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I think it may be that brilliant engineers still exist somewhere, but I suspect they're less likely to go into aerospace than in the 50s, 60s or 70s. Heck or ev

I think it may be that brilliant engineers still exist somewhere, but I suspect they're less likely to go into aerospace than in the 50s, 60s or 70s. Heck or even the 40s. Immediately after the war aerospace was red hot - there were countless countries and companies putting out new jet designs - both commercial and military. The competition and pace was intense and there was quite some cachet and public interest in aviation. Since roughly, I guess, the 90s aerospace is rather settled and a very mature market. There's only a few major players left, and very very few new products; many of those are variations on the previous. Not nearly as much place or appeal for the brightest stars.

cstross 8y ago
No, there's more to it than that. Firstly, from 1903-1968 aerospace was in a period of exponentially improving performance (range, speed, altitude) comparable to Moore's Law. But from the mid-60s onwards the rapid improvements stopped, as developments hit hard limits imposed by material science and thermodynamics: it's hard to get a material much stronger than carbon fibre or titanium alloy, it's ridiculously hard to go faster in air (drag increases faster than the square of speed: if you throw more energy at the problem via your engines it comes out in the form of friction-induced heating). Secondly, there have been huge incremental improvements since 1968. Consider the 737 series. The 737-100 had a maximum range of 1540 nautical miles on 17.86 metric tonnes of fuel; today's 737MAX-10 can do 3850nm on 25.94 tonnes of fuel: it's 72% more fuel-efficient. It's also gone from 118 to 204 seats, so about the same upgrade is passenger capacity. The cargo capacity has almost doubled, too. This being HN, the point of comparison should be an Intel-cpu laptop circa 2009 with an equivalent laptop today. The headline clock speed is probably similar (stuck around 2.4GHz), as is the number of hardware cores. The modern laptop probably has more RAM and more storage, but only by a factor of 2x or 4x. But it has double or triple the battery life, 4x or 8x the pixels on screen, a screamingly fast SSD instead of a rotating-platter drive, and a GPU that the OS can offload a chunk of work onto other than simply accelerated graphics. It looks disappointingly similar, but if you could give your 2009-self your 2019 laptop they wouldn't be in a hurry to give it back again. There have also been huge improvements in overall safety, the 737MAX MCAS problem aside; compare accident rates today with accident rates in the 1980s, let alone the 1950s if you want an eye-opener. (Of 1010 Boeing 707s delivered, there have been 173 hull losses in accidents.)
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Hmm, aren't we agreeing here? :) As a brilliant star with a newly minted engineering degree I might go into aerospace pre-1968 to play with blank sheet developments, X planes and XB-70, Concorde, Harrier, SR-71, 707 etc etc. Much the same with at engine makers - Merlin to Olympus and Pegasus. An absurdly long list, often with remarkably small teams. I might not want to take my 2019 vintage degree into a world of incremental improvements at one of the few global giants. Even if those improvements are of enormous significance over the years. It doesn't feel earth shaking any more, Farnborough isn't showing astounding free PR every year, just steady incremental progress (mostly). No more flying bedsteads. Same goes with the laptop analogy actually - the fun was probably in the earlier years than now with new model every year with an extra few percent on the numbers, or slimmer. Green fields are usually more fun, and when they succeed, more satisfying; even with the odd Osbourne effect or total failure. Were I that newly minted genius, I'm not sure where I would park myself today. Space X for some, perhaps. Probably not Boeing or BAe. I'm sure there's plenty of good (enough) engineers at all of them still. Working as one of thousands. That's not so alluring. > 1010 Boeing 707s delivered, there have been 173 hull losses in accidents Never knew that. That is frankly amazing.
  - cstross 8y ago
    I forgot the point I was trying to make while giving the background! It's not that the engineers of yesteryear were brilliant while today's engineers are second-rate: it's that what they were doing back then was in some respects easier. (And we remember the good planes: as often as not they invented utter turkeys: look at the history of the Supermarine Scimitar for example — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Scimitar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Scimitar — TLDR: yes, it's military, but to lose 51% of your aircraft in 9 years of peacetime service takes some doing. And then compare with the F-35, two crashes out of 308 airframes in service over a 5 year period, even though it's a vastly more complicated and higher performance aircraft.)
    - matwood 8y ago
      Yeah. People tend to forget that as each problem is solved, the next problem is typically more complex.
craydandy 8y ago
Best minds of our generation are trying to get more ads in front of people and trying to get more people to click on them.
thrav 8y ago
They’re at Elon Musk’s companies being underpaid and overworked so they can do something legitimately cool.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

cstross 8y ago

No, there's more to it than that. Firstly, from 1903-1968 aerospace was in a period of exponentially improving performance (range, speed, altitude) comparable to Moore's Law. But from the mid-60s onwards the rapid improvements stopped, as developments hit hard limits imposed by material science and thermodynamics: it's hard to get a material much stronger than carbon fibre or titanium alloy, it's ridiculously hard to go faster in air (drag increases faster than the square of speed: if you throw more energy at the problem via your engines it comes out in the form of friction-induced heating). Secondly, there have been huge incremental improvements since 1968. Consider the 737 series. The 737-100 had a maximum range of 1540 nautical miles on 17.86 metric tonnes of fuel; today's 737MAX-10 can do 3850nm on 25.94 tonnes of fuel: it's 72% more fuel-efficient. It's also gone from 118 to 204 seats, so about the same upgrade is passenger capacity. The cargo capacity has almost doubled, too. This being HN, the point of comparison should be an Intel-cpu laptop circa 2009 with an equivalent laptop today. The headline clock speed is probably similar (stuck around 2.4GHz), as is the number of hardware cores. The modern laptop probably has more RAM and more storage, but only by a factor of 2x or 4x. But it has double or triple the battery life, 4x or 8x the pixels on screen, a screamingly fast SSD instead of a rotating-platter drive, and a GPU that the OS can offload a chunk of work onto other than simply accelerated graphics. It looks disappointingly similar, but if you could give your 2009-self your 2019 laptop they wouldn't be in a hurry to give it back again. There have also been huge improvements in overall safety, the 737MAX MCAS problem aside; compare accident rates today with accident rates in the 1980s, let alone the 1950s if you want an eye-opener. (Of 1010 Boeing 707s delivered, there have been 173 hull losses in accidents.)

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Hmm, aren't we agreeing here? :) As a brilliant star with a newly minted engineering degree I might go into aerospace pre-1968 to play with blank sheet developments, X planes and XB-70, Concorde, Harrier, SR-71, 707 etc etc. Much the same with at engine makers - Merlin to Olympus and Pegasus. An absurdly long list, often with remarkably small teams. I might not want to take my 2019 vintage degree into a world of incremental improvements at one of the few global giants. Even if those improvements are of enormous significance over the years. It doesn't feel earth shaking any more, Farnborough isn't showing astounding free PR every year, just steady incremental progress (mostly). No more flying bedsteads. Same goes with the laptop analogy actually - the fun was probably in the earlier years than now with new model every year with an extra few percent on the numbers, or slimmer. Green fields are usually more fun, and when they succeed, more satisfying; even with the odd Osbourne effect or total failure. Were I that newly minted genius, I'm not sure where I would park myself today. Space X for some, perhaps. Probably not Boeing or BAe. I'm sure there's plenty of good (enough) engineers at all of them still. Working as one of thousands. That's not so alluring. > 1010 Boeing 707s delivered, there have been 173 hull losses in accidents Never knew that. That is frankly amazing.
- cstross 8y ago
  I forgot the point I was trying to make while giving the background! It's not that the engineers of yesteryear were brilliant while today's engineers are second-rate: it's that what they were doing back then was in some respects easier. (And we remember the good planes: as often as not they invented utter turkeys: look at the history of the Supermarine Scimitar for example — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Scimitar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Scimitar — TLDR: yes, it's military, but to lose 51% of your aircraft in 9 years of peacetime service takes some doing. And then compare with the F-35, two crashes out of 308 airframes in service over a 5 year period, even though it's a vastly more complicated and higher performance aircraft.)
  - matwood 8y ago
    Yeah. People tend to forget that as each problem is solved, the next problem is typically more complex.

craydandy 8y ago

Best minds of our generation are trying to get more ads in front of people and trying to get more people to click on them.

thrav 8y ago

They’re at Elon Musk’s companies being underpaid and overworked so they can do something legitimately cool.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]