3 ms·

That's the entire problem. (At least this the view I ended up adopting, and thus my argument.) It goes eyes-shut-closed full-throttle balls-to-the-walls agains

by pas 5y ago

That's the entire problem. (At least this the view I ended up adopting, and thus my argument.) It goes eyes-shut-closed full-throttle balls-to-the-walls against safety. You don't rush nuclear power plants, why are we doing it with planes? (And yes we should use reuse already approved, known, standardized - modular, components. But they should be indistinguishably the same, not "we certified it the same by introducing so much complexity, so many new failure modes, that we have to hide those".) And if safety costs a lot, then we can work on improving our processes (design, safety evaluation), but the process itself should lead to better stuff, not probably-not-that-worse but marginally cheaper so we can keep our semi-vendor-locked-in clients. I'm aware of the Boeing-Airbus US-EU cockfight, and that as usual a coordination problem is at the root of this. But the way forward should be a healthier market, more competition, not a monoculture. (Or duo.) Or, if costs force us into such a pathological state of the airplane market, then we should treat it as such. (It should be viewed as one big problem. The total lack of healthy competition must be factored into the approval process. And a high-level Market Authority should step in to prevent regulatory capture and the usual - almost guaranteed to happen - shenanigans.)

bumby 5y ago
I completely agree. My concern is that the problem is rooted in human psychology rather than process control, which makes it much harder to fix. My experience in aerospace is that the industry swings back and forth on this like a pendulum. A bad event happens and then there’s a focus on safety improvements. Then years or decades go by and no bad event happens. Rather than attribute this increased safety to the process changes, those very same changes are looked at as a burden? Why are we spending all this money and time on quality and safety checks, people say. It’s killing our schedule and budget, they conclude. So they work to erode those processes until another adverse event happens, albeit of a slightly different flavor. Rinse and repeat.

by pas 5y ago

bumby 5y ago

I completely agree. My concern is that the problem is rooted in human psychology rather than process control, which makes it much harder to fix. My experience in aerospace is that the industry swings back and forth on this like a pendulum. A bad event happens and then there’s a focus on safety improvements. Then years or decades go by and no bad event happens. Rather than attribute this increased safety to the process changes, those very same changes are looked at as a burden? Why are we spending all this money and time on quality and safety checks, people say. It’s killing our schedule and budget, they conclude. So they work to erode those processes until another adverse event happens, albeit of a slightly different flavor. Rinse and repeat.