[SystemSafety] Move fast and break things

[Tom Ferrell]

I would suggest to this group that this set of draft VTOL requirements (regulations) is a good thing.  Following a recent pattern, EASA has gotten out in front of the FAA by putting this draft out for public comment.  The FAA has been working with individual companies to identify 'special conditions' on a case by case basis.  The EASA draft establishes a more uniform approach and follows, quite closely, the recent part 23 rewrite now in effect on both sides of the Atlantic.

As I have commented on this list before, these vehicles are coming, and they are coming fast.  Boeing and Airbus are already investing heavily in this area, and there are numerous startups with flying prototypes.  One thing I find very interesting is the first mention of safety impacts to those on the ground, not just occupants.  This is limited to the emergency landing scenario [ref. VTOL.2430(a)(6)] but it's there.

Something else I would note - this was originally posted to this list making note of the fact the draft rules note these vehicles may not be able to auto-rotate.  Yes, that in itself could be viewed as a significant negative.  However, the vast majority of the concepts under active development have multiple battery locations for power diversity on the vehicle and are interconnected in such a way that loss of one, two, or even in one design I've seen,  three rotors would not bring the vehicle crashing down immediately.  The idea of resilience engineering is being exploited in many of these designs.

In general, I see a lot of what is in this proposal as useful and positive.  As was already noted, public comments are being taken until November 15th.

From: systemsafety [mailto:systemsafety-bounces at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de] On Behalf Of Robert P. Schaefer
Sent: Wednesday, October 17, 2018 2:10 PM
To: Olwen Morgan
Cc: systemsafety at lists.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de
Subject: Re: [SystemSafety] Move fast and break things


John Downer has some useful things to say on this topic:

Watching the Watchmaker: On Regulating the Social in Lieu of the Technical, Center for analysis of risk and regulation, Discussion paper 54, June 2009

When Failure is an Option: Redundancy, reliability and regulation in complex technical systems, , Center for analysis of risk and regulation, Discussion paper 53, May 2009

On Oct 17, 2018, at 1:54 PM, Olwen Morgan <olwen at phaedsys.com<mailto:olwen at phaedsys.com>> wrote:


No disrespect, Martyn, but this seems to me like an "elephant-in-the-room" situation. It takes very little thought (aka gedanken-experimentation) to see that such vehicles will be fraught with dangers. You have only to ask what dangers are reasonably foreseeable to get a laundry-list of them. As the old saw goes, "You won't catch me up in one of those things."
Obviously regulators have to address such matters in their charming, institutionalised, bureaucratic way and they do need a formalised investigative/consultative process to do their jobs. But this always raises the question of whether their procedural pirouettes are more part of the problem than part of the solution. In this case, I suspect it is the former. What are they trying to do here? Ensure aviation safety or promote the development of aviation businesses (incidentally the same conflict of purpose that has often afflicted the US FAA)? Outset mindset is the mother of tombstone mentality
I suppose we'll all have to hope that sanity checks kick in early in the process - but bureaucracies don't exactly have an exemplary track record in that respect.
And of course, the much broader issue is why we are devoting so much effort (and carbon) to moving people around when modern economies could achieve comparable results simply by moving information instead. Only the fittest genes survive. The same goes for memes  and both can die out by extinction of species.
Olwen

On 17/10/2018 16:39, Martyn Thomas wrote:

At least the regulator is trying to state and to consult on the

certification requirements and allowable failure probabilities. Contrast

that with the absence of any such requirements at the moment, in the

case of cars that have an autonomous capability.



When will we see an equivalent consultation for "driverless" cars?



Martyn





On 17/10/2018 16:32, Olwen Morgan wrote:

Wasn't it Henry Ford who once said that people can't even drive

properly in two dimensions?



ROTFLMFAO! - not at you, Derek, but at the arrant stupidity of

regulators.





On 17/10/2018 16:17, Derek M Jones wrote:

All,



Readers might wan to fit down while reading:

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/10/16/easa_vtol_air_taxi_regulation/



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