Author: Richard

Be Very Worried

I was scanning through my newsfeed one morning in the last week of May and came across this.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-023-06083-8

This article is behind a paywall so these are a couple of the published scientific articles the article is based on:

https://experts.arizona.edu/en/publications/identifying-a-safe-and-just-corridor-for-people-and-the-planet

https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/a-just-world-on-a-safe-planet-first-study-quantifying-earth-system-boundaries

Why is this worthy of note?

This ‘scientific paper’ purports to define what is ‘safe’ and ‘just’. A scientific measure of safety is a hard metric to define. A scientific measure of justice is a gross dereliction of science.

These studies attempt to define a set of safe limits for different climate metrics and then assess whether or not the human race has exceeded the metrics. These are two very difficult things to define and will involve a high degree of supposition, projection and assumption.

They then attempt to do the same thing with ‘justice’.

Lets examine this in two ways, scientifically and politically:

  1. Science is the process of formulation of a set of hypotheses that are strengthened or defeated by rigorously questioning and testing. There is no such thing as a fixed idea of definitive truth in science. Justice is a subjective moral judgment that is made via societal consensus. The two are not comparable and cannot be combined. It is worth noting that of late the idea that science is created by consensus has been used by the political climate lobby. This is definitionally false. The degradation of the understanding and perception of the scientific method has led us to the point where science has adopted the role of moral judgment by scientific decree – by scientists themselves. An inversion of the scientific method as morals cannot be interrogated or challenged, as to do so is inherently immoral. It is immoral to take the position that murder is just. Therefore couching ‘science’ in moral language has the effect of actively discouraging rigorous testing. It is an anathema to the basis of the scientific method.
  2. Through the decades of the recently changing climate (it’s never changed before!) and now COVID, no matter your position we can all admit that our government employs ‘science’ to effect their political will. In the western world this has happened in the same period when the state has taken over the role of defining morals in society. This used to be an important part of the separation of powers between church and state. Totalitarian governments eliminate or subvert religion so they assume the power of deciding what is moral and what is not, this is a very useful power. In the western world as the church has declined in power this has left a power vacuum that the state has expanded to fill. As the state has politicized science to amplify its political power it follows that with the assumption of moral authority by the government, the moralization of science would eventually follow.

So let’s look at the good news.

OK, after examining the good news, let’s draw some negative conclusions. There are some examples where science has made moral judgements. I am not sure we need to go beyond considering eugenics as an example of the intersection of science, social engineering and morals:

“…..modern societies, as a matter of policy, should promote the improvement of the human race through various forms of governmental intervention. While initially this desire was manifested as the promotion of selective breeding, it ultimately contributed to the intellectual underpinnings of state-sponsored discrimination, forced sterilization, and genocide.”

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2757926/

The government has decided it is immoral that you heat your home, or drive across town to visit a family member, or immoral that we attempt to make enough food to feed the world population, or immoral that you defend children against sexualization, or immoral that you oppose state promoted sterilization of children against their parents wishes, or immoral that you decline a medical procedure. They use fake scientists to make and support these moral edicts.

When science gets involved in gender theory, climate justice and what medical procedures you should be required to accept. What exactly will you be compelled to do against your will for the common good? – what will happen to you if you disagree with a set of astonishingly weak scientific hypotheses with fabricated yet absolute moral justifications?

A Quick Thought

We are expending astronomical amounts of energy, pulling billions of tons of rare and toxic minerals out of the earth to form into an inefficient but occasionally convenient form of energy storage. Batteries are not ‘energy’ they are just a means to store energy temporarily. They are analogous to the fuel tank in your car – they are not the fuel.

It is interesting to look at the weight of fuel containment systems vs the energy density of the fuel they contain. When you do this, batteries look awful, however it is only one metric.

Make sure that whenever you look at an electric car be sure that you make note of the six invisible passengers the driver is taking everywhere with them as they drag around the 1200lbs of batteries they require to get poor to moderate range.

Then imagine how well that translates to an aircraft application.

Managing Managers

I work on a number of programs in a number of different roles. This is part of the pleasure of what I do. I am the CTO for one company and a lowly structures engineer for another. I get to see projects from above and below.
There is a good way to use consultants and then there are other ways.

Let’s imagine a company. This company has just finished its prototype. The prototyping has been very successful. The aircraft met all the technical goals and has validated the investment, time and effort – and more importantly it validates the business case for a production version of the aircraft.

The board of the company spent a bit of time creating a plan for the production version and attempting to raise money. But there is something missing – some magic spark to galvanize the enthusiasm of the investors and harness the energy of the technical team.

The board meets an interested party and thinks they could potentially be the new CEO. This makes a lot of sense. The company has to transition out of prototyping and into production. It is a different mindset and a new CEO with vision and energy is just what they need.

So after working with him and discovering that they like how he operates they make him an offer and he comes on board and injects the energy and enthusiasm that they were missing.

The CEO does not have any aircraft development experience but he has a lot of aviation experience and he leads with confidence.

The design of the aircraft starts to head off in a new direction and resembles the original configuration less and less. This is not necessarily bad. The aircraft has to meet a market need and the CEO is using his wider experience to drive the engineering team to create a viable aircraft.

There is some concern starting to grow amongst the engineers, as the desired aircraft requires that some of the fundamental parameters of the design are set so they are borderline at best and unrealistic at worst, they skirt the boundary of technical, compliance and supply chain risk.

The experienced engineers know that a combination of multiple parameters set like this are unusual and introduce a fatal level of risk. They know these factors will likely combine in the final synthesis of the aircraft into a result that will be entirely unsatisfactory.

Whenever concerns are raised with the executive the engineers are acknowledged but asked to continue with these parameters and do their best to meet them. The company has selected a path and they have to do their best to support it. The engineers grumble but what choice do they have? They mention it in a few more meetings but eventually those issues fade into the background.

Over time the development continues until the executive notices that the engineering team are having problems meeting the brief, the schedule is short and the task is complex and the engineers appear to have dropped the ball. They have forgotten about the warnings from the engineering team of a few months ago and they need to find out what is going on. They hire a consultant.

The consultant examines what is going on and the parameters the project is based on and warns that the aims of the project are likely going to be impossible to achieve and the project will end in a compromised product that matches the original warning from the engineering team.

The executive is dismayed, disappointed and still suffering from memory loss. The executive immediately deploys the engineering team to repeat the original work. Not with the aim of replicating the work of the consultant but to justify the answer they got originally because that is the answer they like.

The blame for this situation is not wholly with the executive. Engineering has to learn to communicate clearly upwards – grumbling or giving warnings is not clear communication. As a team lead, managing the people who work for you is easy – there is a relationship where they have to do what you say (within reason). Managing your managers is much more difficult. As not only do they not have to do what you say or even ask, they will often act in utterly illogical ways.

So, whenever you communicate upwards be specific and explicit. Use presentations (put it in writing) in bold red ink. Repeat it. If an answer or projection is high risk, explain that another way to think of ‘high risk’ is ‘project destroying’. Yes, you ‘might’ create a leprechaun powered aircraft capable of Mach 1.7 (if we finally crack the problem of high yield leprechaun farming). If you base the future of the company on this and direct all the investment towards this goal, the chance of failure is so high that for all intents and purposes failure is guaranteed. Everyone loses their jobs and the capital investment is destroyed and we all get an entry on our resumes that we try to avoid drawing attention to.

Of course, there are always other engineering team members and engineering leads who will take the happy clappy position and support whatever management desires. Remember that when you communicate sideways in the organization, profanity can be a useful tool…..although not in writing.

The Freedom to Comply

Dealing with the move and keeping up with the business of being in business had kept me busy 24-7 for a while.

The process of this move has given me reason for significant concern. We have moved quite often. This is our fourth transatlantic move (yes, I know, we are suckers for punishment) This is the first one we have done without children and this time we have had the most flexibility and financial resources. It has been a paperwork tsunami and has turned into a process that has taken many months to initiate and execute and is still not resolved.

If you are considering a legal relocation to a new country this will be relevant. Bear in mind that we have both lived and worked in the UK before for a period of years. I am a UK citizen, Anna is a citizen of a EU country.

There is a significant problem with legal immigration and relocation. Trust me – we have done this a lot – we have legally emigrated five times – this is the sixth time. We have done work visas, residency, et al over and over. Not only that, we have set up banking, credit cards, phone accounts, residential utilities and multiple businesses in multiple jurisdictions over the last twenty years.

So I blame it on paperwork. That is not really true. It is the conversion to digital that is part of the problem. It used to be that you could go into a bank with your passport and proof of residency and set up a personal account. If you needed a business account you would take your certificate and articles of incorporation and you could get everything done on the same day. If you want a cell phone plan you do the same thing.

Opening a joint personal bank account and getting all the functions working for myself and Anna has taken two months and we are almost there. It used to take an hour.

It has been far worse with the business account. We were incorporated in the UK last year in advance so there would be plenty of time to get our affairs in order – oh how innocent that sounds now. The business banking is still not set up properly. It used to take a 30 minute meeting with a banking representative. This time it has taken over nine months.

Because we are new to the UK (after twenty odd years) we don’t have a credit rating. This is a ‘hard stop’ to getting a cell phone plan – so we are on pay as you go phones.

Every interaction with a digital system devolves into a hacking exercise to work out how the choices available fit our situation. Then you hunt the internet via google, blogs and forums working out what the actual requirements are to fit the ill defined demands of the incompetently conceived and implemented digital process. If you do try and talk to customer service you end up interacting with an AI bot that is like talking to a comedy TV robot from the 1970’s. A single error or misinterpretation in any of these setup procedures will kill the process and you don’t find out for days or weeks. One bank we have been interacting with will only notify you of an error by sending you a letter. A notification that could be instant but instead you have to wait five working days to find out if you were successful. When the letter finally arrives you find out that the process did not work, no reason given, and you have to start over.

Go watch ‘Brazil’ directed by Terry Gilliam. It is not a documentary. Although you would be forgiven for thinking that it is.

I don’t want to describe all the gory details of the process of getting Anna the right to live in the UK – but here are the high points. Pre-Covid there was a five day expedited process to get a spousal visa. It took us five months and a drastic change to our living arrangements for that period to make it possible.

Luckily there is still an expedited process available in the private sector and it costs about the same. You go to the beaches of Northern France, contract with a customer service minded immigration expediter (uncharitably slandered as ‘people smugglers’) and you can get domiciled in the UK in a few hours – and you get free accommodation, healthcare and a cash allowance. Compared to what we had to do, that is an mind-bogglingly fabulous deal.

So this is not just me complaining about the last six months. It is a realization that there has been a profound degradation of the systems we use to navigate everyday existence. This is an invisible but severe constriction to the legal application of personal freedom. For all of us.

It is not until you attempt to exercise those freedoms that you realize how hard they have become to exercise legitimately. We are not without resources, and spending profligately on government processes and fees, temporary accommodation, travel, accountants and lawyers, it is still possible but it is very difficult and astonishingly expensive to remain in compliance in all aspects.

I am not condoning illegal immigration. The abuse of any legal system for personal benefit should be punished. It is why it is deemed illegal. However, when the legitimate process is all but impossible and the illegal process is loaded with incentives it becomes not just a rational option but the only option for most people.

It is easy to blame this on utter incompetence in our national and international bodies. It is crystal clear, God help us, that they are not led by our best and brightest. In an incompetent system, incompetence is cherished and rewarded and you end up with the leaders we are currently blessed with.

There is a clear drift towards the restriction of personal freedoms. This may be with ‘good intent’ (those in charge are woefully incompetent so I am willing to consider that they think this is a good idea) but the outcome will be a two class society.

A class of people who are willing to go to the expense and difficulty of exercising their personal freedom within the boundaries of an increasingly limited, complex, frustrating, expensive and punitive set of government and corporate run systems. Remember if you make any statement that may be construed to be false and if you are not in compliance with every single law, regulation, rule and policy you can be sued, fined or jailed, be financially ruined and have a criminal record.

And, a class of people who ignore the rules and regulations – and are rewarded for doing so.

This drift has been happening for the last 20 years. It has accelerated recently with the government response to COVID providing a useful template for the application of the idea of ‘if we can convince them it is for their own safety, we can do whatever we want’ – with exceptions. If you protest for the right reasons you are given a pass. If you protest for the wrong reasons, the full force of the law is used against you and they will even create new laws to target you.

All the banking problems we have encountered are because of ‘anti-fraud’. This is cause for great ironic merriment. Banks are the largest perpetrators of fraud in the world. They have spent decades turning a blind eye to astronomical amounts of money laundering; holding and processing the personal fortunes of corrupt dictators, systematically profiteering off all their customers. It now has to take months to open a bank account because of ‘anti-fraud’. Jailing the bankers who knowingly profit from the frauds would certainly be a more effective deterrent than anything else that could be done to eliminate fraud. I wonder why that is not done?

All of the immigration issues we have endured are apparently to make sure that the ‘wrong’ people do not come into the country. I don’t know – how about stopping the wrong people who are openly entering illegally rather than giving them benefits and cash?

These solutions sound too simple because they are too simple. If you use a simple solution you risk fixing the actual problem. Are the people who run society idiots? Liars? Both?

The question is: What ‘problems’ are they really fixing? What behavior are they trying to deter? What behaviors are they trying to encourage? Who is encouraged to speak and who is shut down? Which groups are allowed to publicly protest without hindrance from the authorities and which groups are shut down and jailed? Who gets the endorsement of the media and politicians (I repeat myself) and who does not?

I can tell you they are definitely working towards fixing the two scourges of legal immigration and setting up legitimate businesses. We’ll see much less of those in the future. Phew.

Copyright And How Not To Do It

This is a cautionary tale of an individual’s perception of copyright law and how not to deal with a perceived infringement of an interpretation of copyright law.

Our web supremo, Mike, let me know a few weeks ago that we had several DMCA claims against the site. Specifically against four sentences that are used in the textbook that describe some geometric properties of cross sections. One was not even a full sentence, just a fragment of a sentence.

I assumed this was a joke or a misuse of the system to troll the website and reduce our search engine rankings through creating a bad reputation.

I went through the offending verbiage and found that the specific wording I had employed was used in multiple places online. It was also purely technical and definitional in nature and so had dubious creative merit and so could only have a weak claim of copyright – if a valid claim could be made.

I cannot recall where these phrases come from. If I wrote them or took them from the common public domain references or they were an adaptation from some other source.

One of the places I found it was on the website of the individual (or company) who made the claim against me. I will not name him/them, it would serve no purpose as I am going to use this as an example of what not to do.

The individual who made the claim appeared to believe that his claim had merit. The first thing I did was to file a counterclaim pointing out the several reasons why the claim was invalid.

I also found out who the individual was, obtained his contact details and sent him a cease and desist letter. He has a similar website to ours that charges for subscription – for the same kind of things that we give away for no charge, well – at a loss. Whatever his motivations were there was the potential of an element of financial self interest.

I also wrote to him telling him that if he thought there was any issue in the materials on our website to contact me directly to resolve it. We take great pains to ensure that we do not infringe copyright or any other legal protections of the public domain material we host or in the material we create. I told him that I would not be doing anything until the DMCA claims were withdrawn and then we could resolve the issue professionally and amicably.

Things went radio silent and I heard nothing until I received a letter from his lawyer. The letter from the lawyer was combative and pointless. The individual had paid a lawyer to tell me that the DCMA claim had been dropped and ‘requested’ that I change the website and textbook – and gave me a strict deadline to do so.

First top tip. If following up with someone who has offered to work towards a solution with you, do not use an aggressively worded legal letter from a law firm.

I pointed out again that the claim was without merit and as a courtesy I would change the website when I had time. I also pointed out that I had made the offer to do this once the DMCA claim was dropped. I changed the wording on the website so it was not identical.

A few weeks after I changed the website the lawyer sent an email demanding that I change the website. Hmmmm.

I pointed out that as a courtesy I was replying to them to let them know that as a courtesy I had changed the website.

They then demanded to know when I would change the pdf version of the textbook. I told them that I would update the wording when the next issue was published and it has been left at that.

The other party is out of pocket several hundreds or thousands of dollars or more. The situation has been resolved as it would ever have been resolved. He feels very strongly about an issue and I have the courtesy to make a minor change, without admitting liability, to put his mind at rest. This could all have been achieved with a 5 minute email and a 10 minute discussion.

So – if you really want to resolve a perceived copyright infringement (or any legal) issue here are my top tips:
Reach out to the party you believe has infringed your copyright, let them know what you think the problem is and work with them to find an amicable solution.
Nothing else. Copyright infringement enforcement as a legal exercise is only effective if you have the will to follow the full legal course, you have the financial means to support the legal process, you have a reasonable chance of winning and you can enforce the will of the court should the case be judged in your favor.
Nine times out of ten, you will get the resolution you seek through a simple conversation. In the fifteen years we have had the website providing data we have had two threats of legal action. Both of which were ill conceived and poorly managed. Don’t threaten – inform, discuss and resolve.

This is why we decided to give all of our reference material away without cost or limit to the user. Claims of ownership of something brings a set of internal responsibilities that are vague, difficult to describe and expensive to enforce. Not to mention that you can end up looking foolish in the administration of those assumed rights.

Guilt by Association

I have resumed traveling again after a few years of COVID restrictions. When I am traveling I am not working all the time (this is a rarity) and traveling gives me time to think.

This Christmas we spent some time in France, which is always enjoyable. What a beautiful country and such great people. We were having lunch with some French friends discussing politics (something the French can do without feigning moral outrage every 5 minutes). And we were describing our political positions to each other and after a few minutes the husband of the couple looked at me a little aghast and said “You’re a libertarian!”

I thought this reaction was a little amusing sitting, as were, in the very garden of liberte, fraternite and egalite.

In a recent taxi ride to another airport I started the application of my typical ‘libertarian’ thought to a recent interesting development.

In Canada the professional association that governs psychiatry has expressed a wish to either remove Jordan Peterson’s license or compel him to undergo self financed, at a cost specified by the professional society, social media training for an unspecified period of time, presumably ending in some public retraction and ideological mea culpa. His crime was, in part, retweeting the leader of His Majesty’s opposition in the Canadian Parliament.

This underlines my general reluctance to be a member of a professional organization. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, or used to be wrong with that. I know many very good engineers who are ‘professional by association’. I just have always felt a reluctance to put a label from another body on myself and my work. It appears to be, in small part, a version of the logical fallacy of the ‘argument from authority’. “I have the endorsement of this body therefore the things I say are correct”. The intent is to be some level of guarantee of quality of work and that is what it generally means.

However, if the integrity of the institutions degrade, they become a merit badge you can buy to supplement your authority, applying only the conferred social credit of the brand of the institution.

These institutions only work as intended if they are completely impartial and free of any fashionable, political or social influence.

I am lucky that in the area of engineering I am working, being a member of a professional association is not a requirement. I am free from the consequences if such a body were to withdraw their endorsement if I fail to comply with their social or political requirements.

I am free from a potentially Faustian bargain. If you rely on an endorsement from an external body for your livelihood then they have power over you should they wish to exert it. Everyone likes their livelihood after all. What would we do without it?

When such bodies are aligned with the state because they are licensed by the state, when the ruling party becomes entrenched, corrupted and politically infiltrates the institutions you end up with a set of institutions who will enact the political will of the ruling party.

For those in the industry who rely on the endorsement of an independent body for their career: There is no such thing as an “independent body” if it is licensed by the state it is just a matter of time until the manifestation of their political desire and your dependence on them apears.

I remember a discussion with some individuals on the left some years ago. Their firm belief was that everything is political and where it was not political it was imperative to make it so. When the state aligns with the left, the bodies licensed by and aligned with the state will be political. This is the stated philosophical aim of the left and it should not be surprising when it takes place. This is the problem of the ‘ethical state’

(Left and right are meaningless terms in any case, but as the nominal left are in the power that will do as a term, whether they label themselves conservative or liberal, communist or fascist)

If your personal and public politics align with the ideology of the state you have nothing to fear. However, having political beliefs which align with the state and the institution does not mean that I believe you endorse the politicization of these institutions. I assume that you are likewise deplored at the erosion of impartial standards in public life.

The Overton window is being jerked wildly to the ‘left’ and the political morals of the moment are considered retroactive with no statute of limitations.

Do you maintain your professional endorsements and associations in the hope that either your transgressions are minor enough or you will retire before the eye of Sauron rests upon you? Do you trust that the crocodile will eat you last?

What statements of fact will you be prohibited from uttering or posting to social media. What criticism will you hesitate to voice? How will you manage the complex patchwork or multi-disciplinary politically-correct self censorship necessary to maintain your professional endorsements?

When “all lives matter” and “a woman is an adult human female” are publicly unacceptable statements of fact, what’s next?

Ten years ago it was unthinkable that the government would legislate the permissible contents of private and peaceful conversations. If you innocently misgender someone in a private conversation there can be legal consequences in some jurisdictions. Words are now violence and you can be a violent offender at any time.

In this internet age your professional history is instantly accessible and court records are instantly accessible. News travels very quickly and you can get hundreds of almost instant recommendations or warnings through professional networking sites, court records, blog posts, etc.

The days are long gone where you would open the yellow pages and blindly select a professional based on the letters after their name.

There is no longer any need for professional associations. You can tell that they are surplus to requirements in the modern age because they are being turned to more politically useful tasks.

Just like we all laughed at the idea that social justice could ever be inflicted upon university science faculties (who’s laughing now?). We can all laugh now as someone else’s professional association is infected with politics. Funny, huh?

The Unbearable Lightness of Being Stupid

We have returned back to the UK. This has been great after over 20 years away. Everything is the same and everything has changed.

Anna and I were in a typical English town over the weekend nostalgically wandering around ‘Boots the Chemist’ complaining about the lack of human manned checkouts. We were accompanied by the sound of mass drumming from outside. As we were leaving the shop (not ‘store’, it is now ‘shop’) I looked over to the drummers.

It was a group of maybe twenty ‘young people’ in high visibility vests. Some of them had the prerequisite blue hair. Some did not. They had some snare drums and were abusing them in order to create a semi rhythmic noise. It was not particularly unpleasant.

Obviously you wonder what they are making a noise about. There was a table with some things on (I did not care enough to look closely enough to work out what the things were) and the table had a banner.

The banner read “Deeds, not words” (I have added the capitalization and the punctuation which was missing from the original).

There was no other obvious message to communicate the cause that they had decided to hit drums to promote.

Ahhhh – this must be a group of vocalizational-phobes. Maybe they were just very strong advocates of sign language for the deaf – for everyone. They certainly were action-o-philes although the actual action that they seemed to be so enthusiastically advocating for was not defined, or even vaguely hinted at. Possibly they were just very enthusiastic percussionists who wanted to stop talking about drumming and just get the deed of drumming done, In public. With partial blue hair.

This is peak virtue signal. The message and cause no longer matter. What matters is that you get together, make a noise and publicly advocate. It doesn’t matter what you are advocating for, but advocate you must. You must confer visual and public virtue upon yourself in the eyes of your peer group of fellow meaningless advocaters. Blue hair is preferred but optional.

So, folks ‘deeds not words’ (to give it the original format) is the ‘message du jour’ for performative narcissists.

I assume they were woke, the partial blue hair and the soy tinged complexions were a bit of a give away. They were probably radical socialists (are there any other kinds of socialists anymore?). They all appeared to be either stupid, or stupid adjacent but they were without doubt utterly and irredeemably incoherent.

Whether they were badly drumming for net zero, trans-rights, illegal immigration, climate catastrophism, pubic masking, neuro-diversity in the British olympic synchronized swimming team or another season of the muppet babies it did not matter. It did not matter to anyone whose attention was caught by the drumming and it didn’t matter to them. The message was one hundred percent ‘look at me’.

The training ground for politics used to be speech and public debate, now it is incoherent performative narcissism.

I think about the politicians who now represent us and, well……..enough said,

Composites, Manufacturing Planning and Potential Problems

I have two clients at roughly the same point in their respective programs. They have both successfully completed a multi-year prototyping phase, they are zeroing in on a realistic and viable production configuration and they are both looking at the best way to get through the minefield of production R&D, certification, volume manufacturing setup, commercial operations and finally revenue.

This planning phase is critical to the success of their programs and both have very good people involved in advising them and creating their plans.

The same critical issue has come upon both programs. I will not divulge how each program has selected to deal with this issue, but this is a little known problem with composite aircraft development programs. It is a ‘sink or swim’ issue, but then so many issues are when it comes to aircraft development and survival of the project or company.

One of the critical aspects that separate metallic aircraft certification and development programs and composite programs is the lack of accepted production and quality methodologies for the latter.

Metal materials science, supply chain, storage, handling, processing, corrosion protection, etc is very well understood and is governed by a set of largely public domain standards that are easy to access for anyone and accepted internationally by all national aircraft regulators.

The same is not true of composites.

This has a number of critical impacts on composite aircraft programs. All of these impacts are well understood but some are not widely known about. These can come as a set of unpleasant surprises to project management.

As there are no comprehensive public standards available that govern the use of composite materials each OEM has to develop their own internal standards. These standards have to cover all of the same activities as the well known and ‘taken for granted’ standards for metals, These are enshrined is what is usually referred to as a set of process specifications (how do I do it?) and a set of of quality procedures or quality standards (how do I make sure that I have done it right?),

This set of documentation inside each company dealing with composites all look more or less the same. But each company has to take on the task of developing them in a largely independent manner. There are shortcuts you can take, you can buy a composite manufacturing organization that already has the standards established or you can hire an engineer or a team out of another composites OEM to write them for you.

However, there is another path you can take.

You can partner with a manufacturing organization that will ‘build to print’ your designs. If they have an existing set of mature systems already used for the manufacture of certified aircraft structures then they can use those processes for you.

Well……yes….and here comes the ‘but’.

This is where things get messy and difficult.

When you qualify a metallic primary structure installation you do the MMPDS (Mil-Hndbk 5 – or whatever your approval local equivalent is) and you extract the material strength and stiffness characteristics from that reference.

Metallic materials also have relatively simply metrics for stiffness characteristics and for failure modes so a single page in MMPDS can contain the useful data for a range of different thicknesses for a single temper of aluminum. Or even the information for a set of different tempers of aluminum.

There is no equivalency between the public domain nature of the data for metal materials or the type of characteristic data used for the qualification of composite structures.

The data used for qualification of composite structures has to all be developed by the OEM. It is true that there are some baseline material characteristic databases available (AGATE, NCAMP) but the OEM still has to prove equivalency to these material datasets using their company process and quality systems and these datasets only equate to the first level of the composite building block qualification process.

All of these tests, whether to establish the baseline material datasets or to show equivalency (and all the other testing within the building block approach) all have to be done under the OEMs own proprietary process control and quality systems.

The basic material characteristics, the strength of panels and other features, the strength and durability of subassemblies and major assemblies are all certified using test articles built using the process and quality systems you develop.

The type certification of the design of your composite structure has your manufacturing processes and quality system hard-baked into it. In the same way the type certification of the design of your metallic structure has AMS materials standards, NAS and MIL specifications and MMPDS material data baked in.

If you are a composite aircraft startup and you don’t want to take on the significant task of developing or acquiring your own internal manufacturing processes and quality systems upfront, what are the options?

As mentioned previously you can work with a company with their own system who can also be a manufacturing partner. If you do this and you use their systems in your type design program you bake another company’s process control and quality system into your certified type design.

If you chose to work with several companies, for example you could split the wings, the fuselage and the empennage between three different qualified composite suppliers, you will have three different process control and quality systems built into your certified type design.

How do you manage this at a contractual level? You have to negotiate in advance several aspects:

Their proprietary process control and quality system that your subcontractor uses to certify your product must only be changed with your input and approval to safeguard against a change in their proprietary systems that may invalidate your type certificate.

It is normal to audit your suppliers to check that they meet your quality standards. Can you negotiate the right to carry out quality audits of your suppliers to ensure they are meeting their own standards? Will they provide complete details of their system to you so you are able to audit?

What can you do if they fail to meet their own process and quality standards?

What do you do if you want to terminate the relationship with them? Have you pre negotiated a right to use their process control and quality systems and take it with you to another supplier?

If you enter into this relationship with multiple suppliers (using multiple different process control and quality systems) and you decide to bring everything to an in house manufacturing facility (this is often the case because of cost, quality and/or schedule control), and you have the right to continue to use their process and quality systems, do you end up having to implement and multiple different process control and quality systems each inherited from your original manufacturing partners?

Composite aircraft structures are different to metal structures. The manufacturing processes and the quality systems form an integral part of not onty the process certificate but also the type certificate.

As such learning and developing the manufacturing processes become as much a part of the product development process as, well, the product development.

The only foolproof way to execute your program is to develop your own manufacturing processes and quality standards. When and if you choose a composites manufacturing partner you impose your process and quality system on them. You audit them to ensure that they meet your process and quality standards.

You fully own your manufacturing processes, quality system and therefore your type design.

In all honesty there are enough failed or failing aircraft companies out there that you can most likely purchase or license a complete set of company systems. These would be fit for purpose or almost fit for purpose. This does not relieve you of all the work necessary to develop and implement your own systems but it will get you more than half of the way there.

And finally…….

Start-up companies tend to have the belief that the major costs and problems of setting up manufacturing are those associated with the facility and the plant. To be honest it is relatively simple to cost a
manufacturing layout, procure the building and the equipment and put them where they should go. It costs money but that is an easy to predict and easy to budget process and has a visible, tangible and measurable result.

Developing the systems that means you are qualified to use your shiny new manufacturing facility is a much more difficult and esoteric task. Developing your processes and systems should not cost as much as your manufacturing facility. If you get it wrong the overall cost to the company will make the procurement and setup cost of your manufacturing facility look trivial.

The problems of taking on one(or several) manufacturing partners can be compounded by the fact that you are a startup with little leverage in the relationship. This problem can be further compounded by the size of the manufacturing partner you may be working with. The importance of the success of the relationship to your program is probably going to be many, many times more to the survival of your business than it is to their business the larger they are. Without any ill intent you can find yourself in an unequal relationship over which you have little control.

In my opinion the short term pain of developing your own processes yield many benefits including your independence and the ability to choose to outsource or insource depending on what works best for you.

Advice to Young Engineers

As I get older and I see more young engineers enter the industry, including my own daughter, it is interesting to reflect on what characteristics result in success. How you define success is another discussion.

For those of you who don’t know, I got a very indifferent grade for my Bachelors of Engineering from Manchester Polytechnic in the UK. At the time I graduated I had no interest in becoming an engineer. Both of my parents were engineers and I knew the field to some extent, having grown up with it. It was just not something I had any interest in.

So I spent several years in the lower end of the music industry. As all struggling musicians do, I accepted whatever paid work, or unpaid work was offered to get me ahead. I played with bands but I also worked in management, as a studio engineer, a soundtrack composer and a teacher.

By the time I had tried this for a few years, engineering was starting to look pretty damn attractive. So I gave up my ‘dream’ and leaned on my Dad to help get me a job in engineering.

To get to the point – the time that I spent outside of engineering engaged in setting up business and writing business plans (you still have to do that in the music industry), learning from the mentors who took me under their wing and learning to deal with constant rejection and disappointment was a huge advantage when it came to engineering.

In the freewheeling low end of the music industry of 30 years ago, as it has always been, it was the people who worked the hardest, turned up first, left last, were unfailingly good natured, hardworking and pulling for the team who got ahead.

I was not a great engineer and a good attitude was all I had, so that is what I tried to bring to the table.

The engineering skills and experience came over time.

I see my daughter doing the same thing. She keeps on asking for additional work from other engineering groups to expand her cross disciplinary skills and she asks for more responsibility – without the expectation of immediate compensation. She learned very quickly that manufacturing is the customer of engineering and the customer is always right.

She is much more a natural engineer than I was when I started and she is already pulling ahead of her peers. Not because she achieved better marks in college or she has a remarkable IQ (I don’t think she has ever been tested) but because she brings the right attitude.

I am often asked via social media and email by young engineers for advice, how to get ahead in their career.

The answer, as always, is to accumulate experience as fast as you can. Turn up early and leave last. Be unfailingly good natured, work hard and pull for the team – not for yourself.

As with most of life there is no great trick to doing well. You have to bring the best of yourself every day to whatever situation you discover and work as hard as you can for the project and the team.

You must always tell the truth, no matter how unpopular it might be. Don’t compromise your principles even once, you may find you can never get them back.

Joby and the Fine Art of Certification

The FAA has published the airworthiness criteria for the Model JAS4-1 Powered-lift aircraft. (https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2022-23962.pdf)

If you read the preamble, Joby applied for the type certificate on November 2 2018. It has taken over 4 years to establish the certification criteria. Well, you might think, this will mean that they can drive forward through the certification program now.

Not so fast.

The certification criteria from the FAA are in the form of the new amendment 64 part 23 regulations. That is, they are non prescriptive. Or, alternatively, they lack any definition of specific standards.

In this new paradigm of FAA rule making the certification standards (as opposed to the criteria) are outsourced to an external body. In the case of amendment 64 the job of creating the standards related to the certification criteria has been taken on by ASTM.

To give an idea of the relative volume of definition between the regulations or criteria) and the related standards.

For Amendment 64 part 23 the FAA published regulations amount to 35 pages of text (copied into MS Word at 12 point, times new roman).

The ASTM standards, in one iteration that I have access to, in 2021 consisted of 43 separate documents with a total of 351 pages of double column, smaller text.

Let’s say that the ‘standards’ contain about ten times the information present in the ‘criteria’ or regulations. This is probably underestimating the volume of data in the standards but that is OK.

Once you have the standards established and your special conditions (if required) and ELOS, etc you have the definition of the certification basis.

It is also interesting (if we are to believe the press) that Joby has FAA approval for at least some of their compliance plans. (https://www.futureflight.aero/news-article/2022-03-18/joby-secures-faa-approval-first-systems-and-compliance-review)

Joby has managed to get compliance plans approved before the certification criteria has been established. Have the standards been established? Is the certification basis still in work?

It looks like only a small proportion of the required work to achieve certification has reached approval status. Some aspects look to be prematurely mature and there is no information on other aspects of the program. The maturity of the majority of the required work is unknown.

Joby started in 2009, established the preliminary production configuration in 2015, applied for their type certificate in 2018 and have cert. criteria from the FAA in 2022.

They plan to carry paying customers in 2024.

This is a very unusual certification program. It is always hard to place credibility in press reporting so all we know for sure is that the FAA has issued the airworthiness criteria.

Will they make commercial service in 2024? Where would you put your money?