[OT] “Raise the nose, HAL.” “I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

[Gilter]

On Sunday, 21 April 2019 at 19:52:58 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 4/21/2019 10:18 AM, Paolo Invernizzi wrote:
>> I'm finding this article [1] amazing, looking at all the 
>> anecdotical stories that Walter has told us during all that 15 
>> years regarding engineering in avionic industry.
>> 
>> Without specifically discussing the Boing case, but looking at 
>> industry in general...
>> Really, things will go horribly wrong, before starting to go 
>> better again?
>> 
>> Happy Easter to everybody!
>> 
>> [1] 
>> https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer
>
> I have my beefs with the article.
>
> For example,
>
> "They want to have one airplane that all their pilots can fly 
> because that makes both pilots and airplanes fungible, 
> maximizing flexibility and minimizing costs."
>
> Safety is a factor in having different airplanes fly the same. 
> Many accidents have occurred because the pilot, in a moment of 
> stress, applied a solution that would have been correct on the 
> aircraft type he had more experience on.

You can't have two planes fly the same, if they did they wouldn't 
be different then. You could say there's risk factor in that you 
try and do something with one plane, it is so similar for that 
one minuet difference that could cause an accident cause the 
pilot thinks it is doing something else.

There have also been incidents where the pilot was because in a 
moment of stress he applied a solution from another aircraft to 
the aircraft he was flying. A technique used by gliders, a 
single/two seater aircraft that has no engines, was applied to a 
boeing 767.

> He argues that airplanes are stable without augmentation. This 
> isn't true for any jetliners, they have an active yaw damper:
>
>   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_roll
>
> In particular:
>
>   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_roll#Accidents
>
>
> He argues that it would be safer to develop a whole new 
> airframe. Any new airframe, by definition, will be an unproven 
> design, and everything in it would need to be re-proven, which 
> has its limits.
>
>
> "Neither such coders nor their managers are as in touch with 
> the particular culture and mores of the aviation world as much 
> as the people who are down on the factory floor, riveting wings 
> on, designing control yokes, and fitting landing gears. Those 
> people have decades of institutional memory about what has 
> worked in the past and what has not worked. Software people do 
> not."
>
> This is sheer nonsense. People on the shop floor assembling 
> airplanes do indeed have institutional knowledge about what 
> works in manufacturing. They have no idea what works when 
> flying or various failure modes. They have zero experience with 
> stability issues. They do not do design work. Even more 
> ignorant, the 757 I worked on back in 1980 had many computer 
> systems that controlled the airplane, such as the autopilot. 
> Last I checked that was 4 decades ago, and software programmers 
> and managers implemented it.
>
>
> Boeing did indeed make mistakes with the MCAS software design. 
> I won't defend that, I don't understand the causes of those 
> mistakes. But it wasn't about cost saving, another scurrilous 
> charge by the author. The fact that the fix is a software 
> update is evidence enough that it was a mistake, not some blind 
> greed.

A mistake that could have been caught with more rigorous testing 
and training. From what I understand the pilots received an hour 
long training session about the new plane on an ipad and that was 
it. I wouldn't be surprised if they cut corners and costs by not 
testing and providing enough training. I wouldn't be surprised if 
they did cut costs with testing, it's something that will eat a 
good chunk of costs with very little benefit, unless something 
goes wrong, like it has. I'm skeptical that a software patch will 
solve all these issue. I don't have the confidence you have in 
these companies. Maybe they were different 40 years ago. It's 
easy to say, all problems that were being experienced by our 
aircraft were fixed with a software patch. Hope they keep these 
planes grounded until they actually make sure they are safe and 
do actual runs with the plane without any passengers on it so 
they don't all crash and burn.

> There's more, but I should stop here. I'm just tired of these 
> hit pieces from people who only partially know what they're 
> talking about. I'll fly in a 737Max any day.

We'll see if any country ever allows it to fly again. There's a 
long list of countries that have grounded the plane.