321–330 of 494 posts
* The design time on a new plane is going to be tens of years
* Boeing is already losing customers to Airbus as a result of the max disaster, doors blowing off, etc.
* The major thing keeping Boeing in business is long delivery time orders of their older planes, and those are drying up
Given these things can this help them in time?
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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 .
The real issue with the 747 is people will take a point to point route if at all possible. Worse, flying a small plane point to point is cheaper for the passenger than flying 2 747s. If you live in Lincoln NE - sorry your city is too small to get direct flights to anything but close major hubs (even then odds are you drive to nearby Omaha thus further reducing demand options). However if you live in a Larger non-hub…
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It's more likely than not that they will, in my opinion. As an owner of both an AVP and Quest 2, the former is a lot nicer to use than the latter with the exception of VR games, and my hunch is that Valve is going to eat Meta's lunch for gaming with Deckard (which will be at least as good as the Quest 3, but much more open, paired with a vastly more populated and popular marketplace, probably won't treat PCVR as an a…
Of course the AVP is much nicer than the Quest 2. For more than 10 times the price it had better be. It doesn't really describe the companies' different abilities but the design goals. The quest 2 was clearly 'make it as cheap as possible so lots of people can buy it' and the AVP's was 'make it as good as it can be, price is not a factor' Still though, both products eventually get stuck at the same point: a killer us…
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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.
A bit ironic though because the CEO of Boing during their best years was William McPherson Allen, a lawyer.
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The real issue with the 747 is people will take a point to point route if at all possible. Worse, flying a small plane point to point is cheaper for the passenger than flying 2 747s. If you live in Lincoln NE - sorry your city is too small to get direct flights to anything but close major hubs (even then odds are you drive to nearby Omaha thus further reducing demand options). However if you live in a Larger non-hub…
The 747 was at its most efficient when flying long haul routes, like overseas. The 747 was immensely profitable for Boeing for several decades. Every sale was a giant chunk of cash dumped on the company. But none of that would have happened if the 747 wasn't also immensely profitable for the airlines.
there is a reason nobody flies the 747 anymore. It isn't profitable enough agaisnt the 777 and small planes which are cheaper to run.
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…
> 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 It's not just building a product end-to-end. Tim Cook is a supply-chain guy. He knows how to build a product. What he doesn't know how is how to design a new one. This is the reason that all of the "new" stuff that has com…
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Would you not like to see major advances in the physics tech tree? The way you get those advancements, is to have a goal. And funding. A moon colonization program provides both.
To use video games as an analogy: You can't invest all your resources racing up one tech tree; you have to build the whole economic engine to achieve those later levels. "Moon base that produces positive economic benefit" is about 10 steps up a very expensive tech tree and we don't even know what the rungs are. I also don't think this is very imaginative. If you want to colonize the moon, why send a man in a can? How…
The exact opposite of that has been the meta in most 4X games I've played.
You always rush specific techs because you understand the ROI for the specific empire you're going for. That involves specialization.
Apollo allowed America to demonstrate its ability to land a rocket with pinpoint accuracy on the Moon, implying it would be easier to land an ICBM on the Soviets.
The USSR got a large PR boost through launching Sputnik and then a person. It convinced many people communism was a superior ideology for advancing science and technology. Turning it into a "Space Race" allowed the USA to reframe the discussion for the world in a way that let America catch up.
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The 747 was at its most efficient when flying long haul routes, like overseas. The 747 was immensely profitable for Boeing for several decades. Every sale was a giant chunk of cash dumped on the company. But none of that would have happened if the 747 wasn't also immensely profitable for the airlines.
True but small planes are profitable too even for long flights. They have to compete against the more profitable large ones but they do that by emptying the large ones. I want to get to a destination and if a small plane isn't much more money it is cheaper to not transfer at a hub and pay for the 2nd plane to where I want to be. More smaller planes can also fit my schedule which can save money. there is a reason nobo…
The reason is the aerodynamics of it are 60 years old making it no longer competitive with modern aerodynamics.
Compare your car with a 1965 Chevy Impala, for example.
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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.
A bit ironic though because the CEO of Boing during their best years was William McPherson Allen, a lawyer.
And yes professions have stereotypical personalities. Like the used car salesman.