Aircraft are assembled on robotic production lines, why can't they be maintained on them ?
Actually, they mostly aren't. Aircraft construction is still a highly-manual business. Part of that is because aircraft don't lend themselves well to automated methods, and part of it is because the low production figures don't justify the expense of an automated line. There's also the issue of quality control and certification standards; every single part has to be manually inspected.
If you're making tens of thousands of a given model car every year, you can justify an automated line. It doesn't work for aviation where your total lifetime production run might only be one or two thousand units over thirty years. There's also more variation in aircraft and design changes are much more frequent. It's just cheaper to pay people to build them than to try and make huge investments in automating the entire process.
It's a struggle to see why a few robotic arms and some conveyor belts can't do this.
Too many different airplane types, too many varying circumstances, and not enough economy of scale. It's not done because, once again, it's simply cheaper to pay people to do it.
I don't care about the version numbering, really... though it is a pain to have to do manual installs each time (I'm still set up for the old scheme where minor updates ran automatically, but major ones were manual).
What I do care about is the constant removal of functionality and the dumbing-down of the interface.
WTF? No, it's not "composite bombs". We're simply able to drop them more accurately. Get the bombs close enough to the target, and they don't need to be as powerful. There was just an article the other day where the last B53 (a 9MT freefall device designed to hit deeply-buried targets) was being dismantled because we can now put much smaller devices into the ground directly over the target, rather than landing them close by on the surface and relying on very high power.
Yes, the devices are simpler and easier to maintain, but that's just evolving technology.
Incidentally, that's the same thing we're seeing with conventional weapons. The standard fighter load used to be a couple of 2000lb unguided bombs (or 3-6 500lb bombs for each 2000lb one). A given target would usually take several aircraft, each carrying multiple bombs.
Then, along came developed laser-guided weapons, and that number dropped to a couple of 2000lb bombs.
Now, we're seeing lots of guided 500lb and even 250lb bombs. They aren't as powerful, but they land them closer to the target and get the same effect with less collateral damage, less performance impact on the aircraft, less cost and risk per target. We've even seen some inert bombs being used in combat--basically, the shell of a bomb with concrete filler instead of explosive, and a laser-guidance kit.
The US currently has enough warheads to destroy the world several hundred times over.
Quit with the massively overblown hyperbole. If what you were saying was true, and about 2000 warheads was enough to "destroy the world several hundred times over", the would would have been dead and gone a long time ago. Hiroshima would have taken out China and Siberia, too, and Trinity would have wiped out the US. Obviously, that didn't happen.
Nuclear weapons aren't magic "drop one and you wipe out and sterilize everything within a thousand miles" bombs. Yes, they're powerful--more so than people realize, in some ways--but in other ways, they aren't nearly as powerful as common "wisdom" would suggest.
Honestly, 2000 warheads is barely enough for a credible deterrent at all. Yes, the goal of a deterrent is to convince the other guy that you can bomb him back to the middle ages if he does something you don't like, but that takes a lot more than sprinkling five or six devices across the country and calling it done. A credible deterrent plan targets not population, but industrialization, transportation, and military facilities; you want to take out everything that makes it possible for him to fight a war or live in anything close to modern comfort. That takes a lot more than a handful of devices. Something like a railyard or airfield is probably going to take a few successful hits to truly render it unusable.
And then, of course, you can't just sit with the number you came up with there. Next, you have to consider redundancy; a good number of your warheads will fail to initiate, get shot down, or have a delivery failure (the rocket blows up, bomber aborts or is shot down, submarine doesn't get the message or is sunk, etc). And after that, you have to plan for maintenance; a very rough estimate is that a third of your stockpile will be out of service at any given time for maintenance (subs have to go into port for refits; bombers, missiles, and warheads themselves need maintenance and overhauls, etc.).
Remember, the goal isn't to try to be scary. Rather, the goal is to have enough to convince the other guy that he absolutely cannot win under any circumstance, so he shouldn't even think about it. We had that in the past. We might still have it. But we might not. And as long as politicians keep making cuts not based on what makes strategic sense, or with a coherent goal and policy in mind, but rather just trying to score political points by cutting back to some arbitrary number they pulled out of their ass, we make the risk of that happening greater.
Compile error: Statement without citation Compile error: Statement provided without evidence Compile error: Undefined term "liberal" Compile error: Attribute "bias" is not a property of class "reality"
Yes, he does mean it. The term "graduate" is used in multiple ways (at least in the US). It is also usually (or at least in my experience) pronounced differently depending on meaning. The following three examples are usually pronounced "grad-you-ate".
"To graduate" is to finish a degree or course of study. One graduates from high school. One graduates from a college or university with a bachelor's, master's, or PhD.
"Graduation" (grad-you-ay-shin) is the ceremony that marks the above with a conferral of the diploma, some robes, and funny hats with strings.
"Graduation requirements" are specific things (e.g., courses or standardized tests) that one must complete in order to graduate. They can be found at all levels of education.
GP was referring to the above, in the sense of a high school graduation requirement. You are referring to the following, usually pronounced "grad-you-it".
"Undergraduate" refers to the courses taken by students working on a bachelor's degree, or to the students themselves.
"Graduate" refers to the courses taken by students working on a master's or PhD, or to the students themselves.
Your argument is invalid because the government still requires the searches, private property or not. If it was that easy to legally get around Constitutional restrictions simply by hiring a private contractor, every police force and LE agency would be privatized by now.
In fact, if they really wanted to they could FORCE us to go through the cancer scanners if we wanted to fly at all, period. The fact that they provide an opt-out is rather generous, IMO, and an option I take advantage of every time.
The fact that the government insists we need to be virtually strip-searched and/or felt up at all is unreasonable. You're suggesting we need to be grateful that we're being fucked over because we're being offered lube.
Because when Boeing was floating around the idea of a new airplane to see if anyone would buy it, ANA was the first airline to plop down cash and say "we'll take 50". At the time, US airlines were flirting with bankruptcy and didn't have the cash to order new airplanes.
No, they did not! ANA was not responsible for engineering or subcontracting any parts. You're trying to give them credit for things they did not do. [i]You[/i] need to back up your statements that an airline somehow stepped in and did work better than the manufacturer, and pointing to an airline's reservations page doesn't do that.
Boeing fell behind on the project because it (1) set entirely too aggressive of a schedule, (2) farmed out not just the build but also the design of most of the aircraft to other companies, many of whom were not actually capable of doing the work, (3) failed to properly supervise said suppliers, and (4) failed to ensure the production capacity was there to make the required parts. They resolved those problems by sending their own people in to the suppliers to fix the problems and (if necessary) buying them out. ANA did have a part in saving Boeing's ass by agreeing to take delivery of the first few massively-overweight planes (albeit at a very steep discount) even though they didn't meet the performance specs; that kept Boeing from having to write more planes off as sunk costs (three already have been).
I work in the manufacturing side of the aerospace industry, and have followed the program since its inception. I haven't seen any evidence throughout that time that ANA had any hand in resolving Boeing's program issues.
Airline customers in the US don't care about service if it costs even another dime more. The airlines have learned that 95% of US passengers care about:
Customers whine a lot about not having a TV to stare at for the whole flight, not having hot 4-start-restaurant-quality food, or not having a young skinny flight attendant to hit on, but in the end, money talks, and the cheapest flight gets chosen.
ANA didn't engineer anything, it didn't step in and save the day. ANA was just the first airline to put its money where its mouth was and commit to a purchase.
The entire 787 program is a textbook case of piss-poor program and supply-chain management that shows what happens when the bean-counters and marketing weasels define the schedule and plan production without input from engineering. Nobody stepped in from the outside and saved they day; Boeing had to work it out by itself.
No, but silly overstatements (like a 9MT device wiping out everything within hundreds of miles, including underground bunkers) make it hard to hold rational discussion about deterrence policy.
You could probably drop it in the sea and create a tidal wave so big it would cover a medium sized country. It wouldn't just reduce navies near by, it would eradicate anything near the entire ocean.
You're overstating that by a few orders of magnitude. Castle Bravo was 15 MT and didn't cause anything near the effects you postulate.
As powerful and terrible as they are, people still greatly exaggerate the power of nuclear devices. Blast and damage radii don't scale linearly with power.
A few days ago there was one about an eight-year old math prodigy who builds DNA analyzers out of LEGO and what to do with him. The most common suggestions were to make sure he plays plenty of sports and maybe join the boy scouts.
Were those suggestions really intended to prevent the kid from doing his stuff and instead make him into the average jock? Or were they just suggestions to make sure the kid gets some measure of physical activity for his own health, and gets some level of social interaction so he's capable of functioning in regular society? There's a big difference between the two.
It is also worth noting that our current concept of work makes all those things (health, education, and childcare) a lot harder to do, and extremely difficult to do well. People do not have time in their week to cook good meals, do exercise, or spend as much time with their children as they would like to.
People usually do have more time to do those things than you imply--they just don't manage that time or money well. Every minute spent watching TV, for example, could be used doing one of those other things instead. Every dollar spent on cable/satellite TV, soft drinks, booze, or tobacco products could be saved, spent on better things, or not worked.
I don't think those signs will go anywhere for takeoff or landing, because regardless of whether the devices produce electrical interference or not, you don't want lots of items loose in the cabin when the aircraft is more likely to experience sudden large accelerations--they can wind up flying around and hitting people. You also don't want the passengers getting distracted or encumbered by their ipads should the aircraft need to be evacuated.
I think they've realized that, and they've already bought out at least one or two of their subcontractors on the 787 program--that's part of why they set up a second line in Charleston (the tail cone was already being made there).
I would expect that future aircraft (from Boeing and others) will be made more in-house, with less outsourcing of major assemblies and structure. It'll never go away completely, though; things like avionics, engines, sensors, landing gear, etc. will continue to be purchased from companies that specialize in such things.
We certainly could build a next-generation Concorde. It would be beautiful and very fast.
Unfortunately, 99% of airline customers value low price over speed. Only a very tiny number are willing to pay the premium for that speed (ie, several times more than a regular ticket), and there aren't enough of them to justify keeping Concorde in the air, much less the development of a new supersonic airliner. Plus, there's the (overstated?) concern of sonic booms over land.
In the next ten years, though, I expect to see a supersonic business jet or two, offering that speed to those who are willing and able to pay for it. There's at least some kind of market for this.
The constant delays owed a lot to spectacularly terrible Dilbert-esque program management. That is, the kind where you farm out design and assembly to a bunch of subcontractors but don't stay on top of them through the process, or the kind where you slap the airplane together temporarily so you can roll it out on marketing's absurd target date, only to cause yourself several additional months of rework. There were also a ton of supply-chain problems (fastener shortages and the like).
Further, management was way too optimistic with the original schedule, which required production to ramp up before all the bugs had been worked out. They gambled that there wouldn't be significant rework required, but as it turned out, there was.
You probably made a good choice. Ridgecrest is in the middle of nowhere. I went out for an interview a few years ago, and other than the base and its accompanying town, there's nothing else for 60+ miles but desert. And it's in California, with all the nuttiness and high prices that brings.
I don't want an interface that "contextually adapts" to what it thinks I'm doing. I don't want a button bar that makes me have to dig for commands so that it can make the things it thinks I use most bigger--maybe that would be good for my grandmother (who uses the phones with the super-large buttons) but I still have 20:15 vision.
If a button doesn't apply in a given situation, gray it out. That way I know it can't be used. Don't hide it somewhere and leave me spending five minutes wondering "where the hell did it go?" Leave all of my commands up on the screen so that they're in the same place every time I need them and don't have to dig through tabs or menus or anything to find them. And make the interface consistent, with everything in neat rows and about the same size instead of haphazardly shotgunned onto a menu bar.
I still run Office 2003 at home and at work, something I'm thankful for every day.
I'm getting really tired of interfaces (Office, Firefox, and now Explorer) that decide to move commands around and reduce them to the "grandma functions" and making it tedious (if even possible at all) to get the old interface back.
Instead of getting a truck, I just bought a small trailer for my Focus and installed a hitch. I've pulled appliances, bikes, a boat, a barbecue setup, sheets of 4x8 plywood, furniture, etc.
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Aircraft are assembled on robotic production lines, why can't they be maintained on them ?
Actually, they mostly aren't. Aircraft construction is still a highly-manual business. Part of that is because aircraft don't lend themselves well to automated methods, and part of it is because the low production figures don't justify the expense of an automated line. There's also the issue of quality control and certification standards; every single part has to be manually inspected.
If you're making tens of thousands of a given model car every year, you can justify an automated line. It doesn't work for aviation where your total lifetime production run might only be one or two thousand units over thirty years. There's also more variation in aircraft and design changes are much more frequent. It's just cheaper to pay people to build them than to try and make huge investments in automating the entire process.
It's a struggle to see why a few robotic arms and some conveyor belts can't do this.
Too many different airplane types, too many varying circumstances, and not enough economy of scale. It's not done because, once again, it's simply cheaper to pay people to do it.
I don't care about the version numbering, really... though it is a pain to have to do manual installs each time (I'm still set up for the old scheme where minor updates ran automatically, but major ones were manual).
What I do care about is the constant removal of functionality and the dumbing-down of the interface.
WTF? No, it's not "composite bombs". We're simply able to drop them more accurately. Get the bombs close enough to the target, and they don't need to be as powerful. There was just an article the other day where the last B53 (a 9MT freefall device designed to hit deeply-buried targets) was being dismantled because we can now put much smaller devices into the ground directly over the target, rather than landing them close by on the surface and relying on very high power.
Yes, the devices are simpler and easier to maintain, but that's just evolving technology.
Incidentally, that's the same thing we're seeing with conventional weapons. The standard fighter load used to be a couple of 2000lb unguided bombs (or 3-6 500lb bombs for each 2000lb one). A given target would usually take several aircraft, each carrying multiple bombs.
Then, along came developed laser-guided weapons, and that number dropped to a couple of 2000lb bombs.
Now, we're seeing lots of guided 500lb and even 250lb bombs. They aren't as powerful, but they land them closer to the target and get the same effect with less collateral damage, less performance impact on the aircraft, less cost and risk per target. We've even seen some inert bombs being used in combat--basically, the shell of a bomb with concrete filler instead of explosive, and a laser-guidance kit.
The US currently has enough warheads to destroy the world several hundred times over.
Quit with the massively overblown hyperbole. If what you were saying was true, and about 2000 warheads was enough to "destroy the world several hundred times over", the would would have been dead and gone a long time ago. Hiroshima would have taken out China and Siberia, too, and Trinity would have wiped out the US. Obviously, that didn't happen.
Nuclear weapons aren't magic "drop one and you wipe out and sterilize everything within a thousand miles" bombs. Yes, they're powerful--more so than people realize, in some ways--but in other ways, they aren't nearly as powerful as common "wisdom" would suggest.
Honestly, 2000 warheads is barely enough for a credible deterrent at all. Yes, the goal of a deterrent is to convince the other guy that you can bomb him back to the middle ages if he does something you don't like, but that takes a lot more than sprinkling five or six devices across the country and calling it done. A credible deterrent plan targets not population, but industrialization, transportation, and military facilities; you want to take out everything that makes it possible for him to fight a war or live in anything close to modern comfort. That takes a lot more than a handful of devices. Something like a railyard or airfield is probably going to take a few successful hits to truly render it unusable.
And then, of course, you can't just sit with the number you came up with there. Next, you have to consider redundancy; a good number of your warheads will fail to initiate, get shot down, or have a delivery failure (the rocket blows up, bomber aborts or is shot down, submarine doesn't get the message or is sunk, etc). And after that, you have to plan for maintenance; a very rough estimate is that a third of your stockpile will be out of service at any given time for maintenance (subs have to go into port for refits; bombers, missiles, and warheads themselves need maintenance and overhauls, etc.).
Remember, the goal isn't to try to be scary. Rather, the goal is to have enough to convince the other guy that he absolutely cannot win under any circumstance, so he shouldn't even think about it. We had that in the past. We might still have it. But we might not. And as long as politicians keep making cuts not based on what makes strategic sense, or with a coherent goal and policy in mind, but rather just trying to score political points by cutting back to some arbitrary number they pulled out of their ass, we make the risk of that happening greater.
Compile error: Statement without citation
Compile error: Statement provided without evidence
Compile error: Undefined term "liberal"
Compile error: Attribute "bias" is not a property of class "reality"
Yes, he does mean it. The term "graduate" is used in multiple ways (at least in the US). It is also usually (or at least in my experience) pronounced differently depending on meaning. The following three examples are usually pronounced "grad-you-ate".
"To graduate" is to finish a degree or course of study. One graduates from high school. One graduates from a college or university with a bachelor's, master's, or PhD.
"Graduation" (grad-you-ay-shin) is the ceremony that marks the above with a conferral of the diploma, some robes, and funny hats with strings.
"Graduation requirements" are specific things (e.g., courses or standardized tests) that one must complete in order to graduate. They can be found at all levels of education.
GP was referring to the above, in the sense of a high school graduation requirement. You are referring to the following, usually pronounced "grad-you-it".
"Undergraduate" refers to the courses taken by students working on a bachelor's degree, or to the students themselves.
"Graduate" refers to the courses taken by students working on a master's or PhD, or to the students themselves.
Your argument is invalid because the government still requires the searches, private property or not. If it was that easy to legally get around Constitutional restrictions simply by hiring a private contractor, every police force and LE agency would be privatized by now.
In fact, if they really wanted to they could FORCE us to go through the cancer scanners if we wanted to fly at all, period. The fact that they provide an opt-out is rather generous, IMO, and an option I take advantage of every time.
The fact that the government insists we need to be virtually strip-searched and/or felt up at all is unreasonable. You're suggesting we need to be grateful that we're being fucked over because we're being offered lube.
Because when Boeing was floating around the idea of a new airplane to see if anyone would buy it, ANA was the first airline to plop down cash and say "we'll take 50". At the time, US airlines were flirting with bankruptcy and didn't have the cash to order new airplanes.
The 787 was behind schedule due to engineering and manufacturing issues
Yep.
ANA wanted a realized version of the design
As did all of the other companies.
ANA strikes a deal with Boeing - ANA hires out and pays for the remaining portions of the 787 to get it into production
[Citation needed]
ANA chooses the right companies,
[Citation needed]
the re-engineered and realized parts go beyond even Boeing's designs/specifications
[Citation needed]
787's go into production, ANA gets the first batch
ANA got the first batch because it was the first one to place an order, not because of any supposed "engineering" work you claim it did.
No, they did not! ANA was not responsible for engineering or subcontracting any parts. You're trying to give them credit for things they did not do. [i]You[/i] need to back up your statements that an airline somehow stepped in and did work better than the manufacturer, and pointing to an airline's reservations page doesn't do that.
Boeing fell behind on the project because it (1) set entirely too aggressive of a schedule, (2) farmed out not just the build but also the design of most of the aircraft to other companies, many of whom were not actually capable of doing the work, (3) failed to properly supervise said suppliers, and (4) failed to ensure the production capacity was there to make the required parts. They resolved those problems by sending their own people in to the suppliers to fix the problems and (if necessary) buying them out. ANA did have a part in saving Boeing's ass by agreeing to take delivery of the first few massively-overweight planes (albeit at a very steep discount) even though they didn't meet the performance specs; that kept Boeing from having to write more planes off as sunk costs (three already have been).
I work in the manufacturing side of the aerospace industry, and have followed the program since its inception. I haven't seen any evidence throughout that time that ANA had any hand in resolving Boeing's program issues.
Airline customers in the US don't care about service if it costs even another dime more. The airlines have learned that 95% of US passengers care about:
1. Low price ....
2. Low price
3. Low price
4. Low price
5. Low price
6. Schedule
7. Low price
Customers whine a lot about not having a TV to stare at for the whole flight, not having hot 4-start-restaurant-quality food, or not having a young skinny flight attendant to hit on, but in the end, money talks, and the cheapest flight gets chosen.
ANA didn't engineer anything, it didn't step in and save the day. ANA was just the first airline to put its money where its mouth was and commit to a purchase.
The entire 787 program is a textbook case of piss-poor program and supply-chain management that shows what happens when the bean-counters and marketing weasels define the schedule and plan production without input from engineering. Nobody stepped in from the outside and saved they day; Boeing had to work it out by itself.
No, but silly overstatements (like a 9MT device wiping out everything within hundreds of miles, including underground bunkers) make it hard to hold rational discussion about deterrence policy.
You could probably drop it in the sea and create a tidal wave so big it would cover a medium sized country. It wouldn't just reduce navies near by, it would eradicate anything near the entire ocean.
You're overstating that by a few orders of magnitude. Castle Bravo was 15 MT and didn't cause anything near the effects you postulate.
As powerful and terrible as they are, people still greatly exaggerate the power of nuclear devices. Blast and damage radii don't scale linearly with power.
a Clarke story...
A few days ago there was one about an eight-year old math prodigy who builds DNA analyzers out of LEGO and what to do with him. The most common suggestions were to make sure he plays plenty of sports and maybe join the boy scouts.
Were those suggestions really intended to prevent the kid from doing his stuff and instead make him into the average jock? Or were they just suggestions to make sure the kid gets some measure of physical activity for his own health, and gets some level of social interaction so he's capable of functioning in regular society? There's a big difference between the two.
And GP said "Nimitz-class carriers", implying at least two of them. Most likely, it would be Nimitz and Eisenhower, for a total of three ships.
It is also worth noting that our current concept of work makes all those things (health, education, and childcare) a lot harder to do, and extremely difficult to do well. People do not have time in their week to cook good meals, do exercise, or spend as much time with their children as they would like to.
People usually do have more time to do those things than you imply--they just don't manage that time or money well. Every minute spent watching TV, for example, could be used doing one of those other things instead. Every dollar spent on cable/satellite TV, soft drinks, booze, or tobacco products could be saved, spent on better things, or not worked.
I don't think those signs will go anywhere for takeoff or landing, because regardless of whether the devices produce electrical interference or not, you don't want lots of items loose in the cabin when the aircraft is more likely to experience sudden large accelerations--they can wind up flying around and hitting people. You also don't want the passengers getting distracted or encumbered by their ipads should the aircraft need to be evacuated.
I think they've realized that, and they've already bought out at least one or two of their subcontractors on the 787 program--that's part of why they set up a second line in Charleston (the tail cone was already being made there).
I would expect that future aircraft (from Boeing and others) will be made more in-house, with less outsourcing of major assemblies and structure. It'll never go away completely, though; things like avionics, engines, sensors, landing gear, etc. will continue to be purchased from companies that specialize in such things.
We certainly could build a next-generation Concorde. It would be beautiful and very fast.
Unfortunately, 99% of airline customers value low price over speed. Only a very tiny number are willing to pay the premium for that speed (ie, several times more than a regular ticket), and there aren't enough of them to justify keeping Concorde in the air, much less the development of a new supersonic airliner. Plus, there's the (overstated?) concern of sonic booms over land.
In the next ten years, though, I expect to see a supersonic business jet or two, offering that speed to those who are willing and able to pay for it. There's at least some kind of market for this.
The constant delays owed a lot to spectacularly terrible Dilbert-esque program management. That is, the kind where you farm out design and assembly to a bunch of subcontractors but don't stay on top of them through the process, or the kind where you slap the airplane together temporarily so you can roll it out on marketing's absurd target date, only to cause yourself several additional months of rework. There were also a ton of supply-chain problems (fastener shortages and the like).
Further, management was way too optimistic with the original schedule, which required production to ramp up before all the bugs had been worked out. They gambled that there wouldn't be significant rework required, but as it turned out, there was.
You probably made a good choice. Ridgecrest is in the middle of nowhere. I went out for an interview a few years ago, and other than the base and its accompanying town, there's nothing else for 60+ miles but desert. And it's in California, with all the nuttiness and high prices that brings.
I don't want an interface that "contextually adapts" to what it thinks I'm doing. I don't want a button bar that makes me have to dig for commands so that it can make the things it thinks I use most bigger--maybe that would be good for my grandmother (who uses the phones with the super-large buttons) but I still have 20:15 vision.
If a button doesn't apply in a given situation, gray it out. That way I know it can't be used. Don't hide it somewhere and leave me spending five minutes wondering "where the hell did it go?" Leave all of my commands up on the screen so that they're in the same place every time I need them and don't have to dig through tabs or menus or anything to find them. And make the interface consistent, with everything in neat rows and about the same size instead of haphazardly shotgunned onto a menu bar.
I still run Office 2003 at home and at work, something I'm thankful for every day.
I'm getting really tired of interfaces (Office, Firefox, and now Explorer) that decide to move commands around and reduce them to the "grandma functions" and making it tedious (if even possible at all) to get the old interface back.
Instead of getting a truck, I just bought a small trailer for my Focus and installed a hitch. I've pulled appliances, bikes, a boat, a barbecue setup, sheets of 4x8 plywood, furniture, etc.