When Boeing’s Starliner commercial crew vehicle failed to reach its planned orbit, it capped off a disastrous 2019 for the company. But it’s biggest problem is the grounding of the 737 MAX. When the ban went into effect, airlines had to cancel thousands of flights due to suddenly not having enough aircraft available. Boeing itself is facing fines and lawsuits from airlines, and has recorded its first loss in 23 years. New 737 MAX are rolling off the assembly line, but since they cannot deliver them to customers, they’ve started to run out of space to park the planes.

All of this can be traced to something that happened 23 years ago - the merger of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. Boeing was successful with its civilian airplanes, but feared that an economic slowdown could threaten its survival. McDonnell Douglas, on the other hand, was no longer successful with its civilian airliners, but boasted a lot of military contracts. A merger, Boeing hoped, would combine the strengths of both companies, and diversify income streams.

But even though Boeing was taking over McDonnell Douglas in a financial sense, the reverse happened with its management. Many McDonnell Douglas executives were given senior positions inside Boeing. Boeing’s previously detail-oriented and excellent engineering culture changed as a result; now it was about cost-cutting and shareholder value instead.

As a result, Boeing spent its time figuring out where it could save money instead of developing new planes. And so the 737, the best-selling airplane in the world (until 2019), became a victim of its own success: Instead of developing a replacement model, Boeing kept tinkering with the 737 to keep it up to date. That meant bolting on modern technology on an aging design.

The 737 was originally designed when ground crews loaded a planes’ cargo manually. So Boeing’s decision to have the plane sit very low made it easier to load and unload its cargo, compared to other airplanes of the time. But now that decision would haunt the 737. Ground crews now used machines to aid them, making a planes height a non-issue. Engines, in the meantime, had become much bigger¹ — so big that they no longer fit under the 737’s wings, so they kept moving forward and up. Eventually, the new engine positions made the plane unstable under certain conditions. But instead of redesigning the 737’s airframe, Boeing introduced the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), which was supposed to make up for these shortcomings. As we know today, it didn’t do its job very well.

It’s easy to blame this on just one thing - and yes, Boeing could have redesigned the 737’s airframe to avoid this issue. But that would have been a costly and lengthy undertaking, and it too would have required a lot of testing to make sure the new airframe didn’t have new issues either. But the MCAS design itself was also lacking.

Critical airplane systems are supposed to be redundant. There’s more than one of everything that’s needed to complete a flight safely. Most planes have two, three, or more flight computers in case one malfunctions, sensors exist multiple times in case one fails, and there are two pilots onboard in case one is incapacitated. But the MCAS relied on just one sensor, with no backup in case of failure, and never cross-checked the data with other systems on board. Operating without a backup is fine for the in-flight entertainment system, but not for a system that is supposed to keep the plane from stalling and crashing. On top of that, Boeing never mentioned the MCAS in any of its training manuals, so pilots didn’t even know about a critical piece of software that kept the plane in the air.

It’s clear that Boeing knew of the problems. Employee emails include such comments as ‘this airplane is designed by clowns, who are in turn supervised by monkeys’ or ‘Would you put your family on a Max simulator trained aircraft? I wouldn’t.’  Boeing management chose to ignore the problems, instead claiming that 737 NG pilots could easily fly the new MAX planes without having to undergo costly simulator training. This decision ensured Boeing would sell a lot of 737 MAX planes, because what airline would say no to a more efficient plane that it could immediately put to use? It also underscores the current philosophy of Boeing, where shareholder value is most important - and not the passengers that fly in its planes.

Interestingly, Airbus has not really been able to profit off of Boeings troubles so far. Partly, this is because Airbus has its own troubles. The company has had to pay fines in multiple countries because of bribery and corruption. The other problem is that even if Boeing wasn’t in trouble, Airbus can’t produce planes quickly enough. If you order one of the new A320neo jets today, you have to wait nine years until you actually receive the plane — and that’s assuming no further production delays, which keep plaguing Airbus. So airlines can’t just cancel their 737 MAX orders, and switch to Airbus’ offerings. Instead, they have to hope that Boeing eventually gets its act together, and gains regulatory approval for its planes.

Color is Weird

You probably know that the colors we see are composed of red, green, and blue light. But there are some colors that we see every day that don’t really exist — like Brown (YouTube).

And… Action!

If you’ve ever watched a “Behind the Scenes” feature, you’ve seen someone clap a slate before the action starts. The slate contains information for the editor so they know which scene and take it is, and the clap allows them to match up the audio with the video. It sounds like a simple job, but it isn’t: Here’s Why Slate Operators Matter (And Why Quentin Tarantino’s is So Great).

Dangerous Beauty

Nuclear weapons are the most destructive weapon on Earth. Yet nuclear explosions have a haunting quality to them: Recently digitized and declassified videos of nuclear tests

📖 Weekly Longread 📚

“A little-known start-up helps law enforcement match photos of unknown people to their online images — and “might lead to a dystopian future or something,” a backer says.” The Secretive Company That Might End Privacy as We Know It

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No one knows what makes them, but there’s an otherworldly quality to them²: Dark Slope Streaks Split on Mars