The problem with NASA, and lawyered up entities Government entities, is that they want to do it right the first time.
OTOH, check out how the likes of SpaceX do it, they know they are going to run into explosions and failures but they treat it as experiments.
NASA is like Classic Greek Science, they know everything, lawyers playing at Science.... SpaceX is like Western Empirical Science, engineers and scientists doing actual Science, they learn from facts.
Classic Greek Science is very expensive and inductive...
Western Empirical Science is a lot cheaper and deductive...
Don't blame Boeing, blame NASA and the Government.
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Speculation.
IMHO, the Wall Street Machine ( and by that I include the London and Euro based globalist bankers and oligarchs ) long ago gave up their usefulness to society: To Facilitate the Flow of Capital.
Instead, they have become a casino. The whole thing about analysis of stock valuations in regards to fundamentally disconnected criteria, such as the history of the stock values per se, is completely speculative and self fulfilling. The notion of "rocket scientists" in Wall Street, "stock analysis", etc, is more nothing that statistical analysis of history mostly devoid of any valid connection to the financial behavior of the companies themselves. Useless to predict the future, except as noted, a self fulfilling way.
And then a plane falls out of the sky and the "rocket science" crashes.
Surely you are not suggesting that commercial aircraft industry not be heavily regulated?
If Boeing cannot build safe aircraft, they deserve to fail financially, just as they have failed technically.
^ You are changing the subject.
(And Boeing has NOT FAILED TECHNICALLY ❗)
My comment was specific to Space Systems, not Commercial Airplanes. There is NO correlation between both companies in terms of how they approach the business. Indeed, they are 180 degrees apart.
Space Systems is bedded on the NASA model of prototypes... most space craft are hand made prototypes. Cost is very high and quality is very important. Testing is mostly analysis based. Meaning, very theoretical.
Commercial Airplanes is based on production techniques. Very few prototypes. Cost is pushed low for profit. Quality should be very important but it can screwed with by Sales and Marketing. Testing is empirical... with pre-production aircraft.
...
Space X is an interesting proposition... they are transitioning the Space Systems model to Commercial Airplanes. Their current model is actually valid in that still places quality above profit.
...
The engineering side of Commercial Airplanes is still very good. They just need to get the bean counters and lawyers-who are stuck on quarterly performance- off from running the company.
The 737MAX was a decision to bypass making a 797... at the time the 787 was using technologies that were considered revolutionary in the industry... the use of carbon fiber worked out fine but going with an electric aircraft ran into the battery issues. So, a mini 797 would have shared those issues, and it was deemed a Big Risk. I agree with that decision, at the time. Perhaps a new wing box could have been designed, but that too would have been very expensive for what really is a transitional aircraft. ( At the time, the 797 was supposed to be the 2030 aircraft, with the "new" 737 a transitional model - something to hold the fort until the 787 was fully checked out ).
The 737MAX introduced new handling characteristics that should have forced a recertification of the plane... but a number of Cheap *** Far Eastern airlines didn't want to spend the money. so Sales and Marketing did their best to hide the new handling characteristics and then avoided the requirement that air speed indicators HAD TO BE redundant.. The end result was that crews did not learn the proper techniques to handle unexpected -for the crew- behaviors. Behaviors that were expected from a design stand point.
Now then, the 737MAX should have been the 797... hopefully, now that the 787's technology is sufficiently mature, Boeing will make the leap to a single isle carbon aircraft.... IMHO, a 14 foot wide 797 with modern high pass turbofans will impact the 320Neo to the point where Airbus will be forced to do a single isle 360.
BTW, the 737MAX is actually a very nice airplane. The cabin is an improvement... a big one.
One more item about how the issues at Boeing Commercial are driven by the bean counters... the manufacturing team at Commercial decided to outsource lots of parts. Even the wings to Japan. Fortunately, the Japanese have a culture of quality, so that worked -but it was not cheap. But other vendors created a lot of headaches... which is still the current source of problems. The management needs to insource back many of those vendors, or create a culture of mutual gain partnership. (think how American Honda handles their Tier 1 and Tier 2 'partners' vs the almost adversarial way of how GM and Ford do it).
The mainstreammedia propaganda machine are on a Boeing tear right now... -follow the money-... but that's because they're just propaganda written by flunkies who failed their only "science" class in the 7th grade.
(And Boeing has NOT FAILED TECHNICALLY ❗)
My comment was specific to Space Systems, not Commercial Airplanes. There is NO correlation between both companies in terms of how they approach the business. Indeed, they are 180 degrees apart.
Space Systems is bedded on the NASA model of prototypes... most space craft are hand made prototypes. Cost is very high and quality is very important. Testing is mostly analysis based. Meaning, very theoretical.
Commercial Airplanes is based on production techniques. Very few prototypes. Cost is pushed low for profit. Quality should be very important but it can screwed with by Sales and Marketing. Testing is empirical... with pre-production aircraft.
...
Space X is an interesting proposition... they are transitioning the Space Systems model to Commercial Airplanes. Their current model is actually valid in that still places quality above profit.
...
The engineering side of Commercial Airplanes is still very good. They just need to get the bean counters and lawyers-who are stuck on quarterly performance- off from running the company.
The 737MAX was a decision to bypass making a 797... at the time the 787 was using technologies that were considered revolutionary in the industry... the use of carbon fiber worked out fine but going with an electric aircraft ran into the battery issues. So, a mini 797 would have shared those issues, and it was deemed a Big Risk. I agree with that decision, at the time. Perhaps a new wing box could have been designed, but that too would have been very expensive for what really is a transitional aircraft. ( At the time, the 797 was supposed to be the 2030 aircraft, with the "new" 737 a transitional model - something to hold the fort until the 787 was fully checked out ).
The 737MAX introduced new handling characteristics that should have forced a recertification of the plane... but a number of Cheap *** Far Eastern airlines didn't want to spend the money. so Sales and Marketing did their best to hide the new handling characteristics and then avoided the requirement that air speed indicators HAD TO BE redundant.. The end result was that crews did not learn the proper techniques to handle unexpected -for the crew- behaviors. Behaviors that were expected from a design stand point.
Now then, the 737MAX should have been the 797... hopefully, now that the 787's technology is sufficiently mature, Boeing will make the leap to a single isle carbon aircraft.... IMHO, a 14 foot wide 797 with modern high pass turbofans will impact the 320Neo to the point where Airbus will be forced to do a single isle 360.
BTW, the 737MAX is actually a very nice airplane. The cabin is an improvement... a big one.
One more item about how the issues at Boeing Commercial are driven by the bean counters... the manufacturing team at Commercial decided to outsource lots of parts. Even the wings to Japan. Fortunately, the Japanese have a culture of quality, so that worked -but it was not cheap. But other vendors created a lot of headaches... which is still the current source of problems. The management needs to insource back many of those vendors, or create a culture of mutual gain partnership. (think how American Honda handles their Tier 1 and Tier 2 'partners' vs the almost adversarial way of how GM and Ford do it).
The mainstream
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Here is how astute the MacDac "management" was: they decided that betting $10 billion on developing a new aircraft was too rich when they could spend that much on valuable stock buybacks (thus kiting executive compensation) so they instead decided to subcontract almost the entire airplane to third party suppliers, even the wing, the crown jewel of airliner design, going to Mitsubishi, who have no small aerospace ambitions of their own. According to the Superior Management Intellects the total risk to Boeing should have been $5.5 billion.
This meant, however, that the contractors would take much of the profit, however beancounter obsession with RONA (Return On Net Assets) rewards hollowing out companies by selling off useful chunks [1] but keeping the MBAs.
The supposedly lower cash risk did not work out that way. Vought, one of the contractors, screwed the pooch so badly that Boeing ended up acquiring them for $1 billion including debt forgiveness, and delays with others meant massive cost overruns. As a result 787 development ended up costing between $22 billion to $32 billion, and revenue-sharing with suppliers means Boeing may never break even on the program.
[1] Hence Boeing selling much of their fabrication capacity as Spirit Aerosystems to Onex for $950 million in 2005 ($1.5 billion in 2004 dollars), and now saying they'll take it back in-house for the low-low price of... over $4 billion, say $4.5 billion once all is said & done, paying 3x of what they got in 2005 for a return of -6% over 19 years. The business acumen needed to realize such a margin is astonishing.
Intel's new 5 nanometre process may surprise people and they seem to be picking up the pace on GPU development. More than that publicly available information I cannot speak without lawyers descending like a cloud of hornets; suffice it to say that if things go well then in a couple of years INTC could be the next meme stonk.
It's ALL balls, b*******, and poppycock in the short term. In the long term stocks tend to revert to proper valuation, but as a reddit memestonker on r/wallstreetbets says: "I can stay retarded longer than they can stay solvent."
I worked with an exec that came from the aerospace industry. He told me most passenger aircraft barely break even over their lifespan. Make of it what you will, but I recall Boeing and Airbus getting billions in tax breaks and government funding. Would these two companies have made it without state help over the years?
DSP_Geek, you miss the point: the whole idea of selling off bits of the company and hollowing what you keep out is it drives up stock prices (for a while) and the result is the execs make a killing. To hell with the original reason d etra of a business to ‘profitably serve it’s chosen markets’, it’s all about the stock price today. Everything else comes 2nd.
I agree, hence my disparaging remark about beancounter obsession with RONA -- it kites up the stock on Wall Street so execs cash in stock grants at higher prices.
You can thank consummate charlatan Milton Friedman for this state of affairs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
You can thank consummate charlatan Milton Friedman for this state of affairs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
This is another side of the story
One of my buddies is a seasoned first officer on the max in a national carrier. They simulate on this exact scenario hoping they will never need to be in this situation.
That particular flight, junior captain (new to plane) was in tow. 10 mins after takeoff, this happened. It was a good thing the junior captain panicked and immediately handled controls to the first officer.
They have 11 seconds to turn off automation and fly by hand. Additional challenge was this in the Philippines with mountainous terrain and they hadn’t reach cruising altitude.
Managed to land safely, captain reading off the manual, first officer landing without his usual instruments.
He was still shaking when he spoke to me the next day. Joked he was a national hero and to expect roses from the government. But all he got was endless interviews from the authorities.
One could imagine scenarios in which things don’t go right. Airlines are also complicit in flying the Max, and keeping hush when things go bad. In this case, the board decides that any news is bad news.
As for my buddy, he is moving to wide body this year. He loved flying the 737 and had the right training. Airbus prompts the pilot what to do, whereas 737’s requires the pilot to do a lot more work when things don’t work.
One of my buddies is a seasoned first officer on the max in a national carrier. They simulate on this exact scenario hoping they will never need to be in this situation.
That particular flight, junior captain (new to plane) was in tow. 10 mins after takeoff, this happened. It was a good thing the junior captain panicked and immediately handled controls to the first officer.
They have 11 seconds to turn off automation and fly by hand. Additional challenge was this in the Philippines with mountainous terrain and they hadn’t reach cruising altitude.
Managed to land safely, captain reading off the manual, first officer landing without his usual instruments.
He was still shaking when he spoke to me the next day. Joked he was a national hero and to expect roses from the government. But all he got was endless interviews from the authorities.
One could imagine scenarios in which things don’t go right. Airlines are also complicit in flying the Max, and keeping hush when things go bad. In this case, the board decides that any news is bad news.
As for my buddy, he is moving to wide body this year. He loved flying the 737 and had the right training. Airbus prompts the pilot what to do, whereas 737’s requires the pilot to do a lot more work when things don’t work.
OTOH, Airbus gets in the way of the pilot too.
(1) There was an Airbus that broke off its tail on takeoff from JFK. The pilot and computer fought each other until the motions of the flight controls were so severe they broke... plane crashed into Jamaica Bay.
(2) The Airbus 380 that blew an engine on take off from Singapore. It took the crew almost half an hour to dismiss all the alarms -and pursuant screens/menus- the computers were throwing at them until they could reach the controls they wanted to cut off fuel, etc... and fly the aircraft back to the airport.
(3) Airbus puts a laptop in front of the pilot and a joy stick to the side. Boeing puts an actual yoke in front of the pilot. When all goes well, the computer flies the plane, but when the SHTF I want the pilot to take over.
(4) Boeing sales and marketing screwed up allowing sales of the 737MAX without the redundant speed sensor system. ALL planes should be required to have them installed.
(1) There was an Airbus that broke off its tail on takeoff from JFK. The pilot and computer fought each other until the motions of the flight controls were so severe they broke... plane crashed into Jamaica Bay.
(2) The Airbus 380 that blew an engine on take off from Singapore. It took the crew almost half an hour to dismiss all the alarms -and pursuant screens/menus- the computers were throwing at them until they could reach the controls they wanted to cut off fuel, etc... and fly the aircraft back to the airport.
(3) Airbus puts a laptop in front of the pilot and a joy stick to the side. Boeing puts an actual yoke in front of the pilot. When all goes well, the computer flies the plane, but when the SHTF I want the pilot to take over.
(4) Boeing sales and marketing screwed up allowing sales of the 737MAX without the redundant speed sensor system. ALL planes should be required to have them installed.
He was no charlatan. You should view his archived broadcasts on youtube.
In the economic pantheon.
Friedman may or may not have believed what he claimed, but corporate rugged individualism does not work in a free society.
Should oil, tobacco, financial, and auto companies lie, cheat, and commit fraud and mass harm in the name of "shareholder value"?
The vast majority will not agree to that.
Should oil, tobacco, financial, and auto companies lie, cheat, and commit fraud and mass harm in the name of "shareholder value"?
The vast majority will not agree to that.
I have and I remain unimpressed. I won’t say more because the mods will shut this thread down.
The aircraft systems helped the pilots to make sensible decisions - despite the massive damage to the plane. They did not get in the way...
Excellent full description and explanation of the engine failure:
https://admiralcloudberg.medium.com...f November,and fuselage in multiple locations.
I'll just leave this here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20201107224510/https://www.nsfwcorp.com/dispatch/milton-friedman/
The entire article is a revelation about the big business origins of American libertarianism, recommended reading.
It's arguable. the computers were throwing errors because systems are interrelated.
The crew knew about those issues, they wanted to get right to configuring the aircraft for a safe return but the spurious/derived subsystem warnings kept them flying half an hour longer that they should have.
Look at it from this point of view... about ten years ago our car developed a wiring glitch on the ABS box. The darn car threw like 9 errors because of that ( ABS is used in many other systems, such as traction control... and then that is used by yet mor systems.. ). Every time we turned the ignition we had to clear ten warning screens. It was a PITA and there was no way to get around it, nor to clear the Tokyo By Night light show on the dash.... I didn't need any of that. I knew we had an issue with the ABS...
Airbus is like that... way too much information... much of it derived from a root cause. It gets in the way of using the vehicle.
Having seen a picture of the 787 glass cockpit I would say Boeing put as many laptops in front of the pilot as airbus do. Also once you go fly by wire what is the advantage of the yoke other than if pilot and co-pilot are out of sync (air france 447) which should be handled by human factors if I understand correctly (one person has the controls and the others know it).
In terms of too much information. In something as complex as an A380 when something previously unknown happens, but the plane is still flying and responding to control inputs i would have thought that the pilots would have wanted as much information as possible before attempting a landing, esp as someone on the ground is also seeing the same data? Yes data overload is an issue but this was a failure that I doubt any amount of FMEA brainstorming would have come up with to give a simple error message for.
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