Which is why the FAA is going to require a test flight before an individual aircraft can return to commercial service. They all have to be brought in to specifications and up to date, then they have to have at least one test flight before they can take passengers.

So, you feel EICAS is required for safety? Envelope protection?

Up to you, but how many crashes of 737 would have been prevented by these things? This aircraft has been flying for decades, surely you can show how these things are necessary for safe operating. I think that looking back on an aircraft's operational history is important, and that making such a radical change to the 737's operation by adding in an EICAS system could be argued as being risky too. So just throwing automation and safety systems don't fix things.

Envelope protection? How on earth do you do that in a non-fly-by-wire aircraft? (you don't). In fact, the MCAS was, at least in part, an envelope protection device you know. One has to be very careful and not just throw on "safety equipment" without doing a really good analysis of how these systems interact with humans. This was the *problem* of the MCAS, and now you want to compound this by adding full envelope protection? OK.. That sounds dangerous too.

So up to you - if you don't like the 737 family, you think it's too old to be safe, then stay home or fly something else. These aircraft have been flying safely for four decades and will continue to fly for a couple more.

With hindsight this was a bad call, but if you look at the situation objectively I think you would see that what happened is understandable. This was what is known as a "normal accident" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Such accidents are difficult to prevent, and as systems get more and more complex the difficulty increases geometrically. What happened is the process failed. It wasn't that any individual or group of engineers didn't do their jobs, it wasn't that the FAA was asleep a the wheel and missed some obvious problem, it wasn't because somebody didn't care, it was an accident.

At this point, the 737 is likely more than airworthy. It has been gone though with a fine toothed comb and the MCAS wasn't the only thing they are fixing. The 737 Max is going to be the most reviewed, best maintained aircraft in the sky for awhile if you ask me.

Technically true - But misleading.

The EASA has signaled that it WILL approve the 737 MAX for flight without the additional software work to provide the additional "virtual AOA" sensor to allow additional cross checks when the actual AOA sensors disagree. What they have said is that they will allow the 737 MAX to fly in the FAA approved configuration with the understanding that at some point in the future, when the new software has been fully vetted and certified, the new software will be added to the minimum required equipment list within a reasonable length of time.

The EASA has also admitted that this new software requirement is NOT strictly required by their regulations, but in agreement with Boeing and the FAA they will levy this on the 737 MAX though special orders that won't apply to any other aircraft.

So, it's likely the EASA will lift the grounding order soon after the FAA's lifting of the order which is due to go into effect early in December. I'd have to look up the exact story, but the EASA has already indicated that the 737 MAX will return to flight at the same time or soon after it does here in the USA.

For what crime?

Serious question.

Look, I know it's popular to bash "big bad Boeing" for malfeasance, but if you truthfully review how this all happened there wasn't anything criminal here. Like all disasters of this kind, it was caused by a series of mistakes, misunderstanding and a process that failed to catch them. Nobody at Boeing or the FAA said anything close to "screw safety, save a buck and just do it!" regardless of all the media coverage and Boeing bashers suggesting otherwise. Everybody followed the process, nobody knew there was an issue or imagined that there would be a chance of two planeloads of people dying.

The MCAS was added late in the certification process. Test flights had turned up an issue and the solution was to pull the MCAS off the shelf (the MAX wasn't the first air frame to use this) and put it on the MAX. Remember this was LATE in the test flying, used an off the shelf solution and was only supposed to address a narrow part of the flight envelope where the control forces where not within the prescribed regulations. The process allowed this, and the "fix" wasn't seen for the danger it turned out to be and the risk management process didn't catch these failure modes. It also caused the information the pilots needed to deal with the malfunction from reaching them. The pilots manuals and training had already been written and approved when flight testing was in progress. I'm sure it would have been in future documentation, but it was absent from the initial versions, and that was a problem.

All of these things are understandable and don't require negligence or malfeasance on Boeing or the FAA's part. This wasn't criminal, it was a series of mistakes, mistakes the process should have caught, but missed. Who's responsible for this? So how are these people now criminally liable for this? I don't think anybody is.

To me, the issue has ALWAYS been the process, not the people of Boeing or the FAA. Nearly 400 people died because the process failed and that let a series of events happen that crashed two aircraft. This wasn't criminal... This was really just a "normal accident" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... That was unfortunate but an inevitable part of fielding such complex systems and infrastructure.

Flying is indeed a dangerous activity - But so are a lot of things we do.

The problem with flying is two fold. First, aviation has very little margin and is sometimes very unforgiving of lapses in good judgment. You need to be careful, follow the rules, keep yourself on the safe side of the margins, but that's hard to do, time after time, flight after flight. Second, when something goes wrong, they can go very wrong very fast and large numbers of people all die at once. Where these accidents are exceedingly rare and commercial aviation is extremely safe, when they happen, it's usually deadly.

So don't get sideways, flying, even a 737 Max is not dangerous compared to things we do every day without a thought. Just driving to work is a bigger risk to your health and safety than flying a 737 Max for the same amount of time. If you compare passenger miles, even the more accident prone commercial aircraft are far safer than your morning commute, with all the crazies out there.

Your choice - For me and my family it's not a problem.

This is going to be the most scrutinized aircraft in the sky. All of them are nearly new, still under warranty with the airlines keeping them well maintained. Pilots will all be re-trained and certified recently and any minor issue will be given prompt attention.

This will literally be the safest aircraft in the sky from my perspective.

Well, to be fair.. ULA Delta IV Heavy is the only option for the really large payloads (~63,000 lbs to LEO) or interplanetary mission profiles that require leaving earth orbit. Space X has some heavy lift capacity (~50,000 lbs to LEO) and has demonstrated they can get stuff out of earth orbit, but a Tesla Roadster is not a Mars rover weight wise. So where I get why SpaceX is the economy vendor for LEO or even geostationary orbits, ULA Delta IV Heavy is pretty much the only game in town once you need large launch weights or high Delta V's.

I suspect that SpaceX is going to rule the bulk of the space launch business in a few short years, but I don't see ULA going away given their niche heavy lift market. SpaceX may be able to throttle up the Falcon Heavy a bit more I suppose, but they end up having to throw away the boosters and forego the recovery and reuse thing already.

Stereotype much?

The vast majority of the earth's surface is NOT in flyover country and I've got a feeling that these areas will be a larger portion of the paying customer base for StarLink. Besides, the VAST majority of the people in this country already have high speed internet, including the people in the rural areas you like to hate. Very few folks don't have any ground based options for internet service.

You misrepresent my stated position to make your argument.

I'm not anti-government, nor am I advocating we don't fund science. I was actually defending the practice of funding the military from the front on assault of the previous poster who was suggesting that we should privately fund the military. I was arguing that if we fund things like education, welfare and Medicaid, which are secondary priorities, then funding the military is a no brainer. Besides, I don't think this observatory is a poster child for the military industrial complex, or responsible for any important military technology.

Finally, this "observatory" is just a white elephant, having been built in 1963. It's over 55 years old and well beyond it's useful life span. Given it's deteriorating condition and the cost to revitalize it, it doesn't seem reasonable to keep dumping money into it. Take the thing down, turn it in for scrap. There is a lot of metal to be recycled.

I'm guessing the powers to be of Slashdot want to keep this white elephant because this is the second story about it in the same number of weeks.

Come on folks, there are cheaper ways to do what this project can do with an array of dishes. Maybe it's time for bringing this thing's life to a close, honor it for what it has accomplished, and move on.

You are correct. This is exactly why we DON'T need this thing. An array of dishes and some fancy programming work just as good or better and are cheaper and more flexible than this thing.

IMHO- The best thing we can do is decommission the facility safely and send it to the scrap yards.

How far have we fallen from our founding ideals.

The PRIMARY purpose of the federal government is to provide for the common defense, after that, we are generally pushing the government into business lines that are not clearly defined in our founding documents.

You can argue that "for the common good" covers much of these additional functions, but we have clearly stepped way out onto a slippery slope when we start having the federal government do things like welfare, Medicaid, and education.

So, like it or not, the military-industrial complex is actually something we want to maintain, albeit maybe not at the current levels. However, we *must* be ready to defend ourselves should the need arise and not repeat the mistakes from the past which got us into things like, I don't know, say world war two? Right now we face two specific threats, Russia and China, and a couple of countries who are backed by our primary opponents and/or the third threat of terrorism by religious extremists. We need to be able to sustain a two-front war yet still have resources to deal with terrorism should the need arise. This will take a MASSIVE amount of men, materials, and fuel, and if you want to keep the fighting off US soil, you better be able to project this power long distances (i.e. you better have ships and transport aircraft too)..

Now if you want to just be a sitting duck, with everybody aiming at you while you sit in the middle of a tiny pond, then go ahead, destroy the military-industrial complex here in the USA. By all means. Just take my advice and learn to speak Russian and Chinees because you will need it to survive.

Correlation is causation now? Because the C02 levels are up and the climate is changing, one must have caused the other..

Yea, I know, it's common knowledge about greenhouse gasses, but can we PLEASE stop with this using a logical fallacy in all these stories? I know it is fashionable, but it leads to illogical thinking in the long run.

Well, I'm not happy with the results of course, but I'm not going to be screaming at the sky or making speeches about how much I've thought about blowing up the White House. You won't find a bunch of us rioting and looting on ignoration day either or cheering while somebody holds up a bloody facsimile of Joe's severed head calling it art. But I digress..

It's not that bad though. We are likely going to keep control of the Senate though the runoffs in GA and have the right to say "no" to legislation and nominations we don't like, that's something. Worst case is we have gridlock, which is not a horribly bad thing in my view. Further, I'm looking to 2022 to take back control of the House where we gained seats this time and then take back the White House in 2024.

IMHO - I'd not be too confident here. As is clear by the last election, things change, the pendulum swings both ways. Your side has not managed to regain the power you had back when Obama was first elected, where you held both chambers of Congress and the White House for 2 years. The pendulum hasn't been able to swing back to the left that far in the last two cycles, but if history is any indicator will now swing right for one or two cycles. Enjoy what you got now, this is likely as good as it's going to get for about 8 years, and about all Joe can do is issue executive orders (the old "I got a Phone and Pen" thing). :)