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Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

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Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#21
It'll be interesting to see if they still can design and build a new ground-up airplane design. The last all-new design was the 787, initiated in 2003 and launched in 2009, and its design was fraught with problems. Before then was the 777 in the early 90s (pre-McDonnell takeover), and the 757/767 in the early 80s.

There's a phenomena that ofter occurs with large organizations where once their markets mature, everybody who can build a product end-to-end leaves or gets forced out, leaving only people with highly specialized maintenance skillsets. The former group has no work to do, after all, so why should the company keep them around? But then if the market ecosystem shifts, and a new product is necessary, they no longer have the capacity to build ground-up new products. All those people have left, and won't come anywhere near the company.

Steve Jobs spoke eloquently about this phenomena in an old interview:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1WrHH-WtaA

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#23
post #52

[stub for offtopicness]

Looking forward to what AI-generated flight control software can do!

Hey hey hey, the $9/hr software engineer will be doing all the work, unless they can find a $1/hr guy. The first guy should just become a vendor and subcontract down to the $1/hr guy, that's what the rest of Boeing's supply chain is doing already.

https://www.industryweek.com/supply-chain/article/22027840/b...

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#24
post #52

[stub for offtopicness]

Looking forward to what AI-generated flight control software can do!

During the MCAS scandal I saw a report that the software developers who wrote it were offshored and being paid something like $13/hr.

While there weren't actually coding flaws in MCAS in that it did what the spec said, I've met people who work in avionics and they would have pushed back against the specification because they tend to think about how their component integrates into the system.

Obviously it's impossible to prove that, had the software been developed by people specializing in avionics they would have caught the problem but it's just another hole in the swiss cheese model: when you outsource your avionics software development to an offshore contractor who was making a webstore yesterday and will be making an iphone app tomorrow, you eliminate the possibility that the implementers could do an informed critique of the spec.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#25
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking forward to what AI-generated flight control software can do!

I mean it couldnt be worse than what they released last time could it? EDIT> what is scarier? the quality of the software they released or that someone on HN is defending it?

I mean, they botched one piece of software in order to retrofit an old plane with catastrophic results. God knows what the Wall Street zombie version of Boeing will do with a whole new plane, especially in the age of AI enshittification.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#27
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking forward to what AI-generated flight control software can do!

I mean it couldnt be worse than what they released last time could it? EDIT> what is scarier? the quality of the software they released or that someone on HN is defending it?

No situation is so bad that it cannot possibly be made worse

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#28

> new single-aisle airplane Does that mean it's not trying to be "another 737" but actually a truely new type?

They already did that, it’s called the 757 and nobody bought it. Maybe we’ll get a 757 MAX with MCAS to make it type compatible with the 737.

AFAIK the 757 frame is too heavy to be powered by the LEAP engines. Those planes were powered by a class of engine between the old 737 and 777 engines, and nobody makes them anymore because they're not in demand, so a 757 MAX is just not financially viable.
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