Thursday, August 25, 2005
Section 41 Roll-out
After work today we stopped by another department of Spirit Aerosystems and saw the new nose section of the 787. It was a big carbon-fibre funnel, and was really cool (thin too!). The pdf above has a good shot of it (without the show-biz setup).
We evidentially were either before or after the big show that the hanger was obviously setup for. It was pretty deserted when we visited. I think they must have had some customers there or something--the amount of $ that went into making this plastic tube exciting. And exciting it was!
For the looping promo video, they had 2 arrays of 4 speakers that looked like they were VRX900's. There were 2 sets of 3 screens, each 3x5 and arranged in a -|--|- pattern. (They didn't account for the spacing when they made the spanning videos) The screens were either back-projected, or plasma (I didn't check)
For the main area they evidentially had had quite a show, there were two arrays of 6 VT48xx speakers (don't know the exact model #) and over 70 lights, at least a dozen of which were motor-controlled.
Remember the fiasco with the fridge, ice and smoke machine at 2am? Well, these guys did it right with two fog machines under the nose section with refridgeration units built in. I guess they poured smoke out on the mirrors underneath during the big unveiling.
Even though I knew it was all a show and for effect, I came away much more excited about this new plane they are developing. Even though it is much more advanced than the technology that I work on (circa. 1960), it seems that making a plane out of carbon fibre really simplifies manufacturing--and maybe design--and is more conducive to automation. It was about time that someone did things differently than it has always been done.
We evidentially were either before or after the big show that the hanger was obviously setup for. It was pretty deserted when we visited. I think they must have had some customers there or something--the amount of $ that went into making this plastic tube exciting. And exciting it was!
For the looping promo video, they had 2 arrays of 4 speakers that looked like they were VRX900's. There were 2 sets of 3 screens, each 3x5 and arranged in a -|--|- pattern. (They didn't account for the spacing when they made the spanning videos) The screens were either back-projected, or plasma (I didn't check)
For the main area they evidentially had had quite a show, there were two arrays of 6 VT48xx speakers (don't know the exact model #) and over 70 lights, at least a dozen of which were motor-controlled.
Remember the fiasco with the fridge, ice and smoke machine at 2am? Well, these guys did it right with two fog machines under the nose section with refridgeration units built in. I guess they poured smoke out on the mirrors underneath during the big unveiling.
Even though I knew it was all a show and for effect, I came away much more excited about this new plane they are developing. Even though it is much more advanced than the technology that I work on (circa. 1960), it seems that making a plane out of carbon fibre really simplifies manufacturing--and maybe design--and is more conducive to automation. It was about time that someone did things differently than it has always been done.
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how could I forget the 2am happiness. The presentation sounds really cool, wish I could have seen it. I never expected the day when you would reference speakers on your blog. :)
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