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Comment by qrbLPHiKpiux | Hacker News Reader

Reading one of the pictographs in the article, it's noting that the heavier engines changed the aerodynamics of the plane in a negative way. Boeing engineers added what they call MCAS to counter these negative effects.

Now, I'm not an aerospace engineer, but common sense tells me that if you add something to a system that introduces a negative effect, you remove that something - not add something else to counter it.

But, that's me.

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That makes sense. Adding more things only complicate the system more and once the original "something" is changed or tweaked, now the rest of the system needs updated to balance again.

That's kind of a simplistic view, isn't it? By that logic you should remove the pilots, crew and passengers since they add a negative effect (weight) to the plane.

In medical instruments, we preferred to eliminate a failure mode rather than mitigate it (when possible). That's not the same as saying "just don't build the device".

Preferred how strongly? Eliminating the failure mode in this case means designing a whole new wing from scratch, which is nearly the same amount of work as designing a whole new plane from scratch. So Boeing's alternatives (while maintaining the same efficiency) were to completely replace the 737, or fix the issue in software. The latter option is obviously vastly less expensive. If you're confidence in the software fix is high, it's probably a reasonably choice. In hindsight Boeing's confidence may have been misplaced.

It depends on your optimization points. No people moved=no business transacted.

Regardless, I don't find the poster's logic to be unreasonable. However, Boeing was additionally constrained by available engine hardware. It's just a whole Charlie Foxtrot of a situation.

That's exactly my point. The statement "if you add something to a system that introduces a negative effect, you remove that something" is borderline nonsensical in any kind of realistic engineering environment.

If I may elaborate my thoughts:

any kind of engineering - I did not want to "catch-all" everything.

How's this - "if you introduce a negative effect that can yield a catastrophic consequence..."

Remove it, or mitigate it?

I say remove it, and charge more for the flight fare. If people want more leg room, then pay for it.

Like how modern safety features add the negative effect of making cars heavier?

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