The Boeing Company Message Board

Next ice age? 1500 to 3000 years. Warming will slow it, that's the good news for someone with a long time frame like yourself, but it won't stop it because we will eventually use up our fossil fuels and the oceans will absorb the excess carbon dioxide in a few hundred years. So start stocking up on coal right now.

Sentiment: Hold

Yes, carbon wings are more labor intensive to build than aluminum making labor costs a bigger factor in the decision on location. Also the tooling for a 777x wing is going to be expensive and will take up a fair amount of space including a couple of very large autoclaves. That would require a considerable adjustment to the Everett facility.
My guess is that one of the reasons for the folding wings will be to make them easier to transport. Putting a joint in a carbon wing is not trivial and will add a fair amount of weight, hard to believe that's just for airport space concerns.

Sentiment: Hold

It is currently within 180 ETOP for most of the common flight paths that skirt the northern edge of the Pacific. However: The Federal Aviation Administration is reviewing its approval for the Boeing 787 to fly up to three hours’ distance from the nearest airport, raising the possibility the jet’s routing may be constrained once the agency lifts the grounding of the Dreamliner fleet.

Sentiment: Hold

It would appear that either the original plan with two flights was too thin for the FAA or, they found something that required further testing. The last two flights were non-standard, 12,000 and 20,000 ft cruising. Most flight testing occurs either at normal cruising altitudes or landing. I would think it would have to have something to do with the battery venting system since it is likely that if the batteries did catch fire and were going to vent the aircraft would be in descent mode looking for a place to land.

Sentiment: Hold

17s are very, very pricy, not competitive with the C-130s that are available.

No, they have been testing the electrical panels, slats, and control systems as well as the batteries. As for these tests, I'm pretty sure they were associated with the batteries, probably follow on per FAA like Fal indicated.

Both flights had a lot of intermediate and low level low speed testing, unusual. Might have had something to do with flaps & slats but most of those problems were resolved last year. Or could have something to do with the battery venting system performance at various speeds and altitudes. Don't think they would be checking electrical panel performance with this type of flight profile.

Sentiment: Hold

From a U of Illinois survey of scientists:
The strongest consensus on the causes of global warming came from climatologists who are active in climate research, with 97 percent agreeing humans play a role.

Petroleum geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest doubters, with only 47 percent and 64 percent, respectively, believing in human involvement.

"The petroleum geologist response is not too surprising, but the meteorologists' is very interesting," said Peter Doran associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, and one of the survey's authors.

"Most members of the public think meteorologists know climate, but most of them actually study very short-term phenomenon."

However, Doran was not surprised by the near-unanimous agreement by climatologists.

"They're the ones who study and publish on climate science. So I guess the take-home message is, the more you know about the field of climate science, the more you're likely to believe in global warming and humankind's contribution to it.

Sentiment: Hold

No, I've been involved with every new launch starting with the 767. None of them came close to having the problems the 87 has had.

Sentiment: Hold

Hmm, makes you wonder what else needs checking out?

If one engine is operating it can start the other one electrically. If both engines are out you need the APU for a restart which needs the battery to start it. If one battery is out (burning or whatever) the other one can be used to start the APU assuming the 28V DC BUS isn't in trouble as well. If the 28V BUS goes out as well things get complicated. There is a link from the batteries to the engine AC BUSes but it isn't clear to me whether the juice can be relayed through them to the APU. The Ram Air Turbine will deploy but it doesn't generate enough juice to start the engines and run the (limited) flight control system.
Bottom line, it would take multiple failures to prevent a restart but some of the redundancies run through the 28V BUS.

Sentiment: Hold

From Boeing spokesperson: Please note that today’s flight is unrelated to the ongoing 787 battery certification testing," Birtel said in an email. "This is a routine test flight designed to address ongoing system upgrades to the airplane. The battery certification demonstration flight will take place in the coming days."

Sentiment: Hold

NiCads are used on a lot of passenger planes including the A380 and the 777.

Sentiment: Hold

Cessna used lithium batteries for one of their business jets, one of them caught fire on the ground and they switched to NiCad.
Boeing wrote a fairly rigorous testing process for Lithium batteries for the FAA as an industry consultant and then decided not to follow it since it was not formally approved when the 87 was ready for certification. That turned out to be a bad decision and now they are doing the testing they should have in the first place as part of their plan to get the planes back in the air.

Sentiment: Hold

Given all the hype about having a test plan in place and ready to go it's puzzling that neither one of the flight test aircraft (5 and 272) have taken to the skies yet since getting the go ahead.

Yes, there are rumors but nothing substantive. Note that the "fix" Boeing is offering is a relatively cheap option and if they can get the FAA to buy it they will have gotten away without a lot of incremental production costs. But that still leaves the extra inventory carrying costs of the 87s sitting around, the reduced cash flow from delayed deliveries, and potential penalties to the airlines. Your logic on there being extra costs is good but given the miracle of Boeing accounting practices it may get hidden away in the footnotes or spread out over ten years or so.
Another associated factor is that McNerney is going to retire in a year or two and wants to go out on a high note with maximized bonuses.

Sentiment: Buy

Sounds impressive but this is nowhere near commercialization and the heat flux is relatively low, note that it took 18 hrs to cool the sample. When a lithium battery shorts out it generates a massive amount of heat very quickly. Maybe with refinements this will pan out but Boeing needs a solution now.

Very sad. No doubt the right wingers will say we don't need heath research because 1) all science is bad since some science is bringing up uncomfortable facts or 2) if you pray you won't get sick. From the other side I have some problems with the way the across the board cuts were put on the table to, supposedly, make sequester so unpalitable that it would never happen. Bad form all the way around.