Comments by "ke6gwf - Ben Blackburn" (@ke6gwf) on "" video.

  1.  @MillionFoul  the Max crashes are exactly the same root cause, arrogance and ignoring engineering testing practices to save a buck and speed things up. They had never tested the MCAS system in many different failure modes, including loss of AOA vane on takeoff with no AOA Disagree indicator. They did the paperwork and said that runaway trim procedures would take care of any issues, and most of the people who were looking at safety and testing were not even aware of how powerful the software had become, and the people who expressed concerns were shut down. And all the people like you who are saying that all the proper testing and certification had been done, are just saying that the process of testing and certification is broken, because it should never have let so many arrogant assumptions slip by without being verified. For instance, they discovered that even with US pilots, the assumption that the runaway trim procedures could be done in a certain length of time, which was an assumption that they have been making for decades, turned out not to be reliable, and not just for foreign pilots. Pilots are trained differently than they were when that standard assumption was made when most pilots had a military background, and hand flying was the only way to fly a plane. So when you hear "we tested everything and it all met the requirements" it doesn't mean that they didn't mess up, it means that the messing up was done in assumptions and shortcuts in the testing and verification process. And MCAS didn't get thoroughly tested, just as Starliner didn't get thoroughly tested.
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  2. Actually worse than that. The internal rocket clock is reset when it enters the terminal launch phase (basically when Mission Control pushes the Begin Launch Countdown button), and all events after that are based on that time sequence, from when the clock is reset. Starliner was programmed to sync with the rocket clock, so that it's events were on that same schedule. But the Starliner programmers forgot to add in the command to check and see if the rocket clock had been reset into terminal launch mode yet... So as soon as Starliner was powered up, it synced with the rocket clock, and never looked back, and didn't know that the rocket clock was later reset just before launch. If it had been programmed properly, it would have checked if the clock had been reset into terminal mode, and only THEN done the sync. It's kind of like asking someone on the phone what time it is, and forgetting to ask them what time zone they are in! Lol
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  3. For those interested, from what I gathered from the teleconference.. The internal rocket clock is reset when it enters the terminal launch phase (basically when Mission Control pushes the Begin Launch Countdown button), and all events after that are based on that time sequence, from when the clock is reset. Starliner was programmed to sync with the rocket clock, so that it's events were on that same schedule. But the Starliner programmers forgot to add in the command to check and see if the rocket clock had been reset into terminal launch mode yet... So as soon as Starliner was powered up, it synced with the rocket clock and never looked back, and didn't know that the rocket clock was later reset just before launch. If it had been programmed properly, it would have checked if the clock had been reset into terminal mode, and only THEN done the sync. It's kind of like asking someone on the phone what time it is, and forgetting to ask them what time zone they are in! Lol
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  4.  @MillionFoul  you just described for me WHY they need to do actual testing, because the systems are so interrelated, actually testing different failure modes is the only way to verify that a new system is safe! You are talking about a plane or rocket system like its a phone app, where you can just test it in the simulator, and then publish it, and then fix the bugs that show up, rather than testing it with different model phones and different OS versions. It's fine for an app, not for a plane. In addition, it was because of lack of testing and verification that they decided that MCAS wasn't a Catastrophic level system, because if they had looked at the more powerful version that shipped, they would have realized that it was capable of catastrophic failures. But because they had very low levels of oversight and were happy to ship stuff with minimal verification and testing, it never got looked at after it was strengthened. If they had been paying attention, they would have realized as soon as they discovered that they screwed up on the AOA disagree indicator, that the lack of it would leave the flight crew with no way to recognize an MCAS issue, especially considering that no one even knew MCAS existed, and someone would have realized that maybe they should alert the customers that the feature they were training for, didn't actually function. But they decided that it wasn't needed, and so were going to include it quietly in a future update, which never came... As to your claim that the crashes were mostly pilot error, you are assuming that the procedures and memory items are infallible and accurate, and they aren't. They attempted to follow the runaway trim procedure, but they were unable to, because the manual trim wheels are not able to be cranked with the control surface at that high an angle, because the aerodynamic forces are too high to overcome manually, and they were too low altitude to be able to dive while they cranked it to take load off of it. So when that didn't work, they re-engaged the trim cutouts, and were able to use the trim switch to recover. Now, if Boeing/FAA had actually told anyone about MCAS, the procedure would be that if the AOA disagree indicator was on, and you had runaway trim, to use the yoke trim switches to get the proper trim, and then turn the trim cutout switches off. And everything would have been fine. But because they decided not to tell anyone, and instead rely on a 50 year old procedure that hadn't been tested under extreme conditions, and that made their untested software unable to be overridden, causing hundreds of deaths. And claiming that the pilots didn't follow procedures that wouldn't work under those circumstances, in a failure mode that they had no training for, because a company shipped untested and unverified software without telling anyone, shows that you have bought into their culture, that not testing extensively is all right, because it costs too much to do proper testing. And it's rich that you make this claim after all the other stuff has come out and the Max failures, both of internal and external oversight, and now seeing the same thing play out with Starliner, with major lack of testing, as well as lack of internal and oversight. The whole system is broken if a company is this lax about testing their actual product, and the supposed oversight agency lets them do whatever they want, to save some time and money. Hopefully this tragedy, and the Starliner comedy (since no one was on it) will get NASA to put Boeing back on the leash, and get the world airline regulators to get involved in making sure that the planes are safe, even if it costs more money.
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  5. The problem is that they were out in the flower bed turning stones looking for bugs to eat, instead of testing the software, because unless Boeing has some wierd ass software design, software isn't found under stones!
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  6. Scott, one thing I think you misunderstood is the radio communication issue. On the teleconference they really tried to talk around the issue, but finally got asked enough times what the problem was that they very reluctantly said more than just "an elevated background noise floor in certain geographical areas". From what I heard on the teleconference, they said it was a loss of communication with TDRS, probably because of cell towers. Now, I am a radio guy, and I don't know exactly what system they had set up, but if it involved the TDRS satellite network, then it would either be a ground station uplink to TDRS, or a connection to a NASA TDRS ground station. If they are communicating directly with the capsule, they wouldn't need TDRS, so I am guessing that it was a TDRS uplink site, probably something Boeing built especially for Starliner. And didn't test... Cell towers broadcast relatively low power, and directed out horizontally, so they don't waste power aiming for the sky. Ever try to send a text from a plane? Lol You don't get reception even directly over a tower usually, because the lobe is horizontal. So there's no way that a cell tower would reach a signal to LEO. It's just not powerful enough. So, if a cell tower caused interference, it was with ground based equipment, not space based. And that means that they probably didn't design proper filters and interference rejection into the ground systems, which is standard practice for any radio system installed near possible interference sources. In addition, if it was a ground station connecting to TDRS, then they could test it ahead of time, to verify it connected. Oh, and certainly they would have known that they were using the same frequency band (or near harmonics of) the nearby cell towers, because that's part of a basic site survey, and that's all in the public FCC database. So if cell towers indeed causes this interference, unless one of the cell transmitters had just gone nuclear and was pumping out highly elevated levels of noise and hadn't shut down yet, then it means that they didn't do a proper site survey, they didn't design the system with intermod and interference rejection and protection and filtration, they didn't test the system to see if there was a lot of noise from nearby frequencies, and didn't test the link to TDRS to make sure it was stable. And if they messed up THAT badly, I understand why they REALLY didn't want to admit that cell towers had messed up their TDRS uplink lol
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  7.  @willierants5880  the 1/3 of the planes inspected is from Boeing’s statement. Are you not believing them?
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  8.  @willierants5880  have you heard that so far 1/3 of the Boeing Max planes inspected have tools, rags, booties, and other FOD inside the fuel tanks? Does that sound like a lazy attitude to safety, and lazy workers and inspectors? Oh, and a lack of QC inspection.
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  9.  @willierants5880  the statement came FROM Boeing. They are the ones who said that they discovered FOD in 35 out of 50 planes that they had so far inspected. Are you doubting Boeing AND the FAA AND multiple airlines, just because you have a hard time believing that it could happen because you used to be there?
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  10.  @willierants5880  well, then you need to check your beliefs, because they are not in harmony with reality! Lol
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  11. The problem is that they were out in the flower bed turning stones looking for bugs to eat, instead of testing the software, because unless Boeing has some wierd ass software design, software isn't found under stones!
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