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>>Maybe it's just me. I don't know. From your comment history it sure seems like you have a vested interest in maintaining favorable PR for Boeing in this foru

>>Maybe it's just me. I don't know. From your comment history it sure seems like you have a vested interest in maintaining favorable PR for Boeing in this forum. Why shouldn't the industry discuss this in open terms? The fact is we don't have access "to the relevant design and test documentation". Boeing and their partners won't share it. So, how can we discuss this without the data, then? Conjecture and informed opinion is all we have, and it seems as if you have rather a bit of the latter .. so why not share a technical analysis of the circumstances based on your understanding rather than attempt an appeal at what could be construed, frankly, as a PR move? What if, Boeing are simply mis-managing the project? It surely is not the first - nor the last - time that a major aerospace company was bit by that bug - in fact, for anyone that pays attention to the big, fat, military-industrial corn-fed cows of the last few decades, its rather the norm than the exception!! Nothing says "management really, really screwed up" than a smoking pile of brand new tech, being doused with fire-retardant foam, while the world asks questions like "why is our technology failing us?" from afar .. lucky, we're not there yet with the 787 - so this is really the best time for us to be discussing these issues. Lucky no lives are lost .. yet.

robomartin 14y ago
Nope. Never worked for Boeing. Never worked directly in aerospace. I did manufacture motor and battery controls that were used in drones and robots maybe twenty years ago mostly in academia. I have no way to know if the motor controls we sold to institutions such as MIT ended-up in Boeing product. I doubt it. It's easy. Go to my profile on HN. Send me an email. I'll reply back with my LinkedIn profile. Then you can go figure out if I have anything to gain from my comments. I'm just an engineer with a lot of experience making mistakes who hates it when people run their mouths without data. That's all. Things at this scale are never as simple as some journalist might make it seem. Most people don't have a clue as to how such massive machines as a 787 are designed, built and tested. Not a clue. Many years ago I had a chance to meet and enjoy long talks with the engineer who had been in charge of the F18 project. It was a fascinating learning experience for me. If I remember correctly, he said he had some 3,000 engineers working for him. Now, how many people would imagine that 3,000 engineers had their hand on the F18 design simply by looking at it? Better yet, how many journalist? And, how many of these people could diagnose an F18 problem --even if qualified-- without access to real engineering and test data?
robomartin 14y ago
> Conjecture and informed opinion is all we have, and it seems as if you have rather a bit of the latter .. so why not share a technical analysis of the circumstances based on your understanding rather than attempt an appeal at what could be construed, frankly, as a PR move? Crap, I didn't catch that one. Really? That's how you see what I wrote? Amazing. Here you have an engineer (me) saying: "We don't know enough. We need facts before we can reach a conclusion. Please stop." And your interpretation is that I am using conjecture for PR purposes? Are you an engineer? If you are not, maybe you just don't understand my vantage point. And that's OK. Life goes on. Here's an analogy, imperfect, but, what the hell: A guy gets arrested and accused of rape. You say: "He probably did it. Hang him!". I say: "Let's wait and look at the evidence, which should ideally include DNA. Then we can look at the facts as they may be available to us and make a decision." These are vastly different approaches to the problem. Who would you want in the jury if YOU were the accused? Someone like me or someone like these clowns that are flapping their jaws without having access to the evidence?
- aidenn0 14y ago
  And this is why stating your occupation as "engineer" is an express ticket off of a jury.
  - robomartin 14y ago
    Isn't that the truth! It has happened to me a few times. I actually wanted to serve too. Nope. The minute I revealed what I did: business owner, engineer, software, etc. Done. Excused.
    - warrenm 14y ago
      there is something deeply disturbing about our legal system when that is true :|
    - SilasX 14y ago
      If we're going to report anecdotes, two (aerospace) engineer friends of mine (one of whom professed this purported fact) at the same company got picked for a jury on the same drunk-driving case.
ubernostrum 14y ago
Couple things. One is that I'm actually thankful for robomartin's comments; they break up some of the more outlandish hero-worshipping of Elon Musk (i.e., http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5138430 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5138430, which is frankly just a ridiculous thing to say). Another is that this is not new. What is new about the 787 is the sheer amount of media attention, not the fact that there are serious post-service-entry problems. For example: Nothing says "management really, really screwed up" than a smoking pile of brand new tech, being doused with fire-retardant foam, while the world asks questions like "why is our technology failing us?" from afar You mean, the way we all went crazy, posted huge numbers of threads and begged people who don't work on airliners for a living to come save Airbus in one fell swoop after the A380 exploding-engine accident (which, on investigation, turned out to not be a one-off problem, but a general flaw with the plane's engines)? The one where a smoking pile of brand-new tech had to be doused with fire-retardant foam? This stuff happens. The other thing that's different about it now is that when it happens, people don't die by the hundreds, as they used to when a new airliner entered service and a problem suddenly became visible. What is not different is that it still gets solved by research and hard work, rather than by pop-entrepreneurs snarking away in major newspapers.
- dialtone 14y ago
  Actually that's inaccurate... The A380 has 2 engine types and the issue only affected one of the 2 types, specifically the Rolls Royce engine. The other problem is that the issue was not a general flaw but some of the oil valves in the engine were not cut properly and would eventually break. A better example of how this stuff hits the A380 are the cracks in the wings.

robomartin 14y ago

Nope. Never worked for Boeing. Never worked directly in aerospace. I did manufacture motor and battery controls that were used in drones and robots maybe twenty years ago mostly in academia. I have no way to know if the motor controls we sold to institutions such as MIT ended-up in Boeing product. I doubt it. It's easy. Go to my profile on HN. Send me an email. I'll reply back with my LinkedIn profile. Then you can go figure out if I have anything to gain from my comments. I'm just an engineer with a lot of experience making mistakes who hates it when people run their mouths without data. That's all. Things at this scale are never as simple as some journalist might make it seem. Most people don't have a clue as to how such massive machines as a 787 are designed, built and tested. Not a clue. Many years ago I had a chance to meet and enjoy long talks with the engineer who had been in charge of the F18 project. It was a fascinating learning experience for me. If I remember correctly, he said he had some 3,000 engineers working for him. Now, how many people would imagine that 3,000 engineers had their hand on the F18 design simply by looking at it? Better yet, how many journalist? And, how many of these people could diagnose an F18 problem --even if qualified-- without access to real engineering and test data?

robomartin 14y ago

> Conjecture and informed opinion is all we have, and it seems as if you have rather a bit of the latter .. so why not share a technical analysis of the circumstances based on your understanding rather than attempt an appeal at what could be construed, frankly, as a PR move? Crap, I didn't catch that one. Really? That's how you see what I wrote? Amazing. Here you have an engineer (me) saying: "We don't know enough. We need facts before we can reach a conclusion. Please stop." And your interpretation is that I am using conjecture for PR purposes? Are you an engineer? If you are not, maybe you just don't understand my vantage point. And that's OK. Life goes on. Here's an analogy, imperfect, but, what the hell: A guy gets arrested and accused of rape. You say: "He probably did it. Hang him!". I say: "Let's wait and look at the evidence, which should ideally include DNA. Then we can look at the facts as they may be available to us and make a decision." These are vastly different approaches to the problem. Who would you want in the jury if YOU were the accused? Someone like me or someone like these clowns that are flapping their jaws without having access to the evidence?

aidenn0 14y ago
And this is why stating your occupation as "engineer" is an express ticket off of a jury.
- robomartin 14y ago
  Isn't that the truth! It has happened to me a few times. I actually wanted to serve too. Nope. The minute I revealed what I did: business owner, engineer, software, etc. Done. Excused.
  - warrenm 14y ago
    there is something deeply disturbing about our legal system when that is true :|
  - SilasX 14y ago
    If we're going to report anecdotes, two (aerospace) engineer friends of mine (one of whom professed this purported fact) at the same company got picked for a jury on the same drunk-driving case.

ubernostrum 14y ago

Couple things. One is that I'm actually thankful for robomartin's comments; they break up some of the more outlandish hero-worshipping of Elon Musk (i.e., http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5138430 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5138430, which is frankly just a ridiculous thing to say). Another is that this is not new. What is new about the 787 is the sheer amount of media attention, not the fact that there are serious post-service-entry problems. For example: Nothing says "management really, really screwed up" than a smoking pile of brand new tech, being doused with fire-retardant foam, while the world asks questions like "why is our technology failing us?" from afar You mean, the way we all went crazy, posted huge numbers of threads and begged people who don't work on airliners for a living to come save Airbus in one fell swoop after the A380 exploding-engine accident (which, on investigation, turned out to not be a one-off problem, but a general flaw with the plane's engines)? The one where a smoking pile of brand-new tech had to be doused with fire-retardant foam? This stuff happens. The other thing that's different about it now is that when it happens, people don't die by the hundreds, as they used to when a new airliner entered service and a problem suddenly became visible. What is not different is that it still gets solved by research and hard work, rather than by pop-entrepreneurs snarking away in major newspapers.

dialtone 14y ago
Actually that's inaccurate... The A380 has 2 engine types and the issue only affected one of the 2 types, specifically the Rolls Royce engine. The other problem is that the issue was not a general flaw but some of the oil valves in the engine were not cut properly and would eventually break. A better example of how this stuff hits the A380 are the cracks in the wings.