I get where you are coming from. And understand it isn't binary. I was hoping you knew what what the name of the various diagrams you asserted were being evaluated were.
I understand there are different levels of problematic behavoor, because something that causes a 3 degree uncommanded pitch over say 10 seconds is a sight less severe than one that does the same over 3 seconds.
I'm still not seeing anything that's significantly changing my mental model of this problem. Physically, legally and pragmatically speaking.
-The plane remains statically stable within the majority of the flight envelope.
-Dynamic stability still isn't quite there, but can be handled with more conservative maneuvering.
-Critical information was deemphasized in the certification process, or changed after the fact
-the promised deliverable did not achieve it's stated goals without excessive "compliance engineering"
The plane is absolutely dangerous to an uninformed pilot; but aerodynamically, within a constrained flight envelope, it's fine. I don't personally feel it should be airworthy, as I agree with many test pilot's from back in the 60's. It just encourages the use of less airworthy designs with less problematic behavior, because a computer can smooth out the curve, and yet as a programmer myself,I believe a passenger plane should not be reliant on that level of hack necessarily.
As it is, I'm not even highly confident that if there were something wrong with the software update, that the FAA would even catch it in it's current incarnation.
But without language naming the graphs you're talking about, or need to see to be convinced of safety, a FOIA would honestly be fruitless.
Thanks for the contributing though. I'll see if I can find the paperwork.
If you consider FOIA then it could be, for example:
- of the logs of the measurements of the test flights flown on the 737 MAX prototypes with the new engines but without the MCAS, if the test flights are flown to establish the flight envelope, especially of the correlation to the pilot's input and the plane's response.
- of the calculations or of the physical models of the said response to the pilots input, on the plane without the MCAS. Such parameters and models are indeed used e.g. in the flight simulators.
- Note that even if there were planed deliveries of hundreds of billions (!) worth of 737 MAX planes, up to recently only four (!) flight simulators for 737 MAX were delivered. I don't know if it's possible to even fly them without assuming MCAS "always working perfectly."
I'm not directly in that field to be able to give you a "local" jargon though. My view is a result of just reading those newspaper articles which provided enough engineering details (and a few forums) and I do remember seeing some complex enough related graphs for which I''m sure they couldn't be invented by a journalist, but surely not a "definitive plainly obvious proof". But there is indeed a lot still kept hidden from the public, and I'm sure there are more technical details that are significantly worse than we are ready to imagine.
I understand there are different levels of problematic behavoor, because something that causes a 3 degree uncommanded pitch over say 10 seconds is a sight less severe than one that does the same over 3 seconds.
I'm still not seeing anything that's significantly changing my mental model of this problem. Physically, legally and pragmatically speaking.
-The plane remains statically stable within the majority of the flight envelope.
-Dynamic stability still isn't quite there, but can be handled with more conservative maneuvering.
-Critical information was deemphasized in the certification process, or changed after the fact
-the promised deliverable did not achieve it's stated goals without excessive "compliance engineering"
The plane is absolutely dangerous to an uninformed pilot; but aerodynamically, within a constrained flight envelope, it's fine. I don't personally feel it should be airworthy, as I agree with many test pilot's from back in the 60's. It just encourages the use of less airworthy designs with less problematic behavior, because a computer can smooth out the curve, and yet as a programmer myself,I believe a passenger plane should not be reliant on that level of hack necessarily.
As it is, I'm not even highly confident that if there were something wrong with the software update, that the FAA would even catch it in it's current incarnation.
But without language naming the graphs you're talking about, or need to see to be convinced of safety, a FOIA would honestly be fruitless.
Thanks for the contributing though. I'll see if I can find the paperwork.