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Comment by Theodores | Hacker News Reader

The Space Shuttle had a tonne of hours put on it before we learned of the O-ring problem catastrophically.

Everyone was trying their hardest and did their best, everything was built to spec but there were organisational and communication problems. The message that the dreaded O-rings weren't good for a cold weather launch was not heard or understood. No malice was involved but, when you have a schedule and deadlines with lots of large organisation hubris these things happen.

In only the broadest strokes is the current Boeing situation analogous to the sad fate of the Space Shuttle, however, just because a lot of testing has gone on and just because there is a lot of regulation does not mean that the layman appreciation of the situation is wrong. The layman understanding can be big picture rather than bogged down by intricacy of details.

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These calls always seem easy in the aftermath, when you have the benefit of hindsight. In both of these cases, billions of dollars are on the line, but the truth is, there is always some risk. There is, as we've all heard, a greater risk of us dying in our car than any type of air catastrophe. Yet we still drive. How many flights have these planes taken? I can almost guarantee that Boeing did not build this sensor; the sensor has a spec sheet, its operational capability was verified in a laboratory and the FAA approved it. If the problem was not recoverable, they would have grounded the planes after the first accident; it appeared to be a training issue. Anyway, we can only make decisions with the information we have; it was the satellite data that suggested there was a link. It was then that the direction was clear and the call was made; this system is too dangerous as it is.

Making decisions based on fear is a fools errand. It is how you spend trillions of dollars waging wars combating terrorism when the risk of a terror related death is the US is lower than getting struck by lightening.

But the choice here is not "fly or drive", the choice here is "fly 737 MAX or fly another plane". I expect very few fliers have the budget and time to change flights, and those who can, will.

No they knew of O-ring burns before the catastrophe. They measured it, and determined that it was a tolerable amount, because it was less then 10% penetration. Problem was the root cause of the burns was not adequately determined. When you don't know the o-rings are twisting due to internal stress and that those stresses have a dependence on temperature, you miss that catastrophic O-ring failure is a risk at near freezing temperatures.

The second space shuttle crash was the same problem again. Falling chunks of ice and foam. Since nothing major had happened previously, it was assumed everything would be fine.

These failure and problems were the warning signs that something was wrong. There was no design spec for acceptable o-ring burn through or a leading edge heat shield damage threshold spec.

I bet we will find that Boeing and the FAA talked themselves into believing that

> The Vertical Pitch Indicator is reading on some MAX 8's 10-20 degrees higher than what the aircraft actually is pitched at.

Seems like not everything was built to spec

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