3 ms·

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

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.
    - Scoundreller 8y ago
      I like to say we never solve problems, we try to replace bigger ones with smaller ones.
      - FabHK 8y ago
        And more equally distributed ones: there are not many easy solutions anymore that are pareto improvements, ie do not have downsides elsewhere. For example, the door to the cockpit is locked now to keep terrorists out - which allows a suicidal co-pilot to fly the machine into a mountain undisturbed. (Having said that, a suicidal pilot can take down the machine one way or the other, so maybe locking the doors was a pareto improvement.)

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.
  - Scoundreller 8y ago
    I like to say we never solve problems, we try to replace bigger ones with smaller ones.
    - FabHK 8y ago
      And more equally distributed ones: there are not many easy solutions anymore that are pareto improvements, ie do not have downsides elsewhere. For example, the door to the cockpit is locked now to keep terrorists out - which allows a suicidal co-pilot to fly the machine into a mountain undisturbed. (Having said that, a suicidal pilot can take down the machine one way or the other, so maybe locking the doors was a pareto improvement.)