Australian aircraft engineers have called for the grounding of the Airbus A380 – the world’s biggest passenger aircraft – after Singapore Airlines and Qantas found cracks in the wings of several planes.
Is this a story? Australian aircraft engineers have called for the grounding of the Airbus A380 – the world’s biggest passenger aircraft – after Singapore Airlines and Qantas found cracks in the wings of several planes.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Is this a story? Australian aircraft engineers have called for the grounding of the Airbus A380 – the world’s biggest passenger aircraft – after Singapore Airlines and Qantas found cracks in the wings of several planes.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
I have begun to recently ponder how safe these new composite hybrid planes are given it is relatively new technology. Am I right about this being new technology, unproven?
“I have begun to recently ponder how safe these new composite hybrid planes are given it is relatively new technology. Am I right about this being new technology, unproven?
”
Rene, composite materials technology was new in the 1960s, but it has been 50 years since the first large-scale aerospace use of composite materials (the Minuteman ICBM series had wound fiberglass/epoxy stages), and hundreds of billions of dollars of work has gone into making them reliable since then. The real questions will revolve around how they used the materials in the structures. They were building a very large airplane, that they *knew* would be restricted to a smaller number of airports than competing aircraft. Their desire to lighten the aircraft and match it to existing terminal facilities, so that they could maximize the number of airports it could fly into *might* have got the better of them, but by now the composite materials are a well-known asset for aircraft. Like all materials, they have their own tradeoffs, but those should have been well-known to the designers.
A couple questions for any aerospace engineers (or just aviation experts): I know the new Boeing 787 is around 50% composite, the most ever for an airliner. How much of the Airbus 380 is constructed of composites? Were the cracks found in areas that were made of the composites, or metal? One final qustion: We know the risk for “metal fatigue” – are composites more or less prone to some form of “fatigue”? I thought they may be less prone to fatigue, but I’ll defer to the experts…