Posted on 02/26/2008 3:35:45 PM PST by Tank-FL
Last month, technology news sites and blogs breathlessly reported on a Federal Aviation Administration document suggesting that Boeing's new 787 Dreamliner passenger jet may be vulnerable to computer hackers.
Boeing now says that the problem was fixed even before the FAA issued its warning. But there may be yet another way bad guys could get into the plane's control system, one that neither the company nor the FAA may have noticed.
The FAA was specifically concerned that a passenger could use the on-board entertainment network, which personal laptops can plug into, to access the plane's navigation system and disable or take over the plane.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
ROFLMBO
It was a long way from the TRS80 (RadioShack early computer) to the perfection of a computer system simple enough to for all levels of household users to operate. That was accomplished with XP. Vista is an attempt to milk acheived perfection for additonal profits.
In other words, Vista was not necessary.
You should have read his entire comment ... the sarcasm would have been obvious to you....
“Are you volunteering to crawl out on a wing to give the prop a spin in case of failure ?”
Wing? sheesh....you trust the WING to hold the engine? no, the engines should be mounted directly on the fuselage, that’s the only place I would trust it.
And NO I wouldn’t crawl out on a wing, they are made of aluminum and can corrode. I’m for cloth wings, they don’t corrode - and frankly I think it’s a good idea to have two sets of wings, for redundancy, just in case one fails.
“The plane’s systems should have code in ROM that will allow the pilot to fly the plane. Perhaps not fly it as smoothly or elegantly as fancier code would allow, but at least fly it.”
Actually, I’ve seen aircraft in test do exactly this, but really, you’re opening yourself up to more trouble here than the problems it would potentially solve.
Fly-by-wire works, it’s reliable, and it’s here to stay. We haven’t had stick-and-rudder guys for decades on commercial flights.
Your safety is more in the hands of the geeks than the golden-arms these days.
So, you might grab a stick of beemans before you board your next flight.....because you want to be ready when the entertainment center says it’s your turn to fly.
Fly-by-wire-only is potentially, not in all cases, but could be MORE redundant than hydraulic/mechanical backup.
Adding ‘backups’ to control surfaces doesn’t necessarily improve all situations.
The DC-10 in Soiux City had all sorts of backups, in the wrong place, and they didn’t work.
The MD-80 Alaska Air trim-screwjack was ‘redundant’ with the hydraulic control ram...except the nut on the screwjack was stripped and thus the system turned into a single point of failure.
If the single-redundancy FBW system has a 0.9999 failure rate, it’s probably safer than dual hydro+mechanical systems with 0.9999 and 0.997 respective failure rates.
Imagine flying along a 30,000 ft. and seeing this message on your flight control computer screen.
“Fatal System Error - Shutting Down Now.”
That kkey bbbbounccce will be a real bitch on landings. I hope they have good shock absorbers on those things! (Or an up to date keybounce filter! :)
My TRS Mod-1 went in for warranty service almost 20 times. No kidding. Went through five mainboards. At the end it still ran like a three-legged horse. Had to keep whacking it upside the EI every ten minutes or so to keep it from locking up. Ah, those were the days... NOT!
(I was jealous of the guy who bought the first one in our part of the state -- they gave HIM the "pregnant cable" (an extra DIN cable to run next to the ribbon between the KB and EI), but all I got was the "buffered" cable (a box with a PCB that rode on the ribbon cable). I got the third one sold in the region, so I guess I didn't rate for really "early adopter" treatment.)
After all the warranty extentions wore off (they kept bumping my coverage up every time they'd wall-job it for a few weeks***), I took to it with screwdriver and soldering pencil. Added lower-case mod (21L02 1K static RAM chip "piggybacked" over one of the video memory chips, buncha wire-wrap wires soldered hither and yon, a couple of surplus calculator keys to use as Ctrl keys, and a machine language driver written by a guy out east who put out a newsletter), then a double-density kit (the "real" one from Tandy -- i.e., no real support, had to use third-party OS to make real use of the thing), four half-height 720K DSDD drives (the same format that ended up being the first standard for 3.5" drives, but using 5.25" disks), and I finally pushed it into the grave when I just had to tweak it just a tad faster. It died at something like 2 or 2.5Mhz (I forget the exact speed) when I added the turbo kit. I should have known better than to try digging the spurs into that already-lame old nag.
It was dead, dead, dead, for keeps after that adventure. Had to race down and buy a Mod-4, because we were running our store on the damn thing. Ouch!
*** I remember the time the store manager called to tell me it was back, and this time he was sure they'd fixed it -- they really got it taken care of, finally, blah blah blah. So, I went in, and instead of lugging it back with me, I said let's try it out and see what happens. He says sure, no problem, so, I plug it in -- it's sitting on the counter in the ratshack store -- and I pecked in some two-line loop to dump a string to the monitor (or something like that) -- and I think it was like thirty seconds or so and it locked up tight as a drum. Had to reset it or power down to get it going again. I just shook my head and walked out, and he packed it up for one more trip to the shop. It was like a bad dream that wouldn't end.
TWICE!!!!
That civilian cargo plane that was hit by an Surface To Air Missile leaving Baghdad lost all hydraulics too. The crew managed to land the aircraft wheels up on the runway and survived. No fire. Just a belly landing.
Of course we never heard about that part because it didn't fit the media template.
Likewise you should have read mine. The fact that a pilot once managed to land a plane with zero control surfaces should not be taken to imply that loss of all control surfaces can be considered 'acceptable'.
Fly-by-wire works, it’s reliable, and it’s here to stay. We haven’t had stick-and-rudder guys for decades on commercial flights.
What problems or dangers would be posed by adding a minimalist mode to the software? Granted, one has to make sure that it doesn't get invoked accidentally, but that shouldn't be difficult.
I would expect that a fairly minimal control system for an airplane could be handled with something fairly primitive on the level of an 8x52 microcontroller or equivalent. The system wouldn't do a whole lot--just direct control surfaces to match the positions of the pilot's controls. Communication wouldn't have to be terribly fast, so the backup communications bus could use clunky but noise-resistant protocols.
The only per-unit cost I would think would be at all significant would be stringing cables for the backup network. The software would be much simpler than that which would normally be used in flying the plane, so I would think the extra cost of certifying it would be slight compared with the cost of certifying the main software.
I only meant that in the event of the computer failing, there should be some means for the pilots to manually control the plane.
“but that shouldn’t be difficult.”
maybe, maybe not.
What IS difficult is making sure pilots know how to fly a plane with completely different flying qualities than the one they took off with.
Why go minimalist? why not have another fully-redundant flight control system?
triple, quad redundant how much more do you need?
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