Update on 787 Battery Problems

So, they're doing things like our CONgress critters do now, eh? "We need to pass this bill so we can see what's in it." said Nancy Pugnosy.

Did they ever ask Elon Musk what he had in mind? He offered to fix it for them gratis.

Well, the individual companies (for battery and for charger) no doubt satisfied their respective contracts. It's Boeing that should have insisted of a full-up test, and it's the FAA that should also have insisted that Boeing insist.

This reminds me more of the NASA screwup that caused the Hubble to be nearsighted - there was never a full-up optical test on the ground. The problem was that they had two null-corrector results. The big fancy null corrector said the optics were perfect, while the simple crosscheck corrector said the optics were off. Perkin-Elmer, the optics house that made the mirrors, offered to do a full up test for something like $20 million, but NASA declined, and chose to believe the complex null corrector. Oops.

No, they did not take Elon Musk up on it. Nor would I have, were I in charge. The air safety crowd that does investigations is very good at this stuff, and bone-crushingly thorough. SpaceX simply hasn't the throw weight to compete.

Joe Gwinn

One would think that, given the frequency of problems in the automotive and cell phone industries with lithiums, that someone would have required some testing of a product which could kill hundreds of people at a time if it malfunctioned in the same manner. But it wasn't, in one of the highly most regulated industries in our nation. Go figure.

What a horrible place to be, heading that dep't at that time, eh?

So thorough that it passed right by them the first time. Hasn't he already blown the doors off previously NASA-only records in numerous events? That's weight to me.

NASA didn't grind the mirror - Another very respected company did - I want to say Perkin-Elmer - who had made others for years.

It was a simple grinding tech goof that wasn't caught locally and not at NASA upon reception. The precision had to be out of the world for that lens, but we do them much larger and better now.

Mart> >

And had the FAA insisted, you can bet that SOMEONE certainly would have complained about excess government regulation driving up the costs. But yes, this testing should have been done, regulation or no regulation.

It's good that they are keeping the problem contained, but it doesn't seem to address the issue of removing heat generated by the batteries. They are asking a 30V battery about twice the size of a car battery to start an 1100 hp APU (genset) and not get excessively hot. Internal resistance always gets worse in a battery. (I'll bet that the mgt system for cell charging won't be the issue.) I don't know why space is so tight that they cannot spread the 8 cells apart and have proper heat sinks for them.

Exhausive regulations protect those who permit a failure while following them, but not those who step outside them to catch an embarrassing oversight.

Here is a well-documented example:

To compound the problem the commander of US subs in Australia (ComSubSWPac) had been one of the torpedo's developers and refused to listen to complaints. jsw

On 3/24/2013 6:55 PM, Joe Gwinn wrote: ...

...

That's Monday-morning hindsight talking, there, mostly...

The problem was not a grinding error per se, it was that the fancy null corrector was made wrong. If I recall, one of the lens spacers was one millimeter too long or too short, and the mirror was ground to match the fancy null corrector.

Joe Gwinn

[snip]

They did know.

One assumes (well, hopes) that this manager is now running a 7-11.

Wrong organization. It's the development organization that forgot to do the full-up test.

SpaceX and competitors have the advantage of not being big bureaucracies, and being in competition. Most will fail, and a few will be the future.

Joe Gwinn

Then where are the hats? Someone deserves to be handed to.

Or asking "Do you want fries with that?" It's much less dangerous when they screw up again.

You're right.

Ain't that the way?

yet the kodak made mirror which was perfect was left in a warehouse or something like that.

the investigators made by good, but it's clear nobody as boeing knows what the're doing.

While you can blame subcontractors, it's boeing that sells the planes so it's their problem for picking jr level, unsupervised suppliers.

It's just weird. Being can design an airplane, but can't put together a battery and charger themselves?

Boeing didn't design the plane, or build it. That's the problem. The whole shooting match was contracted out, with final assembly by Boeing. Everything between "concept" and "final assembly" was contracted out to the lowest bidder.

It was Alan Shepard, the US astronaut, who said "It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract."

Definition of an airplane - "a collection of compromises flying in close formation"

somebody had to say this is the final shape and these are the functional components we need, and that had to have been boeing.

It must be a fascinating process to get everything from various suppliers to even fit together in the first place.

Having worked on man-rated systems I can tell you that everything involved traces back directly to a standard . Whether that standard is the wavelength of red light or the length of Mrs. O'Malley's toenail on November 27th , as long as it traces back to the standard it'll all fit .

And Bo_ing is now laying off another few thousand employees, not management of course...

Many of the parts are now being made by Boeing. All sorts of problems with contracted out parts and assemblies have delayed the production of the plane. What is interesting is that I know several folks who work for Boeing in many different types of jobs, from engineering to assemblers to tooling makers to inspectors. And they all predicted these problems. Eric