Last year, I was talking to a gentleman who had worked for Boeing as an engineer.
He explained to me how before the advent of CADCAM software the aircraft company had hired thousands of engineers to sit in a room and design parts, each individual part for an entire aircraft - job security indeed.
He explained to me that it wasn't quite the glamorous job that you might think, he told me that someone had to design the toilet handles for a Boeing airliner, the brackets for the seats, and just about everything else.
Newbies, that is to say engineers just getting out of college, would be assigned these more mundane tasks while the senior aerospace engineers got to do the fun stuff.
Nevertheless, many of the incidental parts and devices that are engineered, designed, and created or the interior of an aircraft are quite important.
Consider safety for instance.
Recently the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) noted that some of the seat brackets were not strong enough, and somewhat loose on a particular type of aircraft.
Now then, in the event of an accident all of those seats could break off and crush everyone as they compacted with the front of the aircraft.
That's just not survivable for all the airline passengers.
Are you beginning to see why such things are important? Okay so, the other day I was introduced to a rather interesting technology which could sense if weight were taken off of a seat, or any object actually, as the technology could be used for anything.
So I wanted to check this out and did a little studying.
There was an interesting research paper in the Journal of Lightwave Technology October of 1985 titled; "Coherence of Multiplexing Fiber Optic Interferometric Sensors," by Robert H Wentworth and Janet L Brooks which describes the use of a laser diode scheme with sensors and receivers on couplers with gates, phase modulators, and detectors which could allow for this.
With this new information known it seems to be possible to use fiber optics and sensors in each seat, along with a central control system to help rebalance the aircraft while in flight, automating the trim tabs on the elevator for maximum efficiency.
Such a system might also give advice on the best way to rebalance the aircraft.
Such as moving people from certain aisles up to first class, or people who were on one side of the airplane to the other.
This would improve efficiency, fuel economy, and could easily save the airline the ticket costs of a few passengers by saving additional fuel.
Further, and since I am more concerned with the safety of the aircraft, a well-balanced aircraft has better flying characteristics, and it keeps the aircraft in the perfect weight and balance criteria for its design.
Moving a couple of passengers around would not be difficult, especially if you upgraded a couple to first class, nor would moving a few passengers from one side of the aisle to the other, but it would improve the safety.
Please consider all this and think on.
He explained to me how before the advent of CADCAM software the aircraft company had hired thousands of engineers to sit in a room and design parts, each individual part for an entire aircraft - job security indeed.
He explained to me that it wasn't quite the glamorous job that you might think, he told me that someone had to design the toilet handles for a Boeing airliner, the brackets for the seats, and just about everything else.
Newbies, that is to say engineers just getting out of college, would be assigned these more mundane tasks while the senior aerospace engineers got to do the fun stuff.
Nevertheless, many of the incidental parts and devices that are engineered, designed, and created or the interior of an aircraft are quite important.
Consider safety for instance.
Recently the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) noted that some of the seat brackets were not strong enough, and somewhat loose on a particular type of aircraft.
Now then, in the event of an accident all of those seats could break off and crush everyone as they compacted with the front of the aircraft.
That's just not survivable for all the airline passengers.
Are you beginning to see why such things are important? Okay so, the other day I was introduced to a rather interesting technology which could sense if weight were taken off of a seat, or any object actually, as the technology could be used for anything.
So I wanted to check this out and did a little studying.
There was an interesting research paper in the Journal of Lightwave Technology October of 1985 titled; "Coherence of Multiplexing Fiber Optic Interferometric Sensors," by Robert H Wentworth and Janet L Brooks which describes the use of a laser diode scheme with sensors and receivers on couplers with gates, phase modulators, and detectors which could allow for this.
With this new information known it seems to be possible to use fiber optics and sensors in each seat, along with a central control system to help rebalance the aircraft while in flight, automating the trim tabs on the elevator for maximum efficiency.
Such a system might also give advice on the best way to rebalance the aircraft.
Such as moving people from certain aisles up to first class, or people who were on one side of the airplane to the other.
This would improve efficiency, fuel economy, and could easily save the airline the ticket costs of a few passengers by saving additional fuel.
Further, and since I am more concerned with the safety of the aircraft, a well-balanced aircraft has better flying characteristics, and it keeps the aircraft in the perfect weight and balance criteria for its design.
Moving a couple of passengers around would not be difficult, especially if you upgraded a couple to first class, nor would moving a few passengers from one side of the aisle to the other, but it would improve the safety.
Please consider all this and think on.
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