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Bill Whittle Network

Boeing... Boeing... Gone!

Bill Whittle Network

Bill Whittle Network

News

4.9720 Ratings

🗓️ 13 June 2023

⏱️ 18 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

American aerospace giant Boeing introduced their successor to the Apollo capsule -- the Starliner -- back in 2010. The first manned test flight of the Starliner was scheduled for 2017. But in early June, 2023 --thirteen years after its introduction -- the first manned test flight has no been delayed..."indefinitely," according to company officials. Was it a fault with some untested, bleeding-edge, all-digital flight control system? Actually, no: the ELECTRICAL TAPE they used turned out to be flammable, and replacing it will likely mean disassembly of the entire capsule. Another high tech issue: the PARACHUTES don't seem to be working. What happened to this one-time giant? Join our elite squad of anti-elitists by becoming a Citizen Producer today: https://billwhittle.com/register/

Transcript

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0:00.0

Well, it's been about 15 years since I got my first smartphone.

0:03.0

I remember one of the first things I did was zoom in, use the satellite map, zoom all the way in,

0:09.0

and then watch as I was walking down the sidewalk, and I said, my God, this is the 21st century.

0:15.0

This thing knows where I am to within a foot or two. This is absolutely amazing.

0:19.0

And most of the advances that we've seen in our lifetime have been electronic advances.

0:22.6

But sometimes the world of mechanics gets back in the picture and that's what I wanted to talk about today.

0:27.6

Hi everybody, I'm Bill Wittle here with Steve Green and Scott Ott.

0:30.6

And I want to show you a little video of a brand new manufacturing technique called EDM,

0:35.6

that stands for electrical discharge machinery, machining rather.

0:39.1

Look at these pieces fit together.

0:40.9

There is no detectable seam.

0:42.8

I looked at this and I said, man, this is 21st century technology.

0:47.7

This is unbelievable.

0:49.4

This kind of manufacturing is going to change the world.

0:52.8

Now, today's right angle has nothing to do with

0:54.5

EDM. Today's right angle has to do with manufacturing. We received news just a few days ago

1:00.9

that the one of the most technically savvy companies in the world, Boeing, which is just a giant

1:08.1

when it comes to aerospace and so on, has delayed the launch of their space capsule, the Dreamliner, indefinitely.

1:15.6

The Starliner, I think.

1:17.6

Sorry, sorry, yeah, sorry, Dreamliner is there a 787, thank you, the Starliner has been delayed indefinitely.

1:23.6

And I thought, wow, is it because they're having a problem with their EDM tooling,

1:27.7

or they're not getting those parts to fit to that level of precision? It turns out no. The reason that

...

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