Starliner launched this morning, at last. But the orbital insertion went wrong as the spacecraft was pointing the wrong way - they had better pray it wasn't an angle-of-attack sensor problem...
It's not until you see other people try and fail to do this stuff, that you really appreciate how far ahead SpaceX are, and how we'll they're doing. Boeing were charging NASA 50% more than them for this mission.
I'm of the opinion boeing deserves to fail at this point. the fact that they have the hubris to keep on producing a defective grounded plane on the expectation of 'well they will just reapprove it anyway, they have to, we are too big to not', after it killed 300 people is beyond me.
>>20756 The 737 MAX thing is quite ridiculous - Boeing are too big to fail, in the US; they would get bailed out, somehow. From the outside, what has happened there looks quite corrupt, but much of it is on the regulator who let it happen.
For more technical details, I can highly recommend the PPRune site, which is full of pilots, geeks and engineers involved.
Thanks for the recommendation. I am fairly familiar with the details. My understanding is it seems to come from a combination of Airbus being technologically ahead and them needing a competing product immediately. Looking for a loop hole to not require rectifying pilots, and them being allowed to sign off their own products for the FAA. The 737 just isn't fit to have that engine on it. I full expect the FAA to sign it off again and every other Aviation authority refusing to out of principle.
>>20762 >them being allowed to sign off their own products for the FAA. >The 737 just isn't fit to have that engine on it
Agree completely - and certainly agree that there are future shenanigans to come around the recertification by the FAA. One can easily imagine this becoming part of a future US/Euro trade war.
While I agree much of the blame is on the FAA, I do still think Boeing shoulder the responsibility for trying to rush market the MAX as needing no additional training or rating. That was what killed people - flying a 737 to book, where the rules had changed.
As for the MAX entering service, it's interesting. From talking to 737 pilots and from reading PPRune, probably half of them would refuse to fly one regardless at this point, either due to distrust of the engineering or just down to knowing that passengers will also refuse to fly them. And I think that's the main point - I don't believe passengers will board a MAX. Sure most people aren't going to know what they're getting on, but I can absolutely imagine what could happen when they hear "welcome aboard this Boeing 737-MAX 8 200" on the announcement.
>for trying to rush market the MAX as needing no additional training or rating.
I mean that was the entire point of the project. If they weren't trying to get away with as much as they could whilst still calling it the same aircraft they probably wouldn't have made the decisions they did. There would almost certainly have been a conversation where an engineer came up with a more practical and safer design, but it would have either met the legal definition of a new plane or would have required enough variation in opperation to mean pilots required recertification.
Even with additional MCAS training the MAX could have retained a 737 type rating, but Boeing didn't even allude to the existence of the system in crew manuals, didn't program their simulators to accurately reflect the operation, and claimed they didn't expect MCAS to 'not operate under normal flight envelope conditions'. If that were true, though, of course, it would still be prudent to mention in the crew documentation that it exists.
There's more than one way Boeing could have implemented this system without losing the 737 type and while still remaining competitive to Airbus. Even Ryanair would choose 40 of MCAS-focused sim training to keep a consistent 737 fleet over splitting their pilot pool between entirely different aircraft, but I don't believe they even needed that. Just proper documentation and not giving the system priority over pilot input would have been enough. They could still have bribed/convinced the FAA to let them call it a flight control system under those conditions.
>>20778 The issue was that that it wasn't boosted high enough. The only major difference I know of is that they've got to burn a lot less fuel to de-orbit it than they would have if it had reached orbit successfully.
Landing from orbit if you want to hit a perfect spot requires making very precise maneuvers at the right point (mostly from the other side of the planet). Which you can do because you are starting from a stable position of not falling down.
If your trajectory is messed up massively because you didn't make a stable orbit than landing remotely near where you would like is a miracle.
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No. 20787Anonymous 23rd December 2019 Monday 5:39 pm20787Boeing fires embattled CEO Dennis Muilenburg
>>20791 I read something that said most of the issues with Boeing recently were inherited from the previous CEO and he was slowly starting to get them back on track. Apparently his successor isn't going to try to change the poor managerial culture they have and will instead make the problems worse through cost cutting and laying people off.
If you're interested in the 737 MAX story, this presentation is brilliant - it recreates in the simulator how hard it was to recover from runaway MCAS failure.
