Quote:
Originally Posted by mykalberta
No other commercial aicraft is built using carbon fibre composite molds and as such they will never know for sure how it handles. If you really think that any pilot could use the current 787 "simulator" and fly the plane - well then I guess we will have to agree to disagree.
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This is a ridiculous assertion - they knew to a very high degree how it was going to perform before it flew. They knew the physical and aerodynamic properties of the airframe, they knew the weight and balance, thrust, they know where the control surfaces are and how much deflection they have, etc, etc. Flight is basically all about fluid dynamics - its well understood, highly modeled, and we have a century of data to draw upon.
In fact, if they took off yesterday and determined that the plane had significant deviations from expected performance and handling, the entire project would have been deemed a failure. You don't sink billions of dollars in R&D, tooling, and manufacture only to discover that the one flying prototype has nowhere near the performance envelope you projected when you started. Particularly when your engineers have a history of developing numerous other airliners.
If you want to talk about real world reliability, fatigue life, damage resistance, etc, then yes, there is significantly more of an unknown element there - accelerated wear testing will never be as accurate as real world operation. But they knew how the thing would fly.