161–170 of 195 posts
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Nope, software engineers at least have a sense of proper QA. This is the equivalence of “let the product manager do the QA” thing.
You are sincerely suggesting that software engineers have a stronger sense of QA than aerospace engineers?
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> position of no regulation whatsoever, or the ill-defined yet ludicrous "self regulation", but rather independent regulation by third-party companies I think these positions are essentially the same, at least in the case of most consumer-facing regulation. The latter would cause a myriad of captive "independent regulatory" bodies to emerge to confuse consumers, complete with slick websites and easy to confuse names…
Kosher labeling seems to work decently, even though "nobody has the time" to figure out what any of the logos mean. Meanwhile, evidently "nobody has the time" for knocking on enough congressmen's doors to override Big Business' billion-dollar lobbying efforts, and so here we are watching planes fall from the sky.
Mainly because it relies on government regulation to function, namely trademark law. It's also probably a fairly unique case, since I doubt there's a ton of money in kosher food production (meaning the payoff for abusing the system is low), and the people who care about keeping kosher care about it a lot and can focus on it due to the presence of other regulation.
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That might be true for the FAA, but it's not true for the FDA. They will ask companies for original data and then replicate analyses.
But do they replicate how that "original data" was generated or gathered?
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AFAIK, the FAA, like many regulating bodies take everything at face value, making sure they are not getting lied to isn't their jobs. An audit usually goes like: "I see that you mentioned a change in document X, show me the corresponding test report", "who is responsible for that part?", "does document Y match document X, as required by norm Z?". They will never check that you actually did the tests, or that the anal…
> AFAIK, the FAA, like many regulating bodies take everything at face value, making sure they are not getting lied to isn't their jobs. I don't think this is accurate whatsoever. USDA has inspections all the time, they don't just check a report you file with them and go "Oh yeah, they know what they're doing over there." Similar with other industries. If a regulatory body doesn't validate the tests of a manufacturer,…
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> It makes no metion of MCAS. 27 - FLIGHT CONTROLS STABILIZER TRIM: Stab Trim cutout switches panel
Not sure what the meaning of your comment is. The Stab Trim cutout switches have been in the 737, in the same place aft of the flap selector, since the original 737. These were not a new feature related to the MCAS system.
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Not sure what the meaning of your comment is. The Stab Trim cutout switches have been in the 737, in the same place aft of the flap selector, since the original 737. These were not a new feature related to the MCAS system.
No, not a new feature. But don't they stop the ability of MCAS to change the trim?
I'm not a real-world airliner pilot (I just play with them in simulators), so I can't comment on whether it's reasonable to expect pilots to recognize the situation and react accordingly in this new failure mode. Without knowledge of the existence of the MCAS system and how it can fail, with uncommanded nose-down, it's unclear that pilots would think there were any factors they recognize that would cause a runaway trim situation and think, "oh, I need to run the runaway trim checklist." I think that's the crux of the argument "any 737 pilot should have been competent to save the plane because they should have recognized runaway stab trim" versus "the set of conditions that caused this problem involved systems that pilots weren't trained on, so it's not reasonable for them to recognize what was happening and realize they can fall back on different training that they did have."
Anyway... comment I was replying to seemed to imply the existence of the stab trim cutout switches implied that the MCAS system was made known to pilots, which is why I pointed out those switches had been there forever.
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No, not a new feature. But don't they stop the ability of MCAS to change the trim?
Yes, the "correct procedure" would be for the pilots to recognize the MCAS problem (whether they know about the existence of MCAS or not) as a runaway stab trim problem, and treat it as such. One of the steps for the runaway stab trim emergency checklist (which I believe is a memory item for 737 pilots) is to set the stab trim switches to cutoff. At that point, they can manually (with the wheels in the cockpit) retur…
Firstly, I think the whole issue is not going away any time soon which is bad enough.
But what looks worse is the article points to high levels of incompetence, if not gross negligence in the design and testing of the MCAS.
Like all 737s, the MAX actually has two of the sensors, one on each side of the fuselage near the cockpit. But the MCAS was designed to take a reading from only one of them.
Lemme said Boeing could have designed the system to compare the readings from the two vanes, which would have indicated if one of them was way off.
Alternatively, the system could have been designed to check that the angle-of-attack reading was accurate while the plane was taxiing on the ground before takeoff, when the angle of attack should read zero.
I can see this headed to the courts and if the details in the article are found to be correct, there's a good chance Boeing would be up for a rather big settlement, not to mention a massive dent to their reputation
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Well, we don't have the department of horse safety, do we? I'm sure operators of business that do horse rides have general liability insurance. So, in effect, the free market did solve this problem. > Because a free market does not solve all problems, even those that might theoretically be solved by a free market. If it's a solvable problem, it can be solved with the free market. If a solution is possible that is mer…
Your counter is that now, a hundred years after they ceased to be widely used for personal transport, the free market has a solution? After centuries of their use where it did not solve the problem? That is pretty weak reasoning. I'm honestly not sure if you're just trolling me now. It amounts to saying something like "evolution can solve all problems". Even if true, the timeline leaves a bit to be desired, and a bit…
For example, it wasn't that long ago that heresy would get you burned at the stake, but a sexist/racist joke didn't even merit comment.
Today, it's the reverse.
In the age where "engineers": (1) can automatically land a "VW bug sized" rover on Mars (2) can land booster rockets practically from orbit (3) can make an adaptive flight control system that can fly a drone even when half a wing is blown clean off mid-flight (on purpose). https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=JyyN-qWWNfQ
How does this MCAS system, as part of a larger flight dynamics system, have so little understanding of what the hell it is doing to the flight dynamics?
I am beyond confused...