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Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

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Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#21

Post by jlgreco »

djt wrote: post #8
garretruh wrote: post #2

While I have enormous respect for Elon Musk, I would hope that Boeing engineers have just as thorough an understanding of the workings and safety implications of Lithium-ion batteries. Though Tesla's engineering is admittedly much more focused around battery technology, Boeing has decades of experience with aircraft electrical systems.

no doubt Boeing know that even if the batteries smoke and fail they wont be a threat to safety, but Musk has a better handle on marketing. If there is smoke on a plane or car people expect the worst, regardless of if it is actually a safety issue.

I don't know, don't Li-ion batteries tend to fail fairly spectacularly? Those melted cars after Sandy come to mind.

Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#23

Post by richardjordan »

michaelkscott wrote: post #19
richardjordan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Elon Musk, a physicist by education, is indeed an engineer and was very hands on in the engineering processes at SpaceX, so I'd assume he wasn't out of the technical loop that led to design decisions at Tesla.

Maybe a little OT but: Can you be considered an "ist" by having just a BS degree. That is, physicist, computer scientist, etc... If no, what is the requirement? Masters or PhD?

I did a BSc in Physics. I consider myself a Physicist by education, just as I consider Musk to be. You are trained to be a Physicist whether you pursue a career in that field or not. As I mentioned on a post recently talking about research projects, my final year project in 1995, without going into too much detail, was modeling the expansion of the universe assuming a non-zero cosmological constant and tracing the paths of light through such an expanding/contracting/whatever universe, depending on assumed values, and studying the likely distribution of hydrogen absorption lines as it passed through a posited foam-like structure of walls and filaments of matter. This was a relatively off the wall topic at the time, but for anyone studying Physics today you'll know a lot of these things now represent the state of thinking in many ways. People might pursue these topics to a much deeper level in order to get a Masters or PhD but you still need to be a Physicist at any level to dive into such a project and produce a result.

At least that's my 2c - it's all just semantics, and as such there are many possible answers here :-)

Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#24

Post by joezydeco »

rst wrote: post #18
garretruh wrote: post #2

While I have enormous respect for Elon Musk, I would hope that Boeing engineers have just as thorough an understanding of the workings and safety implications of Lithium-ion batteries. Though Tesla's engineering is admittedly much more focused around battery technology, Boeing has decades of experience with aircraft electrical systems.

It's not necessarily Boeing's engineers. A lot of the 787 design (not just fabrication) was subcontracted out, so it's just as likely to have been whatever subcontractor had the combination of low bid and business connections to win the contract. Ref: http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2013/02/04/130204ta_...

The 787 electrical design was subcontracted to Thales, who then subcontracted the battery work to GS Yuasa:

http://www.gsyuasa-lp.com/content/thales-selects-gs-yuasa-li...

Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#25

Post by richardjordan »

JohnsonB wrote: post #20
michaelkscott wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe a little OT but: Can you be considered an "ist" by having just a BS degree. That is, physicist, computer scientist, etc... If no, what is the requirement? Masters or PhD?

You don't even need formal qualifications for those, just the actual skill, and then it's up to people to asses if you have them.

Right. A bit like an artist. You don't need an advanced degree in art to be an accomplished artist. Plus the idea of formalized education with narrowly focused advanced degrees is fairly recent, and for most of the history of the discipline Physicists have not been so qualified.

Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#26

Post by CamperBob2 »

Avitas wrote: post #17
Camillo wrote: post #3

This is a very smart move by Musk from a PR point of view. By accusing Boeing's batteries of being fundamentally unsafe, he garners the maximum amount of trust from people who are concerned about battery safety, so that, when he immediately follows up with an explanation of why this couldn't happen on a Tesla, those very people are already leaning towards believing him. This goes over much better than attempting to d…

That makes me wonder what the next public and private PR moves should be for Boeing. My first guess is that their strategy should: A) Mention the tradeoffs involved with any engineering project B) Quickly accept blame instead of pushing it off to a supplier, a single employee and/or group (i.e., even if they have excellent reason and evidence for doing so) C) Make known their official stance on Elon's technical asses…

D) Invent a time machine and qualify two different battery types, as they should have done in the first place.

Everything else will keep the 787 on the ground for a very long time, I'm afraid.

Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#28

Post by CamperBob2 »

michaelkscott wrote: post #19
richardjordan wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Elon Musk, a physicist by education, is indeed an engineer and was very hands on in the engineering processes at SpaceX, so I'd assume he wasn't out of the technical loop that led to design decisions at Tesla.

Maybe a little OT but: Can you be considered an "ist" by having just a BS degree. That is, physicist, computer scientist, etc... If no, what is the requirement? Masters or PhD?

If no, what is the requirement? Masters or PhD

Launching payloads to the ISS is good enough for me.

Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#30

Post by meh01 »

grinich wrote: post #16
sfall wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

an MIT professor already backs up what he is saying, he is not on his own with his opinion

Not just any MIT prof-- Sadoway is an expert metallurgist and leading researcher on energy storage in batteries. The article is also incorrect: Sadoway is part of the Materials Science Engineering Department. As an aside, his intro chemistry lectures are excellent, entertaining, and available online. http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/materials-science-and-engineering...

Except they're both clueless about battery use in planes.
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