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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

#381
post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A phrase does not mean anything by itself. People mean something when they use it. You could argue that expressions carry some meaning, by virtue of shared use. But your definition does not align with the meaning most people make of this specific expression as you can witness above.

The way most people use it is wrong though and not in the normal "language evolves" way. The exception of a lawyer being a good CEO does not, in any way, prove that lawyers are not good CEOs .

Words are just noises. Think of them as pointers. They point to a concept in the brain. What concept that may be differs from person to person. But as long as the words point to something, they aren't used wrongly.

The idea that there was some point in history were the pointer target was officially designated to be x is just false. That point in time never existed.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

War planes dropped natural stability a while ago, IIRC the F16 was the first relaxed stability production aircraft (it's naturally stable at supersonic speeds but not subsonic). In fact there was a flying airliner with relaxed stability (though only neutral not negative) when Airframe was published: the MD-11. Though I don't know that there have been others since.

I think you're right about the F-16 being the first. My money would have been on the F-117, but that apparently started development three years later – the F-16 is surprisingly old!

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#384

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…

> I have a book here somewhere

You can't just say that, mention a bunch of interesting things, and not tell me the name of the book...

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#385

Anyone with 737MAX cockpit time? Overly nerdy question: I'm curious regarding AoA sensor failure, is there an ability to manually source select the AoA, if not, how about the FMC? This might be called master source select, or which side is controlling (captain or first officer).

The AoA failure logic does not allow for manual reversion of the master/monitoring FCC. It still requires cross-checking sides in the event of an AOA DISAGREE annunciation. But since the update, MCAS is disabled in this scenario. As far as the FMC, the relationship between AoA vanes, flight control computers and CMD A/B is not configurable. But the non-failed autopilot channel can be selected.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there is a reason nobody flies the 747 anymore 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.

Mostly it's about engine tech. A 777/787 or whatever can fit almost as many passengers as a 747, but has only two engines, burning less fuel and requiring less maintenance. Back when 747 was designed engine tech wasn't there yet to build really big two engine airplanes. There was also the issue of ETOPS limits. The regulations on how far away from nearest airport you can fly with two-engine aircraft were stricter tha…

There's also the issue of cargo space. The 777-300 actually has a larger hold, about 11% more. Cargo is pretty lucrative so even passenger airlines like being able to devote some of their hold space to it.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#387

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…

This is eerily similar to the comment on the thread about LLMs that says software teams have to maintain a "theory" or model about how the software works and when they cant, they can no longer function beyond limited forms of maintenance. And in that comment the idea was that LLMs are accelerating this dynamic. I dont want to stretch the analogy too thin but in this case instead of LLMs being a catalyst, perhaps its…

> This is eerily similar to the comment on the thread about LLMs that says software teams have to maintain a "theory" or model about how the software works and when they cant, they can no longer function beyond limited forms of maintenance.

Link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45424366

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#388
post #182
post #41

Earlier 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.

I feel like Nokia would still be a notable smartphone company albeit not on the scale of apple (as the single alternative to the android ecosystem) if not for Microsoft and it's plant delivering the actual blow.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#389
post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_description Try to understand that there is no individual ownership over turns of phrase, and that they tend to shift around over time. Bugs Bunny turned Nimrod from a byword for a competent hunter into an insult. This is natural and all of your favorite words have or will be subject to it as long as there are humans to communicate with them.

Ooooh that's why nimrod is an insult! Now it makes sense! Thank you! Btw, let me add my personal pet peeve: "egregiously" somehow went from meaning "very good" to mean "very bad" in American English. In my native language "egregiamente" still has the original meaning so I was confused for a long time.

I'm still momentarily paused when kids today say 'shit' to mean 'good' etc. Yeah some words shift in meaning and other words swap in meaning.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#390

This has been a long time coming. The big buyer for 737 consistently has been Southwest. Before a recent ownership shakeup, Southwest wanted to only operate the 737 airframe, and avoid as many new features as possible to keep training costs low, and maintenance costs low. New activist ownership has pushed to diversify frames and phase out reliance on the 737 frame which is significantly more inefficient than modern f…

People blame Boeing for the 737 MAX. They were elbows deep in a clean sheet design. Yeah, they shouldn’t have built the plane but the demand was made by Southwest and American who both said straight up if you don’t make a new 737, we’re switching to Airbus.

Boeing is absolutely to blame though, in the end they’re responsible for the safety of the aircraft and there was plenty wrong internally at Airbus. The customer isn’t always king.
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