HighWind, #1239
If you really know what you are doing, a better protection can be achieved by contactors, and electronics. It would be possible to design a system that is fault tolerant, and have selftest to prevent dormant faults.
Circuit breakers can fail, but imho, an electronic solution driving a contactor
is not enough on it's own, since the contactor coil drive transistor itself can
fail short circuit, not to mention the possibility of other hardware or software
failures.
For such a safety critical design, belt and braces, using a normally open
contactor and a mechanical circuit breaker or hrc fuse, would provide
disimilar solution redundancy that covers either circuit failure.
I'm a bit disappointed about the lack of real meat in the proposed solution as
well, in that it's only discussed in general terms. The really sad thing is
that Boeing had to be kicked so very hard to get their act together and do the
job properly. The bean counters will still think they were right though. They
will probably see the whole exercise in terms of damage limitation and will
learn nothing from it at all
...