They do make a line of jets today, and the caravan, and they have started extremely limited production of a couple of the small models again. It's nothing compared to the product line they were cranking out back when the lawsuit shut them down. There's been a few changes in ownership along the way, and they went from being the world dominant manufacturer of light planes, to being an insignificant, almost non player in the market today, with the exception of the caravan. the only reason the caravan line survived, they had long term delivery contracts with fedex, couldn't afford to shut that down.
Anyone else seen that video of an airbus flying into the trees after a low pass for an airshow? Apparently, the pilot wanted to pull up 30ft to clear the trees, but the computer decided it was better to increase thrust before pulling up.
There's a lot of 'details' on this incident that most folks dont know about, a long string of details that added up to a major problem. In a nutshell, the airplane was to low, to slow. There was an altimeter error of 67 feet, so the pilots setting up for a low pass at 100 feet, actually levelled off at 30 feet. The engines were de-spooled because of the need to slow the aircraft. the altimeter error was critical at this point, the aircraft was established on a trajectory where physics would only allow level and descending flight, but it was below the treeline.
The aircraft was doomed when it levelled off, no matter what. Without the engines spooled up, there wasn't enough power available to effect a climb, and the aircraft was to slow to climb on kinetic energy alone. the computers didn't allow the nose up commands because it would have caused a stall.
If you read ALL of the information available on that incident, and sift thru all the politics of the conflicting reports, the big picture becomes pretty obvious. The airplane was to low (altimeter error), and once the crew realized they were below the treeline, go-around power was commanded, but, it was to late. It was physically impossible for the engines to develop the required thrust in the time available. The fcs didn't allow the pitch up command because it would have caused aerodynamic stall, and a much worse impact. In the final analysis, the flight control system did exactly what it was supposed to do, but the crew had placed the airframe in a situation where contact with the trees was inevitable. If the fcs had allowed the pitch up command, there would have been an uncontrolled stall accident, likely with no survivors. Instead, there was a controlled impact, very impressive looking fireball on the video, 3 deaths, and 133 survivors.
Every airplane that takes off, is eventually going to touch down. Surviveability of the touchdown is directly related to wether or not the aircraft is under control, and to a lesser extent, related to where it touches down. The computers had full control of an impossible situation, and 133 people survived. If the nose up command had been alllowed, likely nobody would have survived the impact after a stall event. It's a natural reaction for a pilot to try 'pull up' in a case like this one, and the override of the computerized systems likely saved a lot of lives. that's the part that never seems to get reported tho, the press loves to replay the clip over and over, with an implied emphasis on the assumption that a person could have flown that aircraft out of the situation. Physics was not going to allow that, once the plane levelled off on the low pass, it was doomed, the only question left, how bad would the crash be. 133 people survived because the flight control system didn't allow the airframe to leave 'controlled flight'.
As for the new Boeings, hate to burst your bubble on this subject, but all the new boeing equipment has the same type of fly by wire setup. the computers will tell the pilot to fuck off if s/he inputs commands that will cause the aircraft to leave the realms of controlled flight.
Actually, that's not the case. The neat thing about a properly executed barrel roll, the airframe experiences no negative g, it's pretty much the same as level flight close to 1g positive (measured toward the floor, not the ground) all the way thru. That's the difference between a barrel roll and an axial roll.
I've done barrel rolls in airplanes that I'd never consider doing real aerobatics in.
Actually, this has been changed. In the us it was 'advised' a few years ago, not sure of the status of 'forced' yet on the airlines down there. In Canada, the standards changed in January of this year. the standards are now 200/165 in Canada for summer weights male/female. The US has advisories of 200/179 for male/female, and if it's not already done, those will be the 'legal' standards shortly.
Over the last 20 years there have been a lot of accidents where overweight was a major contributing factor, due to the low averages in use as 'standard'. The first real wake-up call to regulators came on the Arrow Air incident in Gander, where a DC-8 full of us service personnel made a big smoking fireball. there's been a lot of pressure back and forth within the industry since then, regulators trying to push standard weights up, airlines trying to keep them down.
Serious accidents in 2003/2004 respectively caused both sets of regulators to issue new 'recommended' guidelines for airlines as circulars. I dont know if the process has reached 'regulation' yet in the us, but it has in Canada, and it will in the us before year end if it's not already done.
It's interesting to note, with these new standards, american women are subtantially heavier than thier canadian counterparts. Having travelled extensively in both countries over the years, for once, the regulators got it right:)
This is a case where proper preventative maintenance could have potentially saved the lives of the people on Flight 587.
Proper maintanence is the responsibility of the airline, not the manufacturer. Do you expect Ford to do oil changes and safety checks on your 10 year old car?
You really need to dig a little deeper if you are going to have that kind of attitude. Go into the archives, and start searching for 'uncommanded rudder deflection', and 'thrust reverser engaged in flight'. You'll find references to all sorts of 737 incidents, including a few that made smoking craters on the ground.
As long as airplanes are mechanical things, built by people, operated at high speed, also by more people, there are going to be occaisional incidents. The event chains leading up to most incidents can be traced back to human errors, but occaisionally the root cause is a mechanical failure of some type. If you want to get into a pissing match about what types have more mechanical failures, I've got volumes and volumes of accident reports on the shelf here (reading every one of them is part of my job description, as is developing training standards to ensure we dont have similar problems). Even if we isolate the search to just rudder problems, gonna be a hell of a lot more hits on the B-737 than there are on the airbus fleet.
Airplanes are just machines, and sometimes they will break. It's going to happen to stuff built by Airbus, and it's going to happen to stuff built by Boeing. Historically, there have been a lot more Boeing incidents than Airbus incidents, but that's simply because they have been building airplanes longer, and there's more of them flying. Statistically, measured in terms of accident rates per flight hour, or in terms of passenger miles carried, there's not a lot of difference between the fleets.
I've got slightly more than your average persons exposure to this business, and if pushed on making choices on what I will ride in, and what I wont, the aircraft type will not enter into the equation. It's not about what tools you use to do the job, but about how you look after the tools and train the staff once you have the equipment on the flight line.
The grand caravan is a great plane, but it's not the 'pickup truck', it's the '1 ton truck'. There is nothing in the cessna line anymore in the price/performance category the 180 and 185 on floats used to fill, which is the backbone for lots of remote lodges etc in the north. There's two choices, buy 20 year old used equipment, or buy a Found for this category. I first flew a caravan in '89, really like the plane, but at a million dollars a pop, it's not gonna happen for your average lodge. That's why 50 year old Beavers are still so popular. It's still way cheaper to maintain a 50 year old airplane, than it is to pay interest on the loans for a caravan.
The maule is a fun toy, but, it just doesn't have the load capacity. As we like to say, why is a maule a great plane for fishing, cuz there's so much room in the back to store your fishing rods. 2 seats back there, and an airplane which are no good for anything but fishing gear after you fill up the tanks and hang some floats under it.
In the late 80's, cessna was sued over an accident involving a 20 year old airplane which was proven to not be maintained up to the specs required by factory maintance manuals. the courts in thier wisdom still granted a multi million dollar product liability claim. The cessna production line was stopped the next day, and piper a couple days later. Most commuter manufacturers closed up shop within a year or two, after they satisfied outstanding orders.
From your list, LAX, JFK and SFO will be able to handle it. the rest dont matter. The whole purpose if the big airplane, is to get more passengers in and out of the major hubs. The point of the exercise is so an airline doesn't have to go to the smaller outlying locations you mention, with a single landing slot at the main hub, they can double the number of passengers in/out of that hub, alleviating the need to hassle with the small outlier airports.
If you want to buy a noisy, polluting aircraft, it's easy. There's lots of Boeing 707, 727, 737-100 and 737-200 equipment available pretty cheap on the used market. McDonnel Douglas dc-9 equipment is also available dirt cheap, and Lockheed L-1011's aren't exactly expensive anymore.
On the other hand, if you want quiet, fuel efficient airplanes, a really good place to start today, is in Brazil, the Embraer line fits the bill quite well.
Noise and pollution levels of airplanes have nothing to do with where they are built, and everything to do with when they were built.
The reality on the scheduling issue is airport capacity, busy airports simply cant handle more arrivals and departures. the only way to increase capacity is to use larger aircraft. Using ny/london as an example, most folks would prefer to wait a couple hours and arrive at Heathrow, rather than leave earlier, and arrive at Gatwick.
I've been seeing the PR out of Boeing for the last few years, with all the talk about how folks would rather use more frequent, smaller planes. It sounds good, but, doesn't quite equate with reality. After 28 years in the business, one thing i have learned. If the ticket is 25 dollars cheaper, most of the travelling public will happily wait 2 hours and save the money. Cheaper tickets happen when you cram more people into bigger airplanes. Business class travellers would rather have more frequent flights, but, the reality is, there's not enough of them to cover the increased operating costs. business travellers have learned to adjust thier schedules to fit those of the airlines, and the airlines are not going to reverse that process anytime soon.
And as for your terrorist paranoia, there's more than enough 747's in the sky today. If your fictional terrorist really wanted to get his money's worth out of that missle stored in his closet, he's got lots of targets today. The reality is, that missle is stored over with Iraq's WMD supply, ie non-existant. If it actually existed, it would have been used already.
Besides, the A380 is assembled in France. Terrorists would much rather pick a Boeing target, for political reasons. Americans should think twice when they play the terrorist card when comparing the airplanes, cuz airlines the world over realize full well that a Boeing aircraft is a much juicier target than an Airbus. It's not something that's discussed in public, but, airlines are factoring this in to making purchasing decisions today. The terrorist card is actually a serious strike against purchasing Boeing. Just another one of those little side effects from 9/11 that have long term negative impact on the us economy.
unless there's a severe price difference between airlines that use the non-American, non-European planes and those that do use American or European planes, I won't be flying on one.
How typical, so easy to badmouth the planes, but, if it's cheaper, you'll go ahead and get on them anyways.
My guess would be that this sort of personal hysteria is the reason that we don't see much of a market for planes from these countries.
Actually, it's more like ignorance of what they are riding on, because americans are climbing onto non-American and non-European airplanes every day by the thousands, altho i'm sure very few of them realize it. Between Embraer and Bombardier, a lot more airframes are being delivered to US airlines than Boeing and Airbus are providing.
God bless capitalism.
The reason there are no american manufacturers left in the sub 100 passenger jet category is because of the product liability lawsuits in the usa. Heck, even Boeing has special status, they only sell airplanes to the us government directly, all the rest of what they make is sold thru carribean shell corps to avoid the taxes and liabilities of being a manufacturer in the usa, and even that is changing now. Look very carefully at where components are going to be built for the newest models they are bringing out. Hint, you will have to travel to China to see the production facilities.
Large aircraft have 10 year lead times from initial design concept, to first deliveries. The Q400 (Dash 8) has been king of the commuters for the last 10 years (canadian airplane). The CRJ and EMB have emerged as the mainline of the small passenger jets (sub 100 passengers, canadian and brazillian airplanes) over the last 5 years. Now Airbus is emerging as king of the big iron. During this same period, even Boeing has been slowly starting to shift to offshore production, a process thats going to accellerate if they want to survive in the industry. When you factor in lead times, it's pretty obvious, with the exception of Boeing and all it's associated government contracts, the aerospace industry abandoned the usa in droves all at the same time, during the early 90's. this trend can be traced directly back to the product liability lawsuit which halted production at the cessna plants, it was a HUGE wakeup call for the industry, and started the wheels moving in earnest for aircraft manufacturing to get out of the usa.
Your beloved capitalism, and all it's associated lawsuits decimated the aircraft manufacturing business in the usa during the 80's. The assembly lines of Cessna, Piper, McDonnel Douglas and Lockheed all fell victim to the process. The USA was once the king of aircraft production, the world over, that's no longer the case. they compete head on with airbus in the 100+ categories, and there are no serious offerings out of america in the sub 100 passenger ranges.
I've been in this business for 28 years. I've watched the industry press as various designs and concepts go from 'early hype' to either 'abandoned' or 'flying' stages. It's pretty obvious that Boeing bent to political pressure, and the next batch from them will still have final assembly in the usa, but the components will be coming from all over, specfically a lot of the hardware from china, and the software from india. To anybody that's been watching the industry for a lot of years, it's pretty obvious, the groundwork has been laid. The next batch of Boeing products after the dreamliner, are going to have final assembly done in China.
The lead times and investment capital required in this industry are HUGE. Even if the usa fixed the legal system today, it would take at least 20 years for the industry to regain it's world dominance, but that wont happen because of the sheer cost of american labor. I watched the 380 take off, and listened to the commentary about a 'new age in aviation'. It was truely just that, the start of a new age in aviation.
The problem with a lot of software developers today, is they are still stuck in the mindset of 'sell the box to make the money'. They days of selling shrink-wrap are numbered, the big companies have seen this coming for a long time. The real revenue from software, is after sale service and support.
The oss model provides a fundamental shift in mindset that a lot of folks just 'dont get'. It takes the 'sale' out of the equation, and dumps all of the revenue into the 'service and support' category. For those who dont believe this is a viable business model, I advise you to take a look at the books over at Redhat, they are a matter of public record.
Mysql is probably the best known enterprise operating on this philosophy to deliver an application (vs rh delivering the os and associated apps). Some would say they are successful based on deployment, others would say based on revenues, and yet more will say it's not really a 'viable business'. All the analyst and sideline talk is cheap, the bottom line is the product, and i haven't heard horror stories of starving/overworked developers over at Mysql. I've heard lots of these stories coming out of EA.
For JasperSoft the real issue will be 'what is the value add they have for the product, and will the corporate world see enough value, to step up and purchase the value add?' If the answer to that question is yes, they will prosper, if it's not, they will wither and die, the market will choose.
Can this business model work? ofc it can. Just ask IBM how they do with a rebadged and value added apache based web system. Check out Redhat while you are at it. Then again, can the model fail? Sure can, take a look at SCO (formerly Caldera).
The question in this case is NOT wether or not JasperSoft started with an open source base, or a proprietary base. It's how they manage thier resources (capital, developers, sales, etc) after they start, and can they leverage those resources into a revenue stream that surpasses the burn rate. If they succeed in developing revenues that surpass the burn rate, the company will prosper, otherwise it'll wither and die. Actual development is but a small part of a successful company, and wether or not the starting foundation was open or closed source, is an even smaller part of the entire picture.
The reason it's not an issue for the U.S. to use nuclear power is because we're genuinely interested in only using nuclear power in virtue of its energy-providing capabilities, not in virtue of its WMD capabilities.
I'll believe that when the US stops manufacturing nuclear weapons. Until then, it's just a bunch of hypocritical pots hollering at the kettle....
What exactly happens when a nuke is detonated in space?
Most of the immediate damage caused by a nuke, comes from the pressure wave from the blast. In space, no atmosphere, no pressure wave. So, the impact from the pressure wave doesn't exist, so not much is damaged immediately. The chain reaction also lets off a lot of heat, that would definitely effect things in the immediate vicinity, it may even melt them. There will be a localized concentration of radiation for a period, but, there's lots of various forms of radiation in space already, again, will only effect things that cant take it (electronics and such), have little effect on things that can (rocks et al).
This is why i laugh every time the issue of meteor impact comes up here on/., and various folks want to 'nuke it'. A large meteor on an impact trajectory with earth is not going to be affected much by a nuclear explosion, unless the device is detonated well below it's surface. Just landing on it and blowing up, without an atmosphere, isn't going to do much of anything. Blowing up 'in the vicinity' is just going to shower the rock with more radiation, and make it even deadlier when it arrives. The only real solution to an impact trajectory meteor is to adjust it's trajectory, and a nuke the absolute WRONG way to do that. A controlled small expenditure of energy, over a long period, is the best way to adjust a trajectory. A large, uncontrolled expenditure of energy is the worst way to do it.
You obviously missed that chapter. The M$ software is proprietary, and will be kept here as the 'secret weapon'. When we do finally stumble on the borg (or they stumble on us), we'll seed the collective by planting Windows onto a drone. It'll only take a few days, and the entire collective will consist of millions of machines working at 2 tasks, first trying to fight off infections from other drones, and second, trying to infect other drones. The collective will grind to a halt, and humanity will prevail, until next week's episode....
You dont have to guess about the issues, just look at history. The soviets had a satellite de-orbit over northern canada many years ago. The search area for nuclear debris was rather large.
The politics of why they even bothered to look, and what was actually found, are another subject/debate unto themselves...
you are right, it was late, I wasn't remembering things quite clearly last nite. 386sx is the one with the neutered data bus, 486sx is the one with the co-processor section disabled.
Either way, it's still the same issue. Intel hardware from 33mhz and on was using a die size suceptible to shorts on the die from a gamma particle. The 16mhz parts were not subject to that, traces are to far apart.
But you are missing the most important detail. The old processors are 1.5 and 1.2 micron technology. The traces inside those chips have sufficient spacing, a gamma particle can hit one, but not two. When you get to the 486, you get to a smaller die size, and it's possible for a gamma particle to short two traces. This is why the 80386sx is used, the co-processor section of the chip is not used on the sx, it's the highest density portion of the chip, and far more suceptible to gamma particle problems.
It's MUCH easier to harden a processor that has the bigger die spacing, doesn't take much/any shielding for use inside the van allen belt. If you go to more modern stuff, you are going to need about 50 pounds of lead to shield it.
Actually, it takes a full tank, and 2 external rockets (which carry far more energy than the main fuel tank). on a single tank, the shuttle wouldn't even get off the pad.
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They do make a line of jets today, and the caravan, and they have started extremely limited production of a couple of the small models again. It's nothing compared to the product line they were cranking out back when the lawsuit shut them down. There's been a few changes in ownership along the way, and they went from being the world dominant manufacturer of light planes, to being an insignificant, almost non player in the market today, with the exception of the caravan. the only reason the caravan line survived, they had long term delivery contracts with fedex, couldn't afford to shut that down.
There's a lot of 'details' on this incident that most folks dont know about, a long string of details that added up to a major problem. In a nutshell, the airplane was to low, to slow. There was an altimeter error of 67 feet, so the pilots setting up for a low pass at 100 feet, actually levelled off at 30 feet. The engines were de-spooled because of the need to slow the aircraft. the altimeter error was critical at this point, the aircraft was established on a trajectory where physics would only allow level and descending flight, but it was below the treeline.
The aircraft was doomed when it levelled off, no matter what. Without the engines spooled up, there wasn't enough power available to effect a climb, and the aircraft was to slow to climb on kinetic energy alone. the computers didn't allow the nose up commands because it would have caused a stall.
If you read ALL of the information available on that incident, and sift thru all the politics of the conflicting reports, the big picture becomes pretty obvious. The airplane was to low (altimeter error), and once the crew realized they were below the treeline, go-around power was commanded, but, it was to late. It was physically impossible for the engines to develop the required thrust in the time available. The fcs didn't allow the pitch up command because it would have caused aerodynamic stall, and a much worse impact. In the final analysis, the flight control system did exactly what it was supposed to do, but the crew had placed the airframe in a situation where contact with the trees was inevitable. If the fcs had allowed the pitch up command, there would have been an uncontrolled stall accident, likely with no survivors. Instead, there was a controlled impact, very impressive looking fireball on the video, 3 deaths, and 133 survivors.
Every airplane that takes off, is eventually going to touch down. Surviveability of the touchdown is directly related to wether or not the aircraft is under control, and to a lesser extent, related to where it touches down. The computers had full control of an impossible situation, and 133 people survived. If the nose up command had been alllowed, likely nobody would have survived the impact after a stall event. It's a natural reaction for a pilot to try 'pull up' in a case like this one, and the override of the computerized systems likely saved a lot of lives. that's the part that never seems to get reported tho, the press loves to replay the clip over and over, with an implied emphasis on the assumption that a person could have flown that aircraft out of the situation. Physics was not going to allow that, once the plane levelled off on the low pass, it was doomed, the only question left, how bad would the crash be. 133 people survived because the flight control system didn't allow the airframe to leave 'controlled flight'.
As for the new Boeings, hate to burst your bubble on this subject, but all the new boeing equipment has the same type of fly by wire setup. the computers will tell the pilot to fuck off if s/he inputs commands that will cause the aircraft to leave the realms of controlled flight.
Taking a hundred passenger jets, converting them to air tankers, then putting them on a long term cost+ lease to the us air force, that's a subsidy...
I've done barrel rolls in airplanes that I'd never consider doing real aerobatics in.
Over the last 20 years there have been a lot of accidents where overweight was a major contributing factor, due to the low averages in use as 'standard'. The first real wake-up call to regulators came on the Arrow Air incident in Gander, where a DC-8 full of us service personnel made a big smoking fireball. there's been a lot of pressure back and forth within the industry since then, regulators trying to push standard weights up, airlines trying to keep them down.
Serious accidents in 2003/2004 respectively caused both sets of regulators to issue new 'recommended' guidelines for airlines as circulars. I dont know if the process has reached 'regulation' yet in the us, but it has in Canada, and it will in the us before year end if it's not already done.
It's interesting to note, with these new standards, american women are subtantially heavier than thier canadian counterparts. Having travelled extensively in both countries over the years, for once, the regulators got it right :)
Proper maintanence is the responsibility of the airline, not the manufacturer. Do you expect Ford to do oil changes and safety checks on your 10 year old car?
As long as airplanes are mechanical things, built by people, operated at high speed, also by more people, there are going to be occaisional incidents. The event chains leading up to most incidents can be traced back to human errors, but occaisionally the root cause is a mechanical failure of some type. If you want to get into a pissing match about what types have more mechanical failures, I've got volumes and volumes of accident reports on the shelf here (reading every one of them is part of my job description, as is developing training standards to ensure we dont have similar problems). Even if we isolate the search to just rudder problems, gonna be a hell of a lot more hits on the B-737 than there are on the airbus fleet.
Airplanes are just machines, and sometimes they will break. It's going to happen to stuff built by Airbus, and it's going to happen to stuff built by Boeing. Historically, there have been a lot more Boeing incidents than Airbus incidents, but that's simply because they have been building airplanes longer, and there's more of them flying. Statistically, measured in terms of accident rates per flight hour, or in terms of passenger miles carried, there's not a lot of difference between the fleets.
I've got slightly more than your average persons exposure to this business, and if pushed on making choices on what I will ride in, and what I wont, the aircraft type will not enter into the equation. It's not about what tools you use to do the job, but about how you look after the tools and train the staff once you have the equipment on the flight line.
The maule is a fun toy, but, it just doesn't have the load capacity. As we like to say, why is a maule a great plane for fishing, cuz there's so much room in the back to store your fishing rods. 2 seats back there, and an airplane which are no good for anything but fishing gear after you fill up the tanks and hang some floats under it.
It truely was the end of an industry.
From your list, LAX, JFK and SFO will be able to handle it. the rest dont matter. The whole purpose if the big airplane, is to get more passengers in and out of the major hubs. The point of the exercise is so an airline doesn't have to go to the smaller outlying locations you mention, with a single landing slot at the main hub, they can double the number of passengers in/out of that hub, alleviating the need to hassle with the small outlier airports.
I guess we would have to exclude skylab then...
On the other hand, if you want quiet, fuel efficient airplanes, a really good place to start today, is in Brazil, the Embraer line fits the bill quite well.
Noise and pollution levels of airplanes have nothing to do with where they are built, and everything to do with when they were built.
oh for mod points today, that's one of the best laffs so far in this thread.
I've been seeing the PR out of Boeing for the last few years, with all the talk about how folks would rather use more frequent, smaller planes. It sounds good, but, doesn't quite equate with reality. After 28 years in the business, one thing i have learned. If the ticket is 25 dollars cheaper, most of the travelling public will happily wait 2 hours and save the money. Cheaper tickets happen when you cram more people into bigger airplanes. Business class travellers would rather have more frequent flights, but, the reality is, there's not enough of them to cover the increased operating costs. business travellers have learned to adjust thier schedules to fit those of the airlines, and the airlines are not going to reverse that process anytime soon.
And as for your terrorist paranoia, there's more than enough 747's in the sky today. If your fictional terrorist really wanted to get his money's worth out of that missle stored in his closet, he's got lots of targets today. The reality is, that missle is stored over with Iraq's WMD supply, ie non-existant. If it actually existed, it would have been used already.
Besides, the A380 is assembled in France. Terrorists would much rather pick a Boeing target, for political reasons. Americans should think twice when they play the terrorist card when comparing the airplanes, cuz airlines the world over realize full well that a Boeing aircraft is a much juicier target than an Airbus. It's not something that's discussed in public, but, airlines are factoring this in to making purchasing decisions today. The terrorist card is actually a serious strike against purchasing Boeing. Just another one of those little side effects from 9/11 that have long term negative impact on the us economy.
How typical, so easy to badmouth the planes, but, if it's cheaper, you'll go ahead and get on them anyways.
My guess would be that this sort of personal hysteria is the reason that we don't see much of a market for planes from these countries.
Actually, it's more like ignorance of what they are riding on, because americans are climbing onto non-American and non-European airplanes every day by the thousands, altho i'm sure very few of them realize it. Between Embraer and Bombardier, a lot more airframes are being delivered to US airlines than Boeing and Airbus are providing.
God bless capitalism.
The reason there are no american manufacturers left in the sub 100 passenger jet category is because of the product liability lawsuits in the usa. Heck, even Boeing has special status, they only sell airplanes to the us government directly, all the rest of what they make is sold thru carribean shell corps to avoid the taxes and liabilities of being a manufacturer in the usa, and even that is changing now. Look very carefully at where components are going to be built for the newest models they are bringing out. Hint, you will have to travel to China to see the production facilities.
Large aircraft have 10 year lead times from initial design concept, to first deliveries. The Q400 (Dash 8) has been king of the commuters for the last 10 years (canadian airplane). The CRJ and EMB have emerged as the mainline of the small passenger jets (sub 100 passengers, canadian and brazillian airplanes) over the last 5 years. Now Airbus is emerging as king of the big iron. During this same period, even Boeing has been slowly starting to shift to offshore production, a process thats going to accellerate if they want to survive in the industry. When you factor in lead times, it's pretty obvious, with the exception of Boeing and all it's associated government contracts, the aerospace industry abandoned the usa in droves all at the same time, during the early 90's. this trend can be traced directly back to the product liability lawsuit which halted production at the cessna plants, it was a HUGE wakeup call for the industry, and started the wheels moving in earnest for aircraft manufacturing to get out of the usa.
Your beloved capitalism, and all it's associated lawsuits decimated the aircraft manufacturing business in the usa during the 80's. The assembly lines of Cessna, Piper, McDonnel Douglas and Lockheed all fell victim to the process. The USA was once the king of aircraft production, the world over, that's no longer the case. they compete head on with airbus in the 100+ categories, and there are no serious offerings out of america in the sub 100 passenger ranges.
I've been in this business for 28 years. I've watched the industry press as various designs and concepts go from 'early hype' to either 'abandoned' or 'flying' stages. It's pretty obvious that Boeing bent to political pressure, and the next batch from them will still have final assembly in the usa, but the components will be coming from all over, specfically a lot of the hardware from china, and the software from india. To anybody that's been watching the industry for a lot of years, it's pretty obvious, the groundwork has been laid. The next batch of Boeing products after the dreamliner, are going to have final assembly done in China.
The lead times and investment capital required in this industry are HUGE. Even if the usa fixed the legal system today, it would take at least 20 years for the industry to regain it's world dominance, but that wont happen because of the sheer cost of american labor. I watched the 380 take off, and listened to the commentary about a 'new age in aviation'. It was truely just that, the start of a new age in aviation.
There was a time when you had no choice, t
The oss model provides a fundamental shift in mindset that a lot of folks just 'dont get'. It takes the 'sale' out of the equation, and dumps all of the revenue into the 'service and support' category. For those who dont believe this is a viable business model, I advise you to take a look at the books over at Redhat, they are a matter of public record.
Mysql is probably the best known enterprise operating on this philosophy to deliver an application (vs rh delivering the os and associated apps). Some would say they are successful based on deployment, others would say based on revenues, and yet more will say it's not really a 'viable business'. All the analyst and sideline talk is cheap, the bottom line is the product, and i haven't heard horror stories of starving/overworked developers over at Mysql. I've heard lots of these stories coming out of EA.
For JasperSoft the real issue will be 'what is the value add they have for the product, and will the corporate world see enough value, to step up and purchase the value add?' If the answer to that question is yes, they will prosper, if it's not, they will wither and die, the market will choose.
Can this business model work? ofc it can. Just ask IBM how they do with a rebadged and value added apache based web system. Check out Redhat while you are at it. Then again, can the model fail? Sure can, take a look at SCO (formerly Caldera).
The question in this case is NOT wether or not JasperSoft started with an open source base, or a proprietary base. It's how they manage thier resources (capital, developers, sales, etc) after they start, and can they leverage those resources into a revenue stream that surpasses the burn rate. If they succeed in developing revenues that surpass the burn rate, the company will prosper, otherwise it'll wither and die. Actual development is but a small part of a successful company, and wether or not the starting foundation was open or closed source, is an even smaller part of the entire picture.
I'll believe that when the US stops manufacturing nuclear weapons. Until then, it's just a bunch of hypocritical pots hollering at the kettle....
Most of the immediate damage caused by a nuke, comes from the pressure wave from the blast. In space, no atmosphere, no pressure wave. So, the impact from the pressure wave doesn't exist, so not much is damaged immediately. The chain reaction also lets off a lot of heat, that would definitely effect things in the immediate vicinity, it may even melt them. There will be a localized concentration of radiation for a period, but, there's lots of various forms of radiation in space already, again, will only effect things that cant take it (electronics and such), have little effect on things that can (rocks et al).
This is why i laugh every time the issue of meteor impact comes up here on /., and various folks want to 'nuke it'. A large meteor on an impact trajectory with earth is not going to be affected much by a nuclear explosion, unless the device is detonated well below it's surface. Just landing on it and blowing up, without an atmosphere, isn't going to do much of anything. Blowing up 'in the vicinity' is just going to shower the rock with more radiation, and make it even deadlier when it arrives. The only real solution to an impact trajectory meteor is to adjust it's trajectory, and a nuke the absolute WRONG way to do that. A controlled small expenditure of energy, over a long period, is the best way to adjust a trajectory. A large, uncontrolled expenditure of energy is the worst way to do it.
You obviously missed that chapter. The M$ software is proprietary, and will be kept here as the 'secret weapon'. When we do finally stumble on the borg (or they stumble on us), we'll seed the collective by planting Windows onto a drone. It'll only take a few days, and the entire collective will consist of millions of machines working at 2 tasks, first trying to fight off infections from other drones, and second, trying to infect other drones. The collective will grind to a halt, and humanity will prevail, until next week's episode....
The politics of why they even bothered to look, and what was actually found, are another subject/debate unto themselves...
roll the clock forward another year.
'You might remember me from the cancelled shuttle program....'
Either way, it's still the same issue. Intel hardware from 33mhz and on was using a die size suceptible to shorts on the die from a gamma particle. The 16mhz parts were not subject to that, traces are to far apart.
It's MUCH easier to harden a processor that has the bigger die spacing, doesn't take much/any shielding for use inside the van allen belt. If you go to more modern stuff, you are going to need about 50 pounds of lead to shield it.
Actually, it takes a full tank, and 2 external rockets (which carry far more energy than the main fuel tank). on a single tank, the shuttle wouldn't even get off the pad.
yup, sitting in florida, buring up money like its going out of style, and not flying, is very unique....