Without it, on full throttle, the aircraft doesn't have enough authority to bring the nose down once it goes up too high.
If "the aircraft" doesn't have enough authority to bring the nose down, then how can the pilot ever bring the nose down, and how can the MCAS bring it down? The MCAS doesn't create new control surfaces. It adjusts the trim. Just like the pilots can. And the pilots can always push the yoke forward... to bring the nose down.
Every aircraft where the engines are not on the center of drag (thus drag and thrust are not coaxial) will either pitch up or down when the throttles are changed. The aircraft can handle it. And the pilots can handle it.
It has nothing to do with auto-pilot, except the system is disabled when auto-pilot is engaged.
It uses the same control surfaces that the autopilot uses, including the same electric trim. If you can disable the electric trim control for the autopilot (which you can) then it will be disabled for MCAS.
And Boeing distributed this information to all customers last November.
It shows that in Nov, 2018 the FAA issued an emergency AD (airworthiness directive) covering exactly this problem and defining the emergency procedure to deal with it. The specific: the aircrew must comply with the operating manual emergency procedure to resolve a Runaway Stabilizer problem.
It also includes the message that Boeing sent to all customers alerting them to the existence of the system (MCAS).
They are well informed about what the auto-pilot does and that they need to monitor it and disable it under certain conditions. For the MCAS, Boeing sabotaged that redundancy.
You're saying that Boeing removed the circuit breakers for the autopilot and electric trim system? Otherwise, how can you claim that the pilots are "well informed" about how to disable the autopilot and electric trim systems? How can they be well informed on how to disable a system that cannot be disabled? (Truth: the breakers are still there, and pilots are, indeed, well informed about using them, so claiming that Boeing sabotaged that ability is not true.)
On the 737 NG there isn't a system that will continue to increase the trim input like this.
The 737 NG has no autopilot? Hmmm. Didn't know that. What I do know is that any 3 axis autopilot has the ability to exhibit runaway trim (not as a standard feature, but as a known and recognized failure mode) and thus electric trim systems have a circuit breaker that can be pulled to disable the trim motor.
I also know that a standard checklist item for an aircraft with an autopilot is the ability of the pilot to both overpower the autopilot and disable it completely.
Slashdot told me there was nothing wrong with the planes.
Now today they are not safe? WTF?
Understand the difference between "safe"/"airworthy" and "pilots don't know how to fly it". A plane can be perfectly airworthy while the pilots aren't trained to recognize one specific issue and how to trivially correct it.
It was obviously the predecessor and ramp-up to the iPhone.
There was no iPhone, and it was "obviously" a follow-on to the Walkman. And the thousands of other MP3 players that came before it. And it still had nothing to do with the smart phone market. Apple did not enter the smart phone market, as you incorrectly claim, when it released the iPod.
Spotify's investors would not be likely to agree to abandoning the iphone.
"We cannot make a profit selling through the iPhone. We cannot make up the losses by increasing the volume." That should be enough to convince all but the Apple fanboi investors.
Now, if Spotify is making a profit through Apple, then the issue devolves into crying because Apple won't let them make as much profit as they want. But they're still making a profit.
One crash was in the northern hemisphere, the other in the southern hemisphere. Everyone knows that Coriolis causes the AOA sensor to operation backwards in the south from the way it does in the north. I bet this was a problem with the GPS ignoring the negative sign on the latitude value. That's what it had to be.
Except up until recently 737MAX pilots didn't even know "the system" (MCAS) existed,
Every one of them knew that the electric trim system existed and how to disable it. It doesn't matter what you name it. If there are uncommanded trim changes that are creating a flight hazard, you pull the breaker(s) on the electric trim motors and then diagnose the problem while hand-flying the aircraft.
Even private pilots learn this the first time they fly an airplane with autopilot (and thus an electric trim system). And that's why every airplane with an autopilot (which drives the electric trim) has a dozen ways of disabling the autopilot, starting with the "off" button on the autopilot itself and ending with the circuit breaker feeding power to the autopilot system.
An ATP/commercial pilot who doesn't know how to disable electric trim isn't passing his checkrides and won't be piloting a commercial aircraft, especially when their ability to fly passengers depends on regular simulator evaluations with simulated emergencies.
A single engine failure can crash a twin engine plane -- if it happens at the wrong time and the pilot fails to initiate the documented corrective action.
It would seem obvious that a twin would be safer than a single from an engine failure view.
But that's also something that new pilots are taught: twins are less safe than singles. In a single engine aircraft where one engine dies, the pilot knows without a doubt he's got to find a safe landing place right now. In a twin, the pilot can hope his other engine will get him someplace safe, he can be distracted while trying to fix the problem with the dead engine, or he can simply goof up and shut down the working engine by mistake.
There was an Airbus crash in England, IIRC, where the engine instruments or controls were cross wired on a two-engine airplane by mistake. One failed, and the pilot dutifully went through the the emergency shutdown procedure for... the working engine. And then there were none.
Random guy on Internet "calls BS" on major scientific/medical conundrum that the world's collective scientific establishment is still largely uncertain about. How about that.
No, "random guy on Internet" calls BS on a city council that demands that the FCC prove that something is safe before they'll allow it in their city, based on research that irradiated rats at levels much higher than any of them ever will be, using different frequencies, for a topic that is already preempted by federal regulation.
"Portlandia" was a TV show based on a very specific brand of reality practiced in one specific city. It's a fascinating place to visit, but I can't imagine why anyone would want to live there. The rest of Oregon is waiting for Cascadia so we can start over at the intersection of the Willamette and Columbia.
a) it results in perpetually unpatched systems becoming a health hazard to the rest of the internet.
I wish this meme would die. Not all unpatched systems are a health hazard to anyone, much less your little part of the world. They DO need to do productive work, and when they stop working it costs a lot of money to get working again.
I just had to waste an hour this morning driving to a site to reboot a computer because "windows detected a potential problem and shut the system down to prevent damage to the hardware." How nice. It's one of those systems that is behind a strong firewall and is not a "health hazard" to anyone.
I don't want options from MS, I want actual quality so that I have no need for options.
That's a stupid meme, too. People use computers for different things, and people run different software on them. The fact that your games run just fine and you have no devices more complicated than a keyboard doesn't mean that's what everyone else does. Some of us have stuff that breaks when MS decides to change how things work and force updates. We have PRODUCTION systems that need to keep running, and we get paid to verify that changes won't break things before we apply them -- and MS doesn't give a shit if one of my production systems stops working because they change something.
And imagine if Proton was actually being run by Russian operatives, who by blackholing it from their own people convinced everyone else in the world that it was secure and they all started using it, thus funneling all sensitive email through Russian hands by default.
Ochen xorosho, tovarich.
Knowing the current state of Congress, they're require a third-party auditor to "certify" all new IoT products before allowing their sale in the US.
If you read the bill instead of fabricate FUD, you'll see that it has nothing to do with approving anything for sale in the US, and that the "third party" is NIST.
The list of third-party auditors will probably closely match the list of corporate donors who sponsored the bill.
I did not know that NIST was a corporate donor to any political campaign.
I'm sure that the open source people will love jumping through this extra regulatory hoop and paying the required fees toll before getting their product on the market.
It has nothing to do with "open source" or getting a product on the market.
Another fact is that neither AA nor SW has had any reported incidences or close calls, despite many flights with these planes...
Perhaps FAA oversight requires an aircraft with a faulty AOA sensor be fixed before it is allowed to fly again, and Ethiopian regulators do not? The first people to notice the faulty sensor did not crash and they reported it as a squawk. The fact that it was not considered important enough to fix speaks volumes about the maintenance services and regulatory controls.
Trim is normally set so that you don't have to push or pull on the yoke to maintain your path. You don't look at a "trim indication".
And when the aircraft you are flying suddenly tries to climb or descend when you've changed nothing and the thrust has not changed, one of the first things you would look at is the trim indicator to see if that is causing the problem.
Runaway trim is an age old problem taught to every pilot who deals with "George" -- an autopilot.
Mandating information because there is material, easily ascertainable difference in the origin of what you buy, you mean?
No. Not even close. And you know it. Do you really think that there should be mandatory labeling of corn chips to identify which state of the US the corn was grown in, for example? That's a difference in the origin that makes no difference in any scientifically discernible way. "Maltodextrin" which comes from GMO corn is identical to that which comes from non-GMO, and is thus indiscernible in any scientific way, but according to you, it has to be labeled because it is an "easily ascertainable difference in the origin".
That's a good, two-paragraph strawman that is also a false analogy.
Complete accurate analogy. Some people fear gluten needlessly. Some people fear GMO needlessly. Presence or lack of gluten, according to your argument, is a difference that must be documented so that they can make "an informed choice".
Let me try one on my own then - gluten-free will be unnecessary unless, of course, we get to the point where gluten genes are inserted in everything green because they let it look "fresh" longer.
Incorrect. "Gluten-free" will be necessary because it will, according to you, allow "informed choice" for the consumer. Who knows, that dried seaweed product may have gluten in it somehow magically. Maybe it is dried on a layer of wheat flour? But even if there is no possible way there is gluten in the product, it is "information" to support the "choice". You cannot get away from the natural result of the "informed choice" argument you are making.
Another strawman with selective quoting. 10 bonus points.
So "informed choice" is not as important as you pretend. Noted.
Where I live, things are a bit different, we have legal requirements for proper labeling, and it is a lot easier to pick the sweets with the GMO ingredients and HFCS.
Straw man, this HFCS stuff. And no, it is not trivial to pick out which components of something are GMO without specific information one way or the other. Is the corn in your corn chip from a GMO variety? How about the wheat in your bread? The ingredient requirements say you list "corn meal" or "white flour", but not whether it's GMO or not. Is the "maltodextrin" (which comes from corn) from a GMO strain or not? You cannot tell.
Where I live, things are a bit different,
The product being discussed is US-based, and the context is US. Sorry to confuse you. I guess from your statement that you live in a place with extreme labeling requirements, not "proper" ones, and every speck of every GMO-potential ingredient demands a large "GMO! DANGER!" label. (That may not be the language, but it's the effect. There is no reason to label GMO other than the fear factor.)
Even if they paid the same day, the aggregator (Expedia, etc) gets their cut off the top. It's more profit to the hotel if you book direct, and the price to you can be lower. You're paying a lot for the convenience of Expedia or Booking.com.
If a credit card is stolen it can be cancelled quickly and any fraudelent purchases dispuated with a cap on damage, the credit card company will take absorb the damage. With a debit card you don't have such protections usually
The protections on a debit card depend on the institution that issues it. My credit union has the same protections for their debit cards as a standard credit card. The only difference is that your account is short the money you dispute until it is put back, where you don't pay the disputed amount for a CC.
There's an additional issue that using a credit card will help you build up a good credit score
Some of us are old enough we already have a credit score.
Not really, the regulations of the market should first and foremost reflect the preferences of the participants.
Poppycock. Mandating information based on verifiable justification, perhaps. But mandating information just because people have unfounded fears from misinformation campaigns is not required.
Next you'll tell us that manufacturers should be required to label all "gluten free" products as such because some people are gluten-sensitive -- even products that cannot possibly contain gluten. It's really pretty funny looking at labels today, where companies freely demonstrate an ignorance of what gluten is. I've seen a package of dried seaweed labeled "gluten free", for God's sake.
People who need to stay away from gluten already know (or should know for their own self-interest) what products can and cannot contain gluten, so voluntary "gluten-free" labeling panders only to stupid people who hear "gluten bad" messages and think they need to stay away. It's marketing based on fear, and mandating fear-based marketing is just ridiculous.
There is no need to explicitly label non-GMO foods as such,
What happened to being able to make an informed choice?
practically all food that is on the market today is non-GMO
Uhhh. Ok. Sure. Wandered down the snack aisle lately? Here's an amazing fact: not even Popsicle will deny that their products contain GMO ingredients, and there's not much to a popsicle that could be GMO. They won't even claim "gluten-free", despite many of their products containing no grain at all. (Umm, I just LOVE those oat-flavored popsicles!)
Slashdot Mirror
Without it, on full throttle, the aircraft doesn't have enough authority to bring the nose down once it goes up too high.
If "the aircraft" doesn't have enough authority to bring the nose down, then how can the pilot ever bring the nose down, and how can the MCAS bring it down? The MCAS doesn't create new control surfaces. It adjusts the trim. Just like the pilots can. And the pilots can always push the yoke forward ... to bring the nose down.
Every aircraft where the engines are not on the center of drag (thus drag and thrust are not coaxial) will either pitch up or down when the throttles are changed. The aircraft can handle it. And the pilots can handle it.
It has nothing to do with auto-pilot, except the system is disabled when auto-pilot is engaged.
It uses the same control surfaces that the autopilot uses, including the same electric trim. If you can disable the electric trim control for the autopilot (which you can) then it will be disabled for MCAS.
And Boeing distributed this information to all customers last November.
It shows that in Nov, 2018 the FAA issued an emergency AD (airworthiness directive) covering exactly this problem and defining the emergency procedure to deal with it. The specific: the aircrew must comply with the operating manual emergency procedure to resolve a Runaway Stabilizer problem.
It also includes the message that Boeing sent to all customers alerting them to the existence of the system (MCAS).
They are well informed about what the auto-pilot does and that they need to monitor it and disable it under certain conditions. For the MCAS, Boeing sabotaged that redundancy.
You're saying that Boeing removed the circuit breakers for the autopilot and electric trim system? Otherwise, how can you claim that the pilots are "well informed" about how to disable the autopilot and electric trim systems? How can they be well informed on how to disable a system that cannot be disabled? (Truth: the breakers are still there, and pilots are, indeed, well informed about using them, so claiming that Boeing sabotaged that ability is not true.)
On the 737 NG there isn't a system that will continue to increase the trim input like this.
The 737 NG has no autopilot? Hmmm. Didn't know that. What I do know is that any 3 axis autopilot has the ability to exhibit runaway trim (not as a standard feature, but as a known and recognized failure mode) and thus electric trim systems have a circuit breaker that can be pulled to disable the trim motor.
I also know that a standard checklist item for an aircraft with an autopilot is the ability of the pilot to both overpower the autopilot and disable it completely.
Slashdot told me there was nothing wrong with the planes. Now today they are not safe? WTF?
Understand the difference between "safe"/"airworthy" and "pilots don't know how to fly it". A plane can be perfectly airworthy while the pilots aren't trained to recognize one specific issue and how to trivially correct it.
It was obviously the predecessor and ramp-up to the iPhone.
There was no iPhone, and it was "obviously" a follow-on to the Walkman. And the thousands of other MP3 players that came before it. And it still had nothing to do with the smart phone market. Apple did not enter the smart phone market, as you incorrectly claim, when it released the iPod.
No one buys a phone because of the apps that work with it.
Really? I currently own two iPads (yes I know, not "phones", but Apple products) ONLY because of one specific app that runs only on iOS. Try again.
They either like the Apple closed system or they don't.
Irrelevant. I don't have to like the Apple closed system to want to use the app that runs only on iOS.
Spotify cannot hope to 'lure' people to Android simply because their app works there.
Hmmm. If people can be lured INTO Apple because of an app, they can be lured out of Apple for the same reason. And save money while doing it.
Spotify's investors would not be likely to agree to abandoning the iphone.
"We cannot make a profit selling through the iPhone. We cannot make up the losses by increasing the volume." That should be enough to convince all but the Apple fanboi investors.
Now, if Spotify is making a profit through Apple, then the issue devolves into crying because Apple won't let them make as much profit as they want. But they're still making a profit.
It's one or the other.
There was no one in the smart phone market when Apple entered it with the iPod.
Apple neither entered the smart phone market nor created it when they released the iPod. The iPod isn't a smart phone.
And the very last thing consumers want is for something to be more affordable.
I am an Apple user. What is this thing "affordable" you speak of? I would love to subscribe to your newsletter.
One crash was in the northern hemisphere, the other in the southern hemisphere. Everyone knows that Coriolis causes the AOA sensor to operation backwards in the south from the way it does in the north. I bet this was a problem with the GPS ignoring the negative sign on the latitude value. That's what it had to be.
Except up until recently 737MAX pilots didn't even know "the system" (MCAS) existed,
Every one of them knew that the electric trim system existed and how to disable it. It doesn't matter what you name it. If there are uncommanded trim changes that are creating a flight hazard, you pull the breaker(s) on the electric trim motors and then diagnose the problem while hand-flying the aircraft.
Even private pilots learn this the first time they fly an airplane with autopilot (and thus an electric trim system). And that's why every airplane with an autopilot (which drives the electric trim) has a dozen ways of disabling the autopilot, starting with the "off" button on the autopilot itself and ending with the circuit breaker feeding power to the autopilot system.
An ATP/commercial pilot who doesn't know how to disable electric trim isn't passing his checkrides and won't be piloting a commercial aircraft, especially when their ability to fly passengers depends on regular simulator evaluations with simulated emergencies.
A single engine failure can crash a twin engine plane -- if it happens at the wrong time and the pilot fails to initiate the documented corrective action.
It would seem obvious that a twin would be safer than a single from an engine failure view.
But that's also something that new pilots are taught: twins are less safe than singles. In a single engine aircraft where one engine dies, the pilot knows without a doubt he's got to find a safe landing place right now. In a twin, the pilot can hope his other engine will get him someplace safe, he can be distracted while trying to fix the problem with the dead engine, or he can simply goof up and shut down the working engine by mistake.
There was an Airbus crash in England, IIRC, where the engine instruments or controls were cross wired on a two-engine airplane by mistake. One failed, and the pilot dutifully went through the the emergency shutdown procedure for ... the working engine. And then there were none.
Yes! Forget about "Think of the Children!" . . . "Think of the Chickens!"
No, think about the chicken children!
These youngsters, they grow up so fast these days, don't they?
Random guy on Internet "calls BS" on major scientific/medical conundrum that the world's collective scientific establishment is still largely uncertain about. How about that.
No, "random guy on Internet" calls BS on a city council that demands that the FCC prove that something is safe before they'll allow it in their city, based on research that irradiated rats at levels much higher than any of them ever will be, using different frequencies, for a topic that is already preempted by federal regulation.
"Portlandia" was a TV show based on a very specific brand of reality practiced in one specific city. It's a fascinating place to visit, but I can't imagine why anyone would want to live there. The rest of Oregon is waiting for Cascadia so we can start over at the intersection of the Willamette and Columbia.
a) it results in perpetually unpatched systems becoming a health hazard to the rest of the internet.
I wish this meme would die. Not all unpatched systems are a health hazard to anyone, much less your little part of the world. They DO need to do productive work, and when they stop working it costs a lot of money to get working again.
I just had to waste an hour this morning driving to a site to reboot a computer because "windows detected a potential problem and shut the system down to prevent damage to the hardware." How nice. It's one of those systems that is behind a strong firewall and is not a "health hazard" to anyone.
I don't want options from MS, I want actual quality so that I have no need for options.
That's a stupid meme, too. People use computers for different things, and people run different software on them. The fact that your games run just fine and you have no devices more complicated than a keyboard doesn't mean that's what everyone else does. Some of us have stuff that breaks when MS decides to change how things work and force updates. We have PRODUCTION systems that need to keep running, and we get paid to verify that changes won't break things before we apply them -- and MS doesn't give a shit if one of my production systems stops working because they change something.
And imagine if Proton was actually being run by Russian operatives, who by blackholing it from their own people convinced everyone else in the world that it was secure and they all started using it, thus funneling all sensitive email through Russian hands by default. Ochen xorosho, tovarich.
Knowing the current state of Congress, they're require a third-party auditor to "certify" all new IoT products before allowing their sale in the US.
If you read the bill instead of fabricate FUD, you'll see that it has nothing to do with approving anything for sale in the US, and that the "third party" is NIST.
The list of third-party auditors will probably closely match the list of corporate donors who sponsored the bill.
I did not know that NIST was a corporate donor to any political campaign.
I'm sure that the open source people will love jumping through this extra regulatory hoop and paying the required fees toll before getting their product on the market.
It has nothing to do with "open source" or getting a product on the market.
Another fact is that neither AA nor SW has had any reported incidences or close calls, despite many flights with these planes...
Perhaps FAA oversight requires an aircraft with a faulty AOA sensor be fixed before it is allowed to fly again, and Ethiopian regulators do not? The first people to notice the faulty sensor did not crash and they reported it as a squawk. The fact that it was not considered important enough to fix speaks volumes about the maintenance services and regulatory controls.
Trim is normally set so that you don't have to push or pull on the yoke to maintain your path. You don't look at a "trim indication".
And when the aircraft you are flying suddenly tries to climb or descend when you've changed nothing and the thrust has not changed, one of the first things you would look at is the trim indicator to see if that is causing the problem.
Runaway trim is an age old problem taught to every pilot who deals with "George" -- an autopilot.
Mandating information because there is material, easily ascertainable difference in the origin of what you buy, you mean?
No. Not even close. And you know it. Do you really think that there should be mandatory labeling of corn chips to identify which state of the US the corn was grown in, for example? That's a difference in the origin that makes no difference in any scientifically discernible way. "Maltodextrin" which comes from GMO corn is identical to that which comes from non-GMO, and is thus indiscernible in any scientific way, but according to you, it has to be labeled because it is an "easily ascertainable difference in the origin".
That's a good, two-paragraph strawman that is also a false analogy.
Complete accurate analogy. Some people fear gluten needlessly. Some people fear GMO needlessly. Presence or lack of gluten, according to your argument, is a difference that must be documented so that they can make "an informed choice".
Let me try one on my own then - gluten-free will be unnecessary unless, of course, we get to the point where gluten genes are inserted in everything green because they let it look "fresh" longer.
Incorrect. "Gluten-free" will be necessary because it will, according to you, allow "informed choice" for the consumer. Who knows, that dried seaweed product may have gluten in it somehow magically. Maybe it is dried on a layer of wheat flour? But even if there is no possible way there is gluten in the product, it is "information" to support the "choice". You cannot get away from the natural result of the "informed choice" argument you are making.
Another strawman with selective quoting. 10 bonus points.
So "informed choice" is not as important as you pretend. Noted.
Where I live, things are a bit different, we have legal requirements for proper labeling, and it is a lot easier to pick the sweets with the GMO ingredients and HFCS.
Straw man, this HFCS stuff. And no, it is not trivial to pick out which components of something are GMO without specific information one way or the other. Is the corn in your corn chip from a GMO variety? How about the wheat in your bread? The ingredient requirements say you list "corn meal" or "white flour", but not whether it's GMO or not. Is the "maltodextrin" (which comes from corn) from a GMO strain or not? You cannot tell.
Where I live, things are a bit different,
The product being discussed is US-based, and the context is US. Sorry to confuse you. I guess from your statement that you live in a place with extreme labeling requirements, not "proper" ones, and every speck of every GMO-potential ingredient demands a large "GMO! DANGER!" label. (That may not be the language, but it's the effect. There is no reason to label GMO other than the fear factor.)
This is what informed choice is about.
"Informed choice" is a straw man, you say.
A digital signature is not obscuring the meaning of anything. It does not meet the condition of the prohibition.
Even if they paid the same day, the aggregator (Expedia, etc) gets their cut off the top. It's more profit to the hotel if you book direct, and the price to you can be lower. You're paying a lot for the convenience of Expedia or Booking.com.
If a credit card is stolen it can be cancelled quickly and any fraudelent purchases dispuated with a cap on damage, the credit card company will take absorb the damage. With a debit card you don't have such protections usually
The protections on a debit card depend on the institution that issues it. My credit union has the same protections for their debit cards as a standard credit card. The only difference is that your account is short the money you dispute until it is put back, where you don't pay the disputed amount for a CC.
There's an additional issue that using a credit card will help you build up a good credit score
Some of us are old enough we already have a credit score.
Not really, the regulations of the market should first and foremost reflect the preferences of the participants.
Poppycock. Mandating information based on verifiable justification, perhaps. But mandating information just because people have unfounded fears from misinformation campaigns is not required.
Next you'll tell us that manufacturers should be required to label all "gluten free" products as such because some people are gluten-sensitive -- even products that cannot possibly contain gluten. It's really pretty funny looking at labels today, where companies freely demonstrate an ignorance of what gluten is. I've seen a package of dried seaweed labeled "gluten free", for God's sake.
People who need to stay away from gluten already know (or should know for their own self-interest) what products can and cannot contain gluten, so voluntary "gluten-free" labeling panders only to stupid people who hear "gluten bad" messages and think they need to stay away. It's marketing based on fear, and mandating fear-based marketing is just ridiculous.
There is no need to explicitly label non-GMO foods as such,
What happened to being able to make an informed choice?
practically all food that is on the market today is non-GMO
Uhhh. Ok. Sure. Wandered down the snack aisle lately? Here's an amazing fact: not even Popsicle will deny that their products contain GMO ingredients, and there's not much to a popsicle that could be GMO. They won't even claim "gluten-free", despite many of their products containing no grain at all. (Umm, I just LOVE those oat-flavored popsicles!)