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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

#81

Post by hitekker »

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…

Andy Grove, Steve Job's friend (if not mentor), agreed:

"Not only did we lose an untold number of jobs, we broke the chain of experience that is so important in technological evolution. ....abandoning today’s 'commodity' manufacturing can lock you out of tomorrow’s emerging industry." https://www.zdnet.com/article/us-high-tech-manufacturing-bas...

No one listened to him, certainly not Intel.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#82

Post by pixl97 »

eastbound wrote: post #75
lisper wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

There’s a beautiful conference (which I’ve lost) saying that science and technology can regress. We always talk about “the progress” but things do regress all the time; Tests I’ve cleared for employment can’t be passed by newcomers, the NASA wouldn’t be able to put a rocket on the moon today, and there is no downloadable Jira competitor anymore. In fact the speed of innovation is, pretty much, equal to the speed of m…

This here should trigger a red flag when you hear anyone say "The government should be run like a business".

Businesses kill themselves all the time from the loss of institutional knowledge. We see stuff like "government spends X a year paying people Y to build almost no product Z". Instead, we're paying people Y to be ready to build Z when something goes terribly wrong like war.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#83

Post by georgeburdell »

phkahler wrote: post #58
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…

>> 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. A coworker from China once told me (and I can see it) everything in China is considered ephemeral. Companies in the US want to invest capital to generate ROI and recurring revenue (o…

I work with a lot of Chinese. I can confirm that they like to work in 1st gear a lot, rebuilding the same stuff over and over in reaction to changing requirements. Because of their immense capacity for work, it more than compensates for what westerners might desire in long term planning. I have gained quite a bit of respect for this way of work due to the results they have gotten.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#84

Post by masklinn »

silverquiet wrote: post #45
Esophagus4 wrote: post #40

I hope they design and build the airframe properly this time. A plane that needs [cheaply outsourced] software (that relies on one sensor) to correct bad behavior at the flight envelope is just not acceptable. I still refuse to fly on the 737 MAX. I know it’s probably fine given what pilots now know about the how to control the thing, but I just refuse to support Boeing’s malicious negligence or any carrier that enab…

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.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#85

Post by petre »

intrasight wrote: post #66
lisper wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

What about Airpods? Also, I expect Vision to eventually be a massive success.

The basic Airpods are crap, noise cancellation is useless, they fall off the ear. You're better off with Sony or JBL at half the price. The Pro ones are good.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#86

Post by bunderbunder »

imoverclocked wrote: post #59
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…

The biggest tell will be just how over budget the development process becomes. Another issue in large companies trying to build something new is the scope creep which leads to committees and then decision by committee. If the folks leading this effort in Boeing are smart, they will keep the size of the team as small as possible. Maybe they will even hire some people back to lead this effort... assuming they can find…

I think you might have the chain of causality mixed up. From what I've seen, the sheer scale of the company creates large committees because you've got lots of managers and they all know that getting involved in the project is essential to their career advancement. And then that creates scope creep. Partially due to design by committee effects, but also because the manager in charge of flobnix realizes their opportunity for career advancement by shoehorning problems that need to be solved with flobnix into the requirements.

I also suspect that, if the folks leading this effort at Boeing are smart, they will sit back and let it happen. Large bureaucratic organizations like Boeing are ruled by office politics and largely run by people whose individual priorities are not particularly well-aligned with large scale company priorities. Pushing back risks making enemies (a dangerous thing to have in such an environment) and tends to have no real immediate upside.

Concrete example: why is the Lunar Gateway such an essential part of the Artemis project's mission architecture when we didn't need anything like that for Apollo? Many reasons have been given, but I suspect the real one is that 2020s NASA has a lot of people who specialize in space stations on staff and 1960s NASA didn't.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#87

Post by hinkley »

tracker1 wrote: post #65
hinkley wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked on the 787 but far from the engineering team. Boeing vowed to never build a plane like that again. They gave the wing design away to Mitsubishi for fucks sake. You never do that. They were neck deep in the McDonnell Douglas metastasis at the time, and doing an impression of Captain Ahab in trying to union bust in Seattle by fucking off to South Carolina. Boeing customers would figure out which plane numbers…

Assuming it was more of a philosophical aversion to working on the C-17... it's interesting where different people may draw different lines at differing points in their careers. I worked on a contract project for an email marketing management solution for a major CC/Bank... I hated it, it made me feel icky and after my 6mo term was up, I was completely out. I also once outright rejected an in-company project for the…

If I’m remembering the timeline correctly, we already knew how shitty we were being in Afghanistan by the point the question was asked.

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#88

Post by Centigonal »

silverquiet wrote: post #45
Esophagus4 wrote: post #40

I hope they design and build the airframe properly this time. A plane that needs [cheaply outsourced] software (that relies on one sensor) to correct bad behavior at the flight envelope is just not acceptable. I still refuse to fly on the 737 MAX. I know it’s probably fine given what pilots now know about the how to control the thing, but I just refuse to support Boeing’s malicious negligence or any carrier that enab…

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…

Starting with the F-16, many fighter jets are designed to be intentionally unstable to improve maneuverability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relaxed_stability#Intentional_...

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#89

Post by baud147258 »

imoverclocked wrote: post #59
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…

The biggest tell will be just how over budget the development process becomes. Another issue in large companies trying to build something new is the scope creep which leads to committees and then decision by committee. If the folks leading this effort in Boeing are smart, they will keep the size of the team as small as possible. Maybe they will even hire some people back to lead this effort... assuming they can find…

> If you want passengers to want your plane, design it without sardines in mind; People don't like being sardines.

Isn't that something that's more the responsibility of the airlines, who decide how many seats are put in a plane, following the limits of the aircraft? Like if you want more legroom you take a more expensive ticket from a company that doesn't try to cram as many passengers in each plane

Re: Boeing has started working on a 737 MAX replacement

#90

Post by masklinn »

hinkley wrote: post #60
Esophagus4 wrote: post #40

I hope they design and build the airframe properly this time. A plane that needs [cheaply outsourced] software (that relies on one sensor) to correct bad behavior at the flight envelope is just not acceptable. I still refuse to fly on the 737 MAX. I know it’s probably fine given what pilots now know about the how to control the thing, but I just refuse to support Boeing’s malicious negligence or any carrier that enab…

The 737 is a clusterfuck because the giant engines throw off the physics of the plane both inertially and aerodynamically. It’s easier to make a turbofan more efficient by making it bigger. But power density also tends to go up with new models, so there’s at least a chance that there’s a smaller, lighter engine with the same thrust and fuel economy out there, allowing them to improve (restore) the physics of the airc…

While not great, the MAX would have been fine if Boeing (and their airlines) had not clung so hard to the type rating. Without that, MCAS could have been left out entirely alongside its utterly botched implementation.

But that would have required a heavier certification process, and some pilot re-training. And they couldn't have that.

Of course that wouldn't have freed Boeing from the rest of its dismal record (MCAS didn't cause door blowouts), but...

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