@bscholl Boom ceo cannot comprehend putting things under a cover fork found in kitchen I fear

It’s funny to me how many commenters here assume I think landing gear should slavishly follow the Raptor 3 design exactly, versus the general principle of iterative simplification.

We did two iterations of XB-1 gear, second one deleted 40% of parts while improving reliability

@bscholl There is absolutely no reason for that level of complexity. I can’t believe they’ve had decades to improve on that and haven’t done anything.

@bscholl Imagine Space X engineers on this. Would look IMPECABLE

@Robotbeat @bscholl The reason is serviceability. Dog if you tried to make an airliner with the design philosophy of Raptor you'd be known as the airline equivalent of Astra

@bscholl Aight big guy let’s see the overture wheel well

@bscholl R3 is more complex than R1, it just has all that complexity hidden because most of the plumbing/wiring is integrated directly into the structure. This trade only made sense because they wanted to get rid of the shielding around the engines, so they must be heatproof themselves

@bscholl Boeing is working with FAA regs and they cannot change anything or make things better without massive investment on recertification.

@mcrs987 @bscholl It is. The 737 Max is the epitime of technical debt. The whole industry is, but the Max is literally infamous for it.

Nah, as somebody who's worked on airplanes, getting in the guts of any non clean sheet aircraft is always a pain. More tubes and access points 50% of the time just means more things to break and you have to remove a bunch of things to get to the tooth or connection you're looking for that's leaking and just needs a quarter turn to tighten it. The 737 especially is 50 years of upgrades and minor changes piled on top of each other. Literally the equivalent of airliner equivalent of 737_final_draft_final-for-real this-time.pdf

@bscholl In exchange for that shielding, R3 is now basically not servicable, if it has a problem you just throw out the whole engine and replace it. And that tighter integration took an enormous amount of development effort, and made the engine harder to build

Engineering is about trades

@bscholl The last thing I as a pilot would want are critical hydraulic and electrical and control systems so integrated into the aircraft they are inaccessible and invisible.

@bscholl Aviation is very quickly becoming as nuclear had been until recently. We very badly need to fight the bureaucratic impulse.

@bscholl They can only dream…

@mcrs987 @bscholl Okay but like... that is an incredible mess in there. Everything for a reason, I'm sure. But... damn.

@bscholl The actual lesson people should take from Raptor is about vertical integration and holistic engineering. SpaceX arrived at a design for this specific part that only makes sense because they own the whole vehicle and can optimize every piece simultaneously for their specific need

@mcrs987 @bscholl Yeah, I'm well aware of aviation's requirements. I literally work on a program to develop a more manufacturable and higher performance version of a single aisle airliner like the 737.

@Robotbeat @bscholl I would sure hope you wouldn't see that as a mess then

@bscholl People will say this is for serviceability but really they could innovate and make it simpler and more reliable.

@bscholl "Aviation is most complicated industry"

Is not a flex

And should never have been one