Who knew or knows?

Technical questions always abound in a society that tends toward critical thinking (saying 'tends' in that this is a goal, yet the issues of quasi-empiricism still pertain). So, questions can be about any of the aspects, whether process or part.

Here are some.

• On 5/21/07, a News release talked about the first 787 as if it would be done in about 7 weeks since all that was necessary was putting together 6 major sections; the release also retold the story of the goal of stuffed sections and the few day turnaround for future planes.

  At that time, it was known that the 7/8/7 roll out would be an empty shell. Does this indicate a disparity on the views related to earned-value?

• A recent report described a position on visual inspection referring to lab test, and perhaps even analytics via computation, results. Though it is good to hear that engineering has been working hard, a few questions arise. One might ask about scaling up in that the material in the lab needs to be manufactured in a much larger scale. There is a homogeneity assumption. With metals, we have long experience in controlling the process to obtain desired results. Yet, even with some metals, this control can be more problematic than we would like. What is the length of our experience with composites? Of the scale that we're talking now?
  

• Do we know how well fixes made to the composite material due to extraction and replacement of temporary fasteners preserve the expected properties (design allowables)?

Remarks:

09/02/2009 -- Lets face it, folks, undecidability needs to be discussed and adopted in any complex situational setting, especially if computers are involved. Only hubris pushes us to make loud exclamations about what we're going to do in the future.

06/30/2009 -- Another delay (is the project out on a limb?).

01/27/2009 -- Through time, 787 problems identified, discussed, and reported.

Modified: 09/02/2009