> If there’s one thing that saga taught us it’s that traditional aerospace is incredibly conservative and risk averse Was that ever in doubt? > I’m not sure w

> If there’s one thing that saga taught us it’s that traditional aerospace is incredibly conservative and risk averse Was that ever in doubt? > I’m not sure where this mentality came from. My guess would be many boom bust cycles and shifting political winds causing project cancellation. That probably burned people too many times on new projects. Combine that with a safety at any cost mentality and a lack of incentives to innovate. Look into the history of aviation. How many aircraft manufacturers disappeared or barely survived, usually no longer making civilian jets, because they made a wrong bet at the wrong time? How many disappeared because their planes got a bad reputation for being unsafe? Just a small selection off the top of my head: BAC, de Havilland, Bombardier, Lockheed, Dassault, Convair, McDonnel Douglas, Sud Aviation, Dornier. A new jet design is extremely expensive, needs to add concrete benefits to the potential customers (airlines) and needs to be convincing for both airlines and passengers alike. And for the record, Airbus are working on a bunch of radical design moonshots: https://www.airbus.com/en/innovation/low-carbon-aviation/hydrogen/zeroe https://www.airbus.com/en/innovation/low-carbon-aviation/hyd... , and so are Embraer https://embraercommercialaviationsustainability.com/concepts/ https://embraercommercialaviationsustainability.com/concepts... .