Earlier quoted context omitted.
They will use a very small team and will mostly let AI design the plane ;)
Can’t wait to fly in the 737-AI.
All the executives first, please.
Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement
191–200 of 494 posts
Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement
#192Earlier quoted context omitted.
The more you change, the more you need to recertify, the more it costs, the more time it takes, the less your shareholders profit.
That mindset is inevitably going to leave you in a ditch though. Either you run out of suppliers for the chip that are willing to produce on a shitty inefficient old node under certified conditions (mostly because it inevitably gets really expensive to keep the machines for production running!), or you run out of developers able and willing to write code for these old designs where the toolchain probably is also cert…
That's my gut feeling too but... I don't build certified airliners with lifespans of multiple decades for a living (or run companies that do).
All I know from having worked in an Airbus subsidiary for a couple of years is that their world is nothing like mine.
Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement
#193Earlier quoted context omitted.
To add to this & the Jobs interview - an oil industry proverb: a healthy oil company has a geologist in charge, a mature one has an engineer in charge, a declining one has an accountant in charge, and a dying one has a lawyer in charge.
Nokia’s CEO between 2006 and 2010 was their former chief lawyer. It’s like they knew they were dying even before Apple delivered the actual blow.
Nokia is the best case study of what not to do. In 2005 Nokia launched the 770 Internet Tablet. It was the groundwork for the modern smartphone. But the management did not allow it to have a GSM modem. So it was not a smartphone. Only after the iPhone Nokia launched the N900 but it was too late. Nokia did not believe in touch screen too.
Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
Indeed. A fully new airframe likely won’t try to avoid training and certification overhead. Ripping that bandaid off will cut a lot of bullshit. But, there’s only so much engine you can shove under a narrow body aircraft. Landing gear is limited by physics and just making it taller won’t fix everything. I just looked and from what I can find on Wikipedia this may warrant a new model from P&W or CFM because I’m not se…
>Landing gear is limited by physics and just making it taller won’t fix everything. Every other plane is higher than the 737. The only reason the engines needed to be pushed forward on the 737, is that the 737 was built back in the day to be lower to the ground for easier operations at poorer airports, with things like stairs and baggage. The 737 doesn't need to be as short as it is anymore because the vast majority…
That isn’t really true. Air stairs are still very common in much of Europe and Asia. It’s only places like the US and the Middle East that jet bridges are ubiquitous.
Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you want passengers to want your plane, design it without sardines in mind; People don't like being sardines. Isn't that something that's more the responsibility of the airlines, who decide how many seats are put in a plane, following the limits of the aircraft? Like if you want more legroom you take a more expensive ticket from a company that doesn't try to cram as many passengers in each plane
Pretty much. You can outfit pretty much any airframe you want to be business class only seating but not enough people will buy when it pops up on Expedia at 2+ times the price of the alternative. I don't love Economy on long flights either but I'm mostly not willing to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket for a more comfortable alternative for 8 hours or so.
There is a business-class only airline (La Compagnie) that flies from Newark to Europe and they're profitable. A little more expensive than 2x the price though, but less than 10x.
Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement
#196China recently started building and delivering airplanes. It will be interesting to see if Boeing can actually compete with what is coming out of China over the next few years: https://www.voanews.com/a/7528331.html In the short-term, I imagine USA-based airlines will not be allowed to buy any airplanes from China: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-comac-military-... And perhaps they would not even be allo…
The C919 isn’t even competitive with where Boeing was 20 or 30 years ago.
Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement
#197Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nokia’s CEO between 2006 and 2010 was their former chief lawyer. It’s like they knew they were dying even before Apple delivered the actual blow.
Nokia is the best case study of what not to do. In 2005 Nokia launched the 770 Internet Tablet. It was the groundwork for the modern smartphone. But the management did not allow it to have a GSM modem. So it was not a smartphone. Only after the iPhone Nokia launched the N900 but it was too late. Nokia did not believe in touch screen too.
The 770 and Maemo environment were pretty amazing back in the day - high resolution screen for the time, but a somewhat laggy interface given the compute available at the time. Hardware was somewhat compromised - the half-height MMC storage expansion was particularly difficult to find. I still have one sitting around somewhere.
It did support touch, with a stylus built in - I forget if the stylus was needed or if you could use your bare fingers.
Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement
#198I hope they design and build the airframe properly this time. A plane that needs [cheaply outsourced] software (that relies on one sensor) to correct bad behavior at the flight envelope is just not acceptable. I still refuse to fly on the 737 MAX. I know it’s probably fine given what pilots now know about the how to control the thing, but I just refuse to support Boeing’s malicious negligence or any carrier that enab…
I read "Airframe" by Michael Crichton probably twenty years ago, and it was around ten years old at that time. I remember that that book talked about how the planes were unstable by design and required software to maintain proper flight characteristics, and that this was so because it was more efficient. The book is fiction, but I doubt it was far off the mark at the time. I suspect that there is no going back from t…
When that book was published, the F-117 Nighthawk was already retired after 10 years in service. The thing doesn't even look like it could fly on account of the rudimentary stealth features.
Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nokia’s CEO between 2006 and 2010 was their former chief lawyer. It’s like they knew they were dying even before Apple delivered the actual blow.
Nokia is the best case study of what not to do. In 2005 Nokia launched the 770 Internet Tablet. It was the groundwork for the modern smartphone. But the management did not allow it to have a GSM modem. So it was not a smartphone. Only after the iPhone Nokia launched the N900 but it was too late. Nokia did not believe in touch screen too.
They also threw away Meego, which was praised for UI and design.. and it was Linux.. not often heard in the same phrase. Build with Qt.
Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you might have the chain of causality mixed up. From what I've seen, the sheer scale of the company creates large committees because you've got lots of managers and they all know that getting involved in the project is essential to their career advancement. And then that creates scope creep. Partially due to design by committee effects, but also because the manager in charge of flobnix realizes their opportun…
>why is the Lunar Gateway such an essential part of the Artemis project's mission architecture when we didn't need anything like that for Apollo? The explicit reason is: Why would we pay another $200 billion to just do Apollo again? People were bored of Apollo before it even finished its original set of missions.
In the 1980s I read articles in the “science fact” columns in Analog Science Fiction Magazine that told me that NASA sold out a much more ambitious lunar program for something that was little more than a stunt.
The reality was that Von Braun looked at dozens of mission architectures before discovering one that was much more feasible than any of the others and made it possible to realize Kennedy’s dream.
The moon is not far away in terms of miles but in terms of energy and momentum it is very far away if your goal is to fly there and fly back. Right now the best idea we have for a moon lander is to hope that SpaceX gets Starship to orbit and masters orbital refueling it’s not like they can fly 100 tons there and back, but rather they can land about what Apollo did with a much bigger spacecraft that’s really tall and tippy, needs an elevator, can get the ascent rockets smashed on rocks, etc. if they had a set of those chopsticks on the Moon or Mars they could land it easily but on generic inner solar system bodies covered with boulders, craters and stuff good luck. Plan B is basically the same from Blue Origin.
If you could refuel there the math changes, maybe you can, there might be usable ice at the poles but nobody has seen it, unless we have a Drexler machine we’re going to have to launch a huge number of missions with a marginally effective system until we have a system in place that can reliably deliver fuel.
So it’s tough, any honest analysis of space colonization makes you come to the conclusion that Drexler did, rocketry has very little to do with it, being able to pack a self-sufficient industrial civilization into the smallest package has everything to do with it.