Dreamliner (Boeing 787) rollout on Sunday

im sure there will be lots of info on flightblogger.blogspot.com

just happens to be a former student of mine, but hes got a lot of inside info
 
Carbon Fiber. Light, Strong. Electric airplane, no Turbine bleed. Dornier electric de-ice?
I wonder if they've settled the ICAW....remember, Beech could not deliver of ICAW specs for the Starship and retired the entire fleet. They gotta have solved this.....
 
Bruce, can you expand on this? What issue? Something to do with lightning protection?
In September of 1996 the Raytheon Corp. contracted with FAA to develop a technology for determining the continuing airworthiness of Carbon Fiber structures. On the red board, some will remember a technical writer from California who worked there- the famous "calibrated windsock" string.

Raytheon was unable to deliver the specs, and two years after the contract was to be made good, withdrew support for the Starship fleet, sending every one to the boneyard.

There was no affordable technology at that time to evauate delamination, voids, overstresses, etc.

I wonder what Boeing's got up their sleeve this decade. They can't risk the company on it, so it is safe to assume the problem has been fixed. Do they embed RFIDs or the like? Measure capacitance changes from embed to embed? It gotta be pretty hi-tech and proprietary, for sure and I'll bet they're not saying and for SURE not sharing.
 
Dish 9601 has a great picture, but the audio cuts out every second for a second... is this happening to anybody else? They have a crappy audio feed from what I can tell.

EDIT: Now that he's speaking, it's fine; must be something with their digital music player or one of the input connections.
 
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Wow! I just watched the roll out... They sure pulled out all the stops to create a huge media event out of this!

And if even half the artist depictions and photos of mockups are actually realized, flying commercial may become an exciting thing once again.

But of course, the fiscal health of each airline, the airports, ATC, the government organizations and overall economies of the world will have more impact on it's success than all the wonderful pictures and beautiful interiors.

But it does certainly seem as though Boeing has made an attempt to meet many needs with this aircraft- those of the flying public, those of the airlines, and those with an outlook toward the environmental impact of air travel.

Let's hope they are successful, and that success does not come on the backs of smaller airlines, and smaller markets which may not be able to support this particular aircraft.
 
In September of 1996 the Raytheon Corp. contracted with FAA to develop a technology for determining the continuing airworthiness of Carbon Fiber structures. On the red board, some will remember a technical writer from California who worked there- the famous "calibrated windsock" string.

Raytheon was unable to deliver the specs, and two years after the contract was to be made good, withdrew support for the Starship fleet, sending every one to the boneyard.

There was no affordable technology at that time to evauate delamination, voids, overstresses, etc.

I wonder what Boeing's got up their sleeve this decade. They can't risk the company on it, so it is safe to assume the problem has been fixed. Do they embed RFIDs or the like? Measure capacitance changes from embed to embed? It gotta be pretty hi-tech and proprietary, for sure and I'll bet they're not saying and for SURE not sharing.

I bet both Boeing AND Airbus solved this a while ago, as there's a ton of Carbon Fiber in the 777, like the rudder. But perhaps additional work was needed to address more use of CF in the higher stress sections like the wing.
 
In September of 1996 the Raytheon Corp. contracted with FAA to develop a technology for determining the continuing airworthiness of Carbon Fiber structures. On the red board, some will remember a technical writer from California who worked there- the famous "calibrated windsock" string.

Raytheon was unable to deliver the specs, and two years after the contract was to be made good, withdrew support for the Starship fleet, sending every one to the boneyard.

There was no affordable technology at that time to evauate delamination, voids, overstresses, etc.

I wonder what Boeing's got up their sleeve this decade. They can't risk the company on it, so it is safe to assume the problem has been fixed. Do they embed RFIDs or the like? Measure capacitance changes from embed to embed? It gotta be pretty hi-tech and proprietary, for sure and I'll bet they're not saying and for SURE not sharing.

But Raytheon (now Hawker Beechcraft) has since produced a number of aircraft with carbon fiber fuselages, the Premier 1 and Hawker 4000 being two of them. There are very reliable non destructive inspection methods (ultrasound, xray etc) for evaluating the quality of the laminate.

Also, Boeing has a great deal of experience with carbon fiber fuselages in its Military aircraft, and much of the 787 technology is an outgrowth from that.
 
one of our own members has done a ton of research on NDE of Carbon Fiber structures, namely C Channel Wing Spars.

Cirrus uses Carbon Fiber spars on the new G3.
 
For ya'll who perhaps hadn't made the correlation; the 787 was released on JUL 08, 07.

RE: the Starship, there's the owner based at Santa Barbara who not only fought to keep his flying but bought 2 airframes plus parts. He keeps them stored at Mojave, the home of Rutan's Scaled Composites.

Speaking of which, I wonder how much Burt Rutan was involved in the 787?
 
For ya'll who perhaps hadn't made the correlation; the 787 was released on JUL 08, 07.
Now, it makes sense. I had been wondering why they would pick a Sunday for the release. Normally, I'd expect such to take place on a Monday and carry through the next work week or so as a motivator. I guess Sunday is just as good, particularly with the date used.
 
boeing was going nuts all week with 7x7 stuff all week long, including a big fly in of 7x7's on the evening of 7/7/07 with landing starting at 7:07 PM and continuing every ten minutes
 
I wonder how many Boeing employees will be using "7" in their lotto picks?
 
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