787

[den]

Boeing 787 sure is a nice looking plane.

Comments

[klishnor.livejournal.com]

It was cabin pressurization, combined with the fact that the Comet's designers innocently chose to use rectangular windows in the passenger cabin.

If someone had actually learnt a lesson from history, then the designers would have known they were heading for trouble.

Victorian engineers had used strain gauges on ships to show how stress built up around sharp corners when a structure was put under repetitive loads.

But I'd certainly trust my life to the structural integrity of a Nimrod (the military version of the Comet, and still flying very happily).

[hafoc.livejournal.com]

As would I, or one of the later Comets for that matter. They got that little window problem all fixed up, yeah. (Rather I'd trust them as much as anything. I LOVE flying, but I'm a very nervous flyer. Figure it out if you can, I can't.)

I think the problem wasn't the structure per se. It's that nobody made the connection that in a pressurized fuselage, even a minor crack at a window corner can "run," propelled by the interior pressure, and then the whole fuselage ruptures like a punctured balloon. Unless they incorporate rip stoppers into the structure, which I understand they now do.

Composite fatigue.. hrm. The worst I've heard of so far is that some of the composites in light aircraft have a short lifespan because they take damage from ultraviolet light. One would hope that's something Boeing has considered. I think it's probably only a problem with the more basic composites like fiberglass, but... (shrugs)