Posted on 01/31/2013 11:52:13 AM PST by jazusamo
Ping!
Interesting article by Chesser regarding the 787 Dreamliner battery problem, green energy faction, lobbying and subsidies.
We lost a space shuttle because NASA bowed to the same pressure and altered the composition of the foam insulation on the external fuel tank. It had been changed in 1997 to exclude the use of freon, which eliminated the preferred material chosen by engineers.
On the issue of the headquarters relocation mentioned in the article: I wonder if moving to a city that has had 40+ murders this month alone makes wonder if the $63MM was worth it? What happens if/when a Boeing employee or family member is killed? Will they remember why Dallas or Denver were such bad choices?
Excellent point...Fortunately this battery problem hasn’t caused a crash, as yet, but the incident that took place in Japan was real close.
Boeing has been working on the P-8 for six years and it doesn’t work, either. Like the 787, the P-8 was supposed to be “more environmentally sensitive.” That goal has been achieved; when an aircraft can’t fly, it is indeed more environmentally sensitive. The process is broken.
But American engineers fixed the problems and the 727’s are looked back on with great fondness by many.
I'm confident the Boeing engineers will fix the problems..and this to shall pass.
Didn’t we lose TWO shuttles to the loss of heat shielding due to the change in the composition of the glue?
ping
Delta took a different approach to lowering fuel costs, they bought a refinery outside Philadelphia.
I agree, they’ll fix these problems but it’s going to cost big bucks and the battery problem is something they were aware of.
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“...and will argue that the aviation industry always seeks to lower its costs (like any business), especially the biggest ones: labor and fuel. This is true...”
So one builds a more fuel efficient plane that more people will buy so they can make more money. I know they had a LOT of problems because of them parting out so much to other countries - but that was also done to promote the bottom line “Okay, your country can make the landing gear but you have to order 10 planes from us.”
I have NO IDEA why the writer brings this Lithium batteries into the fray when he blames Boeing for being “Green”. Perhaps they are lighter than other batteries? Run things that used to be run by the engine power? That would have been interesting to know - then one might be able to agree that they pushed the “fuel efficiency” thing a bit too far for current technology.
No, the first shuttle was due booster O-rings that were too cold to work properly. Also, the joints did not have sufficient o-ring redundancy, which was changed after the accident.
No, we only lost two. The first was the contraction of the O-rings in the SRB segments due to cold weather. The rubber was too stiff and the hot gasses just blew right through the sidewall of the booster at the joint the O-rings were suppose to seal. NASA wanted a launch outside of the given safety parameters and the engineers refused. Eventually they were forced to sign off on it under duress, but got the head idiots to sign and letter agreeing Morton Thiokol engineers were absolved of any blame.
We lost the last one not so much because of the glue, but the foam insulation tiles that lined the main fuel module. It came off at just over mach 4 and the supposedly too-light foam that would not be a threat to the space shuttle itself put a 3-4” hole in the leading edge of her wing, which of course burned right through her during re-entry.
Ah, you know what... I conflated the two because the 2nd one was lost on re-entry DUE TO a problem at launch.
He’s written about it in prior articles and LI batteries are lighter.
Here’s one:
http://nlpc.org/stories/2013/01/22/boeings-green-dreamliner-costing-company-and-customers-plenty
“As a complement to the constant push by the Obama administration and environmental groups to kill fossil fuels by artificially driving up their costs via regulations, they have promoted the increased use of electricity (as though fossil fuels have nothing to do with its generation) as a replacement. The implications of that have led to seemingly desperate, and still elusive, attempts (through billions of dollars in “research” and subsidies for Obama-crony “green” companies) to make storage of electricity viable. And with lithium-ion the major technology of choice for battery advancement, that too has become a concern for safety in a seeming trade-off for efficiency.”
The quick fix is asy, replace the batteries with older, proven technology.
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