Mmmmm....plastic airplane

Okay, so this really cool guy that Boeing and Spirit trust got to take some cool pictures of the Boeing 787, one of the first commercial airplanes to use huge quantities of composite material. So this outsider got to take pictures, but I’m not allowed. That’s why I took the pictures from his website and am sharing them with you so I can show you what I’ve been doing this summer. I’m not taking credit, it belongs to Jon Ostrower. You can visit his site at http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/flightblogger/ and read some of his other posts.

Spirit doesn’t make the whole plane, only about the first 41 feet of it. It’s essentially a giant plastic shell with stuff on the inside. Don’t let that scare you though, a lot of time has been put into the design of this thing. I’ve been working on the structural repair manual (read: how the flight mechanics fix broken airplane parts) where I basically check calculations and rerun any analysis that needs to be corrected. I’ve worked on parts like the cockpit window frames, composite skin repairs and the forward pressure bulkhead. This first picture shows line units 4 through 7, of which LU 4 is the closest to completion and is being sent out soon. LU 4 is the one closest to the camera. I worked on a package that included determining repair tolerances for the window frames of the cockpit. It was my first project. Not bad for a new hire.

Next is a piece of the aircraft that is close to me. It’s the forward pressure bulkhead, the green dome behind the radar antennae. It is part of what holds pressure in the cabin. Usually, this part is just a flat plate, but it’s domed in the 787. It can catch a 4 lb bird traveling at 350 knots. The video of the bird strike test is pretty cool. The bulkhead catches the bird just like a catcher would catch a baseball. I put in a lot of hours making sure the repair tolerances for this part were good.

The next picture is of the passenger deck. You can’t really see it, but the passenger entry doors are wide enough to fit two people side by side in them. If you’ve ever been on a plane, you know how impressive that is since most planes have you squeeze through a small door. You can see into the cockpit a little bit, but if you want to see more cockpit pictures, go here: http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/flightblogger/2008/06/fours-front-office.html . Spirit doesn’t put the seats or other aesthetics in, Boeing will do that.

This picture is of the cargo area. You can see another part that I worked on, the cargo shear web. It’s mostly covered, but the drill on the bottom right is sitting on it. It’s a piece of composite that sits below the cargo floor. That’s the project I put 45 hours in on last week. I had to determine what kind of bonded repairs (read: how to fix composite material by applying more composite material) needed to be done for various types of damage.

This last one is just because. It’s of the flight recorder, the thing that tells them what happened when the airplane crashed. Hopefully we won’t be using these. You can also see how much random wiring is all over the place. A lot gets stuffed into these airplanes.

Well, that just a little bit of what I’ve been working on here at Spirit. I’ve been having fun doing it, despite the long hours. I could go into more detail, but then I wouldn’t have any conversation starter. Also, I probably shouldn’t talk in too much detail, or else Boeing might send people to get rid of me.