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Comment by anonymousab | Hacker News Reader

> It is nearly impossible to bring innovation to market because of panic and fear.

No, it's because of greed and managerial and executive rot. They could innovate as much as they want, nearly as fast as they want, and still be safe - as they and other airliners have done in the past! - but then they wouldn't save the "max" amount of money doing it. How dreadful.

Boeing's failures are all Boeing's fault alone. They rightfully deserve the pillorying.

> If a car has an issue we don't blink and we loose nearly 40k people a year in the US alone

That is more of an argument for stricter requirements around automobiles and that entire industry than anything else.

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The industry is littered with defunct companies that couldn't financially afford to spend ten+ years bringing a new design to market. It took nearly 14 years to bring the 787 to market, what company can afford a timeline like that? This is more the norm than the exception. Innovation is massively stifled in aviation.

> That is more of an argument for stricter requirements around automobiles and that entire industry than anything else.

I agree that cars should, and could, be safer. But my argument was about the reaction people have to accidents. In cars we have several orders of magnitude more deaths and we don't bat an eye at that but in aviation we have a scary incident and it is wall to wall coverage.

Boeing is obviously in decline. 2 maxs crashed in the last few years, now this, boeing recommended other airlines examine their max 9s and found several loose bolts[1]. So the airlines had to absorb the cost of inspection and maintenance due to poor boeing integration. Maybe, instead of paying boeing to fail, we just... let them fail? Or the government should privatize and fire the managers who are cutting safety costs for profit.

[1]https://www.npr.org/2024/01/08/1223517098/door-plug-boeing-7...

" Innovation is massively stifled in aviation."

Flying is also a pretty mature technology by now. We've done it for more than 100 years and the physics is well understood. Massive leaps in capabilities are unlikely, much like no one will develop a pistol with a 2 mile range or a coffee machine that produces an espresso in a blink of an eye.

What you can do is add more sensors and software, but the increasing complexity may not be worth it.

I would argue that aircraft are massively inefficient. Lets just look at the biggest cause, pilots. When flying the aircraft has to deal with cruse and takeoff and landing. Basically, the less you have to re-work the aircraft for takeoff/landing the more you can optimize it for cruse. Looking at just one thing, flaps, it becomes obvious how much aircraft could be improved by radical changes. When taking off, flaps are set much less aggressively than when landing. This is because most of the additional lift and subsequent reduction in stall speed, come with just a little flap extension. In landing however the flaps are extended considerably more. This is not for stall issues, but just so the pilots can see the runway. By increasing the flaps we are increasing the angle of attack of the aircraft and that allows the pilots to drop the nose, so they can see the numbers better. Land flaps are a huge change to the configuration of the aircraft and require a lot of structural changes to happen, just so pilots can see. Those changes cost cruse performance massively. There are many other things like this in air frame design, materials, etc. Just look at the experimental aircraft world compared to certified designs. The differences in performance are massive but they don't come to market because the industry is so stuck in its rut.

100 years is not a long time. Compare a railroad now to a railroad we had 100 years after the invention of railroads.

There are massive improvements still possible in the engine. Like the currently in design RISE engine. And other engines as well. And if you combined the technology you can get even further. We are not close to the end on any of this. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkHKet7rp4o

There are various aero-dynamic concepts that have not yet been fully or even partially explored. Trust brace wings, blended wings or my personal favorite, Prantdl Wing. A Prantdl wing might allow you to remove the whole tail, another huge potential boost. You can even combine all these concepts potentially.

I would guess we can get 40% more efficiency just based on those things.

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