Originally Posted by
gums
Salute!
Brought this up on nother thread/post. But why can't Boeing modify the engine nacelles to "help" with the pitch coefficients/moments?
You know, right now the things act like canards, but maybe some tabs could be used that only exerted down moments when above a certain AoA? I have seen tabs on other engine configuration and always assumed they helped keep airflow smooth over/under the wing. But if these MAX suckers are that far forward and higher that they have pronounced aerodynamic effects, then why use them?
Gums wonders....
My guess is that any permanent aerodynamic modification to the nacelles will have -ve effect on drag and hence fuel economy in normal flight regime - thus negating the entire reason we've got too-big-for-a-737 engines on it in the first place (and in the wrong place). Any variable/controllable tabs/slots/whatever would be a big change that they were almost certainly too late in the development process to add.
But in the end it's most likely: why bother with hardware when the fix is "just a few lines of code" (or even less - sounds like the "fix" was just changing the config to make original, probably relatively safe, system far more aggressive).
I've forgotten how many times I've heard "just a few lines of code", the phrase always makes the heart sink and the worry levels rise, and it is never uttered by people who actually realise the risk involved. Note that I say that having spent most of my software career outside of safety-critical and/or aviation work.
Software is easy to change, that is (one of) its strength. It's Achilles heel is that is is
too damn easy to change and change requires far less thought than it should. Just because you can does not mean you should - but management will always ask if you
can, and then tell you that therefore you
should.
Offtopic prediction: Tesla is going to get bit in the arse by this some day with their OTA updates. Right now thousands of Tesla drivers wake up in the morning and their car drives differently and better than it did yesterday - and everyone thinks that is awesome. One day hundreds of thousands of Tesla drivers are going to wake up in the morning and find their car drives worse than it did yesterday, I really hope they find out on the driveway and not when they hit the highway...