5 ms·
> I dunno. I can think of a bunch of failure points on a modern airliner. not catastrophic failure, like you get with a rocket or a helicopter.
by rkk3 5y ago
> I dunno. I can think of a bunch of failure points on a modern airliner.
not catastrophic failure, like you get with a rocket or a helicopter.
- remus 5y agoI'm not an expert but "wings falling off" seems like a pretty catastrophic failure for a typical aeroplane.
- voldacar 5y agoThe wing root is the strongest part of any airframe. Wings falling off is way down there on the list of aviation risks, maybe next to getting struck by a meteor
- abletonlive 5y agothat's not redundancy. can a plane fly w/ only 1 wing and for how long?
- voldacar 5y agoa plane without a wing is no longer a plane, realistically
- mmcconnell1618 5y agoIsraeli F15 landed missing one wing but this was a fighter jet with super high thrust capability to help offset missing lift from the wings: https://theaviationist.com/2014/09/15/f-15-lands-with-one-wing/ https://theaviationist.com/2014/09/15/f-15-lands-with-one-wi...
- WJW 5y agoLow probability or not, if an airplane can't stay in the air with one of the wings missing that definitely counts as a "single point of failure". Whether that SPOF needs to be mitigated is a tradeoff based on other constraints like the expected risk, economics, and safety regulations (and in the case of the space telescope, maximum launch mass of the rocket).
- CamperBob2 5y agoThat's kind of ridiculous. A terrorist bomb in the cargo hold is a "single point of failure" that will crash the plane, as is quantum uncertainty causing one wing to break off spontaneously. This says nothing about the actual SPoF engineering requirement, which is a very real, very relevant thing.
- jonas21 5y agoWings don't just go missing. It would require multiple failures for a wing to "fall off" an airliner.
- turrican 5y agohttps://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2018/may/16/ntsb-finds-metal-fatigue-in-piper-wing https://www.aopa.org/news-and-media/all-news/2018/may/16/nts... Not as small of a risk as you’d expect (though not anything to seriously worry about). This metal fatigue grounded a large chunk of the US training fleet and similar cracks were frequently found in other Piper Arrows (including ours).
- voldacar 5y agoThat is actually kind of scary. How many cycles does the airframe have to go through in order for this to become a problem? I tend to think that if the FAA gave a shit about general aviation maybe we wouldn't be flying planes from the 1960s
- WalterBright 5y agoFor airliners, the airplanes are retired after a certain number of cycles. The 757 was designed for 62,000 flying hours, if I recall correctly. It's scrap after that. My dad's B-17 in WW2 was scrapped after 30 missions, it was considered worn out.
- WalterBright 5y agoThe wings have dual spars.