Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by na85 2686 days ago
Perhaps not, but remember that the metal fatigue phenomenon responsible for cracking in the Comet was not yet fully understood at that time.

Nowadays we have a very good understanding of how metals degrade/respond to repeated load cycles and can design around it. I have not personally worked on airliner window structures but there are a number of avenues that one could take to retain the general shape of the window and still avoid structural compromise due to cracking.