While I can't dispute anything that is being said I think it is unfortunate that this is playing out the way it is.
I can't dispute it because there's virtually no reliable publicly-available information on the design of this battery pack. I think it is unbecoming of an engineer or scientist, particularly of prominence, to voice such opinions without access to design data from the source.
Before I could even begin to dare to voice opinion I would need to study CAD models, electrical and electronic diagrams and test data. I would also want to have access to representative samples of the packs for inspection. Even then, unless there was something so obviously wrong with the design that a conclusion was inescapable I'd refrain from rash public comments and redouble evaluation efforts to make sure every angle was evaluated exhaustively.
Having designed high-performance, high-current chargers in the past I know a thing or two about battery technology, particularly when it comes to failure modes. When you are doing that kind of work you purposely test designs to induce and document failures and design around them when possible. Yes, I have blown-up lots of batteries and chargers. And, yes, this means that if you've worked with high-energy battery technologies (and electronics in general) you get a good general sense of the good, the bad and the ugly. I get it. And I would still want design and test data from the horses-mouth before uttering a word.
The problem here is that the engineers at Boeing are not clowns. Unless you consider people with advanced degrees from the top engineering schools in the world to be clowns. This is an industry that takes what they do very, very seriously. A lot of work, simulation and testing goes into all of their projects. I could not imagine the engineers at Boeing slapping together a battery pack for something like the 787 project without years of work and testing. I just can't see it. Yet, they are human beings which means that mistakes and miscalculations do happen. That's true of any human endeavor.
And so, making such comments is also disrespectful. I understand competitive forces very well. But there's a time and a place for that.
If he is wrong he'll have a lot of explaining to do. If that is the case I hope he'll devote just as much energy to issuing the necessary apologies and clarifications as he does being critical.
EDIT:
If you ever get a chance to visit the Boeing factory in Seattle it is a must. I did many years ago. As an engineer it was fascinating. I remember one test they showed us where they clamped down (I think) a 747 wing in this huge structure and used incredibly large hydraulic jacks to bend the wing up and down repeatedly for failure-mode testing. I could be wrong, but I think I remember the peak to peak bending at the wing-tip was in the order of ten stories. I could not imagine designing and building an electro-mechanical structure that could do that and survive with enough functionality to get people safely back to ground level.
So, yes, please, I think it might be wise to remain quiet and let those who actually have real data go through a proper investigative process and get us real answers. If anything out of respect for the work, talent and dedication that goes into designing and building such amazing products.
Generally sympathetic to this point of view, but Lockheed/Boeing actually started this war by publicly calling SpaceX's tech into question. From Dec. 18 2012:
The Lockheed-Boeing venture, United Launch Alliance, has
launched “hundreds of billions of dollars” of satellites
on 66 consecutive missions, said Robert Stevens,
Lockheed’s chairman and chief executive officer.
“I’m hugely pleased with 66 in a row from ULA, and I don’t
know the record of SpaceX yet,” Stevens said at a Dec. 14
Bloomberg Government breakfast in Washington. “Two in a
row?
A public statement like that probably means that both Lockheed and Boeing have been beating up on SpaceX as "risky" behind closed doors for a while. Musk saw an opportunity to turn the tables and took it, first by offering to "help" on Twitter and then via these comments. This is separate from the technical issue at stake, but looks like Musk may not have started this particular fight. Moreover, given that SpaceX and Boeing are going to head-to-head, it is likely that Musk/SpaceX has now made a fairly detailed study of Boeing's batteries to make their case in subsequent competitive launch bids.
Boeing batteries are overheating. Tesla batteries are not overheating. There are sufficiently similar requirements on their performance and safety that any layman can conclude there is something wrong with Boeings design.
The problem here is that the engineers at Boeing are not clowns.
The problem here is that you think that is what is being alleged. It isn't: an enormous and old company like Boeing can have an entrenched culture that leads to decisions being made that do not follow the advice of the engineers. What makes Tesla and SpaceX competitive is not their technical knowledge: it's the fact that they can use that knowledge effectively.
NASA's engineers aren't clowns either, yet their shuttles exploded, unnecessarily. The Feynman committee tore their procedures, not their engineering ability, to shreds.
It was an engineer, Roger Boisjoly, who repeatedly warned about the safety of the o-rings, particularly in low temperatures. The decision to launch the shuttle came from management not the engineers.
Feynman was on the accident investigation committee, and was critical to exposing crucial facts and making sure they made it into the report. Feynman even wrote an additional report to add to the committee's work. http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-report.html
Bolsjoy's ordeal is now in the curriculum of many engineering ethics courses.
Thus decisively proving the parent's point. Boeing might have the most talented engineers in the world, but if management ignores them then all their degrees and seriousness doesn't mean jack.
Elon's comments have some validity, but there is a bit of grandstanding going on. Thermal runaway with lion batteries isn't a random event. It's very predictable and very preventable. 99% of lion batteries in use have a built in thermosensor so that they can charge correctly without exploding---because any lion battery will explode if charged too fast or if it goes into overvoltage.
So since all of the variables to prevent thermal runaway are know, it should make no difference how closely together they are placed. However in this case there is either a problem with the charging software---which isn't adequately performing and preventing the condition that is causing the batteries to overheat OR the batteries themselves (although in good working order) are not performing within the correct performance envelope that the software has been developed to use.
Screaming that placing the cells too close together is bogus. You laptop has cells placed equally close together as do all Tesla vehicles---and they can burn and explode just like the ones on the 787---yet that is a very rare occurrence. Because all of the charging parameters are known. Same applies to the Boeing batteries, but something is not performing according to plan.
In space, the parameters are completely different. Fire is the absolute worst case scenario in space and everything that can be done to mitigate the chance of one will be taken. Which is why the batteries on the SpaceX vehicles are spaced out they way they are. Yes, they know all of the parameters for the batteries, but the logistics of changing a battery in space are much different than those of an aircraft.
Boeing's fault in all of this is that something is not performing according to spec---and they knew that due to all of the battery swaps the Japanese airlines were doing. At that point they should have grounded and figured out the problem. But past Elon, others have already stepped up and criticized Boeings move to lions in the first place. Nickel cadmium batteries would have weighed 40 pounds more and have barely 1/1000th of a chance of thermal runaway that lithium ion batteries do. They don't charge as fast, but they are still well within the performance envelope needed by the 787.
In the specific context of engineering, the only thing I have ever heard about Boeing's "entrenched culture" is that they are obsessed with safety. A Boeing airliner is a modern miracle of overengineering.
Bingo - the engineers may have said one thing, and the project manager/board of arbitrary decisions may have said "my cousin makes batteries" or "fewer cells will mean easier part replacement".
Engineering is only part of making an engineered product.
I'm going to disregard the bits about wings and the general engineering attitude at Boeing. It is simply not relevant.
Musk has one very important justification to make the statement he did: that battery caught fire. That alone is proof positive that he is right. If the charger should fail, is it then permissible that the batteries catch fire? If not then they are fundamentally unsafe.
For that reason alone this is a valid statement, and there are more justifications (such as BIG cells with LITTLE spacing which is problematic) for the use of the word 'fundamental'.
There is enough data available about the architecture for people with far more experience than you to make such statements, the amount of energy liberated from such a big cell should it go wrong is enormous and that alone is a reason to avoid big cells.
I'm sure Elon is picking up PR points here but you can't just discard what he is saying because he does not have engineering samples on his desk. The incident proves his point quite effectively, this design really does have problems.
I totally agree with this and I can tell you that I have been in the same position as Musk in an analogous situation. From what my competitor was saying about their own product it was several red flags. There is no way such and such can be true unless you are doing X and Y wrong.
A battery on fire is not necessarily an indicator of a problem in the design. It could be a manufacturing, software, or maintenance defect. It's too early to jump to conclusions. However, unless it's a maintenance defect, it's almost certainly an indicator of a flaw in quality control and verification.
What respect is due to a design that puts people's lives in danger?
Yes, respect the engineers, and make sure to criticize the design and not the engineer, but please criticize the ever loving fuck out of the design.
This isn't about corporate pride here. This is about lives.
My life. Your life. Your family's lives. Everyone who flies in a plane is potentially endangered by faulty aircraft designs.
So please, Mr. Musk, and any other engineer who can level meaningful criticisms at any design that has significant human safety implications, make your voices heard.
When Ralph Nader does this sort of thing he is lauded, I don't think Musk's criticisms should be viewed in any different light.
If you count an automotive journalist whose face was significantly damaged in a rollover accident[1] "the auto industry," sure. And maybe you do, his magazine ran ads from auto companies, but it's a pretty cold dismissal on your part. Possibly an incorrect one as well-- considering that he refused to back down from statements that angered various automotive corporations at the cost of ad revenue.
The only reference to this that I can find is an article from just a few years ago in which Davis argues that Nader's focus on the Corvair had the effect of delaying the auto industry shift to more aerodynamic cars with front-wheel drives.
For some reason your comments are coming across with a lot of hostility. I'm not sure why, but my knowledge of Nader's book comes from having read about it when I was younger and took an interest in the topic. I'm happy to be proven wrong about the attempt by the auto industry to smear Nader - and his success at proving this attempt and defending his thesis - but I'm confused about why this discussion is starting to feel personal.
I'm not trying to prove you wrong about the auto-industry trying to smear Nader. I'm not arguing that Nader was wrong or deserved criticism. I was reacting to your dismissive flourish "Translation:" bit.
What respect is due to a design that puts people's lives in danger?
No lives are in danger, because the planes are grounded. They will not fly again until the cause of the present issue is found and resolved. It doesn't seem entirely unreasonable to me that that puts Musk's comments in a slightly different light for some people.
Note that if Musk were a (Chartered) Professional Engineer (which afaik he is not) he might well be called upon to explain these comments to an Ethics committee. Here is a snippet (from the IPENZ Code of Ethics) that I imagine is probably fairly representative of Professional Engineers' obligations:
11. Not review other engineers’ work without taking reasonable steps to inform them and investigate
(1) A Member who reviews another engineer’s work for the purpose of commenting on that work must take reasonable steps to—
(a) inform that engineer of the proposed review before starting it; and
(b) investigate the matters concerned before commenting.
(2) Subclause (1) does not apply if taking those steps would result in there being a significant and immediate risk of harm to the health or safety of people, damage to property, or damage to the environment.
No lives are in danger (because the planes are grounded) but lives were in danger.
How about: If he would not speak up he would be remiss. Imagine the situation where an engineer at Boeing could be ignored but where someone of Musks standing would could not be ignored. If Musk has this knowledge and does not speak up that would be far worse than if he does.
After all, either he is wrong (which Boeing can prove, in which case Musk gets to eat some crow) or he is right (in which case his words force Boeing into more accountability, which in the case of air travel with multi-hundred-ton planes is a good thing all around).
This does not qualify as a formal review of one engineers work by another. This is simply commentary by one of the companies that has an extreme amount of knowledge about use of batteries in vehicular applications commenting on the implementation details of the structural arrangement chosen by another company for a similar (but of course still different in many way, but more critical rather than less) application. As such it is something that Boeing should - and probably does - take serious.
I highly doubt that they would take input like this and discard it either because the 'source' does not have his chartered engineers paper (the guy puts rockets into space, which I think might offset some paperwork) and makes his comments in a forum where he can't be easily ignored (which may very well be the whole point).
It doesn't appear to be in this linked article, but Musk has indicated that he is already in contact with Boeing's lead engineer in this area. I think even by the strictest interpretation of official engineering ethics Musk is doing everything right so far.
We don't know how much access he's had to relevant design documents: it's clear he has had some contact with Boeing (but not how much) and it's clear he has pretty substantial domain knowledge, but I don't think anyone here is in a position to assess whether he genuinely does have enough information at his disposal to have correctly diagnosed the problem.
Launching the whole debate with a Twitter comment announcing he could fix it wasn't smart, irrespective of ethics, because he's inevitably going to be accused of a publicity stunt there. Giving a more detailed explanation of where he thinks the problem might lie to the industry press after discussions with Boeing is rather different, and I don't see any ethical obligation for him not to do that.
Engineering ethics, PE licensure, both are an embarrassing shame to the engineering profession.
Besides, Musk might well get a pass via Subclause (2), because lives are arguably in danger, if Musk has a belief that the aircraft might be returned to service without the issue having been addressed.
These guidelines are clearly ab out not getting each other in trouble, not the interests of those using whatever a chartered engineer might be involved in.
Pedant mode: we know the design is unsafe and faulty, so much so that the planes have been grounded. The question now is how much and in what way are they unsafe.
Regardless, I think my post was clear that criticisms which are well founded in solid engineering deserve to see the light of day, regardless of politeness. And even regardless of whether they turn out to be ultimately true. If they are solid criticisms they need to be rebutted with equally solid counterpoint arguments and/or evidence.
Failing to go about the process of safety openly and humbly is the sort of thing that costs lives. Especially now near the anniversaries of the 3 worst accidents in US manned spaceflight history I think encouraging a spirit of honest and open technological criticism is the right thing to do.
Blah blah, appeal to authority... It's too complicated for you... etc etc. More appeals to authority, and a plea to patiently wait for word from up on high that they've figured out at last, whatever it was that they missed the first time.
Some of what you said may be true, but it's also a typical thing one might say after any engineering (potential) disaster. I'm pleased that some persons with appropriate knowledge have spoken out and I hope that it will remove any pressure Boeing engineers may feel to give their battery issue less attention than it deserves.
I have to say that if that's your best reasoning, I hope you stay far away from any life-safety critical engineering decisions for vehicles that I'm to set foot in.
I find it amusing that you are one-sidedly complaining about appeals to authority when so many comments, on both sides, in this thread boil down to "my preferred expert is better than your preferred expert".
The difference is that, "my preferred expert" took the trouble to explain his reasoning which I will paraphrase as "Thermal runaway in Lithium batteries."
Upvoted, to me Musk is being a publicity whore and scoring cheap hits over Boeing. I.e. his comments do not help us in advancing our understanding so can only be intended to publicise his own company's products.
Musk being a publicity whore has no relation to the safety of the batteries. The fact they catch fire during normal flight operation demonstrate they are not.
He may well be. I can't say what is Musk's intent. What I can say, is that if Boeing handles their business properly, it won't make much difference what anyone has said or done this time next year.
The thing that will "remove any pressure Boeing engineers may feel to give their battery issue less attention than it deserves" is heat from the NTSB and FAA, not self-serving pronouncements by some guy who happens to run a couple of tiny (compared to Boeing) high-tech engineering companies.
Companies (and their regulators) have frequently been shamed into doing what they should have in the first place by independent critics. Nader and automobiles as previously detailed, Rachel Carson and Silent Spring (ultimately resulting in the Clean Air and Clean Water acts and the EPA, created by Republican president Richard Nixon). Upton Sinclair and food processing.
1. Elon Musk is not a whistleblower. He didn't bring this issue to light at the risk of persecution by Boeing or the airlines.
2. He's also not an "independent critic" - he's a entrepreneur who runs an aerospace company that competes with Boeing's space activities, another company that makes cars powered using batteries, and has no history as a critic of aircraft design.
3. I'm not from the US, so I hadn't heard of Upton Sinclair, but Carson's and Nader's motivations for what they did came from a desire to protect the natural environment and promote social justice respectively. I don't think that comparable motivations can be ascribed to Elon Musk in this case.
Musk definitely has a horse in the race. Still, he's independent to the extent that he's beholden to neither Boeing nor the NTSB/FAA. He's also critiquing Boeing on a specific technology on which he has substantial expertise and experience: lithium-ion battery storage. Including experience with aerospace implementations of that technology.
My point was that your assertion that working within the system is sufficient to effect change is demonstrably false.
As for businesses competing not only on dollars but mindshare and technological direction -- isn't that what the free market system is all about? Directed self-interest?
Even if the engineers at Boing are REALLY good (and that's not guaranteed by any means) then you've still go the subcontractor problem to deal with. Boeing didn't design, engineer, fabricate, test and qualify these batteries in-house.
Saying that they have advanced degrees from prestigious institutions makes it less likely that they have made mistakes is a non-starter. There ARE PROBLEMS with the batteries FULL STOP. The degrees of those involved make no difference anymore. How seriously they take things doesn't matter.
I don't see that any Tesla cars have caught on fire according to Google (probably not accurate) but in terms of any metric you'd like to see, they're doing much better. Fires per passenger mile, fires per car per year, etc.
"Panasonic and Tesla together have developed a next-generation battery cell based on this nickel chemistry and optimized specifically for electric vehicle quality and life."
Tesla and Panasonic designed it together. Panasonic is just the manufacturer. I would be curious if Boeing engineers were also helping to design the internals of their battery.
All he did was invalidating this argument from the parent.
> The problem here is that the engineers at Boeing are not clowns. Unless you consider people with advanced degrees from the top engineering schools in the world to be clowns.
No, not at all. The parent was making an appeal to authority (the engineers are not clowns, they have advanced degrees from prestigious schools). That's fine, but that only matters if those folks did all the work I talked about.
I don't care how Tesla got their batteries as the track record of their success makes the credentials of those involved in designing them irrelevant.
I'm not the guy you're responding to but I think it is safe to say there are problems with the batteries. Because, you see, they are catching fire, which is why all of this became an issue to begin with.
The problem may or may not be what Elon Musk thinks it is, but if an airplane's batteries are catching fire mid-flight, those batteries certainly have problems, unless catching fire was one of the design goals of those batteries, but I'm going to have to guess it wasn't.
Well, there have been at least 100 of them replaced so far, for either being discharged too far, expired, or had charging problems. Apparently, it's pretty easy for ground crews to leave something going that drains the battery to the point where it needs to be sent back to the manufacturer.
That's on 50 planes that have been flying in commercial service for less than a year.
I'd be very interested in what they are saying if --and only if-- they had access to Boeing and FAA design and test data.
You have to remember that the FAA had to approve these subsystems as well. I don't have any first-hand experience on just how detailed (or not) this certification process might be. Once again, how could anyone say anything at all without looking at data.
To make a really dumb analogy, it's like claiming to know what happened with a race horse that died clear across the country because you know race horses. Wouldn't you first have to see the veterinarian's records on that horse as well as such things as dietary and other data before really being able to say anything at all.
In other words, I am not detracting from the expert status some of these folks enjoy. Not at all. I think it is precisely because they might be domain experts at some level that they should behave with decorum and refrain from making comments without a full stack of the necessary data.
> it's like claiming to know what happened with a race horse that died clear across the country because you know race horses. Wouldn't you first have to see the veterinarian's records on that horse as well as such things as dietary and other data before really being able to say anything at all.
If the differential has 5 items, and the most likely is most likely by 99% just on demographics, then it's going to take a lot of lab data to refute that.
Similarly, heat dissipation is a first-order problem in battery design. Especially in these high-capacity designs using high-density chemistries. What else is on the differential?
What else? Shorting. Chemical impurities (less likely). Failed peripherals like fans (hopefully less likely to have this result, due to thermal cut-offs). Improper assembly. Those are my next candidates anyway, after a thermal design defect as you said (which is fairly broad).
Your points are common sense. You can therefore assume that other men, including the men you are criticizing, know them. Given this, and given that they are speaking publicly, I would wager that they have more access to data than you presume.
You think Musk is grandstanding in hopes that consumers will demand SpaceX rockets for commercial airline travel instead of Boeing 787's? Well, duh, I'd take a ride in a rocket over another boring commercial flight any day.
I for one think it likely that Musk talks with a good grasp of the facts.
But I will say on the PR angle, he does compete directly with the entrenched manufacturers in the space arena and all discredit and doubt cast would serve him well.
Youre focusing on what Elon Musk has to gain, which is very, very little. This is actual all about what he stands to lose. Tesla's business is predicated on the public accepting that cars packed with Li batteries are safe. If the public loses faith is Li batter mass power storage, Tesla is toast.
That doesn't mean Elon is either right or wrong, but it's sufficient to explain why he feels a pressing need to be involved in the debate.
This is exactly why he is out in front of this issue.
I worked in a hardware store after the first space shuttle accident in 1986. More than one customer thought the store should not be selling O rings since they caused the shuttle to blow up.
Did these seem to think that the o-rings were made of an explosive material, or did they seem to be worried that by selling o-rings the store was somehow enabling shoddy safety engineering?
Sometimes, I just have to try and convince myself that I'm missing the sarcasm and the general public is smarter than it appears.
Let's just say I don't think Musk emailed Flightglobal because he couldn't figure out how to get in touch with anyone at Boeing. It was not a mistake that his statement went to the press.
I do think Musk is a brilliant innovator, but that does not preclude him from also having an aggressive PR strategy.
FWIW, Boeing is a direct competitor to SpaceX for private launch contracts.
> I'm betting Musk has as much data about those batteries as Boeing, the FAA, or anyone else alive.
You're betting that, are you? Based on a couple of paragraphs in a news article, you're betting that Mr. Musk has as much data as anyone alive - including the Japanese designers and manufacturers of the battery?
If there were a viable way of determining the facts of the matter, I would be happy to bet pretty much any sum you cared to name against you.
"Finally, the FAA changes so slowly that if this were even all possible, the adoption and certification would all take at least 50 years." --Eric Schmidt, http://longbets.org/4/
I'm not sure that erring on the side of caution is a bad thing when it comes to commercial jets, especially when "erring on the side of caution" means requiring an airline carrying large numbers of paying passengers needing to pay two qualified pilots to sit in a cockpit just in case things go wrong. I suspect most people underestimate just how many different separate electronic systems, usually developed and manufactured by independent specialists, are involved in controlling an aircraft (not to mention the new ones that would need to be developed for when things go wrong: there's a big difference between an autopilot landing an an instrument landing system and a pilot gliding his plane to a perfect stop on the Hudson River.)
Also worth pointing out that the CEO of Google (yes...I know his company tests driverless cars) isn't really more of an expert on the FAA certification process than the average person here.
I think he's on the right side of the bet, but I'd also note that the avionics which assist the pilot in controlling the plane and monitoring what's going on have changed more in the last 50 years than any other aspect of commercial aircraft.
Commercial considerations are a bigger factor than certification in new aircraft programme inertia: airlines' economies of scale hugely favour existing models, and expensive radical innovation in aircraft programmes can often be improved upon at lower research cost by rivals.
You seem to think that the burden of proof is on the critics. When an airplane has multiple failures, I'd say the burden of proof is on Boeing. Especially when the critics know a lot about the technology in question.
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment Corp., 1977
"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better
than a 'C,' the idea must be feasible."
-- A Yale University management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper
proposing reliable overnight delivery service.
(Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau."
-- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction".
-- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
-- Bill Gates, 1981
"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives."
-- Admiral William Leahy, U.S. Atomic Bomb Project.
I did come across an interesting letter that is not necessarily relevant to this discussion but might be worth reading:
There is no evidence for the Gates alleged quote. Same for the Watson alleged quote.
As far as Smith and FedEx goes, according to Smith himself he wrote one paper that touched on the idea while an undergraduate. He doesn't remember what his grade was. The "C" notion came about, he says, because a reported asked him what his grade was and he said "I don’t know, probably made my usual C". [1]
The Ken Olsen quote is taken way out of context. He was thoroughly aware of personal computers in 1977. He was referring to behemoth home automation systems:
Well, here he's not saying that its safe, and never going to have problems.. He's saying its a bad design.. which I think he's competent enough to recognize the physics of
The investigators looking into this have already said they haven't found a problem with the batteries.. and they are turning their attention to the electrical system.
So who are you going to believe. Musk, who has no access to the details of these batteries, or the investigators who have access to everything and are looking at and testing these batteries themselves.
The investigators looking into this have already said they haven't found a problem with the batteries.. and they are turning their attention to the electrical system.
You're missing a key point: they are turning their attention to the electrical system that controls how the batteries charge and discharge. That means that, even if the batteries themselves have no design problems per se, their failure modes under an overcharge condition are highly relevant. Which is exactly what Musk and Prof. Sadoway are critiquing: they're not saying the batteries were manufactured badly or designed badly for normal operation; they're saying the batteries were not properly designed to cope with the failure mode that the electrical control system is suspected of inducing.
Anything that goes into a new model of jumbo jet should have reams of test documentation. Multiple people at Boeing would have examined and approved this stuff. If they were fooled they shouldn't have been.
The point you make about design of the 787 is fitting. Many of us can appreciate its awe inspiring technological splendor. However, one does have to wonder if it's possible, that this feeling could be overly motivating your defense of Boeing, and criticism of Mr Musk?
We can probably agree that no one (Musk included), is without reproach. However historically we see a person willing to go all in, literally putting all his liquidity toward his new ventures. It does seem somewhat implausible he simply keeps striking it lucky.
I haven't the foggiest clue if he's right or not, but it does appear he's taken a calculated risk. Accordingly, he will be punished or rewarded as the story unfolds.
His approach seems somewhat harsh/brazen, but is that what really matters here?
When your're the unlucky patient strapped to the operating table, in need of critical surgery (assuming only two doctors were available), would want the specialist with the highest level of competency, or the one with the nicest bedside manner?
I have seen the same wing bending test for the A380 at the Airbus factory in Chester. It is jaw-dropping.
The engineers have to climb into the wing to fit rivets and electrical wires. Sometimes it takes 20 minutes to crawl to the spot they want. Since they take a portable lamp with them, a popular prank was to switch someone's light off when they were well inside the wing.
Another anecdote from the Airbus engineer was Boeing had to cut a 747 wing apart because their engineer got stuck in there working on a wing. Can't verify this claim though.
Sure, you'd act real careful to protect the sanctity of your word.
But bear in mind this man leads two multimillion dollar companies. I can imagine the PR/marketing opportunity was difficult to pass up. Even if further data proves his assessment of Boeing's configuration ill-advised, a majority of impressions will remain in his favor. He may have even nipped any comparisons between Boeing's "dangerous" technology and Tesla in the bud.
A reader might walk away from the story with the idea that Tesla engineers are more skilled than Boeing engineers. Call it what you want, but that's a helluva branding opportunity.
Information is being withheld. It's hard to expect respect while at the same time withholding critical information in the name of company secrets.
Take building designs, public accessible for any engineer to take a look. If a flaw is published like in this article, it can be verified by independent sources. If someone was hiding blueprint designs and a article like this was published, everyone would assume the architect was up to no good. The respect for the work, talent and dedication would only go as far as a courtesy phone call before publishing.
So regarding planes who's design and inner working is now days mostly regarded as company secrets, staying quiet would be worse than speaking out about a issue. Boeing should see this is an perfect time to publish their electrical and electronic diagrams, together with test data, and let independent engineers either verify the authors claims or denounce it.
The 787 Dreamliner saw wing flex of 154% of design maximum, at "approximately 25 feet", to quote your own sources. That's a 2.5 storey building.
The 747's wingspan, depending on aircraft configuration, ranges from 195 to 224 feet, which is approximately 19 - 22 storeys (assuming 10' per storey).
Furthermore, hindsight is 20/20. It's easy to rush in after the fact and make up reasons (even if those reasons are legit) to explain what is retrospectively obvious. Where was this warning before the incidents? As you stated, it's completely opportunistic and out of line to make this kind of claim without the due diligence.
Where was the evidence that there was anything to warn about before the incidents? Everybody trusted Boeing to have a robust battery design. Now it appears that at least some aspect of it was not robust.
I agree. Elon Musk is amazing, but I doubt he has the time to review the battery design of everything manufactured in the entire Universe so that he can warn about design flaws.
On the other hand, if your kid sticks a fork in a electrical socket, anyone can say, "you really should have bought covers for your sockets". Does that really add anything to the conversation? Sometimes the incident itself make the previously underlying flaw so apparent that the armchair commentary and criticisms (which in the Boeding case seem to obvious in retrospect to all EE professors) almost provide no real value.
>Before I could even begin to dare to voice opinion I would need to study CAD models, electrical and electronic diagrams and test data. I would also want to have access to representative samples of the packs for inspection.
Has Boeing shared this information and this access with anyone except regulators?
Are they under any obligation to do so?
If not, then the more people who follow your suggested rule of not saying anything unless they have all the info, the greater the incentive for manufacturers and the regulators to choose never to give out the information.
So Musk lays down his ideas for good battery design and is backed up by a guy from MIT. Seems fairly solid.
Boeing guy says something like "I design battery cells not to fail, then assume they will. I then design battery so if one cell fails others won't. Then I assume they will and design for that."
What we know is that the cells fail, then batteries fail, then noxious smoke blows into the cabin, so if what he says is true his designs have failed in three different ways. Seems to me Musk has more credibility here.
Now, is this guy a clown? No -- he's probably a smart, competent guy who is doing what he's required to do given the situation he's in, while he's probably just been in ten meetings where people screamed "I told you so!" at each other.
Musk probably isn't screwing around. I've been reading comments but no one has mentioned it: Who's to say he doesn't have access to one of the grounded 787s? He could have flown his MIT friend over to take a look with him and torn one of the batteries apart. He's the type of guy who could personally know the owner of a 787. Without schematics, he can tell a lot from the work Tesla has done. He could probably even see a near exact configuration they already tried.
It does not matter if the you have the best engineers in the world as long management's primary concern is not flawless designs, from an engineering pov, but striking a balance between that and some unrelated economic measure.
When it comes to safety, such compromises are always /very/ dangerous.
But did Boeing design those or was it outsourced far away ? There was an article on how they misdesigned the building system, it might have been a integration hell, reducing chances of thorough testing.
I don't know a single thing about this domain, but SpaceX embeds the same kind of batteries in a much larger and complex constraint space, it's another point for Musk POV.
Too bad Boeing and SpaceX didn't work together, it could have been a very synergic, local partnership.
I think that talking about the battery pack being inherently unsafe is completely off-topic here. GS Yuasa manufactures batteries for 60 satellites and they haven't had a single failure there
http://www.gsyuasa-lp.com/content/gs-yuasa-lithium-ion-batte...
In aviation people usually very thoroughly figure out what went wrong and why and only then suggest fixes. And the fixes are designed by the people who have access to the complete system.
That's a hilarious observation, and I've upvoted it.
However, batteries (as opposed to capacitors) get their power from redox reactions. If we use a definition of "fire" that includes the rapid redox reaction between liquid phase propellant and solid phase propellant in a hybrid rocket motor in the vacuum of space, that definition would likely also extend to rapid redox reactions between liquid electrolyte and solid electrode in a battery during a particularly fast thermal runaway in the vacuum of space. In other words, under many reasonable definitions of "fire", any sufficiently rapid thermal runaway in a battery would be a fire, despite there not being any air present.
Musk's allegation is that the 787 battery is a poor design, not that it was manufactured incorrectly.
Your point would be a good point if Musk's allegation were that GS Yusa had manufactured the batteries incorrectly or if the satellite battery were of the same design as the 787 battery AND used under similar conditions.
However, my understanding is that the 787 battery is a new design and used under conditions rather different from a satellite.
I can't dispute it because there's virtually no reliable publicly-available information on the design of this battery pack. I think it is unbecoming of an engineer or scientist, particularly of prominence, to voice such opinions without access to design data from the source.
Before I could even begin to dare to voice opinion I would need to study CAD models, electrical and electronic diagrams and test data. I would also want to have access to representative samples of the packs for inspection. Even then, unless there was something so obviously wrong with the design that a conclusion was inescapable I'd refrain from rash public comments and redouble evaluation efforts to make sure every angle was evaluated exhaustively.
Having designed high-performance, high-current chargers in the past I know a thing or two about battery technology, particularly when it comes to failure modes. When you are doing that kind of work you purposely test designs to induce and document failures and design around them when possible. Yes, I have blown-up lots of batteries and chargers. And, yes, this means that if you've worked with high-energy battery technologies (and electronics in general) you get a good general sense of the good, the bad and the ugly. I get it. And I would still want design and test data from the horses-mouth before uttering a word.
The problem here is that the engineers at Boeing are not clowns. Unless you consider people with advanced degrees from the top engineering schools in the world to be clowns. This is an industry that takes what they do very, very seriously. A lot of work, simulation and testing goes into all of their projects. I could not imagine the engineers at Boeing slapping together a battery pack for something like the 787 project without years of work and testing. I just can't see it. Yet, they are human beings which means that mistakes and miscalculations do happen. That's true of any human endeavor.
And so, making such comments is also disrespectful. I understand competitive forces very well. But there's a time and a place for that.
If he is wrong he'll have a lot of explaining to do. If that is the case I hope he'll devote just as much energy to issuing the necessary apologies and clarifications as he does being critical.
EDIT:
If you ever get a chance to visit the Boeing factory in Seattle it is a must. I did many years ago. As an engineer it was fascinating. I remember one test they showed us where they clamped down (I think) a 747 wing in this huge structure and used incredibly large hydraulic jacks to bend the wing up and down repeatedly for failure-mode testing. I could be wrong, but I think I remember the peak to peak bending at the wing-tip was in the order of ten stories. I could not imagine designing and building an electro-mechanical structure that could do that and survive with enough functionality to get people safely back to ground level.
I think this might be it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRf395ioJRY
Here's video on the 787 wing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sA9Kato1CxA
Also: http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/03/boeing-787-passes-incre...
So, yes, please, I think it might be wise to remain quiet and let those who actually have real data go through a proper investigative process and get us real answers. If anything out of respect for the work, talent and dedication that goes into designing and building such amazing products.