDR or CVR data in a disciplinary manner (accidents that are the result of willful negligence or malicious intent are excepted, obviously). The airline can use FDR data for QA purposes (that is, to gather gross data and evaluate whether various procedures are generally being followed), but they can't use it to punish (or reward) pilots. Most other US airlines have similar clauses in their pilot contracts, and I'd be surprised if British Airways didn't have a similar clause in theirs.
"These provisions affect new aircraft manufactured after March 7, 2010."
This won't affect a single new aircraft for two years unless Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier, and Embraer decide to do it on their own, and it does NOT apply to the existing fleet of transport category aircraft at all (i.e., retrofits are not required).
That's true, but silicon is at least an order of magnitude stronger than magnetic tape, which is fairly notoriously fragile. It's a minor miracle that the recorders survive serious crashes in a usable condition as often as they do.
Any crash that would fracture silicon chips would leave pretty much nothing at all of the airplane or magnetic tape-based FDR/CVR units, so I see this as a general win.
The Sarbanes-Oxley connection is in having to re-state their past financial results if they give away the upgrade for products that aren't accounted for on a subscription basis.
For example, the new software for the iPod touch is a $20 download. This is the same software that's a free update for the iPhone. Even the new software for the Apple TV is a free upgrade. If I were an iPod touch owner, I'd be pretty offended that I have to pay $20 (well, disregarding free jailbreaking options and whatnot) for an update that iPhone users get for free.
In case you didn't get the memo, the iPod Touch is not being accounted for on Apple's balance sheet on a subscription basis. The Apple TV and the iPhone are. Thanks to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Apple has to charge for upgrades like this when they aren't accounting for product sales on a subscription basis.
In other words, you should be blaming Congress for passing flawed legislation instead of blaming Apple for charging you $20. (I agree with you that $20 seems a bit steep, but Apple *is* required by law, as I understand it, to charge for the update.)
Most "power" users I know can get about a day a gigabyte (RAM) out of Leopard. I get two to three days out of my old PowerMac with 1.75GB of RAM. A friend of mine has 3GB in a Mac Pro and he can get 3-4 days before a required reboot. My boss has 2GB in his iMac, and left it on during the holidays. He couldn't login to it to reboot when he got back after a week. There are problems with it.
Here's some more anecdotal evidence to counter your totally anecdotal evidence.
I've been running Leopard for a month now without logging out or shutting down ever. I've rebooted once, to install a software update (10.5.1), and I have 2 GB RAM and a 1.5 GHz PPC 7450. I simply do NOT reboot or log out unless a software update requires me to, and this has been my general practise since well before I upgraded to OS X in 2002.
I do Objective-C development on a regular basis and am, by all accounts, a "power" user. One day per gigabyte my ass. It's no worse than Tiger or Panther was. (I have problems with the dev toolchain, mostly Interface Builder, but that's neither here nor there.)
Am I the only one whose first thought after reading this (it was all over the news and the Web two days ago) was basically, "Gee, that's so nice that they're announcing what type of airplanes and routes this will be used on, so even if the FAA doesn't plan an official test, I'm sure there are plenty of skeevy characters out there who would be more than happy to conduct unofficial testing without telling anyone ahead of time"?
American, BAE, and the FAA had all better be about 100% confident that this system works exactly as intended 100% of the time, because I can just about guarantee that some idiot is going to try to test this system with a live missile whether the FAA intends to or not.
I don't think for a second that there are terrorists hiding behind every tree, but I have a healthy respect for redneck ingenuity and know there are a LOT of people in this country who would view this announcement as a "challenge". Why tempt fate?
He seems to have walked away from this with his reputation as a journalist intact, which is a valuable asset if he's planning on asking sources to trust him in the future. It also speaks quite well of his character.
Yeah, so well that it almost makes up for the fact that Nick is a guy willing to knowingly release a company's trade secrets for personal profit (i.e., the buckets of cash he was raking in from advertising on his site) and some dubious level of "entertainment" value.
"So if the Blackbird has issues with heating - you can bet that any other plane operating at that speed or higher will have the same problem."
Hell, even the Concorde had "issues" with heating, most memorably its one-foot stretch at speed that created a large enough gap between the FE's panel and the wall for a bunch of FEs to leave their hats in the gap on the final flight, and the Concorde was limited to "only" Mach 2.
>last i checked it was plugin writers who were blamed for all the memory issues by Mozilla
Which to me sounds eerily similar to Microsoft blaming 3rd party software for taking down the operating system.
Except "taking down the operating system" is very different, both in severity and root cause, from leaking memory. If you're going to allow extensions to run as part of the browser, you don't really have any control over what they do with the browser's RAM usage. An OS has the luxury of being able to partition processes off into their own memory spaces if it so desires, but to do this within the constraints of a single application and within the limitations an OS imposes on how much low-level memory management apps can do on their own is up there on the difficult-to-impossible scale.
At which point will the Indiana legislators start realising that their duty is to all the people of Indiana
Fuck their duties to the people of Indiana. What about their duties to the other 60 million people who live in states bordering Lake Michigan, or the 100 million people who live downstream of Lake Michigan, or the few hundred million Americans and Canadians who depend on the Great Lakes to supply fresh, clean water?
This is arrogance and irresponsibility of the HIGHEST degree. The crooks who legislated this should be thrown in jail, along with the goons from BP who decided it was a good idea. Better yet, how about we make them drink the water they're so intent on polluting?
"with the promise of enough control to allow for self-propagating code not very far away"
Uhm, am I the only one who thought "virus" as soon as I read that? I'm as in favour of third-party iPhone apps as the next guy, but "self-propagating code" just sounds evil.
Subsidised? You've gotta be kidding me. The carriers aren't subsidising one cent of the iPhone, and Apple is already making a hefty profit without their subsidies. AT&T knows they have an inferior product, and they're scared shitless that people* will recognise this and avoid their network while wanting the Gadget du Jour. They're using the lock-in to force their service on people. This is what's typically known as a "monopoly", and under different circumstances it would be illegal.
*"people" being the folks who actually went out and bought this thing last weekend. Personally, I'm waiting until it's no longer locked to AT&T's network, because I *already* realise that AT&T sucks.
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Parent is a lot of things, but "interesting" is not one of them. Let's take a closer look, shall we?
... I'd say Linux is perfect for schools.
It's too bad that Macs are more expensive and less productive in an office environment than PCs
I'm sure people would welcome things like "actual data" and "research studies", but since you didn't bother providing either one in support of your "more expensive and less productive" argument -- after all, this is Slashdot, where any crackpot can say anything he wants, gloriously unencumbered by fact -- I'm betting no one is going to take you seriously.
I cringe at Macs in schools because they aren't business computers
You're utterly insane.
Linux has no place -- none -- on the desktop in schools. There's a *reason* Linux hasn't achieved the market penetration of Mac OS X, and it's not because Apple has a fancy marketing campaign and a big ad budget. It's because Linux -- and I'm being kind here -- is at least an order of magnitude less user-friendly than either Windows or Mac OS X. It's far more difficult to use a Linux machine as a desktop PC than either a Windows PC or Mac.
Even setting that aside, you dismiss Macs because they aren't "business computers". Well, name me one, just *one*, publicly-traded company in the US that has standardised on Linux as its corporate OS.
Go ahead, I'll wait.
Whew, good thing I didn't hold my breath. Linux is even less of a "business OS" than the Mac is.
[Linux will] teach students how to work with computers better than any Mac or Windows will.
Which might be fine if the class is a class about computer operating systems or programming, and probably not so fine if the class is about ANYTHING else. Schools teach things besides computer systems, you know. In fact, most K-12 schools in the US teach very little of what would be considered "computer science" aside from the AP CS course, and it's primarily a Java class. Teaching a graphic design class? Where's Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop (arguably the industry standards) for Linux? And don't tell me "GIMP", because when that kid gets out into the real world, the design house he ends up working for isn't going to have a bunch of Linux boxes running the GIMP.
When you're teaching a subject, you want any visual/aural/technological aids to put the focus on the subject, not the presentation tool. The aids are just that -- aids. They should do their job and stay out of the way. Computers have an amazing ability to be a tremendous distraction unless the subject is the computer itself, and the less user-friendly the OS is, the bigger this problem becomes. Mac OS X, for the most part, stays out of your way and lets the software Just Work(TM). Good luck doing that with Linux, unless you're trying to teach kids how to use Unix, in which case, yeah, Linux would be great...if that's all those computers are going to do. Or you could buy Macs and run Mac software, Windows software, *and* teach kids Unix basics...all with the same machines! I know using computers for anything besides pr0n is probably a totally foreign concept to you, but try to keep up.
The hardware can also be kept cheap.
If by "cheap" you mean "thrown together by some pre-pubescent 26-year-old dropout still living in his mom's basement with bottom of the barrel Chinese knockoff parts", yes. Schools want standard configurations that will have some modicum of reliability. That's not as inexpensive as you seem to think it is.
You and the people who modded you "interesting" can keep on living in your "Linux is the answer to everything" fantasy world. The rest of us will be getting actual work done and teaching our kids to do the same.
p
Hopefully they'll charge exorbitant licencing fees for this patent, protecting us from the stench of Smelly Message Service for another 17 years.
p
The NARA should not be considering quitting right when the Bush regime is caught red-handed deleting vast amounts of incriminating digital content that it was legally required to archive.
Am I the only one who read this story and thought that maybe the NARA isn't choosing to do this? I think it's a mighty strange coincidence that they'd be doing this on their own in the last year of a presidency that, for the past seven years, has shown a willful disregard for the law, especially when it comes to the administration's own recordkeeping. Dubya's White House has made the missing files associated with the Clintons look like a single lost receipt by comparison.
p
Even better is the radioactive duck poop and radioactive trees.
Somewhere, Homer Simpson is saying to himself, "Mmm, radioactive duck poop."
p
This summary is just flat-out wrong. After reading John Lilly's original post yesterday (linked above), I saw this and wondered, "Who the hell is Joe Wilcox?" Hint: he isn't the CEO of Mozilla.
He also doesn't mention a daughter. Joe Wilcox does, according to this "Dee Chisamera" person, but seriously, WTF. CmdrTaco should be ashamed of himself.
p
Turns out maybe those Thielert diesels aren't all that great after all. The FAA just issued an emergency airworthiness directive (AD) for the Centurion 2.0 to solve cracking in a high-pressure fuel line brought on by the intense vibration of a diesel engine. The article also explains that so far, no one has been able to mate a metal prop to a diesel engine due to early fatigue cracking in the metal, which can't take the vibrations.
I'm not sure if that's a byproduct of the Thielert's automotive-based design (it's basically a Mercedes-Benz inline-four) or if it's an inherent problem in diesels of all designs (for example, an opposed-four or V-8 might be less susceptible, dunno).
p
"I'm just observing that the car industry has seen lots of progress, in terms of efficiency and reliability (maintenance intervals are 10x longer now than then, plus breakdowns are basically nonexistent)"
Most routine maintenance on aero engines is undertaken at similar intervals to that of car engines, and that which isn't is usually mandated at a shorter interval by the manufacturer in the interests of safety. Oil changes in aero engines, for instance, are typically done every 50 hours. That's only about twice as often as a car would have its oil changed were the standard-since-forever 3000-mile "severe duty" interval followed, assuming the car averages 30 MPH overall in city driving. Oil changes are a fairly simple and low-cost procedure in both cars and aircraft, so I think it's valid to say this interval is "similar". Spark plugs in aero engines, on the other hand, are usually changed out every 100 hours per the manufacturer's maintenance schedule; modern cars get new spark plugs only when they're tuned up, which is often every 100,000 miles (or about 3000 hours, sticking with our 30 MPH average assumption).
One key difference between car maintenance and aircraft maintenance is that car maintenance intervals are _recommendations_, whereas aircraft maintenance intervals are _mandatory_ in order to comply with the aircraft's type certificate. If the aircraft isn't maintained in accordance with the manufacturer's schedule, it isn't airworthy and isn't legal to fly. This isn't being done to keep A&P mechanics or oil companies or spark plug manufacturers in business; it's being done in the interest of safety.
Modern cars that are properly maintained almost never break down, that's true. But modern cars aren't typically subjected to the stresses of constant high-RPM, maximum-power operation for hours on end. Aircraft engines that are properly maintained almost never break down either. (If that article requires a login, I apologize. It deals with the world record for endurance for a propeller-driven aircraft, set in 1958 by a Cessna 172 that spent nearly 65 days airborne over the desert Southwest without a landing, and -- obviously -- without shutting down the engine for ANY maintenance at all. I suspect the main reason no one has tried to break it since 1958 is because no one relishes the idea of spending two or three months living in a flying phone booth.) They do occasionally break down, at a rate that seems no worse than that of auto racing engines, which are being subjected to similar demands for peak power production. (I don't have any statistics on engine failures in auto racing for comparison, but the various classes of car and motorcycle racing I follow with a passing interest seem to experience at least one engine failure per race.)
Keep in mind, too, that *all* modern auto engines are liquid-cooled, as are the overwhelming majority of motorcycle engines. By helping to equalize temperatures throughout the engine, liquid cooling helps to improve reliability of the cylinder head, engine block, pistons, and crank, but it also introduces a great deal of complexity and further points of failure. "Further points of failure", to a pilot, mean "more potential emergencies to plan for". The loss of coolant from a liquid cooling system *will* result, within minutes, in the loss of virtually all power from the engine as temperatures soar and manufacturing tolerances are exceeded. I personally experienced this in a "modern" car, a 1992 Honda Accord that had never missed a single recommended maintenance item in the 11 years before this happened. The water pump experienced catastrophic failure, a common problem with that engine, and dumped all the coolant on the highway over the course of a minute or two. Had that engine been in an airplane, I would have been looking for a place to land immediately, and that place probably would not have been an airport.
You're still making the patently unfair comparison between
"In 50 years, car engines have on average doubled their specific power, and performance cars routinely exceed 100 bhp/litre now."
I was waiting for someone to take that bait. Comparing aero engines to auto engines isn't even a remotely fair comparison.
The typical automotive engine is built to run for hundreds or thousands of hours at fairly low power settings (idle up to about 30 percent, which is about what is required for a car's engine to propel it on the highway) before an overhaul is needed. The typical aero engine is designed to run for about 1500-2000 hours at or near its maximum power output (cruise power settings on aero engines are usually 75-85 percent power, with 55-65 percent used on occasion when trading a good deal of speed for endurance) before an overhaul is needed.
Race cars' engines are rebuilt after every race, which might be every 24 hours at the most extreme end of the road-racing spectrum. Those are the engines you're comparing to here. The peak power output of an engine can be pushed to ridiculous levels. It's just a number; that doesn't mean the output power is in any way practical.
For a good example, look at the aftermarket exhaust systems for motorcycles: you can easily bump the peak output on a litre-class motorcycle engine 10 bhp or so by putting on a freer-flowing exhaust (or straight pipes). A typical effect of that modification is to totally kill the engine's lower-end torque production. That's fine if you're racing your motorcycle and need to extract every last bit of horsepower from the engine, but if you're racing, it's accepted that you're going to be rebuilding your engine much more often than Joe Sixpack who uses his motorcycle to commute to work, and that you might experience the occasional engine failure.
"there's no technical reason a safe aircraft engine can't be made that exceeds 30 bhp/l"
Probably the closest anyone has gotten is using GM's LS1 Corvette engine in the Republic Seabee, which you'll note was de-rated to 320 bhp (56 hp/L) in the interests of reliability. What some people will accept in terms of "reliability" is much less than others, however, and with a grand total of 1800 hours of operation on the entire converted fleet (with almost 1200 hours of that on one aircraft), it's a little bit early to say whether an engine like that is reliable enough to meet the fairly high standards that Lycoming and Continental have set for themselves. Also notably missing from that page is weight data. (Presumably the LS1 engine plus its liquid cooling system is lighter than the original Franklin, but who knows?) That's critically important for CG and useful load considerations in many installations.
has a business doing installations of GM V8s in other aircraft as well. As I told the original poster, for 99% of what people use a Cessna 310 for these days, putting the aircraft on an experimental certificate and installing the "modern" engine of your choice is a perfectly viable option.
"thanks to litigation, the general aviation industry has been in the tank with no money to invest in new designs"
I'm not sure what gives you this idea. The GA industry worldwide, and particularly in the US, is healthier now than at any time since the 1970s. Cirrus went from a pair of brothers selling kits to the leading manufacturer of piston-powered aircraft in the world in less than 10 years. Cessna just bought out the assets of Columbia, which, like Cirrus, turned a kitplane into a certified aircraft that shamed most existing products inside of a decade. Why did Cessna find themselves in a position of having to do that? Because Cirrus came out of nowhere and displaced them from their longtime throne. Light-sport aircraft may yet prove to be a driving force behind new innovations in the piston GA world.
The biggest factor is probably going to be the ever-increasing cost of fuel. Tha
"A plane like a Cessna 310 twin engine airplane first flew in 1953 with engines that are extremely inefficient and underpowered relative to today's engines."
Bullshit. For all practical purposes, the horizontally opposed piston engine that's in an aircraft now is exactly the same as the one that was put in a new aircraft 50 years ago. The Cessna 310 was originally certified with Continental O-470-B engines producing 240 bhp each (31 hp per litre). The very last Cessna 310 to see production, the R model, was introduced in the late 1970s with Continental IO-520-M engines producing 285 bhp each (33 hp per litre). The only _major_ differences between these two engines are the displacement (470 cubic inches versus 520, accounting for most of the difference in power) and carburetion versus fuel injection (accounting for most of the rest of the difference).
The Cirrus SR22, by *far* the most popular GA piston aircraft in terms of sales numbers over the last three years, uses a Continental IO-550-N engine producing 310 bhp (34 hp per litre). The IO-550-N is pretty much the current state-of-the-art in terms of gasoline-powered normally aspirated aircraft piston engines, and it's making about 10 percent more specific power (power per displacement) than its 1953 predecessor was.
So that pretty much blows up your "underpowered" argument -- at least relative to the engines themselves, which seemed to be your whole point, after all -- and it's a good start on blowing up your efficiency argument.
To finish off your efficiency argument fully would require some numbers on BHP-specific fuel consumption, or BSFC, which I'm not exactly inclined to go dig up, but I do know that you aren't going to find any great gains there either. Maybe 10% or so at *best*, probably not that much.
If you want real improvements in efficiency, you want a diesel engine, and new aircraft are being certified with diesel engines all the time. There are Supplemental Type Certificates (look that up sometime; you don't appear to have any clue what it means or that such a thing even exists) for retrofits of several Cessna models with Thielert Centurion diesel engines that cut the average fuel burn in half with almost no sacrifice in performance.
The bottom line, though, is that despite what the auto companies might like you to think, there have not been any truly revolutionary developments in the design of the reciprocating internal combustion engine in well over 50 years. There's a reason most GA aircraft still use an engine design that was pioneered in the World War II era: it's the most efficient way to package that power and reliability. It has nothing to do with the FAA making certification difficult or expensive.
"Everybody (pilot, owner, passengers, world) would be better served by replacing the original engines with some that are of newer design that are safer, more powerful and burn less fuel"
I've already addressed the latter two. I'd now like to ask you what exactly you think is "safer" about a new Continental IO-550-N installed in a Cirrus SR22 relative to a new (and yes, you can still get one) O-470-B that is original equipment on that 1953 Cessna 310. They're both piston engines and they both have to be treated right or neither one is going to last until TBO.
I'll toss some more facts and figures at you, from the 2007 Nall Report (available at AOPA's Web site along with archives of past reports). For all aviation accidents in 2006 where the NTSB reached a determination of probable cause, only 17 percent were due to mechanical failure of some sort. Nine percent were "unknown", while a staggering 74 percent were the result of pilot error. Considering only fatal accidents gives an even lower percentage due to mechanical failure: just 10 percent.
Not every mechanical failure is engine-related, and of all accidents due to mechanical failure in 2006, only 44 percent were due to engine or propeller malfunctions. That means just nin
Right you are, in certain circumstances, although AvWeb (and the original article) got the magnetic tape and retrofit parts wrong too, which is why this confused the heck out of me.
http://www.faa.gov/regulations_policies/rulemaking/recently_published/media/23532.DOC
is the actual rule, which explicitly does *not* ban magnetic tape. To wit, "[t]he replacement of magnetic tape flight recorders was not proposed in the NPRM and represents a significant change that is beyond the scope of the rulemaking."
The FAA also goes on to say:
Nowhere in the final rule do they ban magnetic tapes, although it does appear that all aircraft operating under 14 CFR Part 121 (i.e., scheduled airlines) in the US will be required to have a CVR capable of recording two hours of audio by 2012. (A lot of them already are, by the way.)
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BA supposedly also regularly takes out the data packs for crew evaluation - too many ILS deviations or rough landings and it's a reprimand and back to the sim for you!
I work for a major US airline and my airline is specifically prohibited from using FDR or CVR data in a disciplinary manner (accidents that are the result of willful negligence or malicious intent are excepted, obviously). The airline can use FDR data for QA purposes (that is, to gather gross data and evaluate whether various procedures are generally being followed), but they can't use it to punish (or reward) pilots. Most other US airlines have similar clauses in their pilot contracts, and I'd be surprised if British Airways didn't have a similar clause in theirs.
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From TFA:
"These provisions affect new aircraft manufactured after March 7, 2010."
This won't affect a single new aircraft for two years unless Boeing, Airbus, Bombardier, and Embraer decide to do it on their own, and it does NOT apply to the existing fleet of transport category aircraft at all (i.e., retrofits are not required).
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That's true, but silicon is at least an order of magnitude stronger than magnetic tape, which is fairly notoriously fragile. It's a minor miracle that the recorders survive serious crashes in a usable condition as often as they do.
Any crash that would fracture silicon chips would leave pretty much nothing at all of the airplane or magnetic tape-based FDR/CVR units, so I see this as a general win.
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Ask, and ye shall receive:
http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13509_1-9850999-20.html
The Sarbanes-Oxley connection is in having to re-state their past financial results if they give away the upgrade for products that aren't accounted for on a subscription basis.
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Because Apple *does* live in America, and that law applies to US companies.
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For example, the new software for the iPod touch is a $20 download. This is the same software that's a free update for the iPhone. Even the new software for the Apple TV is a free upgrade. If I were an iPod touch owner, I'd be pretty offended that I have to pay $20 (well, disregarding free jailbreaking options and whatnot) for an update that iPhone users get for free.
In case you didn't get the memo, the iPod Touch is not being accounted for on Apple's balance sheet on a subscription basis. The Apple TV and the iPhone are. Thanks to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, Apple has to charge for upgrades like this when they aren't accounting for product sales on a subscription basis.
In other words, you should be blaming Congress for passing flawed legislation instead of blaming Apple for charging you $20. (I agree with you that $20 seems a bit steep, but Apple *is* required by law, as I understand it, to charge for the update.)
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Most "power" users I know can get about a day a gigabyte (RAM) out of Leopard. I get two to three days out of my old PowerMac with 1.75GB of RAM. A friend of mine has 3GB in a Mac Pro and he can get 3-4 days before a required reboot. My boss has 2GB in his iMac, and left it on during the holidays. He couldn't login to it to reboot when he got back after a week. There are problems with it.
Here's some more anecdotal evidence to counter your totally anecdotal evidence.
I've been running Leopard for a month now without logging out or shutting down ever. I've rebooted once, to install a software update (10.5.1), and I have 2 GB RAM and a 1.5 GHz PPC 7450. I simply do NOT reboot or log out unless a software update requires me to, and this has been my general practise since well before I upgraded to OS X in 2002.
I do Objective-C development on a regular basis and am, by all accounts, a "power" user. One day per gigabyte my ass. It's no worse than Tiger or Panther was. (I have problems with the dev toolchain, mostly Interface Builder, but that's neither here nor there.)
Am I the only one whose first thought after reading this (it was all over the news and the Web two days ago) was basically, "Gee, that's so nice that they're announcing what type of airplanes and routes this will be used on, so even if the FAA doesn't plan an official test, I'm sure there are plenty of skeevy characters out there who would be more than happy to conduct unofficial testing without telling anyone ahead of time"?
American, BAE, and the FAA had all better be about 100% confident that this system works exactly as intended 100% of the time, because I can just about guarantee that some idiot is going to try to test this system with a live missile whether the FAA intends to or not.
I don't think for a second that there are terrorists hiding behind every tree, but I have a healthy respect for redneck ingenuity and know there are a LOT of people in this country who would view this announcement as a "challenge". Why tempt fate?
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He seems to have walked away from this with his reputation as a journalist intact, which is a valuable asset if he's planning on asking sources to trust him in the future. It also speaks quite well of his character.
Yeah, so well that it almost makes up for the fact that Nick is a guy willing to knowingly release a company's trade secrets for personal profit (i.e., the buckets of cash he was raking in from advertising on his site) and some dubious level of "entertainment" value.
Almost.
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"So if the Blackbird has issues with heating - you can bet that any other plane operating at that speed or higher will have the same problem."
Hell, even the Concorde had "issues" with heating, most memorably its one-foot stretch at speed that created a large enough gap between the FE's panel and the wall for a bunch of FEs to leave their hats in the gap on the final flight, and the Concorde was limited to "only" Mach 2.
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>last i checked it was plugin writers who were blamed for all the memory issues by Mozilla
Which to me sounds eerily similar to Microsoft blaming 3rd party software for taking down the operating system.
Except "taking down the operating system" is very different, both in severity and root cause, from leaking memory. If you're going to allow extensions to run as part of the browser, you don't really have any control over what they do with the browser's RAM usage. An OS has the luxury of being able to partition processes off into their own memory spaces if it so desires, but to do this within the constraints of a single application and within the limitations an OS imposes on how much low-level memory management apps can do on their own is up there on the difficult-to-impossible scale.
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IMO, it still feels like a Windows app. If extensions support isn't critical to your workflow, you might want to have a gander at Camino instead.
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At which point will the Indiana legislators start realising that their duty is to all the people of Indiana
Fuck their duties to the people of Indiana. What about their duties to the other 60 million people who live in states bordering Lake Michigan, or the 100 million people who live downstream of Lake Michigan, or the few hundred million Americans and Canadians who depend on the Great Lakes to supply fresh, clean water?
This is arrogance and irresponsibility of the HIGHEST degree. The crooks who legislated this should be thrown in jail, along with the goons from BP who decided it was a good idea. Better yet, how about we make them drink the water they're so intent on polluting?
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"with the promise of enough control to allow for self-propagating code not very far away"
Uhm, am I the only one who thought "virus" as soon as I read that? I'm as in favour of third-party iPhone apps as the next guy, but "self-propagating code" just sounds evil.
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Subsidised? You've gotta be kidding me. The carriers aren't subsidising one cent of the iPhone, and Apple is already making a hefty profit without their subsidies. AT&T knows they have an inferior product, and they're scared shitless that people* will recognise this and avoid their network while wanting the Gadget du Jour. They're using the lock-in to force their service on people. This is what's typically known as a "monopoly", and under different circumstances it would be illegal.
*"people" being the folks who actually went out and bought this thing last weekend. Personally, I'm waiting until it's no longer locked to AT&T's network, because I *already* realise that AT&T sucks.
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