The same thing happened in the 90s with nuclear power.

And spec is important. Swissair 111 crashed because the wires in an entertainment system installed after manufacture was not in spec. The insulation rubbed away from years of vibration, it caused a short that set the insulation on fire in midair over the Atlantic, and that flight crew never had a chance.

Funny thing is, aviation is such a well-established industry, I would have thought they would also have that safety emphasis baked into everything they do. Per the John Oliver piece on Boeing recently, too much focus on shareholder value is one reason things went wrong over there. Are industries like nuclear power…

I had to go to the R&D cell culture lab last weekend to scrounge for some L-Glutamine. They had, I kid you not, dozens of unlabeled, partially empty, bottles of... I don’t even know what. They all started life as normal things, like PBS, buffers, and whatnot, but now they’re nearly-identical bottles of garbage.

The place that nuclear is way ahead is in paperwork, not in technology. The equipment is robust, but looks highly antiquated.

If it isn’t in the assembly specs it is an issue, you don’t know if the soap will react with a coating or leave a film that won’t allow a coating to adhere. You don’t want to have some weird corrosion or embrittlement in the future that is hard to solve because somebody used Dawn soap, or if Dawn is fine now what if…

Oh yeah. Manufacturing comes over to engineering labs and has an absolute cow sometimes when they see what goes on. :-D

Yes, commonly “snoop” is just a mix of dish soap and water and is used to check for leaks and as a mild lubricant for some rubber components to fit together. Used everywhere in the automotive industry. However, if it isn’t called out to be used in the work instructions, then it is non-conforming and that IS a big deal…

Repurposing things to accomplish wacky things the manufacturer wasn’t anticipating is a time-honored tradition in research and development labs. I myself have Rube Goldberg’d many an experiment in a research lab.

As long as it’s on the drawing/spec/mod list/process/etc., totally fine. If not, that’s a problem.

You work in nuclear power? Curiosity, attention, etc.

I fly Southwest. Their Boeings are safe because they are so old. That seems wrong.

Ahhh, right next to DC which makes sense being a defense contractor. I guess they got the stuff that supposed to blow up confused with the stuff that carries passengers.

It’s actually is better for the plant

Make sense considering if anything goes wrong, we’re fucked.

Dawn.

I mean...don’t stand under a flock right after take off

I realize that Boing planes fly millions of trouble-free miles per day. But I was recently buying tickets from NYC to LAX and made it a point to make sure the plane I was flying on was an Airbus. The more I hear and read about Boeing’s production the less likely I am to fly on one. 

Yes, but when was the last time you heard of a duck’s door blowing off mid flight?

Dawn dish soap? C’mon!