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New UK plan "could spell end of throwaway culture" (BBC News)
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tooki:

--- Quote from: unknownparticle on March 15, 2020, 10:33:01 pm ---It is possible to eliminate pilots now, and has been for at least 20 years.  General practice is for pilots to take off, then the autopilot is activated after about 20 seconds, the plane then flies on autopilot until it is well into the glide path to landing.  However, the autopilot could do the whole thing without problem. The biggest problem in civilian aviation today is pilot boredom and consequent fatigue, because they have nothing to do in flight, this causes human error.  So, it's a psychlogical problem,  would passengers feel safe if they knew the aircraft was being flown entirely by computer with no flight crew onboard?  Even knowing that this would probably be safer than being flown by a human pilot, because, most aviation accidents are caused by pilot error.  Quite a dilemma.

--- End quote ---
Not even close to a dilemma.

Look at the crash stats for military drones: they’re terrible compared to commercial aviation. (Twice a month according to here. And there are vastly fewer drones than commercial aircraft. Consider that there are 1200 Boeing 737s in the sky at any given moment! And then consider how many other models of planes are in use, cumulatively outnumbering the 737.) We are nowhere close to ready to have pilotless passenger aircraft.

What people don’t understand is that “autopilot” isn’t a Google Maps that can control the flight and react dynamically to situations. “Autopilot” is a broad collection of different automatic settings that are enabled selectively. Think cruise control, but for various settings, not just speed. Yes, you can program in a flight path, but again, it must be programmed.

Please, stop promulgating the myth that planes fly themselves. They don’t. I mean, they do, if you consider ONLY the act of keeping the aircraft aloft under non-special circumstances. But pilots do far more than that. Even if you moved those tasks out of the cockpit and into a control room on the ground, those tasks do not go away, and doing them remotely is far less effective.

tooki:

--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on March 16, 2020, 03:32:33 am ---There is no question that humans can sometimes deal with cases that the computers can't currently handle.  But we are nearing the point (or perhaps already past) where the failures that humans introduce to the system outnumber and out weigh the cases where the computer would fail.  Even if you only count cases where it is indisputably pilot error instead of just a case of throwing the pilot under the bus.

It really shouldn't be a situation where personal feelings or preference is the deciding factor.  Just the facts, maam.  Just the facts.

--- End quote ---
The number of crashes today is already minuscule. Yes, they’re now mostly “due to human error”, but this doesn’t tell you ANYTHING about the number of incidents pilots were able to resolve without incident, but which a computer would not have been able to resolve. I think those are FAR more numerous than you think.
MK14:

--- Quote from: unknownparticle on March 16, 2020, 04:50:24 pm ---When have you ever known government regs to be well thought out?!
There is an old piece of car safety advice, said to be very effective and very cost efficient.  Place a rigid 6" long steel spike in the centre of car steering wheels and remove seatbelts, then every one would be very careful how they drove!

--- End quote ---

The intentions and concepts are good. They just seem to get carried away, and end up with crazy levels of feature creep. Hence resulting in what at least some others, think are overly onerous regulations!

Analogy: Someone here, just needs a £20, used analogue crt Oscilloscope. For general hobby work.

They then start a thread somewhere, saying, don't worry about budget, what scope should I get.

Then someone says, you should get at least 100 MHz bandwidth.
Then someone else (also without checking your usage, which is only for audio work, to a maximum of 20 KHz), Hence 500 MHz bandwidth, hence someone insists digital are better.
Then someone says you should get isolated inputs.
4 Input channels (just in case).
Future proof it and get a 2 GHz bandwidth model.
Etc etc.

The £20 used model, has to now be a £75,000 oscilloscope, which ends up being taken out of its box twice. Once for checking an AA battery is 1.5V, the other time is for a 2 KHz signal.

Yes, by all means, get a scope. But a £300 digital Rigol/Siglent etc. Not a super expensive one.
But it would apply to whatever someone wants to buy or achieve.

China (less so India/Others), are apparently doing very well, financially, and selling tons of stuff round the world. Yet, as regards western rules and regulations. They seem to have much less.
These rules and regulations, could price the West out of too many markets.
Quality and safety are good, but is the price too high ?

tl;dr
Make things of reasonable/good quality and safe, but DON'T go overboard.
Specify a Toyota/Ford/Hyundai type of regulation, NOT a Rolls Royce/Lexus/Top Mercedes S class/BMW/Ferrari etc
'Good enough', not 'Gold plated, excessive opulence'.
MK14:

--- Quote from: unknownparticle on March 16, 2020, 04:50:24 pm ---When have you ever known government regs to be well thought out?!
There is an old piece of car safety advice, said to be very effective and very cost efficient.  Place a rigid 6" long steel spike in the centre of car steering wheels and remove seatbelts, then every one would be very careful how they drove!

--- End quote ---

I don't like DISAGREEING with people. But, I heard/read some research about it, and they discovered that is a completely nonsensical method. All you really need to do is check the nut that holds the steering wheel on, is tight.

Because extensive research discovered, that almost all accidents, are caused by the NUT, between the steering wheel, and the drivers seat.   :-DD

Or, in other words (via internet search) 'A car's weakest part is the nut holding the steering wheel'.
Cubdriver:

--- Quote from: CatalinaWOW on March 16, 2020, 03:32:33 am ---There is no question that humans can sometimes deal with cases that the computers can't currently handle.  But we are nearing the point (or perhaps already past) where the failures that humans introduce to the system outnumber and out weigh the cases where the computer would fail.  Even if you only count cases where it is indisputably pilot error instead of just a case of throwing the pilot under the bus.

It really shouldn't be a situation where personal feelings or preference is the deciding factor.  Just the facts, maam.  Just the facts.

--- End quote ---

It's not always the computer that fails.  It's often something else.  An unusual engine failure.  A totally unforeseen weather incident.  Fuel contamination.



You can't program a computer for all the things that can go wrong - there are just too many possibilities.  Some are caused by humans, but it's not always the humans on the plane.  Very few crashes are caused by the pilots.

-Pat
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