[Aloha]

Boeing wrote most of the book on how to do this stuff safely - they just stopped following that book once they bought MDC and its management took over (and arguable laid off the engineering people at MDC who could do it the MDC way safely).

Thats why Boeing is trying to undo it, and repurchase Spirit Aerosystems.

[roenxi]

Note the past-tense in that opening though. The aircraft industry moved from a less-safe state to a more-safe state, then less-safe states were banned.

This raises the question of how feasible it'd be to build new companies. The way that is proven to work (start less safe, then ratchet up standards) is no longer possible because the start of the path has been made illegal. The people who are outcompeting the US are not doing it by starting at the low end and working up.

[Aloha]

There is absolutely no reason why you couldn't meet the accepted safety standards for this industry as a startup.

[roenxi]

There is an excellent reason; startups generally have no idea what they are doing and are very sloppy compared to an established company. Not only that, but they have to be trying to do things differently - otherwise there was no point starting a new company.

Those two factors add up to unsafe practices. It is likely enough that it needs to be factored into investment plans.

[Aloha]

In aviation specifically the standards and practices for the industry are widely available (start with the public domain retrospectives from Project Apollo).

I'm going to note that SpaceX does not seem to be struggling beyond what I would expect to develop a new heavy lift system. Yes, lots of RUD moments, but not an unexpected amount.

I actually agree with you in broad terms, we do have too much hard to follow regulation - but Aviation isn't one of those cases - every rule we have in that sector was paid for in lives.

[roenxi]

> In aviation specifically the standards and practices for the industry are widely available (start with the public domain retrospectives from Project Apollo).

Startup chaos has never been about documentation not being available. There is an almost infinite amount of useful and relevant material that the average startup ignores.

> SpaceX does not seem to be struggling beyond what I would expect to develop a new heavy lift system.

Exactly. We expect some rockets to explode and some rockets did indeed explode. They aren't the safest machines on the planet. If SpaceX was expected to have no exploding rockets, they wouldn't be able to operate their business.

> I actually agree with you in broad terms, we do have too much hard to follow regulation - but Aviation isn't one of those cases - every rule we have in that sector was paid for in lives.

I counter-agree, but ... spending lives is acceptable. We already accept it in all sorts of fields for more trivial things than aerospatial success. If people dying is unacceptable, it is literally impossible to run a civilisation; we don't know how to do mining, forestry and construction without the occasional death. And the first thing that'd go is people doing deliveries on motorcycles, where we have this mysterious tolerance for risk.

We should have consistent standards, not randomly high standards for aerospace. It is bizarre that people can just accept someone getting on a motorbike but it is controversial for Boeing to exist as an independently managed company after around 2x plane crashes.