Is the 787 a failure ?

| ...
| Part of the lithium-ion safety problem, says Elton Cairns,
| a faculty senior scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National
| Laboratory, in California, involves the electrolytes in the
| batteries. "We're using mixtures of organic solvents that
| are quite flammable and quite volatile," he says of today's
| lithium-ion electrolytes. "In my view, that's just asking
| for trouble." And with enough heat, oxygen gets liberated
| from a battery's metal-oxide anode. "There you've got all
| the makings of a fire," he says. And a flame front that
| doesn't need anything outside the battery to sustain itself
| is very hard to extinguish. That's why lithium-ion battery
| fires can get so big (like the one that knocked out a U.S.
| Navy minisub in 2008), he says.
| ...
http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/fuel-cells/can-signal-processing-stop-battery-fires

| ...
| The Advanced SEAL Delivery System (ASDS) submersible
| suffered major damage during a fire Nov. 9 while the craft
| was recharging its lithium-ion batteries at a special base
| in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. No one was severely hurt in the
| accident, but the fire burned for several hours before it
| was extinguished.
|
| Although an investigation still hasn't determined what
| caused the fire, the Navy estimates repairs to the 60-ton
| craft would cost $237 million, or $180 million more than
| the craft's operating budget, and take nearly three years
| to complete.
| ...
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/07/navy_seal_minisub_072709w/

--bks