Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

reddit.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 313 posts

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

#151

Post by gambiting »

jacobush wrote: post #96
salty_biscuits wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hypersonic cruise missiles are an "interesting" development to the equation as well. Much harder to shoot down but also more sneaky so harder to have the mutually assured part.

Still probably impossible to fire enough sneaky missiles to disable enough ICBM silos. I think they are an interesting development, but I don't think they are meant as first strike weapons against another major nuclear, at least not without excepting a full lobby back. They are terrifying against a state without a "nuclear umbrella". A few of these sneaky nukes could take out any ability to strike back conventionally…

As long as nuclear subs are a thing there is no possibility to take out the other side's ability to attack first.

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

#152

Post by salawat »

yiyus wrote: post #20
ptidhomme wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 now engineering seems to be : let's ask my computing power what is the good design, with little further questioning. I see this quite often at the undergrad level. Even for the simplest problem that can be solved with a pencil and a couple of calculations, many students launch their finite element software and blindly trust the results, even if it is telling them something obviously wrong, like orders of magnit…

Is this for real?

That's startling to me. I don't really feel like I "know" something well enough to bother with the overhead of developing computer code until I can at least get the essence of it down on paper.

Computers are for enumerating and increasing confidence in proofs. I find pen and paper to be far more creativity friendly.

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

#153

Post by theNJR »

koolba wrote: post #52

> To this day, I refuse to fly on a 787. I'm sure that the Dreamliners that came off the assembly line after about a year or so were fine but there's that first year of production that, as far as I'm concerned, are ticking time bombs. I talked to many engineers who had worked on that program to know just how badly they rushed that initial production. Ouch. Anybody know where to get a list of who’s operating the plane…

Yah that gave me shivers. I’m flying a 787 in June.

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

#154

Post by HeWhoLurksLate »

mcguire wrote: post #134
PaulHoule wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a new type rating is a fair punishment, I think, for Boeing and the airlines who have been stringing along this obsolete airliner for way too long. Note the 737 MAX was rushed out not just to fight the A320neo but also to counter this kind of jet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A220 which is cheaper to run than the 737 MAX but also has much better passenger comfort than the 737. I was in the similar http…

How is the 737 obsolete?

It's really old, and the main problem is that it's avionics are old, and don't have the same level of electromechanical flexibility that new planes.

Think of the difference between slapping IoT / real-time monitoring capabilities onto an old factory process versus building from the ground up with those capabilities kept in mind.

Obsoletion happens when there is a better alternative available, and there are plenty of better options to the aging 737 airframe.

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

#155

Post by andjd »

PaulHoule wrote: post #101
ozmaverick72 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Having a new type rating is a fair punishment, I think, for Boeing and the airlines who have been stringing along this obsolete airliner for way too long. Note the 737 MAX was rushed out not just to fight the A320neo but also to counter this kind of jet: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_A220 which is cheaper to run than the 737 MAX but also has much better passenger comfort than the 737. I was in the similar http…

>then Boeing nearly killed it by offering airlines a 70% discount on the 737 MAX.

Actually, Boeing lobbied/sued to get punitive tariffs levied on the Bombardier CSeries. While they ultimately lost the case, while it was pending, Bombardier entered an agreement with Airbus to finish assembly of the planes for American customers as a US-based Airbus factory as a way to get around the tariffs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSeries_dumping_petition_by_Bo...

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

#156

Post by salawat »

foldr wrote: post #87
cjrp wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Although at least now you're trying to solve a more logical problem. Increasing angle of attack => counter with elevator, if not sufficient reduce thrust

Reducing thrust will increase angle of attack. The angle of attack is the angle of the wing relative to the airflow, not the angle of the plane relative to the horizon.

Yes conceptually, no because of signage error.

If you were in a position MCAS would have to kick in, you were at positive AoA, reduced thrust would impart a negative AoA moment.

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

#157

Post by Pigo »

dmonagha wrote: post #136
Pigo wrote: post #125

I contracted with a branch of Lockheed. While I couldn't/shouldn't talk about any of the technology involved, I can attest to the culture I witnessed. I always assumed it was horrible because of the government affiliation. But I think that mostly affected their focus, in that most of the branch was dedicated to wasting money so they could ask for more money. However, the culture itself was stagnate by design. Most of…

I worked at a similar large aerospace contractor just in the past couple years. I can attest 100% to what you've said. They estimated they would need to replace 40% of their workforce within the next 10 years just to stay afloat. Recently at my old site they hired 1000 people. Within a year, 800 had quit. These are software engineers, mechanical engineers, etc. I watched people just play on their phones, keep their f…

I understand why people laugh at the stories I tell from there, I laugh at it now that my time is over. But when you're in it, it's just disheartening. No one wants to tell their grandkids "I was in a lot of meetings, and I was the best at looking busy".

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

#158

Post by salawat »

koenigdavidmj wrote: post #49
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 thought that the flight immediately before this one had MCAS trouble too. Were both sensors busted, or was that actually an even number of cycles previous to the crash, and only the previous day?

There was an extra pilot in the cockpit uninvolved with flying the plane.

His participation in Crew Resource Management allowed the previous flight to correctly identify and remediate the issue before things became unrecoverable.

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

#159

Post by decoyworker »

dmonagha wrote: post #136
Pigo wrote: post #125

I contracted with a branch of Lockheed. While I couldn't/shouldn't talk about any of the technology involved, I can attest to the culture I witnessed. I always assumed it was horrible because of the government affiliation. But I think that mostly affected their focus, in that most of the branch was dedicated to wasting money so they could ask for more money. However, the culture itself was stagnate by design. Most of…

I worked at a similar large aerospace contractor just in the past couple years. I can attest 100% to what you've said. They estimated they would need to replace 40% of their workforce within the next 10 years just to stay afloat. Recently at my old site they hired 1000 people. Within a year, 800 had quit. These are software engineers, mechanical engineers, etc. I watched people just play on their phones, keep their f…

Don't forget to charge all that labor to the program (taxpayers).

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

#160

Post by dgritsko »

cesarb wrote: post #47
chippy wrote: post #33

"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.

> Reddit doesn't make it easy to find what they replied to. The trick is to add ?context=3 to the end of the URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/bdfqm4/the_real_rea... (or for the better "old" interface: https://old.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/bdfqm4/the_real_rea... )

I use the "Old Reddit Redirect" Chrome extension to automatically switch to old.reddit.com. It's kind of unbelievable how much worse the new site layout is by almost any metric (usability, performance, etc.). https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/old-reddit-redirec...
Post reply on HN