A spring’s miracle

In memoriam:

We want to express our most deep pain for the lose of Commander Ladislao Tejedor of the Spanish Airforce in the dramatic accident occured last sunday in the "Cuatro Vientos" airfield (LECU) during the monthly airshow of the "Fundación Infante de Orleans" (FIO). Our condolences to the family and friends, as well as to the people of the FIO that with unpayable work help for the conservation of the aviation history in Spain.

DIP Team

We reach today our number seven in the ranking. It goes to a man who did not create great designs or forge a legend in history. But he made something marvelous; he made it possible for everybody to feel the magic of flying. I mean the American  Francis Melvin Rogallo (1912 – 2009),  creator of the flexible wing  that was named after him, one of the simplest profiles that have ever existed. He worked hard to attract  the government’s and in NASA’s interest for his wing, but without success. Although NASA made some test to try this concept for the recovery of Gemini capsules, but they were rejected, even though they had been  successfully used in the Paresev vehicle. In 1967 the program was cancelled. But something extraordinary came out  from this failure. It was the design of the personal glider, nowadays known as Rogallo wings, that made the building of save and low cost vehicles possible, and the capacity for flying affordable to hundred thousands of people.

Therefore my position number 7 goes to Rogallo.

We will speak today about a news that in my opinion should be commented and spread worldwide. In Seattle (Washington) have occurred, in the following order, an earthquake, a coalescence phenomenon and a miracle. The earthquake was of high magnitude, but it was not sensed by the seismographs, although it trembled the basements of some buildings of the area. But I am anticipating the story, so let us make a chronologic description of the events:

• January the 7th, 2013:  a  Japan Airlines’ Boeing 787  Dreamliner parked in the Boston airport, caught fire due to the explosion of one of the Lithium-Ion batteries. Fortunately, when this occurred, the aircraft was empty, after the passengers and crew had disembarked.

• January the 19th,  2013:  another 787 of All Nippons Airways (ANA) had to make an emergency landing in the Shikoku island airport, after the crew detected a smoke alarm in the electric compartment. The crew also reported that they received an alarm in the cockpit related to a malfunction of the batteries.

• Due to these events both companies, ANA and Japan Airlines, voluntary decided to immediately keep their 787 fleet landed.

• On that same day (January 16th) the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) sent an “emergency airworthiness directive” ordering all North American air companies to land their 787 fleets until the problem had been solved. Over the following days,  aviation authorities of other countries made the same decision.

• April the 19th, 2013 the FAA cleared the 787s for flight

• April the 27th, 2013 Ethiopian Airlines decided to restart the flights with their 787. Japanese and the resting operators will do the same soon.

Up to this point, this has only been the presentation of facts. Now we will  let our imagination run free.

January the 16th,  2013, five minutes after the FAA’s decision, a high intensity earthquake occurs in Seattle, even though, as I mentioned before,  it was not detected by any seismograph. The epicenter of the mentioned seismic movement was located in the Boeing factories. As a result of this earthquake, a coalescence phenomenon was clearly identifiable and formed a bubble of engineers (for sure none of the original system designers was included) with a single purpose: solve the problem as soon as possible.

We do not know if this group was related to the “Phantom works” (Boeing’s “all star” engineering group working usually for the military) or if they created a special group for this event. In any case, we can imagine how the situation developed. This reduced group of engineers started working 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, with the unconditional support of small companies around Boeing ("Black Nailed" caves).

They went through the whole system; they took non conventional decisions, redesigned elements, built prototypes, made a lot of tests and, almost certainly, at the end of February or beginning of March, they had a feasible and consolidated solution.

Our congratulations to the colleagues in Boeing. “Chapeau” fellows!

You may think that this was the miracle we were referring at the beginning, but you are wrong. This is not a miracle, it is the result of a well done work by people committed with their objectives and absolutely dedicated to their company. They just did what they were asked to.

But all these efforts were only the smallest part of the whole work that had to be done. The fact that is really annoying is that in the time between the technical solution and the FAA’s decision to allow the flight of the 787 again, tons of papers and documents required to certificate the solution, could be prepared. Any engineer who faces the requalification of a system feels a cold sweat, even if he has just changed a code line in Sw or a resistor in the Hw. So much worse if the system is considered critical.

With the fleet grounded, probably paying compensations to the affected airlines and with the production line in risk, the panorama had to be really scaring.

Therefore,  and firmly believing that Boeing does not play with other playing rules than others, we can only apply a Sherlock Holmes’ reasoning (do not confuse with the "Ockham’s blade principle", even if some malicious minds could think that it is also applicable):

Once you eliminate everything that is possible, what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth

Concerning our case, and once we discarded all logical explanations, there is only one possible option left: a miracle has occurred, a miracle in the category of Cana’s weddings (where water turned into wine).

Somebody should ask the FAA to confirm this.

Below you can find the link to the solution for last weeks challenge.

http://engineers-corner.dip-solutions.com/Answer2.pdf

In the following link you will the engineering challenge for this week. Before you think that we are trying to offend your intellect (you will be able to solve the problem in a few seconds), turn around your thoughts, go your way back and try to think about the problem again, considering everything that could go wrong during the implementation.

http://engineers-corner.dip-solutions.com/Problem3.pdf

A thought:

You never know who is right, but you always know who is the boss.

See you!

Be brave!