Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

Who will design and execute this “seriously”? Given the current state of our government (shutting down as I type), I don’t foresee any “serious” projects from the feds any time soon. Even when there are serious people - everything will get politicized. So nasa is out.

Ok so maybe a multibillionaire. Perhaps Elon musk? Yikes. Or Bezos? Maybe.

The EU is kinda busy increasing their defense spend, preparing to engage in Ukraine so I don’t see them super excited to do this.

China or India perhaps?

Also, why shouldn’t it be completely closed loop? If you’re designing to address the myriad of scenarios that can unfold in space, I’d say you’d want that experience under your belt. Its already easy mode doing this exercise on earth you might as well give yourself a little challenge to capture lessons learned.

The Dreamliner had PMF issues? Hasn't it been a hugely successful point to point widebody?

I have a Garmin with roughly the same functionality and I only need to charge it every other week. If you use the GPS the battery gets drained in about a 6 hour activity, but I've recharged it at a refuge while eating.

you're trying hard to paint a picture of fail, but your evidence doesn't stack up

>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

2003 to 2009 is an incredibly short time line for a revolutionary new design (the heavy use of composites) The A350 developed in response was much less ambitious effort and took longer. The A380 also took a long time to plan and execute. Aircraft generations last at least a decade, and new designs every 15 years-ish is not a crazy ballpark

>and its design was fraught with problems

A380 had plenty of problems, hence the delays

the problems with the 737MAX stemmed from Boeing trying to push the low-wing design of the older 737 through one more generation to avoid a complete redesign, to avoid the kind of cash flow pinch and never-paid-back development that Airbus suffered with the A380 (which was why they tried the "evolutionary" redesign on the cheap that led to the A350)

>Before then was the 777 in the early 90s

777 was a revolutionary approach to developing a plane that led to its incredible success which continues through today (the clever idea they had? asking airlines what they wanted) Airbus has also chosen paths that have been quite successful, their "same cockpit" being one of them. 777 and Airbus's planes from that time all had very long commercial lives

>everybody who can build a product end-to-end leaves or gets forced out, leaving only people with highly specialized maintenance skillsets

I don't think anybody has ever designed a jetliner end to end, as piston planes crossed that hurdle earlier.

>if ... 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

where else are aerospace engineers going to work? I'm not saying there's a surplus but with defense, aviation is a very big industry, and most any engineer would like to work on greenfield designs for marquis products.

shoot from the hip copycat Jobs would find no jobs in aerospace. Different types of people have different personalities. Aircraft design is tight tolerance and exacting, and anybody who does it is going to be comfortable working in a that type of environment, lots of check, test, recheck, paperwork, etc.

The mistake was committed willfully well before the first crash. Their emails during the development and testing of the Max 8 show some strongly worded exchanges clearly indicating their full awareness of the troubles with the MCAS system. There was one simulated flight by a test pilot where the MCAS had activated and was deemed a catastrophic failure. In another instance, the chief test pilot said, "I basically lied to the regulators, unknowingly" - a mistake that he chose not to rectify. It was abundantly clear at that point that business as usual was going to cost lives. The entire top management knew this and yet, not one of them decided to step in.

The first crash was already too late for them. A team that behaved so callously earlier wasn't going to stop at that point without an external intervention. They were in fact attempting to scapegoat the pilots even after the second crash. Therefore, putting the blame on one CEO at the time of the first crash is illogical. The blame must fall on the team that established such an unbelievably flawed safety culture in the first place. Who was that? And why?

I'm not insisting that accountants and lawyers are unfit for top management. There are corporate portfolios that they're the best fit for - like accounting and law firms. Then there are the exceptions who do a sensible job even outside their portfolio. But I have seen both engineering heavy and accounting heavy managements. As expected, their priorities and operational philosophies are drastically different. But their influence doesn't end there. They also define the wider company culture - A culture that not even a CEO can change without significant personal effort against institutional inertia.

So, accountants or lawyers may be sufficient to lead IT companies. But if they choose to lead an industry where so many lives are at stake, they better hold back their profit-seeking instincts and understand the safety culture and the consequences of their decisions damn well.