Well, mention of the MCAS and it's different behaviour to prior trim controls is apparently not in the flight crew operations manual, and I believe the quote about leaving it out of the difference training so as not to confuse the average pilot is direct from Boeing.
You can believe what you like, but please don't put words in my mouth. I didn't ever say Boeing as a company or anyone there meant to harm anyone. I'm sure Boeing is sincere when it states that the relevant training was not provided because it was judged to be unnecessary or even detrimental. It seems that judgement was wrong.
That's a nice easy explanation, but I'm not sure it's true. I just read an interesting post from a pilot on a pilots' forum about a procedure that used to be mentioned in the original 737 flight manual. Apparently, if you had a runaway trim situation that got too out of hand, it could be very difficult or impossible to turn the trim wheels by hand (even with both pilots) due to aerodynamic loading. The recommended procedure was called the "rollercoaster maneuver" and involved inputing elevator control to achieve the desired pitch, releasing it and cranking the trim, and repeating until sufficient trim was achieved.
Apparently there's a report of this happening decades ago, and the pilots involved said it was a long and physically strenuous process.
"I also wonder why there isn't an 'airline pilots only' social media platform that would spread news of this kind of incident far faster than 'official' channels."
Boeing specifically and purposely left any mention of the new systems out of the difference training course that is required to be certified to fly the new 737.
I guess not everyone can be as calm, collected, and infallible as you are in emergency situations. I'm sure we would all feel better of Slashdot reader Obfuscant were our pilot.
He said safe, not doesn't crash. Windows isn't safe, it's spyware that's getting ever more dickish.
Linux works well and is safe, but can still occasionally be a bit of a PITA.
I'm typing this on an OS X notebook, in front of a Linux/Windows dualboot desktop. You're absolutely right, I don't remember the last time I saw any of them crash.
Long range hypersonic missiles don't fly a kilometre or two above the ground. The amount of fuel required to do so would be insane, not to mention the heat management problems. Hypersonic glide missiles are basically ICBMs (or MIRVs that detach from ICBMS) except that they have aerodynamic surfaces for maneuvering in terminal approach in the atmosphere. Medium range hypersonic cruise missiles are designed to fly up high, then dive down for final approach. The Russian Kh-32 probably has a range of ~1000 km and is believed to cruise at an altitude of around 40 km (120,000 feet). Short range hypersonic missiles, the kind you might fire from a ship, submarine or plane to take out a carrier, can fly lower, but the US Navy is already developing ship-based lasers to zap those.
Perhaps your "friend" in the pharma industry is fibbing. Adverse reaction reporting is done by treating physicians, and is taken very seriously. The US has a problem with pharma, money and physicians, but there's a lot less payola in vaccines.
There's been a lot of progress in laser technology recently, and yes, it probably is enough to make a space-based laser useful, although possibly not quite as useful as was envisioned in the 80s. Destructive lasers were giant, heavy, delicate things. To get up to useful power levels, the best option in 2000 was a chemical laser, that effectively used ammunition. Now, you can build a militarily useful laser and put it on a hummer. Megawatt laser weapons in space don't exist currently, but they're a decent possibility.
Hypersonic missiles aren't that different from ballistic ones. The long range ones still have to fly very high. Space-based weapons would be as useful for shooting them down as they are for ballistic missiles.
But if you've got a laser in space that can shoot a missile coming off the launch pad, think what else you could do with it. People think drones are terror from the skies....
Well... sometimes. The goal of US foreign policy is ultimately to further US interests. Sometimes that involves supporting democracy over dictators, sometimes the opposite. Sometimes it entails sowing some chaos and letting the chips fall where they may.
Because getting hacked works like it does on TV... some kid in a hoodie types really fast, and there's nothing you can do unless you have another kid in a hoodie to type back.
Hashing passwords? Is that some kind of drug thing?
I'm not a big fan of MBAs, but this was a pretty long and complicated chain of errors. From what I gather: Boeing wanted to keep the 737's low ground clearance but needed to put bigger engines on to match the efficiency of the new A320s, which meant changing the aerodynamics. Boeing also wanted pilots to be able to do a simple difference training course, rather than have to recertify on a new aircraft, so they invented MCAS. The engineers must have figured that it was a supplemental system, and easy to turn off if it malfunctioned, so they chose to make it kick in aggressively rather than conservatively (either sensor says go, rather than both sensors say go). They also made it harder to turn off than the old system, probably by accident. Then Boeing decided not to mention the new system to pilots in that difference course, to avoid confusing them.
Lots of errors to go around. Some are definitely cost saving, but some are probably a result of not enough whole-system oversight. The decision to go based on one sensor is a bit mystifying. There are already two AoA sensors on the aircraft, and lots of other ways of cross checking them. In fact, Boeing is releasing a software update to add all that cross checking in, so it's not even a hardware limitation.
The 737 MAX isn't actually aerodynamically unstable in normal flight. Any airliner, including all the 737s, with the standard under-the-wing engines will have off-axis thrust that will add a bit of pitch up. The aircraft is designed to compensate for that in normal flight, but in a stall if the pilot gooses the engine it can make it impossible to recover. 737 pilots (including the older model) are trained NOT to increase throttle in a stall because of it. The MAX handles differently in that situation, so they added MCAS so the pilots wouldn't have to be trained in a new stall recovery procedure.
I expect that such a ban, perhaps also requiring a certified vet to prescribe antibiotics, would spur vaccine research. It might actually not be possible, but there's not much motivation when antibiotics for livestock costs pennies.
I'm perhaps a bit younger, since I received several actual anti-bacterial vaccines as a child. You can actually make vaccines using either attenuated live (e.g. tuberculosis, typhoid) or killed (older typhoid, pertussis) bacteria. As you mention, you can also make vaccines to the toxins, although that might be less acceptable for livestock due to the risk of the bacteria being transmitted to a person who isn't vaccinated.
It does seem to be more difficult to create fully effective vaccines for bacteria, particularly ones that confer near total immunity for life, but that wouldn't necessarily be a requirement for an antibiotic replacement in livestock.
By the way, candidate ebola vaccines include all of the mentioned types, including viral particle vaccines and other viruses engineered to express specific ebola antigens.
Our capabilities in biology really have advanced a lot in the last little while. It may not have been practical to use anti-bacterial livestock vaccination in the past, but it might be now, if the externalities of antibiotics were accounted.
That's not *quite* true. The actual human testing is usually planned by independent academics, performed by independent groups (often a whole bunch of hospitals around the world) and often coordinated by an independent contract research organization. The analysis of that data may be done by the company, or might be done by another independent company. Either way, there's a good paper trail, and a whole bunch of people involved who are not paid by the company.
It's done that way because abuses have happened in the past, of course.
I don't think the reason for the 737's ground clearance is really passenger boarding (although that might have been nice). A major feature of the 737 is that it's low to the ground so you can more easily load and unload cargo, including baggage. Passengers hike up stairs no problem... their bags and other cargo doesn't.
Boeing has done a lot to keep that feature into the present day, including special engines with the bottom of the fairing flattened on the upgraded classic and NG 737s.
With two sensors, if they disagree, you scream and don't do anything. The human then has to decide what's going on. That scenario is fine (even desirable) for a supplemental system like the MCAS. It's very, very unlikely that both of the sensors would get stuck in the same position, although you'd want to make sure that doesn't happen if some twit leaves a protective cover on them or something.
A really critical system, that can't be shut off, should have triple redundancy.
That's true, although the only way to turn off the system (which they didn't know existed) is to turn off the electric trim system entirely. Doing that would mean they would have to turn the trim wheels by hand. If you watch a video of it, the electrical system turns the wheels a lot, and quite fast.
They should have turned it off, but if you have to keep trimming up and you're not sure why, you might hesitate to turn off the system that's letting you do so quickly.
That's not entirely true. There are different kinds of vaccines. An organism could develop resistance to a vaccine consisting of viral or bacterial particles.
I wonder how much of that is just because antibiotics are more convenient. There wasn't much progress on an ebola vaccine either, until a whole bunch of people got it.
Don't believe the conspiracy theories. Vaccines aren't perfectly safe: any treatment has the potential for adverse reactions. Vaccine side effects are VERY well monitored. Reporting is legally required, and the data is public.
That's not due to the antimicrobial properties of dirt. It's due to the microbes in the dirt. Many studies, some very large, have shown that exposure to a greater variety of microbes as a child is associated with a better immune system: both better at fighting infection and less likely to engage in autoimmune reactions.
The trick is to get that exposure without catching something that will actually kill you. Dirt is pretty decent for that.
Except that the whole time you're peeing that antibiotic into your nearest convenient body of moving water.
Not finishing a full course of antibiotics is definitely bad, it turns your body into an experiment in directed evolution. Overuse (not just in humans) of antibiotics is also bad because it turns your local waterways into similar experiments.
People have the same reaction if you describe something as a placebo effect. The placebo effect can shrink tumours. It's an example of a psychological process that has real physical effects.
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Well, mention of the MCAS and it's different behaviour to prior trim controls is apparently not in the flight crew operations manual, and I believe the quote about leaving it out of the difference training so as not to confuse the average pilot is direct from Boeing.
You can believe what you like, but please don't put words in my mouth. I didn't ever say Boeing as a company or anyone there meant to harm anyone. I'm sure Boeing is sincere when it states that the relevant training was not provided because it was judged to be unnecessary or even detrimental. It seems that judgement was wrong.
That's a nice easy explanation, but I'm not sure it's true. I just read an interesting post from a pilot on a pilots' forum about a procedure that used to be mentioned in the original 737 flight manual. Apparently, if you had a runaway trim situation that got too out of hand, it could be very difficult or impossible to turn the trim wheels by hand (even with both pilots) due to aerodynamic loading. The recommended procedure was called the "rollercoaster maneuver" and involved inputing elevator control to achieve the desired pitch, releasing it and cranking the trim, and repeating until sufficient trim was achieved.
Apparently there's a report of this happening decades ago, and the pilots involved said it was a long and physically strenuous process.
"I also wonder why there isn't an 'airline pilots only' social media platform that would spread news of this kind of incident far faster than 'official' channels."
There are. They're fascinating.
Boeing specifically and purposely left any mention of the new systems out of the difference training course that is required to be certified to fly the new 737.
I guess not everyone can be as calm, collected, and infallible as you are in emergency situations. I'm sure we would all feel better of Slashdot reader Obfuscant were our pilot.
He said safe, not doesn't crash. Windows isn't safe, it's spyware that's getting ever more dickish.
Linux works well and is safe, but can still occasionally be a bit of a PITA.
I'm typing this on an OS X notebook, in front of a Linux/Windows dualboot desktop. You're absolutely right, I don't remember the last time I saw any of them crash.
Long range hypersonic missiles don't fly a kilometre or two above the ground. The amount of fuel required to do so would be insane, not to mention the heat management problems. Hypersonic glide missiles are basically ICBMs (or MIRVs that detach from ICBMS) except that they have aerodynamic surfaces for maneuvering in terminal approach in the atmosphere. Medium range hypersonic cruise missiles are designed to fly up high, then dive down for final approach. The Russian Kh-32 probably has a range of ~1000 km and is believed to cruise at an altitude of around 40 km (120,000 feet). Short range hypersonic missiles, the kind you might fire from a ship, submarine or plane to take out a carrier, can fly lower, but the US Navy is already developing ship-based lasers to zap those.
Perhaps your "friend" in the pharma industry is fibbing. Adverse reaction reporting is done by treating physicians, and is taken very seriously. The US has a problem with pharma, money and physicians, but there's a lot less payola in vaccines.
There's been a lot of progress in laser technology recently, and yes, it probably is enough to make a space-based laser useful, although possibly not quite as useful as was envisioned in the 80s. Destructive lasers were giant, heavy, delicate things. To get up to useful power levels, the best option in 2000 was a chemical laser, that effectively used ammunition. Now, you can build a militarily useful laser and put it on a hummer. Megawatt laser weapons in space don't exist currently, but they're a decent possibility.
Hypersonic missiles aren't that different from ballistic ones. The long range ones still have to fly very high. Space-based weapons would be as useful for shooting them down as they are for ballistic missiles.
But if you've got a laser in space that can shoot a missile coming off the launch pad, think what else you could do with it. People think drones are terror from the skies....
Well... sometimes. The goal of US foreign policy is ultimately to further US interests. Sometimes that involves supporting democracy over dictators, sometimes the opposite. Sometimes it entails sowing some chaos and letting the chips fall where they may.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Because getting hacked works like it does on TV... some kid in a hoodie types really fast, and there's nothing you can do unless you have another kid in a hoodie to type back.
Hashing passwords? Is that some kind of drug thing?
I'm not a big fan of MBAs, but this was a pretty long and complicated chain of errors. From what I gather: Boeing wanted to keep the 737's low ground clearance but needed to put bigger engines on to match the efficiency of the new A320s, which meant changing the aerodynamics. Boeing also wanted pilots to be able to do a simple difference training course, rather than have to recertify on a new aircraft, so they invented MCAS. The engineers must have figured that it was a supplemental system, and easy to turn off if it malfunctioned, so they chose to make it kick in aggressively rather than conservatively (either sensor says go, rather than both sensors say go). They also made it harder to turn off than the old system, probably by accident. Then Boeing decided not to mention the new system to pilots in that difference course, to avoid confusing them.
Lots of errors to go around. Some are definitely cost saving, but some are probably a result of not enough whole-system oversight. The decision to go based on one sensor is a bit mystifying. There are already two AoA sensors on the aircraft, and lots of other ways of cross checking them. In fact, Boeing is releasing a software update to add all that cross checking in, so it's not even a hardware limitation.
The 737 MAX isn't actually aerodynamically unstable in normal flight. Any airliner, including all the 737s, with the standard under-the-wing engines will have off-axis thrust that will add a bit of pitch up. The aircraft is designed to compensate for that in normal flight, but in a stall if the pilot gooses the engine it can make it impossible to recover. 737 pilots (including the older model) are trained NOT to increase throttle in a stall because of it. The MAX handles differently in that situation, so they added MCAS so the pilots wouldn't have to be trained in a new stall recovery procedure.
I expect that such a ban, perhaps also requiring a certified vet to prescribe antibiotics, would spur vaccine research. It might actually not be possible, but there's not much motivation when antibiotics for livestock costs pennies.
I'm perhaps a bit younger, since I received several actual anti-bacterial vaccines as a child. You can actually make vaccines using either attenuated live (e.g. tuberculosis, typhoid) or killed (older typhoid, pertussis) bacteria. As you mention, you can also make vaccines to the toxins, although that might be less acceptable for livestock due to the risk of the bacteria being transmitted to a person who isn't vaccinated.
It does seem to be more difficult to create fully effective vaccines for bacteria, particularly ones that confer near total immunity for life, but that wouldn't necessarily be a requirement for an antibiotic replacement in livestock.
By the way, candidate ebola vaccines include all of the mentioned types, including viral particle vaccines and other viruses engineered to express specific ebola antigens.
Our capabilities in biology really have advanced a lot in the last little while. It may not have been practical to use anti-bacterial livestock vaccination in the past, but it might be now, if the externalities of antibiotics were accounted.
That's not *quite* true. The actual human testing is usually planned by independent academics, performed by independent groups (often a whole bunch of hospitals around the world) and often coordinated by an independent contract research organization. The analysis of that data may be done by the company, or might be done by another independent company. Either way, there's a good paper trail, and a whole bunch of people involved who are not paid by the company.
It's done that way because abuses have happened in the past, of course.
I don't think the reason for the 737's ground clearance is really passenger boarding (although that might have been nice). A major feature of the 737 is that it's low to the ground so you can more easily load and unload cargo, including baggage. Passengers hike up stairs no problem... their bags and other cargo doesn't.
Boeing has done a lot to keep that feature into the present day, including special engines with the bottom of the fairing flattened on the upgraded classic and NG 737s.
With two sensors, if they disagree, you scream and don't do anything. The human then has to decide what's going on. That scenario is fine (even desirable) for a supplemental system like the MCAS. It's very, very unlikely that both of the sensors would get stuck in the same position, although you'd want to make sure that doesn't happen if some twit leaves a protective cover on them or something.
A really critical system, that can't be shut off, should have triple redundancy.
That's true, although the only way to turn off the system (which they didn't know existed) is to turn off the electric trim system entirely. Doing that would mean they would have to turn the trim wheels by hand. If you watch a video of it, the electrical system turns the wheels a lot, and quite fast.
They should have turned it off, but if you have to keep trimming up and you're not sure why, you might hesitate to turn off the system that's letting you do so quickly.
That's not entirely true. There are different kinds of vaccines. An organism could develop resistance to a vaccine consisting of viral or bacterial particles.
I wonder how much of that is just because antibiotics are more convenient. There wasn't much progress on an ebola vaccine either, until a whole bunch of people got it.
Don't believe the conspiracy theories. Vaccines aren't perfectly safe: any treatment has the potential for adverse reactions. Vaccine side effects are VERY well monitored. Reporting is legally required, and the data is public.
https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesaf...
That's not due to the antimicrobial properties of dirt. It's due to the microbes in the dirt. Many studies, some very large, have shown that exposure to a greater variety of microbes as a child is associated with a better immune system: both better at fighting infection and less likely to engage in autoimmune reactions.
The trick is to get that exposure without catching something that will actually kill you. Dirt is pretty decent for that.
Except that the whole time you're peeing that antibiotic into your nearest convenient body of moving water.
Not finishing a full course of antibiotics is definitely bad, it turns your body into an experiment in directed evolution. Overuse (not just in humans) of antibiotics is also bad because it turns your local waterways into similar experiments.
People have the same reaction if you describe something as a placebo effect. The placebo effect can shrink tumours. It's an example of a psychological process that has real physical effects.