shareoldvideos
1 HN recommender · recommended in 3 months, 2014–2021
56:14 · 745K views · Aug 3, 2013
The first episode of the 1996 PBS documentary series on the creation of the Boeing 777. It follows the design, build and certification process, including meetings with subcontractors.
Cited in threads on Boeing and engineering management as a long, interesting look at how a modern airliner was built.
3 comments from Hacker News
PBS did an interesting, long documentary filming the build and certification process for the 777. It's broken into 5 different, hour long parts that can be found on Youtube ( this video - First part). The last part goes into detail about what they did to meet FAA regulations in a short amount of time.
The PBS documentary is linked in the above article: this video with this quote: "There is a scene in the first episode of a five-part 1996 PBS series on the making of the 777, Boeing’s first plane to employ “fly-by-wire” technology, in which an engineer discusses the company’s philosophy of computer-assisted aviation: One of the things that we do in the basic design is the pilot always has the ultimate authority of control. There’s no computer on the airplane that he cannot override, or turn off if the ultimate comes, but, in terms of any of our features, even those that are built to prevent the airplane from stalling, which is the lowest speed you can fly and beyond which you would lose the control. We don’t inhibit that totally; we make it difficult, but if something in the box should inappropriately think that it’s stalling when it isn’t, the pilot can say, this is wrong and he can override it. That’s a fundamental difference in philosophy that we have versus some of the competition.
As comparison, the series "21st Century - Jet Building the Boeing 777 " is online. this video They have pretty intense meetings with the subcontractors.