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

Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

flightglobal.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 253 posts

Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#121

Post by georgemcbay »

monochromatic wrote: post #115
msandford wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the engineers at Boing are REALLY good (and that's not guaranteed by any means) then you've still go the subcontractor problem to deal with. Boeing didn't design, engineer, fabricate, test and qualify these batteries in-house. Saying that they have advanced degrees from prestigious institutions makes it less likely that they have made mistakes is a non-starter. There ARE PROBLEMS with the batteries FULL STOP.…

> There ARE PROBLEMS with the batteries FULL STOP Because Elon Musk says so? Do you base your trust in him on his degrees?

> Because Elon Musk says so?

I'm not the guy you're responding to but I think it is safe to say there are problems with the batteries. Because, you see, they are catching fire, which is why all of this became an issue to begin with.

The problem may or may not be what Elon Musk thinks it is, but if an airplane's batteries are catching fire mid-flight, those batteries certainly have problems, unless catching fire was one of the design goals of those batteries, but I'm going to have to guess it wasn't.

Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#122

Post by zalzane »

nigelsampson wrote: post #107
amcaskill wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a smart PR move in either scenario. It's unlikely this will matter if he is wrong. If he is correct, this will become an even larger main stream news story and there is a good chance that his prescience will be picked up and included in how it is reported. More importantly, if this becomes a major story, he has preempted the inevitable look at other products (tesla) which include li-ion batteries by describing t…

No one ever remembers the predictions you got wrong, just the ones you got right. It's the basis of all punditry.

this is hard to swallow when someone posted a list of half a dozen horribly incorrect technology predictions in this very thread

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5138247

Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#123

Post by wiredfool »

monochromatic wrote: post #115
msandford wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the engineers at Boing are REALLY good (and that's not guaranteed by any means) then you've still go the subcontractor problem to deal with. Boeing didn't design, engineer, fabricate, test and qualify these batteries in-house. Saying that they have advanced degrees from prestigious institutions makes it less likely that they have made mistakes is a non-starter. There ARE PROBLEMS with the batteries FULL STOP.…

> There ARE PROBLEMS with the batteries FULL STOP Because Elon Musk says so? Do you base your trust in him on his degrees?

Well, there have been at least 100 of them replaced so far, for either being discharged too far, expired, or had charging problems. Apparently, it's pretty easy for ground crews to leave something going that drains the battery to the point where it needs to be sent back to the manufacturer.

That's on 50 planes that have been flying in commercial service for less than a year.

Oh yeah, and that fire thing too.

Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#124

Post by monochromatic »

georgemcbay wrote: post #121
monochromatic wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There ARE PROBLEMS with the batteries FULL STOP Because Elon Musk says so? Do you base your trust in him on his degrees?

> Because Elon Musk says so? I'm not the guy you're responding to but I think it is safe to say there are problems with the batteries. Because, you see, they are catching fire, which is why all of this became an issue to begin with. The problem may or may not be what Elon Musk thinks it is, but if an airplane's batteries are catching fire mid-flight, those batteries certainly have problems, unless catching fire was o…

Yeeeah, I apparently live under a rock. Hadn't heard about the fires, only skimmed the Elon Musk article.

Disregard, carry on.

Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#125

Post by tlb »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #26
Avitas wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

E) Replace with proven technologies (NiCd or AGM) which weigh more and accept a small hit on fuel efficiency until the lithium problems are sorted out.

Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#126

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

robomartin wrote: post #68

While I can't dispute anything that is being said I think it is unfortunate that this is playing out the way it is. I can't dispute it because there's virtually no reliable publicly-available information on the design of this battery pack. I think it is unbecoming of an engineer or scientist, particularly of prominence, to voice such opinions without access to design data from the source. Before I could even begin to…

Blah blah, appeal to authority... It's too complicated for you... etc etc. More appeals to authority, and a plea to patiently wait for word from up on high that they've figured out at last, whatever it was that they missed the first time.

Some of what you said may be true, but it's also a typical thing one might say after any engineering (potential) disaster. I'm pleased that some persons with appropriate knowledge have spoken out and I hope that it will remove any pressure Boeing engineers may feel to give their battery issue less attention than it deserves.

I have to say that if that's your best reasoning, I hope you stay far away from any life-safety critical engineering decisions for vehicles that I'm to set foot in.

Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#127

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

robomartin wrote: post #93
commandar wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>unless there was something so obviously wrong with the design that a conclusion was inescapable Isn't that exactly what both Musk and Professor Sadoway are suggesting in the linked article?

I'd be very interested in what they are saying if --and only if-- they had access to Boeing and FAA design and test data. You have to remember that the FAA had to approve these subsystems as well. I don't have any first-hand experience on just how detailed (or not) this certification process might be. Once again, how could anyone say anything at all without looking at data. To make a really dumb analogy, it's like cl…

>I'd be very interested in what they are saying if --and only if-- they had access to Boeing and FAA design and test data.

Bollocks. Your analogies are crap too. Getting an FAA type certificate is a complicated, drawn out process, note, that doesn't make it a good process.

I'm betting Musk has as much data about those batteries as Boeing, the FAA, or anyone else alive.

Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#128

Post by kragen »

rosser wrote: post #96
ricardobeat wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gasoline isn't dangerous? It's ten times as easy to light up a gas tank than a battery pack, and the energy release is instant.

You can drop a lit match into a bucket of gasoline. It needs to be aerosolized to be explosive.

You can indeed, and it ignites the gasoline. Gasoline vapors in air have relatively wide explosive limits which can be attained in a wide variety of ways, not only by aerosolization.

Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#129

Post by ecaron »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #117
robomartin wrote: post #68

While I can't dispute anything that is being said I think it is unfortunate that this is playing out the way it is. I can't dispute it because there's virtually no reliable publicly-available information on the design of this battery pack. I think it is unbecoming of an engineer or scientist, particularly of prominence, to voice such opinions without access to design data from the source. Before I could even begin to…

Respect? What respect is due to a design that puts people's lives in danger? Yes, respect the engineers, and make sure to criticize the design and not the engineer, but please criticize the ever loving fuck out of the design. This isn't about corporate pride here. This is about lives. My life. Your life. Your family's lives. Everyone who flies in a plane is potentially endangered by faulty aircraft designs. So please…

> When Ralph Nader does this sort of thing he is lauded, I don't think Musk's criticisms should be viewed in any different light.

Just as a point of fact, Ralph Nader was hardly universally lauded when he entered the arena of public critiques: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsafe_at_Any_Speed#Criticisms

Re: Elon Musk: Boeing 787 battery fundamentally unsafe

#130

Post by fnordfnordfnord »

snowwrestler wrote: post #113
rohern wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your points are common sense. You can therefore assume that other men, including the men you are criticizing, know them. Given this, and given that they are speaking publicly, I would wager that they have more access to data than you presume.

Or they are inserting themselves into the news cycle on this story for purposes other than strictly engineering. I don't know if that's what is happening here, but it is certainly not an uncommon PR strategy.

You think Musk is grandstanding in hopes that consumers will demand SpaceX rockets for commercial airline travel instead of Boeing 787's? Well, duh, I'd take a ride in a rocket over another boring commercial flight any day.
Post reply on HN