4 ms·

I can come up with several methods to solve this problem at the hardware level. Slap a temperature sensor on/in/near the heater Monitor current through the he

I can come up with several methods to solve this problem at the hardware level. Slap a temperature sensor on/in/near the heater Monitor current through the heater for temperature coefficient response Capacitive sensing of ice on the heater A timer that shuts off the heater after some time and a buzzer to alert the crew You could even have a thermal fuse with a manual time-limited override Honestly there's so many easy ways to prevent thermal runaway that creating a situation where THE ENGINE FALLS OFF is inexcusably negligent. My space heater has no less than three independent, redundant safeties. As does my clothes iron, my coffee pot, my slow cooker. It really is not that complicated.

benhurmarcel 3y ago
It’s not an electric heater, it blows engine core air from the compressor into the inlet lip. And sensing icing on an inlet isn’t as simple as you make it out to be.
- smrq 3y ago
  So humans are supposed to be able to do it (within five minutes) with the sensor data already available to them, but it's not easy to make a sensor do it automatically? Maybe this is overly optimistic, but I'm confident they could figure out something if they wanted to.
- calamari4065 3y ago
  Great, that doesn't change the fact that there are many ways of ensuring a structure doesn't overhead and explode.
SoftTalker 3y ago
And one or more of those is probably going to be the long-term fix. However any change like this also needs FAA testing and certification, and enough design and review to be sure the changes don't introduce other new problems, all of which will take some time.
- pas 3y ago
  yes, good, time for the FAA to force Boeing to think ahead
ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
Remember that Boeing was too stupid to put an odd number of pitot tubes on their planes, so the computer could have determined which airspeed indication was crazy. They put TWO. Matt Stoller wrote a compelling article asserting that the breakdown at Boeing resulted from the breakdown of the separation between their military and civilian divisions: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout If you think about it, civilian standards must be way higher than military ones; you're talking about millions of people per year who can't bail out of a crashing plane.
- zmgsabst 3y ago
  The breakdown came from trying to crush their engineering organization for costing too much/being unionized — and particularly firing the mid-career engineers, who would by now be the missing senior/principal engineers. MCAS is a reflection of their systems integration engineers not being the caliber and experience they need: it was obviously a defective design.
  - ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
    Not to mention that it was a fraud to begin with, trying to skirt pilot-training rules by having (monumentally incompetent) software tweak the controls of a perverted airframe design to make it imitate previous 737s. If they had done what they needed to do and designed a new plane from scratch, those people wouldn't be dead. OR if they'd simply acknowledged the changed characteristics of the plane, struck deals with purchasers to subsidize training expenses, and let pilots fly it themselves... those people wouldn't be dead. Boeing's recent behavior, as reported by this article, warrants further disgust and ought to be featured in the mainstream news.
    - hn_go_brrrrr 3y ago
      If they had designed a new plane from scratch, those people wouldn't have died because the new airframe wouldn't have been flying yet. Check back again in 2030.

benhurmarcel 3y ago

It’s not an electric heater, it blows engine core air from the compressor into the inlet lip. And sensing icing on an inlet isn’t as simple as you make it out to be.

smrq 3y ago
So humans are supposed to be able to do it (within five minutes) with the sensor data already available to them, but it's not easy to make a sensor do it automatically? Maybe this is overly optimistic, but I'm confident they could figure out something if they wanted to.
calamari4065 3y ago
Great, that doesn't change the fact that there are many ways of ensuring a structure doesn't overhead and explode.

SoftTalker 3y ago

And one or more of those is probably going to be the long-term fix. However any change like this also needs FAA testing and certification, and enough design and review to be sure the changes don't introduce other new problems, all of which will take some time.

pas 3y ago
yes, good, time for the FAA to force Boeing to think ahead

ShadowBanThis01 3y ago

Remember that Boeing was too stupid to put an odd number of pitot tubes on their planes, so the computer could have determined which airspeed indication was crazy. They put TWO. Matt Stoller wrote a compelling article asserting that the breakdown at Boeing resulted from the breakdown of the separation between their military and civilian divisions: https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-coming-boeing-bailout If you think about it, civilian standards must be way higher than military ones; you're talking about millions of people per year who can't bail out of a crashing plane.

zmgsabst 3y ago
The breakdown came from trying to crush their engineering organization for costing too much/being unionized — and particularly firing the mid-career engineers, who would by now be the missing senior/principal engineers. MCAS is a reflection of their systems integration engineers not being the caliber and experience they need: it was obviously a defective design.
- ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
  Not to mention that it was a fraud to begin with, trying to skirt pilot-training rules by having (monumentally incompetent) software tweak the controls of a perverted airframe design to make it imitate previous 737s. If they had done what they needed to do and designed a new plane from scratch, those people wouldn't be dead. OR if they'd simply acknowledged the changed characteristics of the plane, struck deals with purchasers to subsidize training expenses, and let pilots fly it themselves... those people wouldn't be dead. Boeing's recent behavior, as reported by this article, warrants further disgust and ought to be featured in the mainstream news.
  - hn_go_brrrrr 3y ago
    If they had designed a new plane from scratch, those people wouldn't have died because the new airframe wouldn't have been flying yet. Check back again in 2030.