https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/boeing-737-max-7-certification-taking-considerable-amount-time-official-2023-05-31/ Not to spoil the party but the MAX 7 is nowhere close to yet be certified. Actually the linked article says that there are a handful of documents remaining, so the ...
Jump to postThe arming mechanism does not lock the door. On any Airbus, if you try and open the door from outside, the arming mechanism is disarmed, and the door opens without the slide blowing. The same is true for most Boeings as well, but not the B737. For this reason some airlines make the ground staff ope...
Jump to postI don't think a helicopter is the best vehicle to travel to Titan ;) Titan is a good candidate for rotorcraft flight because it's gravity is extremely low, but the atmosphere is very dense, with no appreciable weather. The biggest issue will be drag, so Dragonfly will be like it's namesake, hopping...
Jump to postGAO has issued a report assessing the 34 major projects currently underway at NASA. Of these, 14 are related to Artemis, and 20 are related to science and research. Artemis: -- Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) -- Lunar & ISS Spacesuits (xEVA) -- Gateway Deep Space Logistics & Transport (DSL) -- G...
Jump to postI understood you to be saying the Space Shuttle helped the Russians make their Mir system. Now I think you're saying they developed it independently. If so, I don't think we can credit the Shape Shuttle for things the Russians did independently. Helps to remember that the NASA Shuttle program was d...
Jump to postYes, the Simple Flying tweet has been deleted, so appears to have been a misunderstanding. The statement about approaching TIA, was in regard to the 737 MAX-10. And about approaching certification, the 737 MAX-7. https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/boeing-737-max-7-certification-takin...
Jump to postSimple Flying tweeted today that Boeing expects the 777-9 to be certified within the year. Mike Fleming, Senior Vice President Development Programs and Customer Support, notes there is only some final documentation remains to be completed. Saw that too. Just for clarification, is that type certific...
Jump to postFinal BEA report on the 2020 near mid-air collision of two aircraft at Paris, on parallel runways. A combination of windshear alert and strong crosswind drove an arriving aircraft over the runway of the departing aircraft. They crossed with a vertical and lateral separation of around 500 feet. Both ...
Jump to postI understand manufacturing facility Rocket Lab bought from Virgin Orbit is across the street from Rocket Labs existing facility in Long Beach. Yes, the Twitter thread mentions that they acquired that property and facilities for $16M, but it's been appraised at $100M. If Virgin Orbit had to go down,...
Jump to postRocketLab has revealed they are building the capacity to support an Electron launch cadence of 48 per year. But as of 2024, expect to only reach an annual cadence of 20. Still that is more than enough to drive the economics of reusability. For Neutron, they are still too early in the development sta...
Jump to postSierra has announced they have powered up DreamChaser for the first time. Another step in the sequence to launch.
https://www.sierraspace.com/newsroom/pr ... s-to-life/
Have to keep in mind this is an anomalous event. It doesn't require a broad response. The airline is going to increase supervision of the doors and exit seats, for now, probably to deter copycats. But the door mechanisms are certified safe and effective, and they serve their purpose. The doors alrea...
Jump to postHow would Mir get hold of US technologies? As noted, the resources used for each are different, but the standard and methods of creating that environment for the crew has remained. The Russians developed their own versions of electrolysis and atmospheric mixing and control. Just as they developed t...
Jump to postAres I was to be a crewed rocket using only an SRB for the first stage .. no liquid fuel companion. Yes, I'm aware. Also cancelled for the issues involved. And resurrected only in its heavier sustainer form. There have been relatively few attempts at this over the years. Mostly for missiles and oth...
Jump to postAnother example of Shuttle technology that has since become standard, is the ECLSS system that provided an Earth-like shirt-sleeve crew environment. Similar systems were used for Mir and ISS, and now for Orion, although the resources available have been different for each, and the technology has bee...
Jump to postThe solid rocket boosters *could have been* new technology that lasted. I could imagine today's rockets using recoverable solid motors for the first stage. Did they ever work out economically? Was it cheaper to recover and refurbish than to build new? Again the reuse economics depend on cadence. Fo...
Jump to postOne example of a direct use from shuttle that is still in service, is the R40b engine that was first designed as a shuttle thruster, but since has seen use on larger satellites. Aerojet might still manufacture them on demand. NASA also has a large number in storage. They are rumored to be in use on ...
Jump to postDoes any current non-SLS rocket use space shuttle derived technologies? The SLS does count, but I already knew of that. The tiles on DreamChaser are exactly what I'm looking for. I suspect that Shuttle-derived technology is scattered throughout many spacecraft, in different forms. However you would...
Jump to postIf you're asking if any of the shuttle technologies are still in use for spaceflight today, then SLS would be the best direct example. The tank welding techniques have continued to be advanced, together with tooling. The RS-25 engines are continuing to advance in thrust and manufacturing technology....
Jump to postThis article notes 120 commercial technologies spun off from the Shuttle program. It's the very first hit from a Google search. https://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/home/feature_shuttle_spinoffs.html Here is an earlier (2000) fact sheet about Shuttle program technology. https://www.nasa.gov/centers/mars...
Jump to postAVHerald article. Sounds like the radome was dented on takeoff by a foreign object strike (possibly bird), then collapsed inward at altitude, causing failure alerts.
https://avherald.com/h?article=509c056d&opt=0
Isn’t it mandated that emergency exits should be manned? If yes, how is Asiana going to solve this? Seat FA’s in those seats during take off and landing? Do FAs sit at overwings on 737s? No, but AFAIK FAs make sure that there is someone sitting in the emergency exit seat - if the row is empty they ...
Jump to postI don't think the boomer is going away, Someone has to get coffee for the pilots... :D I thought part of the study of the reduced crew member program was to have a pilot and boom operator fly a tanker to see if the feasibility of the idea would work in a war-time situation. Yes, the idea was that i...
Jump to postWell I guess this puts to rest of often asked question about the possibility! Which is what? Either a door of an airliner can be opened during flight or it can't. I always thought that it wasn't possible. Which is it? The impediment to opening the door is differential air pressure. It's a plug door...
Jump to postJust from an aesthetics standpoint, the way Starliner is mounted to Atlas V has got to be the most ghetto, totally afterthought-looking vehicle interface I've ever seen for a manned spacecraft. Starliner complies with the commercial crew program requirement that it be launcher-agnostic. Therefore i...
Jump to postIt doesn't explain how VT-TSO is working out to be exactly as predicted in the article. What's that called? A miracle? No, a misunderstanding of statistics. In a shotgun pattern, some points will inevitably fall onto the average value. That doesn't say much about prediction. Another way to view it,...
Jump to postYou seem intent on establishing some production flow points in areas the are subject to extreme variability. The answer is from 2 weeks to 4 months depending on the amount and areas of rework, any customer added updates, whether the plane is going to the original customer or was picked up in a fire...
Jump to postBrooklyn Bridge is an amazing achievement and story. David McCullough wrote an excellent history, and Ken Burns adapted it into an excellent PBS documentary, with David narrating. The bridge is so strong, it has adapted without issue to modern traffic loads, and there is no real limit on its life. A...
Jump to postThe first commercial mission, Galactic 01, will be suborbital experiments for the Italian Air Force, with 3 mission specialists being flown. Afterwards, it's expected to fly with a cadence of about once per month. Here is a video of the recent Unity 25 flight. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-8w2yqgLrAs
Jump to postThere are again, issues with that statement. Falcon Heavy puts more into LEO than the Space Shuttle, and again, at a much lower cost. And Falcon Heavy was basically an iteration of F9. The Space Shuttle was a developmental dead end. AFAIK only the avionics of the shuttles have been replaced. F9 wen...
Jump to postThus in fact, Shuttle did both increase access to space, and lower the cost of access. Could've been better, though. Shuttle suffered from the need to always launch a crew with the payload, necessitating higher reliability and reducing payload mass. Payload volume could not be adjusted easily. All ...
Jump to postSierra has reached the point of applying thermal protection system tiles to the DreamChaser flight article, Tenacity. Still significant ground testing left to go, probably 9 to 12 months until launch. NASA astronauts recently visited to receive some training on cargo handling. https://twitter.com/Si...
Jump to postNASA has released an update on Starliner CFT progress. Launch is still scheduled for NET July 21. Fueling is scheduled to begin in June. 95% of the certification issues are closed, including all those resulting from the OFT-2 mission. The Li-Ion battery assessment is complete. It's approved for the ...
Jump to postOnce again we come back to if the shuttle was designed to greatly increase access to space and dramatically lower costs it was a failure.F9/Dragon is what the shuttle aspired to. This statement is factually incorrect. Apollo flew 40 missions (19 missions under Gemini and 21 missions under Apollo), ...
Jump to postULA cancelled the Vulcan FRF test scheduled yesterday, when the BE-4 engine ignition system did not respond as expected during the countdown. Vulcan was rolled back to the VIF to investigate the issue. The FRF test will be rescheduled when the issue is understood and addressed. https://www.space.com...
Jump to postand it's worth whatever delay or costs ensue. There's delay, and there's delay. They can withheld the full operation status until the seat problem is fixed for the extreme percentile. But shouldn't they at least do partial implementation for the training of pilots who fall within the "safe&quo...
Jump to postHow about the digital design, since this is the first time and they have no experience on it, does that also cause a problem? Will Roper had some interesting commentary on this, as he was the chief proponent of digital twinning and virtual design. He said the T-7 is the first example and so has a l...
Jump to postReminds me of when I bought a home that was under construction. Everything cool before the contract was signed, then arm-to-arm combat to get what I felt I was entitled to whilst the contractor scratched and clawed for every cent. Exactly. In my software business, I found that I had to lay out the ...
Jump to postFalcon launches to orbit 8 times a month. You are missing the point. If there was a need for 8 manned missions a month it would be possible. There is no difference between an manned falcon rocket and an unmanned one. The point, as mentioned, is that you can't compare the Falcon stack to Shuttle wit...
Jump to postISpace has released the final investigative report on their Hakuto-R lunar lander mishap. The lander passed over a 3 km cliff, which caused it's radar altimeter reading to instantly jump by a large value. The software error detection identified this as a hardware error, and subsequently applied a co...
Jump to postI didn't know RVS2.0 design had the focus on automation, in my mind it was all about improving boomer vision through screens. I have no doubt it is or will be in the cards but are you sure it's a spec of RVS 2.0 ? Yes, quite sure. When Calhoun convened the independent expert panel to define RVS 2.0...
Jump to postI guess my point about Mars capability is that it depends on hundreds of technologies that have existed only recently, or don't exist even today. The notion that they would exist 30 years earlier "if only" the Shuttle program didn't exist, is not credible. Similarly the notion that the int...
Jump to postFor each of the Shuttle launches, NASA could have given a gaggle of engineers enough money to start a company like SpaceX or Blue Origin. Yes, but the same statement could be made for any heavy launch vehicle, including those of the companies you mention. The more cynical observers among us think t...
Jump to postIf you want to compare Falcon to Shuttle, then you have to include Crew Dragon, acknowledge a 30 year separation in technology & design, as well as a massive difference in program objectives. If anything Falcon took a step back technologically. The engines use RP1 and no LH. That is in fact a h...
Jump to postThe RocketLab TROPICS launch was moved up, due to favorable weather conditions, and went off without a hitch, deploying the last two TROPICS satellites.
Jump to postThe GAO has released a report on the T-7 ATP (Advanced Trainer Program), which documents current issues that are causing delays. 1. The canopy det cord is located over the pilot's head, and could produce overpressure injuries on ejection, for some pilots. 2. The timing of parachute deploy does not a...
Jump to postI politely think you missed a word. "Manned". Almost all launches are unmanned, and this super common case the Shuttle was very expensive compared to it's contemporaries. If you're telling me it cost less per person than Apollo, probably true. I'm pretty sure even the average NASA launch ...
Jump to postI don't think anyone said the Space Shuttle "did not increase access to space". That's not my claim. Then your claim is reduced to "did not meet preliminary projections". Which as noted, is both undisputed and irrelevant, as preliminary projections are not a common standard or m...
Jump to postJust to be clear (and I'm not trying to convince Avatar2go but anyone else reading) those "relatively meaningless statistics" are launch rate (4x slower than target) and cost (9x larger than target). If you think launch rate and cost are "relatively meaningless" then you should ...
Jump to postWith all the issues surrounding the RVS is there a long term plan to automate the entire boom refueling system as has been successfully tested in the A330 tanker? Yes, the RVS 2.0 is specifically designed for automation. That is one of the gains the USAF has made in the upgrade, since it was not pa...
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