Will it ever fly?

[AdamSmith]

...cont.

 

For its part, Harland and Wolff, after its long silence, now rejects the charge. “There was nothing wrong with the materials,” Joris Minne, a company spokesman, said last week. Mr. Minne noted that one of the sister ships, the Olympic, sailed without incident for 24 years, until retirement. (The Britannic sank in 1916 after hitting a mine.)

 

David Livingstone, a former Harland and Wolff official, called the book’s main points misleading. Mr. Livingstone said big shipyards often had to scramble. On a recent job, he noted, Harland and Wolff had to look to Romania to find welders.

 

Mr. Livingstone also called the slag evidence painfully circumstantial, saying no real proof linked the hull opening to bad rivets. “It’s only waffle,” he said of the team’s arguments.

 

But a naval historian praised the book as solving a mystery that has baffled investigators for nearly a century.

 

“It’s fascinating,” said Tim Trower, who reviews books for the Titanic Historical Society, a private group in Indian Orchard, Mass. “This puts in the final nail in the arguments and explains why the incident was so dramatically bad.”

 

The Titanic had every conceivable luxury: cafes, squash courts, a swimming pool, Turkish baths, a barbershop and three libraries. Its owners also bragged about its safety. In a brochure, the White Star Line described the ship as “designed to be unsinkable.”

 

On her inaugural voyage, on the night of April 14, 1912, the ship hit the iceberg around 11:40 p.m. and sank in a little more than two and a half hours. Most everyone assumed the iceberg had torn a huge gash in the starboard hull.

 

The discovery in 1985 of the Titanic wreck began many new inquiries. In 1996, an expedition found, beneath obscuring mud, not a large gash but six narrow slits where bow plates appeared to have parted. Naval experts suspected that rivets had popped along the seams, letting seawater rush in under high pressure.

 

A specialist in metal fracture, Dr. Foecke got involved in 1997, analyzing two salvaged rivets. He was astonished to find about three times more slag than occurs in modern wrought iron.

 

In early 1998, he and a team of marine forensic experts announced their rivet findings, calling them tentative.

 

Dr. Foecke, in addition to working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, also taught and lectured part time at Johns Hopkins. There he met Dr. McCarty, who got hooked on the riddle, as did her thesis adviser.

 

The team acquired rivets from salvors who pulled up hundreds of artifacts from the sunken liner. The scientists also collected old iron of the era — including some from the Brooklyn Bridge — to make comparisons. The new work seemed only to bolster the bad-rivet theory.

 

In 2003, after graduating from Johns Hopkins, Dr. McCarty traveled to England and located the Harland and Wolff archives at the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, in Belfast.

 

She also explored the archives of the British Board of Trade, which regulated shipping and set material standards, and of Lloyd’s of London, which set shipbuilding standards. And she worked at Oxford University and obtained access to its libraries.

 

What emerged was a picture of a company stretched to the limit as it struggled to build the world’s three biggest ships simultaneously. Dr. McCarty also found evidence of complacency. For instance, the Board of Trade gave up testing iron for shipbuilding in 1901 because it saw iron metallurgy as a mature field, unlike the burgeoning world of steel.

 

Dr. McCarty said she enjoyed telling middle and high school students about the decade of rivet forensics, as well as the revelations from the British archives.

 

“They get really excited,” she said. “That’s why I love the story. People see it and get mesmerized.”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/15/science/15titanic.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

[bigvalboy]

....and yet, despite faulty material, and the efforts by White Star Line to save money, had the bulk heads gone all the way to the first deck, then each forward compartment that was compromised would have indeed been water tight. Water would not have been able to spill over the top of each forward bulk-head, and Titanic would not have foundered, or quite possibly been able to stay afloat until the Carpathia arrived.

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zR-uVcvAXY

OR...had she hit the ice-berg head on, instead of trying to port-round it, most likely less compartments would have been compromised...The bow and keel would have buckled, but she was designed to withstand a head on collision....(Monday morning quarterback)

Edited June 15, 2015 by bigvalboy

[ZhenXBear]

I think it's just going to take time for the 787 to find its groove. Much like the auto manufacturers are experiencing with the recent backlash from airbags, Boeing has felt the heat over third party battery issues they didn't have direct control over.

 

All problems aside, she remains a technological sophisticated aircraft with amazing design for a commercial craft.

 

I remember when Cirrus first introduced the SR20 and Diamond the DA-20; the GA community was pretty leery of the composites designs the manufacturers chose for them. Since then, I've flown both, and found them to be enjoyable for different reasons.

 

The SR-22 has become my favorite aircrafts to fly and my first "low wing" transition aircraft beyond some hours in an older Mooney. I like it much better than the C172 G1000 I got my instrument rating on.

 

Oh what I wouldn't give to log some flight time in a 787 simulator!! :cool:

[rvwnsd]

The BBC reports that the loss-making A380 is being discontinued by Airbus. Meanwhile, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is going strong, having built almost three times as may planes as the A380 and turning a profit for the company.

[liubit]

The BBC reports that the loss-making A380 is being discontinued by Airbus. Meanwhile, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is going strong, having built almost three times as may planes as the A380 and turning a profit for the company.

I don’t like the A380: I find it a bit crammed, even in Business Class, with a hint of claustrophobia.

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

'If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going'

 

Much like the great VHS v. Betamax debate, one winner has emerged.

 

The 787 has proven itself a great piece of equipment

 

[+ ArVaGuy]

The Boeing 787 has become a PR nightmare for Boeing, I also think a financial catastrophe at the end of the day. Having just announced another delay yesterday after saying it was going to make a maiden flight by the end of this month. The Paris Air Show crowd must have known that Boeing Execs were bullshitting them...

 

Well, so much for that prediction for a financial disaster for Boeing.

It’s ten years later and the Airbus 380 goes tits up. Gotta love free markets.

[+ tassojunior]

and I love the 380....best way DC to Paris. But so impractical....

[Guest]

and I love the 380....best way DC to Paris. But so impractical....

In my opinion, the smaller the plane that can get me there, the better. With a plane that carries 400 passengers, it takes forever to load and unload the plane, and wait for luggage at baggage claim can also be lengthy. Not worth spending hundreds of $$ more, I suppose, but all else being equal, the smaller the better.

[rvwnsd]

...Gotta love free markets.

Funny you should say that. At one point there were allegations of illegal subsidies provided to Airbus.

[mike carey]

I don’t like the A380: I find it a bit crammed, even in Business Class, with a hint of claustrophobia.

The 787 has proven itself a great piece of equipment

and I love the 380....best way DC to Paris. But so impractical....

I quite like the A380 and haven't found it crammed or claustrophobic, that's more down to the airline than the aeroplane (and I've been in Y, P and J, also trans-Pacific in a B787). I'd put the current preference for the B787 down to more up-to-date technology than anything else. From what I've read the B787 wins on mass (more carbon fibre), fuel efficiency and number of pax (thinner routes). Qantas have cancelled future orders for the A380 (but aren't phasing out the current fleet), and I understand that they can fly the same number of pax more cheaply in two B787s than they do in one A380. The advantage the A380 has is if an airline needs more capacity but can't get more slots. (Last time I flew out of LAX, Qantas had four flights to Australia that evening, A-380s to Sydney and Melbourne and B787s to Brisbane and Melbourne.)

[+ glutes]

Does Boeing have a problem with the 737 Max jets?? Both of the crashes within minutes after take-off. Actually time to consider grounding the aircraft until they find out what is actually happening.

 

The trouble appeared to begin almost immediately after takeoff. The pilots told air traffic controllers that they were having technical problems. And the plane seemed to repeatedly climb and dive before a final plunge.

 

Two eerily similar scenes have played out in recent months for Boeing’s brand-new 737 Max jets: on Sunday, when an Ethiopian Airlines flight crashed just after taking off from Addis Ababa, killing 157 people, and in October, when a Lion Air disaster killed 189 people in Indonesia.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/business/boeing-737-max.html

 

And the sudden loss of control of a Amazon Boeing 767 has not been addressed, crashed on landing back in Feb.

 

As crews continue to search a bay off southeast Texas for clues as to how a Boeing 767 cargo plane nose-dived into shallow water, a cadaver dog found the remains of the third and final victim of the doomed flight. Sheriff Brian Hawthorne of Chambers County, Texas, said an identity has not been released.

 

 

Tuesday's development came days after the Houston-bound Atlas Air plane crashed Saturday, leaving a large "extremely hazardous" debris field along Trinity Bay, some 35 miles east of the city. Flight 3591 had three people on board. Authorities identified two victims so far: Conrad Aska, the 44-year-old first officer and co-pilot, and Sean Archuleta, a 36-year-old jump-seat passenger, according to Hawthorne.

Edited March 11, 2019 by Oaktown

[+ Charlie]

Airbus has announced that it will stop production of the A380.

I quite like the A380 and haven't found it crammed or claustrophobic, that's more down to the airline than the aeroplane (and I've been in Y, P and J, also trans-Pacific in a B787). I'd put the current preference for the B787 down to more up-to-date technology than anything else. From what I've read the B787 wins on mass (more carbon fibre), fuel efficiency and number of pax (thinner routes). Qantas have cancelled future orders for the A380 (but aren't phasing out the current fleet), and I understand that they can fly the same number of pax more cheaply in two B787s than they do in one A380. The advantage the A380 has is if an airline needs more capacity but can't get more slots. (Last time I flew out of LAX, Qantas had four flights to Australia that evening, A-380s to Sydney and Melbourne and B787s to Brisbane and Melbourne.)

[+ glutes]

Boeing stock down 12% after opening Bell:

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/boeing-alone-will-cost-the-dow-more-than-200-points-as-stock-heads-for-big-decline.html

[mike carey]

Boeing stock down 12% after opening Bell:

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/11/boeing-alone-will-cost-the-dow-more-than-200-points-as-stock-heads-for-big-decline.html

There's certainly a perception problem with the B737 MAX8. Whether it's a real problem remains to be seen, but for the moment perception is everything. Good news for Airbus and Embraer for the moment.

[+ glutes]

They grounded all DC-10s for less than this. But that was back when competent people were running things.

[+ VictorPowers]

@Oaktown I had read that the most recent 737 crash was from a plane that should have been grounded anyway. The previous two flights had issues. I think this more of a matter of a company being negligent in pursuit of more profits by overlooking maintenance.

[rvwnsd]

@Oaktown I had read that the most recent 737 crash was from a plane that should have been grounded anyway. The previous two flights had issues. I think this more of a matter of a company being negligent in pursuit of more profits by overlooking maintenance.

Interestingly, the DC-10 crash that @Oaktown referenced above resulted, in large part, from improper removal of an engine assembly during a maintenance procedure.

[+ oldNbusted]

Segment on the PBS Newwshour tonight, including a chat with my mancrush science reporter, Miles O'Brien...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBiITrFxSYQ

[+ glutes]

This country seems to require quite a few bodies before it will compel changes at corporate levels. Probably because of lobbyists our 787 MAX 8's aren't grounded.

Apparently 340 dead in 6 months isn't enough.

[+ azdr0710]

for history buffs, the story of the first commercial jet.......

 

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/comets-tale-63573615/

 

[mike carey]

https://www.joemygod.com/2019/03/australia-bans-boeing-model-from-their-airspace/

 

The Australian Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) has stopped B737 Max 8 flights into Australia. So far it only affects Fiji Airways as Singapore based Silk Airways (that flies into Darwin and Cairns) had already grounded its fleet. No Australian carriers operate the type.

[Otto]

This, from a guy who can't operate an umbrella.

 

[uSER=25073877]Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump[/uSER]

FollowFollow @realDonaldTrump

More

Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Split second decisions are....

7:00 AM - 12 Mar 2019

[gallahadesquire]

Analysis shows that the 737-8 MAX needed bigger engines, which should have had landing gear height increased or other solutions. Rather, the re-programmed the flight computer to adjust the nose (known as the angle of attack) to compensate … can’t remember if it goes nose-up, and stalls, or nose down into the trite “ nose dive”.

 

A simple solution is to train pilots to take off and land manually.

 

I had to call Delta last night, as I am in a 737-8 this month. They told me that they don’t use the MAX version. Also, American hasn’t grounded theirs … yet.

 

It’s interesting that it’s the more recently delivered planes that have this problem. I think Boeing needs to reprogram them, or disable autopilot intake off and landing. It can be done now, but it probably takes more tine than it does for the flight yo become unstable and crash.

 

After the 787 battery screw up (remember that?), Boeing needs to take a really, really hard look at its engineering staff. And I have a nephew who designed the glass cockpit for the 777.

[+ WilliamM]

Update New York Times

 

France, Germany and Britain have banned the plane