Author: Todd Porter

From the discussion that ensued regarding my “diesel vs hybrid” post, it seems like I didn’t clearly make my point. That’s not terribly surprising, since I didn’t state it and really didn’t know what it was when I was writing. In any case, I did not mean that there were no solutions to the many and sundry problems facing us as pilgrims in the 21st century. What I did mean is that the problems are complicated and the solutions will likely be just as complicated. Simple solutions often only address a single symptom of a complex problem and in doing so, create or aggrivate additional problems in the process.

That the problems we face are both complex and interactive is not a cause for despair. Let me explain by analogy. Krista joined me for a business trip I made to Pennsylvania last week and we traveled on Southwest Airlines. I love Southwest, but because of the restrictions on long-haul fights from Dallas Love Field (take any discussion of that topic to its own thread please), it is impossible to get to most places on the east coast without making a lot of stops along the way. In our case, we flew from Dallas to Philadelphia, with stops in Tulsa, Kansas City, and Chicago along the way. On the return, we skipped the Tulsa stop and traveled directly from Kansas City to Dallas.

All of this taking off and landing started me thinking about the 737, so consistent with the level of geekness to which I aspire, I started surfing the web for information. On the way to the bit of information I wanted, I discovered that Boeing started the design studies for this aircraft in 1958. The first one took flight on April 9, 1967. After the requesite testing, Lufthansa launched the first commercial flight on February 10, 1968. So it was ten years from the realization of a need to the manifestation of a solution to meet that need. Ten years … that’s almost two US senate terms, more than two presidential terms, and five terms in the US house. Complex problems require complex solutions, and those take time to develop.

The thing I was really trying to find out about this particular airplane, however, was how many parts it has. The current estimate appears to be about 367,000. Each of these parts was designed by a designer to perform a specific purpose. Not all, but many of these parts are critical to the successful performance of the aircraft. I bet my life on them eight times in the last week without even thinking twice about it.

Though the final assembly of the various subsystems resulting from all these parts takes place in a Boeing plant, many of the subsystems are not actually manufactured by Boeing. Here’s a partial list of subsystem manufacturers:

• Fuselage, engine nacelles and pylons – Spirit AeroSystems (formerly Boeing), Wichita.
• Slats and flaps – Spirit AeroSystems (formerly Boeing), Tulsa.
• Doors – Vought, Stuart, FL.
• Spoilers – Goodrich, Charlotte, NC.
• Vertical fin – Xi’an Aircraft Industry, China.
• Horizontal stabiliser – Korea Aerospace Industries.
• Ailerons – Asian Composites Manufacturing, Malaysia.
• Rudder – Bombardier, Belfast.
• Tail section (aluminium extrusions for) – Alcoa / Shanghai Aircraft Manufacturing, China.
• Main landing gear doors – Aerospace Industrial Development Corp, Taiwan.
• Inboard Flap – Mitsubishi, Japan.
• Elevator – Fuji, Japan.
• Wing Ribs – Kawasaki, Japan.
• Fwd entry door & Overwing exits – Chengdu Aircraft, China.
• Wing-to-body fairing panels and tail cone – BHA Aero Composite Parts Co. Ltd, China.

So, to fling me and a hundred or so new friends five miles into the air and bring us back down again safely, these 367,000 parts get assembled into subsystems anywere from Wichita, KS to Japan, which then make their way to Renton, WA to get hooked up together and turned into an airplane. The success of this endeavor depends on design and production engineers from multiple companies in multiple countires. Like me, people bet their lives, hundreds at a time, on the work of all these people. The amazing thing about it is that most of the time, it’s such a safe bet that we don’t even think about it. So ubiquitous is this risk that at any given moment, there are about 1,250 737s careening through the atmosphere of this planet. Every five seconds, there’s one somewhere in the world taking flight.

What in the world does this have to do with my initial comments about making cars go? Well, I’ve been talking about one product from one manufacturer. This is just one isolated example of humanity tackling a complex problem, developing a complex solution, and refining it to the point where hundreds of people at a time are willing to risk their lives on it every day. I think it’s a beautiful example of successfully applied human ingenuity to create a complex solution (did I mention the 367,000 parts of this machine?) to a complex problem. There are countless other examples from transportation to medicine. My point in giving this one is that humans are not incapable of solving complex problems. Why should we regard the problems of global hunger or energy crises any differently?

To summarize, I found a few very interesting things about making a Boeing 737 that may apply to a variety of problems we face:

• it took 10 years from the initial studies to the first commercial flight – complex solutions to complex problems take time to develop.
• the 737 incorporates subsystems manufactured by multiple companies on multiple continents – the solutions to the social and environmental problems we’re talking about will require more creativity and ingenuity than one person can muster, probably more than is available in a single company or even a single country. The path to a solution will require sustained cooperation in pursuit of a shared goal.
• 367,00 parts – somewhere in the world, someone is making rivets or screws or some other fasteners that will eventually hold a new 737 together. At the end of their workday, they have a box of rivets or screws or some other fasteners that looks nothing like an airplane. However, because that person was awake, alert, and doing their job, I survived for hours at a time in a very unnatural and inhospitable environment (moving several hundred miles an hour five miles above the ground). Details matter.

If you’ve read this far, my hat’s off to you. That’s about all I have to add for the moment. If you’re curious to know more about the 737, all of the technical details about the Boeing 737 came from a very (almost disturbingly) informative Boeing 737 Technical Site by Chris Brady.

A while back, a friend said:

Speaking of fossil fuels, why haven’t all automobiles gone diesel yet? Seriously, it’s better than regular gasoline and hybrid cars.

It reminded me of a conversation Krista and I had in connection with some car trouble we were having a few weeks back.

It turned out to be some fairly expensive car trouble by the time it was all done, which always starts me thinking about buying a new car. I was curious about the diesel issue, so I started looking around on the web for information. One very interesteing and informative site was the EPA’s Green Vehicle Guide.

A Google search on “diesel emmissions” led to an article on the American Lung Assicioation web site titled Diesel Exhaust and Air Pollution. This article stated that

For the same load and engine conditions, diesel engines spew out 100 times more sooty particles than gasoline engines. As a result, diesel engines account for an estimated 26 percent of the total hazardous particulate pollution (PM10) from fuel combustion sources in our air, and 66 percent of the particulate pollution from on-road sources. Diesel engines also produce nearly 20 percent of the total nitrogen oxides (NOx) in outdoor air and 26 percent of the total NOx from on-road sources. Nitrogen oxides are a major contributor to ozone production and smog.

So while a wholesale switch to diesel engines might help alleviate the issues arising from dependence on oil (foreign or otherwise), it has the potential for a dramatic negative impact on the quality of air avaialbe for us to breathe. (Those of you looking for something to do should consider applying for a grant from the Texas Environmental Research Consortium to look for a solution to this problem. Check that out here. Better hurry, though. The application window closes October 6, 2006.)

Like most problems in our world, this one is both complex and interactive. Solving the “dependence on foreign oil” problem by employing bio-diesel-fueled engines, may increase air pollution. To solve the air-pollution problem, we could employ “zero-emission” electric cars. Unfortunately, the batteries for those cars contain hazardous materials that must eventually be disposed of, and the electricity with whcih their charged must still be generated somewhere, which in most cases is done by burning fossil fules of some sort. These are “zero-emission” at the end-use, but in reality just relocate the discharge of the emissions. Even if we generate that energy with a nuclear reactor, we solve the combustion emissions problem, but then have to deal with the resulting waste that will be dangerous to human life for generations after we’re all dead.
What to do… the option with the highest potential for positive impact with the least number if undesirable consequences is simply to reduce our demand for fuel. High-efficiency technologies can do this but, as I’ve just described, can have multiple, unintended negative consequences.

So back to my car problem … The fuel economy of our 1995 Saturn SL1 is currently around 30 mpg (I’m hoping some of the work we had done will get us back around the 35 mpg we got when it was new). One of the questions I had in pondering the repair expense vs new car issue was whether buying a highly efficient new car would be to my financial advantage. So here are the numbers:

• My commute to work is 39 miles one-way, which makes 78 miles round-trip.
• I usually work from home one day a week, so I make this trip 4 days a week.
• Between vacation and business travel where I’m out of town and not making this trip, I estimate that I’m driving over there 43 weeks a year.
• So the grand total, just getting to and from work for me, is 13,416 miles.
• At $2.80/gallon and 30 mpg, that amounts to $1,252.15 a year in fuel cost.
• If I increased my fuel economy to 55 mpg (a just-barely possible feat with the cars currently on the market), it would drop my annual fuel cost to $683, resulting in an annual savings of $569.16.

Then I began to wonder how high gas prices would have to climb to make buying a new car a financially attractive proposition. So, assuming that I woud need an arbitrary $300 a month to make the payment on this technological transportation marvel, gas would have to cost $17.71 a gallon to pay for the new car with fuel savings.

So even while it makes environmental sense to squeeze the maximum performance from every gallon of fossil fuel, it doesn’t make financial sense to trade my 30 mpg car for a 55 mpg car. As you can tell, I’m a curious fellow and consequently became curious about the savings I could achieve by directing my attention to the other variable in this equation: the number of miles I drive.

By reducing my daily commute to 10 miles round trip, it drops my annual milage from 447.2 miles/year to 71.67 miles/year (I’m assuming that if I live that close, I’ll work in the office 5 days a week instead of 4). Without buying a new car, I can save $1,051.49 a year! That’s almost double the savings produced by upgrading the technology! Now that doesn’t necessarily mean I should move or change jobs, since, like our gas->diesel->electric->nuclear problem above, there are multiple other independent variables involved (not the least of which is that houses within 5 miles of my office typically cost 3 or 4 times the cost of our house here). I share all this to make the point that my initial focus on a technological solution (increased fuel economy) prevented me from even considering a behavorial solution (driving less) when, in fact, the behavioral change can have a much more significant impact.