Hacker News Reader

Can't wait to read your review of the Wright Brothers' first (utterly "useless" and dangerous) flight. :)

Bridges are a somewhat solved problem at this point. Novelty for the sake of novelty when the end product is worse is not good engineering.

The bridge is just a demo piece for the manufacturing technology.

I can’t believe this has to be said, but they’re not trying to invent bridges that go over flat land. It’s a demo piece.

This is like when someone gets a 3D printer and prints a 3D Benchy boat. Making toy boats is a solved problem, but that’s not the point of the 3D printer.

I mean, that was an airplane that flew. This is a bridge that doesn't cross anything, and we already have a ton of bridges that cross things. At best this is an art installation, but we already have a ton of 3D printed art. So the novelty factor just isn't the same.

At the end of the day, I'd be interested in what engineering challenges are being solved here. Does this no-tension-members design scale up to let vehicles pass over a river? If so, this is interesting.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com