nuckollsr(at)cox.net
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 Posted: Mon Jun 26, 2006 6:23 am Post subject: TruTrak |
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I'll suggest that it's more rudimentary.
Success in any endeavor is based on assembling a collection of simple-ideas
into an invention that is refined over time and experience while respecting
the laws of optimum proportionality to achieve a recipe for success. If we
look back over the history of flight, we'll find many examples of shaky
technology and process that would scare today's pilots away. History is
replete with accounts by early barnstorming pilots who dealt with
relatively fragile, life limited, less than optimal features in their
airplanes. Repairs were often made with tools carried in the airplane using
materials obtained from local merchants. Most repairs were made to correct
LIFE-LIMITED features as opposed to damage. Today, our high risk concerns
for flight are centered around HOW we operate the airplane. Back then, a
much higher percentage of pilots died because some part of the airplane
failed. Read Lindbergh's account of how the Spirit of St. Louis came into
being. The long pole in his tent was the engine. Recall that his flight was
only 23 years after the Wright brothers struggled into the air with an
extremely fragile, horribly underpowered airframe with dynamic stability
issues designed to bend airplanes and break pilots.
Some things evolve faster than others and the rate of evolution is based on
individual perceptions of opportunity to address a market. As I've written
in other posts, the state of our technical and manufacturing skills today
runs far ahead its application in airplanes. Way too much of how we think
about flying is rooted in our experience which has been hamstrung with the
albatross of regulation teamed with industry's misguided worship of policy
and procedure. While computers, automobiles, even toasters and VCRs become
more capable, less expensive to build and more reliable every year,
on-board systems in our airplanes lag further and further behind.
When one speaks of potentially life saving features that could be developed
for airplanes exploiting all that mankind knows how to do, there will
always be the individual who points a finger a Bill Gates and announces
that he'd never put his life in the hands of that man's software. But
consider the two missions: Bill's products require millions of lines of
code and thousands of programmers to develop an operating system that runs
hundreds of applications in hardware he has little direct control over.
From our perspective as users of airplanes and developers of hardware to
meet market needs, the task of crafting potentially life saving hardware is
perhaps 1/10,000 the size of Bill Gate's task.
A sold state rate sensor ($30), a GPS engine ($30), a stepper motor ($15),
a two gears and a rudimentary gear box combined with a CPU ($2) and a
hand-full of jelly-bean parts will run a few dozen lines of assembler code
that would offer a pilot 99% of everything he wants a "hands off flight"
system to do when thing are turning to crap in the cockpit. The thing that
makes this system stand far above Bill's products for reliability is low
parts count, low line count in code, low stress levels in components,
readily available off-the-shelf components and a SIMPLE SINGLE MINDED TASK
for functionality - hold a course.
Once this rudimentary "hammer" is crafted and installed, a marketer/user
has a means by which a whole lot of features can be added. A palm top could
be programmed to do all manner of navigational assist tasks by feeding new
course commands to the gps-aided wing leveler. The high risks are all
herded into one piece of low cost hardware (the palm top) that can be
totally disconnected from the wing-leveler at any time without crippling
the wing-leveler's ability to save your life. Under those conditions,
perhaps running Bill's software in your airplane becomes less problematic.
Installing two such systems powered from separate sources begins to offer
hands-off-flight stability with the same order of system reliability as
prop bolts.
We can debate the sensor-display-interpretation-reaction servo-loop for
flying forever but no combination of hardware -AND- pilot will match up to
the capabilities of what some simple hardware and yes, even Bill's
software, can do for us to avoid top billing on an NTSB accident
report. Accidents are unintended consequences over which victims have no
control when events stack up beyond some tipping point. Every prudent and
insightful designer should be working toward solutions that make tipping
points harder to reach. 75 years ago pilots were till very much at-risk of
tipping events forced upon them by limits in technology and process; their
demise was properly called an "accident".
Today, we're subject to tipping events that are NOT products of limits to
the best-we-know-how-to-do. They are the unintended consequences of those
who say they're keeping us "safe" from ourselves and our airplanes. In
fact, they have become the biggest promoters of disasters waiting to
happen. If one takes to the race track today with Firestone 500 nylons and
asbestos lined brakes, any demise to the car or driver precipitated by the
failures of those two systems to perform would not be called and accident.
Whether you talking race cars or airplanes, the consequences of not
exploiting the best-we-know-how-to-do are not accidents, they're EXPECTED
RESULTS of ignorance and failure to exploit man's natural desire to survive
and his inherent abilities to improve on that condition if individuals with
with airs of authority are not standing in the way saying, "you can't do that".
This cannot be laid just at the feet of the regulators. Leaders in the
aviation industry have become totally uprooted from the mind set that made
Beech, Lear, Cessna, et als. the once-great icons of aviation progress. If
there's a bright star on the horizon for little airplanes, it's shining
into basements and garages of all you folks who have "disconnected" from
the impediments to progress that are killing type certificated aviation.
The airplanes with the highest return on investment for safety and utility
will be the ones you folks are building.
Bob . . .
08:01 AM 6/26/2006 -0400, you wrote:
| Quote: |
Or it could be exactly the reverse!
But that's a different topic for a different place and it is largely a
software issue...
Ken
>It may be that pilots who truly understand the workings of a computer can
>accept giving control of their lives to it while pilots who do NOT
>understand computers are hesitant to do so.
>
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Bob . . .
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< What is so wonderful about scientific truth...is that >
< the authority which determines whether there can be >
< debate or not does not reside in some fraternity of >
< scientists; nor is it divine. The authority rests >
< with experiment. >
< --Lawrence M. Krauss >
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