Ecm role expanding?

[Eric Bryant]

> From: Marteney, Steven J. [mailto:smarteney at xlvision.com]
> Subject: RE: Ecm role expanding?
> 
> The aircraft argument always ruffles my feathers.  Yeah, so 
> what a few F-16s
> crashed from wire chaffing problems.  So what if a few F-16 
> pilots died as a
> result of poor engineering.  I'm sure the F-16 had quite a bit of
> "validation time" too. 

Yea, and that was work that was done 25 years ago.  Boy, last I checked,
there's been a few planes that have crashed from mechanical problems, too.
Sure, it's a huge deal when a fly-by-wire F-16 or Airbus goes down, but
something like stripped threads on a jackscrew can still kill just as many
people. 

> I'm sure that's a real comfort to the 
> family's of
> those pilots.  I don't like the use of statistics and the 
> value of human
> life in the same argument.  It's not new, fully-tested 
> vehicles that will be
> the problem.  It will be the aging vehicles that us poor folk 
> have to drive
> around cause we can't afford a $500 / month car payment that 
> end up braking
> down.  The aircraft has a much more stringent and controllable service
> regiment as well.

First of all, a well-designed system should be able to provide fault
indication and limp-home ability.  A stuck accelerator cable won't provide
either. 

You know, if you want to get paranoid about failures in older cars, why not
rant about rubber brake hoses that fail with age, or metal gas tanks and
hangers that create extremely hazardous situations as corrosion sets in?  

Eric Bryant
mailto:bryante at ghsp.com
http://www.novagate.com/~bryante 


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