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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

#291

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

shakow wrote: post #287
mschuster91 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Elon. Snark aside: the goal is Mars because it might be possible to colonize the planet and to have a place that acts as a reserve for humanity should shit really hit the fan (i.e. WW3). The moon isn't suitable as much for that purpose due to a complete lack of any atmosphere and because it's too close to Earth.

Even if WW3 were to happen, I'm not sure it could let Earth be in a worse state than Mars for supporting human life.

It won't be. Even an extinction level asteroid or comet impact will be easier to handle on a planet with breathable atmosphere, water, and other resources. Colonizing Antarctica is a few orders of magnitude easier than Mars and we've barely progressed with that. Still, Mars would require much more self-sufficiency than we've ever attempted. It's worth the effort to expand human exploration.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#292

Post by yk »

davidkwast wrote: post #212
zdw wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

True. But Nokia could do many improvements before Apple launched iPhone. But Nokia decided to stay only with Symbian without touch. And we had to wait 4 years to Android show what a Linux with Java smartphone would be. And we saw Nokia going down with Microsoft. It was interesting times back then.

Maemo was an actual GNU/Linux, not just kernel with custom userland. Logging into a cluster from my N900 and having plots just appear on screen thanks to X network transparency is still one of the most futuristic things I have ever seen a computer do.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#293

Post by JumpCrisscross »

tacticus wrote: post #264
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> its design was fraught with problems The 787’s problems were mostly in its supply chain and product-market fit. The actual plane experienced fairly normal growing pains for a clean-sheet design, and has been an exceptional machine since then.

> The 787’s problems were mostly in its supply chain Which was a decision of boeing to outsource to their suppliers the design and development of those components. this combined with boeing doing some interesting pricing decisions lead to suppliers being rather screwed on the project. > The actual plane experienced fairly normal growing pains for a clean-sheet design Other than the design by vibes that boeing leading…

> Other than the design by vibes that boeing leading to spec issues

What are you referring to?

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#294

Post by PaulHoule »

WalterBright wrote: post #217
Denvercoder9 wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no incentive. Passengers rarely know what type they'll be flying on when they book, and prioritize it over price even less. For airlines, a bigger airplane is a distinct disadvantage though, as it's operationally more expensive (increased cross section equals increased drag equals increased fuel burn).

A fully loaded 747 is extremely profitable, the large size has economies of scale. That's why the 747 was very very popular with the airlines. So, yes, a 747 burns more fuel. But the fuel burn per paying passenger is less .

It was an old airplane too and not as optimized as newer airplanes in terms of engines, aerodynamic design, weight and so forth.

The A380 was a step up in size and had additional problems such as there not being that many airports which had upgraded their gates and other facilities to support an airplane that big.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#295

Post by throw7 »

nostrademons wrote: post #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, everybod…

Well, if I was CEO of Boeing, first day I'd basically be Microsoft and move heaven and earth getting the Dave Cutler of aviation (I have no idea who that is). He's in charge and if you don't like it you come to me.

Second problem are the MBA's. I don't have a solution for that, other than keep them far away from Cutler's division.

Honestly, the technical part is "easy"; it's the day to day politics that gets in the way when what is needed is longterm thinking. Take for example when NYC hired Andy Byford and Cuomo The Child couldn't stand not being in the spotlight. Shame.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#296

Post by PaulHoule »

Thorrez wrote: post #220
ghaff wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is, in no small part, because business/first class is being subsidized by economy (and a lot of the passengers in those classes are status upgrades). So, yes, sticker price for upper class service is pretty expensive. In a world where upper class service was the norm on certain routes on certain planes it would probably be pretty expensive but probably cheaper than the upgrade on mixed class service.

Do you have a source showing $/sqft of economy vs business/first class? This video is basically saying the opposite of you: that business/first class subsidizes economy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc

It might be better to say that they form a system which is economically optimized as a whole. It is genius, for instance, that frequent fliers get upgrades from coach to first class when they're available because it means if a first class flier changes their plans or wants to fly on short notice an economy flier just says in coach and won't feel mad about it -- the first class seats are 100% occupied in terms of providing somebody a somewhat premium experience but are 50% occupied with full revenue customers and that 50% occupation is part of the completely premium experience because it means it is always available.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#297

Post by okdood64 »

bigiain wrote: post #271

Boeing today is so obviously a different organisation to the one that built their rapidly dwindling reputation. The 747 was an amazing engineering marvel. They started designing it in '65, the first one rolled off the production line in '68, and they were still making and selling them right up to 2023. I have a book here somewhere that talks about how so many of the design decisions were based on cold hard physics fa…

> That is not today's Boeing.

How do you know they don't take all this into account when designing their planes?

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#298

Post by duxup »

nostrademons wrote: post #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, everybod…

It's interesting how that infects every aspect of a company.

I used to work tech support for a mid sized company selling some specialized networking eqipment, late 1990s and early 2000s. Our big deal was we answered the phone immediately, and we were good at what we did, we solved problems, resolved the issue right then and there on the phone.

Customers paid through the nose for our support contracts because it was worth it and they were happy. Happy customers were actually happy customers.

Company grew and was acquired and acquired other companies and so on.

By the end of my time there happy customers was a metric. It really didn't reflect actually happy customers, it was an amalgam of arbitrary stats. We could hit or surpass those numbers, nothing really mattered. Nobody was more happy if the numbers went up, or more sad if the numbers went down. Someone closed a ticket, did it solve anything?, who knows, but it was one more ticket closed!

Management who knew how to build a team, support people who cared, including myself, all just moved on.

Sad stuff really.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#299

Post by ghaff »

PaulHoule wrote: post #296
Thorrez wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a source showing $/sqft of economy vs business/first class? This video is basically saying the opposite of you: that business/first class subsidizes economy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzB5xtGGsTc

It might be better to say that they form a system which is economically optimized as a whole. It is genius, for instance, that frequent fliers get upgrades from coach to first class when they're available because it means if a first class flier changes their plans or wants to fly on short notice an economy flier just says in coach and won't feel mad about it -- the first class seats are 100% occupied in terms of prov…

Yes, I was imprecise in what I wrote. There's a lot of cross-subsidization in various forms going on that makes all-business class at business-class prices tough for airlines even on routes like NYC to London--which have existed but not sure they do at the moment.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#300

Post by ipython »

hdgvhicv wrote: post #276
ipython wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does a moon base get us, though? It was cool to get bragging rights by being the first to land and come back - in the ultimate show of “soft power” against the Soviet Union. But a permanent moon base? We can’t even fund the ISS.

Can you see a future for humanity where the moon isn’t colonised?

What's the future for humanity if the moon is colonized? What does the moon provide us that the Earth does not?

One interesting (admittedly small in scope, but huge in impact) thought experiment is the following- let's say that the doomsayers are correct. The Earth has been destroyed and inhabitable, leaving just our extra-planetary outposts. How do we supply the necessary high-tech manufacturing capability to survive?

Have we spun up all of the supply chain to reproduce the state-of-the-art technology required just required to sustain life on that celestial body? As an example, even with all our experience on Earth, we have exactly one physical location on our entire planet that can crank out the most advanced chips used in our modern technology we take for granted. That build-out took massive investment of deca-billions of dollars plus a massive, deep supply chain to build, even with all the advantages we have here on Earth (things like, oh, breathable air, access to vast carbon energy storage, access to millions of humans and existing factories... just as a start...)

Are we expected to replicate all of that on our next celestial body? If not, how do we expect to replace failing parts and continue progress?

What about even more basic concerns about things like... literal population growth? We understand ... a little... about how very healthy adult human bodies react to prolonged periods in zero-g (hint: not well, where "prolonged" == 437 contiguous days [0]). What about pregnant women? Babies? Spaceflight crews are required to exercise two hours every day to counteract muscle and bone atrophy [1]. How is that expected of say... an infant?

Don't get me wrong, I find spacefaring fascinating. I idolize the Apollo era. But we haven't even scratched the surface of how we can sustain any sort of population off this planet. We need to find ways to get along here, because ... this is all we've got, folks.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_longest_spacefligh... [1] https://www.nasa.gov/blogs/spacestation/2025/07/16/muscle-an...

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