this post was submitted on 13 Jan 2024
383 points (97.8% liked)
Technology
59589 readers
3332 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It's really not, flying without looking out the window is very common especially for NASA and the USAF.
Absolutely, in fact it's not just nasa or military, almost everyone does that. You need to prove that you can fly without looking out the window to get your "instrument rating" and be legally allowed to fly at night. Every instrument flight rated pilot can do it (a majority of pilots). However, airports are lit up with lights, so even at night or in fog, you can see the runway as you're landing. If you have no windows, you can't do that, you'll need someone to guide you down.
That's not my concern, the issue is a lack of redundancy. If the computers crash or if the vehicle loses power your suddenly have no windows. From a design perspective, it's a risky choice. Not insurmountable, but it's a potential problem point. It's a choice that adds an additional critical single point of failure.
lack of redundancy is a concern, but the same was said for fly by wire cutting the physical link between stick and controls. fly by wire is ubiquitous now, can be made very very safe, and is a net gain for aviation in general.
not having a window is obviously a bigger challenge, but its still a solvable problem.
Yeah, I totally agree. I don't think this is an insurmountable challenge or anything, just a bold decision.
Yeah but looking out the window as your plane crashes isn't going to change the fiery death that a system shutdown on a modern airliner will inevitably bring.
I get what you're saying but a window is a structural trade off too, they've obviously done the testing and determined it's a sensible design choice
Simply not true.
There are redundant systems for everything on aircraft. You can certainly control the plane without the computers working, and without any instruments working. You can generally control the plane even without power because of redundant hydraulic systems.
Thinking computers are necessary to do anything is wrong when it comes to aircraft.
And obviously the choice to eliminate the windows is entirely a structural design, that's where you see the benefits, which I'm sure are quite real.