Retro Button Would Further Automation On the Boeing Max & Ev

[Bret Cahill]

Put a retro or "my kingdom for a horse" switch on anything that seems unnecessarily over automated or when the additional sophistication is of a minor advantage.

If anything doesn't seem perfect, tap the retro switch and you are back to flying by the seat of your pants or at least something that is less complicated / more proven technology.

It may seem counter intuitive but this would actually _further_ automation and sophistication by taking some of the pressure off the designers trying to get every unanticipated situation right the first time.

It may also reduce some of the concerns about AI.

It's astounding this isn't SOP in every design engineering dept.


Bret Cahill

 

[Bret Cahill]

Put a retro or "my kingdom for a horse" switch on anything that seems unnecessarily over automated or when the additional sophistication is of a minor advantage.

If anything doesn't seem perfect, tap the retro switch and you are back to flying by the seat of your pants or at least something that is less complicated / more proven technology.

It may seem counter intuitive but this would actually _further_ automation and sophistication by taking some of the pressure off the designers trying to get every unanticipated situation right the first time.

It may also reduce some of the concerns about AI.

It's astounding this isn't SOP in every design engineering dept.

https://www.bizjournals.com/wichita/news/2019/03/15/boeing-jumps-on-report-of-737-max-software-fix-in.html

Just make sure it's hack proof.

 

[Jeroen Belleman]

On 2019-03-16 15:04, Bret Cahill wrote:

Put a retro or "my kingdom for a horse" switch on anything that
seems unnecessarily over automated or when the additional
sophistication is of a minor advantage.

If anything doesn't seem perfect, tap the retro switch and you are
back to flying by the seat of your pants or at least something that
is less complicated / more proven technology.

That's a typical engineer's solution. *Add* a switch to 'make
things simpler'.

Jeroen Belleman

 

[Adrian Caspersz]

On 16/03/2019 16:11, Jeroen Belleman wrote:

On 2019-03-16 15:04, Bret Cahill wrote:
Put a retro or "my kingdom for a horse" switch on anything that
seems unnecessarily over automated or when the additional
sophistication is of a minor advantage.

If anything doesn't seem perfect, tap the retro switch and you are
back to flying by the seat of your pants or at least something that
is less complicated / more proven technology.


That's a typical engineer's solution. *Add* a switch to 'make
things simpler'.

I once had a Sony 4:3 CRT TV with a double sided remote control. One
side had over 50 buttons, the other side probably 10 - by sliding on a
blanking cover, you hid whichever side you felt less comfortable with.

Other TV remote controls used to have a reset button, called the "granny
button" by some.

And then there is this ...

https://mhealthinsight.com/2014/11/20/how-grandma-sees-the-smartphone/



--
Adrian C

 

[Ralph Mowery]

In article <gf5i4lF34hdU1@mid.individual.net>, email@here.invalid
says...

I once had a Sony 4:3 CRT TV with a double sided remote control. One
side had over 50 buttons, the other side probably 10 - by sliding on a
blanking cover, you hid whichever side you felt less comfortable with.

Other TV remote controls used to have a reset button, called the "granny
button" by some.

Many home devices should be similar to that. Just the minimum to get
things to run. Being over 60 my wife does not care for the electronic
stuff . She just had me to get her one of the Jitterbug flip phones as
she thoughe it would be very simple to make a few calls on if she needed
to.

 

[Bret Cahill]

Put a retro or "my kingdom for a horse" switch on anything that
seems unnecessarily over automated or when the additional
sophistication is of a minor advantage.

If anything doesn't seem perfect, tap the retro switch and you are
back to flying by the seat of your pants or at least something that
is less complicated / more proven technology.


That's a typical engineer's solution. *Add* a switch to 'make
things simpler'.

Actually the goal was to make 'em comfortable wif eben _more_ sophistication.

Boeing did put one over ride in the software.

"When this system detects a dangerous flight condition, it trims the aircraft, attempting to prevent a stall by pushing the nose down. Trim is not a fancy, new fangled technology: the Cessnas I fly have trim wheels, and autopilots manipulate trim to fly aircraft in an automated way. What is different here is: the MCAS commands the trim in this condition without notifying the pilots AND to override the input, the pilots must deactivate the system via a switch on a console, NOT by retrimming the aircraft via the yoke, which is a more common way to manage the airplane’s trim."

https://medium.com/@jpaulreed/the-737max-and-why-software-engineers-should-pay-attention-a041290994bd

 

[Bret Cahill]

I once had a Sony 4:3 CRT TV with a double sided remote control. One
side had over 50 buttons, the other side probably 10 - by sliding on a
blanking cover, you hid whichever side you felt less comfortable with.

Other TV remote controls used to have a reset button, called the "granny
button" by some.

Many home devices should be similar to that.

Part of the holdup in the past was they had to design for the dumbest 30% of the population. GM never sold the EV-1 because they knew it would wind up in the hands of an idiot who would get stuck on the side of the road with a discharged battery. "The customer is always right. . ."

This is no longer the case as online companies like Tesla can target the functionals and ignore the rest.

Just the minimum to get
things to run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ae39kLn0N6g

Being over 60 my wife does not care for the electronic
stuff . She just had me to get her one of the Jitterbug flip phones as
she thoughe it would be very simple to make a few calls on if she needed
to.

An old _New Yorker_ cartoon entitled "The Bare Minimum"

"A loaf of bread"

"A bottle of wine"

"And thou"

 

[Jeroen Belleman]

On 2019-03-17 05:19, Bret Cahill wrote:

Put a retro or "my kingdom for a horse" switch on anything
that seems unnecessarily over automated or when the additional
sophistication is of a minor advantage.

If anything doesn't seem perfect, tap the retro switch and you
are back to flying by the seat of your pants or at least
something that is less complicated / more proven technology.


That's a typical engineer's solution. *Add* a switch to 'make
things simpler'.

Actually the goal was to make 'em comfortable wif eben _more_
sophistication.

Boeing did put one over ride in the software.

"When this system detects a dangerous flight condition, it trims the
aircraft, attempting to prevent a stall by pushing the nose down.
[...]

I think Boeing's engineers have forgotten the single most important
rule of a good user interface: The rule of least surprises. When the
pilot takes the controls in hand, it's the pilot who flies the plane.
The automatics should back off. No extra buttons should be needed.

Jeroen Belleman

 

[Bret Cahill]

Put a retro or "my kingdom for a horse" switch on anything
that seems unnecessarily over automated or when the additional
sophistication is of a minor advantage.

If anything doesn't seem perfect, tap the retro switch and you
are back to flying by the seat of your pants or at least
something that is less complicated / more proven technology.


That's a typical engineer's solution. *Add* a switch to 'make
things simpler'.

Actually the goal was to make 'em comfortable wif eben _more_
sophistication.

Boeing did put one over ride in the software.

"When this system detects a dangerous flight condition, it trims the
aircraft, attempting to prevent a stall by pushing the nose down.
[...]

I think Boeing's engineers have forgotten the single most important
rule of a good user interface: The rule of least surprises. When the
pilot takes the controls in hand, it's the pilot who flies the plane.
The automatics should back off. No extra buttons should be needed.

Someone here once posted the Harrier jump jet had no interface. The pilot was the control system. Using high speed propulsion to low speed VTOL is so trickity yuman pilots might get better stats with an interface. The tax payer shouldn't be sponsoring extreme motor sports with jet engines.

But there is no question that simple automation, i.e., the gas cutting off if the flame on the stove burner gets blown out, has saved tens of thousands of consumers' lives with very little inconvenience -- very good numbers in the cost benefit analysis.

Before "the customer including every idiot is always right" meant dumbing everything down for the bottom 30%, why GM would never let consumers buy the EV-1. They knew the ijiots would get stuck on the side of the road with a discharged battery

As Musk has proven, this is no longer the case. Products can be tailored to different people.

So, a least at the consumer level where any mysterious button can now be utubed for the 70% of the public more or less functional enough to keep their cars out of the canyon, higher sophistication and automation should be very aggressively pursued until the cost benefit ratio starts to approach 1.

This can be facilitated with over rides, legacy or hot wire buttons, etc.

It wouldn't just save consumers time and money. It would force an evaluation of the long term reliability of each component in the machine which would force improvements to the reliability.


Bret Cahill

 

[Bret Cahill]

https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-fi-boeing-max-design-20190315-story.html

If they want to increase fuel efficiency with big fans they need to _really_ start from scratch:

Instead of pussy footing around with incremental increases in bypass ratio GE, RR, Boeing, Airbus and any rooftop not big enough for a real airport need to get together to rethink the entire aviation system.

Put the fuselage inside of 2 counter rotating fans and the core engines in tandem inside of the fuselage, geared together in case one engine fails like the Osprey. The engine room would split the cabin area in two displacing a few dozen seats so the wide body version would have a for cabin and an aft cabin, bathrooms and crews etc.

1. A yuge increase in bypass ratio / fuel savings.

2. Reduced the drag from the engines as ducting is no longer necessary.

3. High low speed thrust for safe VTOL.

4. Increased Safety. If a fan blade snaps off it can't impale any passengers or critical structures.

5. Possible noise reduction opportunities

Then they have two options:

1. Conventional landing gear and runways.

2. Dedicated space saving launch pads that load passengers while the craft is horizontal then, after everyone is strapped in, rotates for VTOL from building roofs.


Bret Cahill

 

[Bret Cahill]

https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-fi-boeing-max-design-20190315-story.html

If they want to increase fuel efficiency with big fans they need to _really_ start from scratch:

Instead of pussy footing around with incremental increases in bypass ratio GE, RR, Boeing, Airbus and any rooftop not big enough for a real airport need to get together to rethink the entire aviation system.

Put the fuselage inside of 2 counter rotating fans and the core engines in tandem inside of the fuselage, geared together in case one engine fails like the Osprey. The engine room would split the cabin area in two displacing a few dozen seats so the wide body version would have a for cabin and an aft cabin, bathrooms and crews etc.

1. A yuge increase in bypass ratio / fuel savings.

2. Reduced the drag from the engines as ducting is no longer necessary.

3. High low speed thrust for safe VTOL.

4. Increased Safety. If a fan blade snaps off it can't impale any passengers or critical structures.

5. Possible noise reduction opportunities

Then they have two options:

1. Conventional landing gear and runways.

2. Dedicated space saving launch pads that load passengers while the craft is horizontal then, after everyone is strapped in, rotates for VTOL from building roofs.


Bret Cahill

 

[Riley Angel]

On 2019-03-17 11:09, Bret Cahill wrote:

Put the fuselage inside of 2 counter rotating fans and the core engines in tandem inside of the fuselage, geared together in case one engine fails like the Osprey. The engine room would split the cabin area in two displacing a few dozen seats so the wide body version would have a for cabin and an aft cabin, bathrooms and crews etc.

So a helicopter then. These don't have the greatest safety record in
general.

4. Increased Safety. If a fan blade snaps off it can't impale any passengers or critical structures.

Shedding a fan blade leads to rapid destruction of turbines caused by
loss of balance anyway.

 

[Bonk]

On 03/17/2019 11:26 AM, Riley Angel wrote:

On 2019-03-17 11:09, Bret Cahill wrote:

Put the fuselage inside of 2 counter rotating fans and the core engines in tandem inside of the fuselage, geared together in case one engine fails like the Osprey. The engine room would split the cabin area in two displacing a few dozen seats so the wide body version would have a for cabin and an aft cabin, bathrooms and crews etc.

So a helicopter then. These don't have the greatest safety record in
general.

I think Brett is designing LeDuc.

<https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Leduc_0.16_Le_Bourget_2007.jpg>

<https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d6/Leduc_0.22%2C_Musee_de_l%27Air_et_de_l%27Espace%2C_Le_Bourget%2C_Paris._%288211499013%29.jpg>

 

[Bret Cahill]

Put the fuselage inside of 2 counter rotating fans and the core engines in tandem inside of the fuselage, geared together in case one engine fails like the Osprey. The engine room would split the cabin area in two displacing a few dozen seats so the wide body version would have a for cabin and an aft cabin, bathrooms and crews etc.

So a helicopter then.

Fixed wings don't provide the lift for a helicopter in any stage of flight.

Like the Osprey the fixed wings provide lift in horizontal flight, but obviously not in VTOL mode.

Unlike the Osprey the fans/props do not change orientation relative to the fuselage after takeoff. Instead the entire fuselage rotates to the horizontal for horizontal flight.

The passengers and pilot are tits up on take off and landing.

Another advantage:

The wings are not designed around the inelegant discontinuity of the engine weight.

These don't have the greatest safety record in
general.

4. Increased Safety. If a fan blade snaps off it can't impale any passengers or critical structures.

Shedding a fan blade leads to rapid destruction of turbines caused by
loss of balance anyway.

Much much less of an issue with larger ductless fans.

1. Imbalance forces increase with the square of rpm times dia. A 3X larger dia. fan has one third the imbalance for the same tip speed and same mass loss. (1/3)^2 X 3 = 1/3.

2. The tip speed will be less. The whole point of high by pass is high mass flow rate but at lower speed for higher propulsion efficiency at take off. Take off is where they are wasting all the fuel.

3. 3X more blades can be packed on a larger annular fan. If one comes off it creates 1/3rd the imbalance as a similar fan with 1/3rd the number of blades.

4. Without ducting, no impacts on other blades. the lost blade easily clears the swept wing which isn't going as fast forward as the blade is traveling away from the plane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2JKBabvx44&t=2s

§ 33.94. Based on a margin of safety (MS) analysis, the most critical compressor, turbine or fan blade at its maximum permissible rotating speed must be contained by the casings while the engine should operate continuously for at least 15 s.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S100093611200009X


Bret Cahill

 

[Bret Cahill]

Put the fuselage inside of 2 counter rotating fans and the core engines in tandem inside of the fuselage, geared together in case one engine fails like the Osprey. The engine room would split the cabin area in two displacing a few dozen seats so the wide body version would have a for cabin and an aft cabin, bathrooms and crews etc.

So a helicopter then. These don't have the greatest safety record in
general.

I think Brett is designing LeDuc.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Leduc_0.16_Le_Bourget_2007.jpg

No engines on the wings but that's where the similarity ends.

The LeDuc engine is inside of the fuselage, same as many older jet fighters which could never take off w/o a runway VTOL because of low / zero bypass ratio.

For radical increases in bypass ratio you need to do it the other way around:

Put the fuselage inside of the engine, or at least inside the fan.

The front and rear of the plane don't necessarily need to look much different than conventional airliners.


Bret Cahill

 

[Bret Cahill]

On Friday, March 15, 2019 at 2:49:00 PM UTC-7, Bret Cahill wrote:

Put a retro or "my kingdom for a horse" switch on anything that seems unnecessarily over automated or when the additional sophistication is of a minor advantage.

If anything doesn't seem perfect, tap the retro switch and you are back to flying by the seat of your pants or at least something that is less complicated / more proven technology.

It may seem counter intuitive but this would actually _further_ automation and sophistication by taking some of the pressure off the designers trying to get every unanticipated situation right the first time.

It may also reduce some of the concerns about AI.

It's astounding this isn't SOP in every design engineering dept.

https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-fi-boeing-max-design-20190315-story.html

Recently the Chinese proved it's harder to reverse engineer than to start from scratch. Putin was gleeful they botched their copy of a Russian fighter.

The Tampa Electric power plant at Sutton Point under went so many modifications, had so much stuff packed in ad hoc after all the original designers were dead or retired I warned a Hillsborough County engineer someone needs to do something about it.

A few weeks later the hydrogen enclosure they were using to replace the bearings ignited killing 3 people. I slept through it but they said they could hear the explosion in Plant City. Cargill workers at the Ybor dock who know the company thought it was the Cargill fertilizer plant in Riverside.


Bret Cahill

 

[Bonk]

On 03/17/2019 02:05 PM, Bret Cahill wrote:

I think Brett is designing LeDuc.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Leduc_0.16_Le_Bourget_2007.jpg

No engines on the wings but that's where the similarity ends.

The LeDuc engine is inside of the fuselage, same as many older jet
fighters which could never take off w/o a runway VTOL because of low
/ zero bypass ratio.

For radical increases in bypass ratio you need to do it the other way
around:

Put the fuselage inside of the engine, or at least inside the fan.

Any of these come close?

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_XFV>

<http://fly.historicwings.com/2012/10/the-flying-barrel/>

<https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/04/02/caproni-stipaan-experimental-barrel-shaped-italian-airplane-designed-1930s-2/>

 

[Bret Cahill]

I think Brett is designing LeDuc.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/76/Leduc_0.16_Le_Bourget_2007.jpg

No engines on the wings but that's where the similarity ends.

The LeDuc engine is inside of the fuselage, same as many older jet
fighters which could never take off w/o a runway VTOL because of low
/ zero bypass ratio.

For radical increases in bypass ratio you need to do it the other way
around:

Put the fuselage inside of the engine, or at least inside the fan.

Any of these come close?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_XFV

The engine and fan need to be behind the cockpit.

Same for airships. A tiny fan or prop engine hanging off the bottom of a blimp wastes over 90% of the energy in turbulence. If a blimp is 30 m in dia. then the blades need to be as big as the wings on some aircraft, but not nearly as strong or heavy. A blimp fan moves slow enough so the blades can run run on a track or belt mounted on the outside of the blimp. A massive reducer and massive drive shaft isn't necessary or desirable.

> <http://fly.historicwings.com/2012/10/the-flying-barrel/>

Another engine inside of the fuselage.

> <https://www.thevintagenews.com/2016/04/02/caproni-stipaan-experimental-barrel-shaped-italian-airplane-designed-1930s-2/>

Another engine inside of the fuselage.

The fuselage needs to be inside of the big fan for high bypass.


Bret Cahill

 

[Bonk]

On 03/18/2019 09:52 AM, Bret Cahill wrote:

Put the fuselage inside of the engine, or at least inside the
fan.

The engine and fan need to be behind the cockpit.

The fuselage needs to be inside of the big fan for high bypass.

I got it! There's an airplane called the Optica...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgley_Optica

 

[Bret Cahill]

Put the fuselage inside of the engine, or at least inside the
fan.

The engine and fan need to be behind the cockpit.

The fuselage needs to be inside of the big fan for high bypass.

I got it! There's an airplane called the Optica...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgley_Optica

That has fans behind the cockpit but where's the cabin area after the engine room?

For high passenger miles / unit fuel -- the number 1 number in the industry -- you need a lot passenger seats. You also need to reduce fuel consumption with high bypass [yuge run way dragging fans].

For and aft of this shouldn't look too different than a conventional airliner except midship where the fuselage is collared by a pair or 2 of 72 - 96 blade annular ductless fans with blades 2 m - 3.5 m long.

Instead of engines on the wings there's housing for 2.5 m - 4 m tall landing gear so the yuge fan clears the runway if anyone feels more comfortable taking off and landing horizontal.

Up close you should be able to see alignment surfaces and attachment points for the hydraulics of a dedicated launcher for roof top boardings and take offs.

They can do precision vertical and near vertical landings now. They just don't know it.


Bret Cahill