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Comment by wavefunction | Hacker News Reader

@sandworm How about a third option where neither the plane nor the debris falls?

The risk of falling debris actually killing someone pales in comparison to the risks of it perhaps doing more damage onboard the aircraft. A loose part near/inside an engine is no longer doing its job and could cause more damage where it is. And the ground is a big place. Drop a random pin in google maps. Then zoom in to see if it is actually on someone's head. This is lottery odds territory.

Objects drop from aircraft all the time, daily. It isn't generally newsworthy unless part of a larger story. And even then, only if the object is found and recognized as being from an aircraft. Small rocks also fall daily from space, probably more by weight than aircraft-related objects, yet virtually nobody ever gets hit by space rocks.

To add to that, 100 tons of spacerocks hit eath every day. I dont think 100 tons of parts fall of airliners daily.

That being said, there was a russian spacecraft that disintegrated and hit someone house, in the middle of siberia bo less. So it does happen, but its freak ecen3ts territory.

Oh, if you are going to include manmade space-related objects there have been many deaths. Dig into how many Chinese rocket stages have landed on villages. If we include such things as "aviation" I would retract my above statements re debris. Rockets do sometimes fall on people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelsat_708

https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/china-keeps-dropping...

"It has happened many times before, including most infamously in 1996 when a Long March 3B rocket veered off course shortly after a launch and crashed into a village. Chinese officials reported six dead from the accident, although Western sources have speculated that hundreds of Chinese citizens may have died in the accident."

Why compare two sovereign nations with vastly different safety regulations?

I didnt. I only said that rockets sometime crash on people and gave an example. Nobody is comparing countries in this thread. Aviation is about as international as any industry can be.

False equivalency. 100 T of diffuse material reaching Earth, likely burning up, isn't the same as or even remotely comparable to parts falling off aircraft due to man-made negligence. Jettisoning honeycomb cowling sections because a particular model of engine is relatively unreliable, through design, manufacturing, or maintenance, isn't an excuse for not fixing it or not using a better engine if it cannot be fixed economically.

Could you proofread and type correctly so we understand what you're saying? I can't read all of what you're saying.

I'm sure people PW is working on that, but the failure rates on commercial aircraft parts are already ridiculously low. Bad things will always happen.

"Bad things will always happen" is a despicable shrug mentality. Bad things happen when people don't have their acts together in design, engineering, manufacturing, maintenance, and operation. The failure rates should be striving for zero, unlike the stunts Boeing has pulled on 737NG, MAX, and the 787.

Totally agree with you on the recent laxness in design and the regulatory capture that allowed it. But treating zero as a feasible goal is unrealistic. I've done code inspections for safety of flight code and making sure you have 100% coverage and branch coverage not just in the high level code but in assembler still doesn't get everything. You try to make sure that redundancy saves you (seriously boeing!) But common mode errors and just human fallibility to see all the possibilities mean we miss stuff. And all this is so much easier in software than in mechanical designs where redundancy sometimes just isn't doable. We shouldn't give up best practices, but we shouldn't have unreasonable expectations of them either. And not every engineering failure implies a failure in engineering process.

I wanted to clarify my last statement. Even when best practices are followed bad stuff happens, and that doesn't necessarily mean best practices need to change.

Of course not. Make improvements rather than knowingly shove-in bad Ducommun parts on the line or crappy MCAS. Also, hold manufacturers responsible when they take cost-shortcuts, sacrifice safety, and kill people. Boeing routinely gets a slap for doing so since it's also considered a strategic defense contractor, part of the MIC that greases palms in DC.

I never said it was feasible, you did. It must be strived for, because that's the difference between excellence and crap.

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