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Comment by slumdev | Hacker News Reader

> That would at least put the 787 in the same class of "suit-designed" aircraft.

The 787 is a suit-designed aircraft. Composite materials are not ready for prime time. They are a gamble that Boeing suits have made against passenger lives. If the bet pays out, the planes save a miniscule amount of fuel compared to planes made of traditional materials. If the bet does not pay out, people die.

Only a few months ago, we discovered more 737 problems. These were unrelated to MCAS. Instead, they affected the part that holds the wing to the fuselage:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/09/29/boeing...

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Strongly disagree there. The material is perfectly fine, in part due to massive safety margins.

Composites have been in use in crewed aerospace vehicles for ~55 years (or arguably >80 years).

Composite aircraft were developed in the early 1960s, although first use of composites goes back to the 1930s, and even the Space Shuttle developed in the 1970s made extensive use of composites... not just carbon fiber and kevlar, but also materials considered cutting edge today, like metal-matrix boron fiber and carbon-carbon.

The materials are perfectly ready, if you're willing to pay the cost of testing, analysis, and margin. It took just ~35 years to go from Wright Brothers and their wooden aircraft to all-aluminum pressurized airliners (and yeah, there were folks who were skeptical of aluminum at that time as well).

Given at least 50 years in extensive use, I can't see how waiting longer will help[0]. The alternative is permanent stasis.

[0]More analysis or more margin or more testing is an argument I could buy into, but not being "too early for prime time."

"Composite materials are not ready for prime time."

Wow, I didn't know the 787 was built with that in mind. Seriously, my dad has worked at Beechcraft since the 80s and he remembers when they tried that nonsense with the Starship. It's like no one remembers why the idea was scrapped beyond the initial costs (composites have to have aluminum weave to allow lightning strikes and static discharge dissipate through the wings otherwise it'll blow off said wing).

people still die more driving to the airport than in a plane crash.

The fact that people smoke, drive while texting, drive drunk, don't exercise and so on, show that they don't really care about not dying. They just like to complain when dying is caused by somebody else.

> They just like to complain when dying is caused by somebody else.

Which is completely legitimate.

Should we have an eligibility criteria for people who can be allowed to complain?

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