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From The Register
As expected. The description is that of a light metal fire, where the burning light metal strips oxygen from the electrolyte in the batteries, and anywhere else it can.
This is a very aggressive fire (reaction). If there is any material with oxygen in its composition (and there nearly always is) with heat as the ignition, the light metal can strip the oxygen from the material.
For example: Lithium can reduce Aluminum Oxide to Aluminum, or steal the oxygen from the glue used in the composites of the airplane.
There is no danger to passengers from the fire, none at all. (Note: falls are not fatal. Only sudden stops) so the passengers would not be killed by the fire. Just the sudden stop.
Added on reflection: Boeing’s apparent unwillingness to look at an alternative (even a temporary one) is a testament to bad management.
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Too bad no one knew of these properties of Lithium before Boeing made the unfortunate “discovery”./s
What a mess. Recommended.
Such a travesty. We pay upwards of a trillion dollars every few years or so to have the Department of Homeland Security keep all of us safe. TSA gets to pat us down and squeeze us over, and pull apart our junk to make sure that we don’t endanger our fellow passengers when we fly. And remember the savagery they exhibit when some “unruly” passenger forgets that they stowed a fingernail clipper in their carry on!
All of tha tcaution so the passenger can enter a plane where the chosen batteries are made of lithium cobalt, the most unstable/combustible of the lithium batteries. Not only that, in their haste or whatever to get this product finished, the engineers exceeded the batteries’ specifications:
Ah cells rated for 5C or 325 A and the BMS was set to 580 A with a 2.5 V low voltage cutoff.
How is it that all the decades of data assembled by automotive battery developers was overlooked by the aviation engineers?
Full report is here:
http://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/2013/boeing_787/interim_report_B787_3-7-13.pdf
How much are the US taxpayers on the hook for with this Boeing boondoggle??? How much taxes does Boeing pay, if anything? But will we taxpayers be bailing Boeing out, whilst the Boeing fat cats give themselves Million$$ in “bonuses” for their clearly “heckuva job well done”??
Nuts.
Didn’t Boeing just spend gazillions to move its headquarters to Chicogo many many miles away from all it’s manufacturing plants in Seattle?? For “tax breaks”?? That it so richly “needs”??
Geez. Instead of trying to drown the USG govt in a bathtub, I think we really need to focus on drowning US megaCorps, Banks & Wall ST in a bath tub. Too big to fail, my ass.
Headquarters are located where the CEO wants the HQ to be. The public reason Boeing moved their headquarters maybe for tax breaks.
My money would be on the then CEO’s mistress.
More Boeing
newsnothig to see here, move along:Boeing shifting flight training from Renton to Miami
They should have had Li Ping make their batteries. You can goggle Li Ping.