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Comment by nimbius | Hacker News Reader

Occhams razor might say the reasons to downplay this incident are overwhelmingly more attractive.

- Boeing is a fortune 50 company and is a direct contributor to news media advertising revenue.

- Boeing is a darling of US aerospace and a bulwark of us international projection of soft power and defense. Telling the truth will destroy the us aircraft market.

- china does not have this problem with its space program. The comac airliner also directly competes with Boeing's beleaguered 737

- loss of confidence in the us space program at the vehicle level jeopardizes trust from consumers and insurance companies in the us space products market like satellite launches.

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>The comac airliner also directly competes with Boeing's beleaguered 737

Not in any remotely meaningful way. Some estimates suggest it will be more than a decade before Comac will have the manufacturing capacity to fill existing domestic orders (as of now they've built 9). Then there's the fact that their planes aren't nearly as fuel efficient as those from Boeing and Airbus - the engines may be imports but are neutered due to export restrictions. China's own airlines aren't even interested.

  > it will be more than a decade before Comac will have the manufacturing capacity to fill even domestic orders

If you think that a decade is enough time for Boeing (or Airbus) to react to losing one large market and having a new competitor encroach on existing markets, then I suggest looking at past airliner development programs.

A decade is nothing in this industry. And China, specifically, is known for being able to scale manufacturing - so they may not have a decade like us Westerners think.

> The comac airliner also directly competes with Boeing's beleaguered 737

Thanks but I'll take my chances on a MAX.

Do you know what happens when a Chinese-built plane crashes in China? There is no fancy congressional inquiry, no lawsuits, no crying families on TV. No, they hose off the crash site and put them in unmarked graves and build a shoddily-constructed apartment building over top of it. Maybe the pilot's family is jailed and never heard from again. Pretend it never happened and life over there continues as usual.

Well no one is losing confidence in US space program. Since SpaceX has the overwhelming global lead in space engineering.

The main issue is, NASA for political reasons, has to keep the delusion of the 'have 2 suppliers'. Boeing is clearly nonviable anymore, but as you said, it has tremendous influence in US congress, so NASA pays them billions.

NASA's programs would be simpler if they simply just dumped all the money to SpaceX, but that could cause longer term issues. The other solution would be partnering with Airbus as the backup supplier, but that would cause political earthquake.

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