One is that I'm actually thankful for robomartin's comments; they break up some of the more outlandish hero-worshipping of Elon Musk (i.e., https://hackernews.hn/item?id=5138430, which is frankly just a ridiculous thing to say).
Another is that this is not new. What is new about the 787 is the sheer amount of media attention, not the fact that there are serious post-service-entry problems. For example:
Nothing says "management really, really screwed up" than a smoking pile of brand new tech, being doused with fire-retardant foam, while the world asks questions like "why is our technology failing us?" from afar
You mean, the way we all went crazy, posted huge numbers of threads and begged people who don't work on airliners for a living to come save Airbus in one fell swoop after the A380 exploding-engine accident (which, on investigation, turned out to not be a one-off problem, but a general flaw with the plane's engines)? The one where a smoking pile of brand-new tech had to be doused with fire-retardant foam?
This stuff happens. The other thing that's different about it now is that when it happens, people don't die by the hundreds, as they used to when a new airliner entered service and a problem suddenly became visible. What is not different is that it still gets solved by research and hard work, rather than by pop-entrepreneurs snarking away in major newspapers.
Actually that's inaccurate... The A380 has 2 engine types and the issue only affected one of the 2 types, specifically the Rolls Royce engine. The other problem is that the issue was not a general flaw but some of the oil valves in the engine were not cut properly and would eventually break.
A better example of how this stuff hits the A380 are the cracks in the wings.
One is that I'm actually thankful for robomartin's comments; they break up some of the more outlandish hero-worshipping of Elon Musk (i.e., https://hackernews.hn/item?id=5138430, which is frankly just a ridiculous thing to say).
Another is that this is not new. What is new about the 787 is the sheer amount of media attention, not the fact that there are serious post-service-entry problems. For example:
Nothing says "management really, really screwed up" than a smoking pile of brand new tech, being doused with fire-retardant foam, while the world asks questions like "why is our technology failing us?" from afar
You mean, the way we all went crazy, posted huge numbers of threads and begged people who don't work on airliners for a living to come save Airbus in one fell swoop after the A380 exploding-engine accident (which, on investigation, turned out to not be a one-off problem, but a general flaw with the plane's engines)? The one where a smoking pile of brand-new tech had to be doused with fire-retardant foam?
This stuff happens. The other thing that's different about it now is that when it happens, people don't die by the hundreds, as they used to when a new airliner entered service and a problem suddenly became visible. What is not different is that it still gets solved by research and hard work, rather than by pop-entrepreneurs snarking away in major newspapers.