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“I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

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Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#31

Post by ozmaverick72 »

spectramax wrote: post #2

Btw, the new "fix" for the MCAS has just been announced and discussed by a 40-year experienced pilot [1]. Turns out that while we shouldn't be doing armchair analysis and assuming the worst of the engineering, management and executive team; the software fix released appears to be rather elementary and MCAS should have been designed with these safety checks in the first place. Why it wasn't is a huge concern and we wo…

The software fixes as described sound sensible and it's hard to believe they were not in the original design. Unfortunately I don't see how these changes will allow them to keep a common type rating with the 737 NG. After the updated MCAS has made its one shot trim adjustment you will now be flying an aircraft with different handling characteristics if you keep increasing the angle of attack into the stall. Surely the FAA can't sign off on the common type rating and half hour of video training ??

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#32

Post by robbiep »

ptidhomme wrote: post #5
spectramax wrote: post #2

Btw, the new "fix" for the MCAS has just been announced and discussed by a 40-year experienced pilot [1]. Turns out that while we shouldn't be doing armchair analysis and assuming the worst of the engineering, management and executive team; the software fix released appears to be rather elementary and MCAS should have been designed with these safety checks in the first place. Why it wasn't is a huge concern and we wo…

> I wonder how we, humans, collectively build extraordinary monuments while we individually rest on stilts My take is that we used to have brilliant engineers in the time where computational ressources were scarce (60s, 70 , 80s...), and they thought out their design thoroughly starting with a fucking paper and pencil. Aerospace indutries still rely on the designs from these times. But now engineering seems to be : l…

But we do. Look at SpaceX. Landing Rockets, crew dragon going to be half the cost of starliner.

It’s just that LargeCorp eventually has the profit motive as the overriding goal and stops being innovative. It’s schumpters creative destruction in reality

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#33

Post by chippy »

"I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period and I can absolutely guarantee this happened."

was in response to this comment:

"I would be very surprised if in a few years from today a bunch of engineers don't testify that ample of warning was given to management about this. "

Reddit doesn't make it easy to find what they replied to.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#34

Post by lazyjones »

llcoolv wrote: post #30

Well a decades-long oligopoly of two companies is similar to central planning in many aspects and his story indeed rings a lot of bells.

It's good that the C919 and MC-21 have arrived to compete then. I just don't see how the catastrophic MCAS design could have been avoided with more competition...

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#35

Post by m_mueller »

atemerev wrote: post #28
m_mueller wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a war between China and the US, with neutral Russia [1], would be truly terrifying. To given example of the level of sophistication, just have a look at [2]. All the signs point towards China overtaking the US in industrial power, if it hasn't already happened. [1] if Russia isn't neutral it would stay cold anyways due to MAD I think. [2] https://dms.licdn.com/playback/C4D05AQE8hl2GCSdo1Q/feedshare...

As a Russian, I hope that nuclear weapons still provide enough deterrence to avoid large-scale war between superpowers. However, this might not be the case, as said superpowers can just decide to avoid nuclear confrontation (because of immediate counterstrike) and still fight conventionally — just like chemical weapons weren’t used on large scale in WW2, compared to WW1.

What worries me is that the mechanics of MAD may be approaching their end. With increasing space technology, perimeter defense against ICBMs have become feasible (albeit still very expensive). Thinking this forward a couple of decades, I think that defense may become cheaper than offense, even with multiple warheads per ICBM. In a way that's good, as nuclear annihilation might be averted, on ther other hand it could also lead to nations feeling cornered to strike first (before defense is built up sufficiently), and also we might be seeing a rebirth of conventional industrial warfare like in WW2.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#36

Post by m_mueller »

cm2187 wrote: post #29
m_mueller wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a war between China and the US, with neutral Russia [1], would be truly terrifying. To given example of the level of sophistication, just have a look at [2]. All the signs point towards China overtaking the US in industrial power, if it hasn't already happened. [1] if Russia isn't neutral it would stay cold anyways due to MAD I think. [2] https://dms.licdn.com/playback/C4D05AQE8hl2GCSdo1Q/feedshare...

But modern firepower between two nuclear nations only requires a few nuclear facilities, not the sort of industrial complex that made the difference in ww2. Good intentions of not using nukes don't really matter, as the conflict would invariably escalate as one of the parties takes over. Which is why this noise of direct war between US and Russia or US and China isn't really credible. A supply chain war is more credi…

in my other comment I'm kinda replying to the same thing: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=m_mueller#19672286

> The world pulling its supply chain out of China would be the end of the Chinese economy.

I'm not so sure this is true. China has a huge domestic market, and even more potential to build it up more. It's also likely that in such a scenario, a whole block of nations would form, replacing some if not much of China's output with war efforts as it happens in a WW.

Let's just hope it never comes to this, really, for the sake of our daughters and sons if not ourselves.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#37

Post by ilogik »

spectramax wrote: post #2

Btw, the new "fix" for the MCAS has just been announced and discussed by a 40-year experienced pilot [1]. Turns out that while we shouldn't be doing armchair analysis and assuming the worst of the engineering, management and executive team; the software fix released appears to be rather elementary and MCAS should have been designed with these safety checks in the first place. Why it wasn't is a huge concern and we wo…

> Original MCAS system used only 1 AOA sensor and switched back and forth between the two after every flight.

Who the fuck thought that was a good idea???

Let's make it 10x more difficult to detect that there is a problem.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#38

Post by seren »

gmueckl wrote: post #14
lordnacho wrote: post #3

My view of aircraft engineering has certainly changed since the 737 stuff came out. You always get told software engineers are a bunch of cowboys compared to aircraft people, because they have to put everything through a bunch of rigourous tests. I asked a friend who trains commercial pilots about it, and to my surprise he told me the processes to get things certified are political and hand-wavy.

I haven't worked for aviation yet, but from what I have seen in other areas that need certification processes, the system is setup in a way that invites gaming it. In Europe, most certifications are performed by competing private companies. That cannot possibly go wrong and erode standards, right?

Dieselgate happened in spite of having tests executed by "independent" bodies, even if it certainly looks better, it is not fail safe either.

But it is harder to plead ignorance, incompetence or bad luck when you have purposely implemented a code that run only in test settings.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#39

Post by adrianN »

cm2187 wrote: post #29
m_mueller wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a war between China and the US, with neutral Russia [1], would be truly terrifying. To given example of the level of sophistication, just have a look at [2]. All the signs point towards China overtaking the US in industrial power, if it hasn't already happened. [1] if Russia isn't neutral it would stay cold anyways due to MAD I think. [2] https://dms.licdn.com/playback/C4D05AQE8hl2GCSdo1Q/feedshare...

But modern firepower between two nuclear nations only requires a few nuclear facilities, not the sort of industrial complex that made the difference in ww2. Good intentions of not using nukes don't really matter, as the conflict would invariably escalate as one of the parties takes over. Which is why this noise of direct war between US and Russia or US and China isn't really credible. A supply chain war is more credi…

There are more than a billion people in China, most of which don't have a particularly great standard of living. The domestic market in China is massive and has huge potential for growth. I think China would be fine without the rest of the world.

Re: “I worked at Boeing for about 1.5 years in the 2008-9 time period”

#40

Post by rjsw »

noir_lord wrote: post #16
noncoml wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brilliant engineers are still there. We haven’t gotten stupider as a species in 30 years. It’s the economics that changed. As people say “They don’t build stuff like they used too anymore”. First we started going cheap on the materials. Now we are going cheap on the engineers too. Why pay a senior “brilliant” engineer $$$$ when a fresh out of college “average” engineer can write the “same piece of code” for $$

> “They don’t build stuff like they used too anymore”. In fairness part (but far from all) of the reason we don't build stuff like we used too, is because we have much better understanding of material limits so we don't need to over-design structual elements like we used to. How that understanding of material limits feeds into design obsolescence is where I do get annoyed though. With everything we know now we could…

As someone who has spent most of their working life so far trying to make it easier to store data on materials, I'm not sure things have progressed all that much.

I do work with people from Boeing (and Airbus) but they are not yet using all the features of stuff I wrote 30 years ago.

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