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Didn’t read the full article but it starts with > The jet was perhaps the pinnacle of American engineering excellence. Its retirement signals an end to an era
by moojacob 3mo ago
Didn’t read the full article but it starts with
> The jet was perhaps the pinnacle of American engineering excellence. Its retirement signals an end to an era of American culture—and ambition.
End of American ambition? SpaceX landing is rockets… today! That’s apples to apples also, both aerospace. In other fields we have literally taught computers how to talk.
- Leonard_of_Q 3mo agoThe Atlantic writes for its owners as well as its readership, both of whom consider it unsavoury to compliment their homeland without adding multiple caveats.
- jquery 3mo agoConsidering who the current face of the country is and how we are acting on the world stage, it’s the least they can do.
- throw-the-towel 3mo agoHow is this kind of ritual flagellation supposed to mitigate Trump though?
- GMoromisato 3mo agoIronically, it's this ritual self-flagellation that helped elect Trump. Normies lost faith in the media partly because they were seen as not really loving America. And if you don't trust the media, then it's a lot easier to believe Trump's lies.
- jquery 3mo ago> Normies lost faith in the media partly because they were seen as not really loving America. I would argue they lost faith because the media constantly lies and distorts the truth to promote the ideology of capital. They are elite and disconnected, absolutely, just not in a left wing way, but a corpo-capitalist way (which only looks “left” if you’re to the right of capital).
- boxed 3mo ago> constantly lies and distorts the truth sure > to promote the ideology of capital eh, no that's false. They promote the ideology of ad revenue at most, which causes audience capture, which on the left means anti-capital crazy talk like pro-theocracy, anti-growth and other weird shit.
- microgpt 3mo agoSocial media promotes ad revenue (engagement). That's why it's full of brainrot slop and outrage bait. Legacy media promotes ideologies consistent with its owners, which is why for instance it downplays bad stuff Israel does and upplays bad stuff Iran does.
- boxed 3mo ago> Legacy media promotes ideologies consistent with its owners, which is why for instance it downplays bad stuff Israel does and upplays bad stuff Iran does. Partly true, but also mostly wrong. It's all about the business model. Owners doing what you say can only do so much if the business model is based on selling ads and no one gets a salary if they don't attack jews enough for their audience. The claim that Israels bad actions are down played is pretty doubtful. I always see 10x or more negative reporting of Israel compared to what I happen to know about the conflicts. Like in Swedish media it's always "Israel attacks Lebanon" but never ever "Hizbollah attacks Israel", even though that's what happens first.
- kelnos 3mo agoI feel like it's the other way around: Trump got elected because he was extremely critical of the US, and spun that as "America sucks right now because the liberals have ruined it". And beyond that, he just said the right words to people who were not doing so well in the economy. Lies, of course, but very seductive lies, and for a while I even felt bad for some Trump voters for getting sucked into those lies. And then of course he leaned into the popular right-wing culture-war stuff. (No longer, though: at some point you lose the ability to say "but I thought he would help me!" after the 500th time he hasn't helped you like he said he would.)
- GMoromisato 3mo agoAgreed! Both sides said that "America sucks right now". I think Trump said "Let's go back to when America was great" whereas liberals said, "America was never great, so we need to keep changing." Worse, it was easy for some liberals to slide from "America was never great" to "and it's the fault of [white people|cis people|males]" I'm not endorsing any of those views--I just think that's how some people perceived it.
- dcrazy 3mo agoThis is why the right gets away with saying liberals hate America. Because as long as there is anything to criticize about America (which there always will be), some people simply cannot make a single truly positive statement about America, or even things that happened in or came from America. Slate is even worse than The Atlantic in this regard.
- mathgeek 3mo ago> This is why the right gets away with saying liberals hate America. This is a form of victim blaming. The right side of American politics gets away with it not because the left complains, but because the right doesn’t get punished at the polls for doing it.
- dcrazy 3mo agoThey don’t get punished at the polls because people accept, or are at least willing to entertain the implication, that the left wing dislikes America. And what sense does it make to vote for an unpatriotic politician? Would you want to work for a CEO who publicly disdains the company? (Gil Amelio’s infamous quote about steering the sinking Apple ship comes to mind.) As long as the Democratic base insists on caveating every American achievement with the Omnicause, it will keep playing into the Gingrichian rhetoric.
- jquery 3mo agoI looked up Gil Amelio’s “infamous” quote and it doesn’t seem incorrect given what Apple was going through at the time. Steve Jobs had just sold 1.5 million shares of Apple stock and tanked the stock, would you accuse Steve Jobs of hating Apple? Toxic positivity is when you can’t criticize something even when it deserves criticism. Is America full of brilliant people? Yes. Is it in a steep decline at the moment? Also yes. Apple thrived because Steve Jobs did a coup and steered the ship. America needs the same, but not from an incompetent nincompoop like the current moron.
- mindslight 3mo ago> what sense does it make to vote for an unpatriotic politician? I don't know? Ask everyone who voted for a second Grump term. Every one of his rambles is some kind of sour puss complaint about our country, and yet people are still lapping it up! I'd say the better framework is constructive versus destructive. The average American just doesn't want to think about constructive solutions or constructive criticism. The nuance required for incremental improvement is just too much work. But tell them you're going to smash things and hurt people, and they'll buy right in. It's essentially pan-religious fundamentalism. Of course then the corpos are all too happy to step in with their own constructive but proprietary and anti-individual-liberty solutions. Which points back to the real motives for why the destructive memes end up being so popularized to begin with - destruction creates a power vacuum for the corpos to step into, while constructive governmental solutions get corrupted by lobbyists to overtly benefit corpos.
- s1artibartfast 3mo agoTo pile on, it dont think this attitude is productive. For every person that finds it motivation for positive change, there are two that take the criticism as face value and g8ve up or lean into it. It is like basic child psychology. It is hard to get child to develop constructively by telling them they are awful and worthless.
- rayiner 3mo agoAmerica is currently leading the way in both commercial aerospace and AI simultaneously. This feels like a decade old article.
- GMoromisato 3mo agoJust off the top of my head, I can come up with a dozen American accomplishments that would have blown the minds of 747 engineers: The Internet Hubble Space Telescope Google Deep Blue beating Kasparov iPhone Human Genome Project F-22/B-2/F-35 stealth tech Falcon Heavy dual booster landings Waymo Starship live re-entry video via Starlink ChatGPT B-52 still flying
- GMoromisato 3mo agoI agree with you, and I would have expected Ian Bogost to take a more holistic view. Talking about why, for example, Boeing never build a larger passenger airplane, or why the Concorde is no longer flying, would actually make for an interesting analysis of technology and business. Why did the progression from the Wright brothers to the 747 not continue for the next fifty years? The answer has to do with physics and economics rather than lack of American ambition or excellence.
- WalterBright 3mo ago> Boeing never build a larger passenger airplane 1. there wasn't demand for one - airliner designs are driven by the customers 2. the airport terminals would have to be rebuilt 3. the runways would have to be redone to support the weight > why the Concorde is no longer flying It lost prodigious amounts of money on every flight. The Concorde was a prestige project, not a practical one. > Why did the progression from the Wright brothers to the 747 not continue for the next fifty years? The 747 is far more technologically primitive than today's airliners. Take a good close look at the wing shape of the two, for starters.
- GMoromisato 3mo agoAnd that's my point: Your answers are far more interesting than Ian Bogost's throwaway assertion that America just wasn't ambitious enough and that aircraft engineering peaked with the 747.
- projektfu 3mo agoYou could say that engineering excellence at GE (and competition with RR and P&W) led to ETOPS which made it less attractive to simply build larger airplanes with 3+ engines. Why send one 747 per day when you can send multiple A330s or 767s, accommodating more schedules?
- Rover222 3mo agoGlad to see your sentiment. I’m so tired of the reflexive self flagellation of a lot of Americans. It’s often based in ignorance.
- rootusrootus 3mo agoIt is very tiring. I get why Europeans might enjoy taking shots at us (though at one point I'd have said it was more of a good natured ribbing, given that Europe's history is also many Americans' history), and I fully understand the armies of bots spreading invective ... but the constant dogging on America by our own citizens is sad. I'm sure a lot of this outcome is intentional, but nobody fights back. America is many things, has done many things. Some great, some not so much. Americans themselves should at least be honest about seeing the good parts even if nobody else will admit it. And if we're going to keep progressing forward we need people to be on board in good faith. /soapbox rant over
- wolvoleo 3mo agoNot American but I feel the sentiment. I'm planning to change nationality soon as 'my' own country is also on the same right-wing conservative track. I'm not interested in making things better anymore. I just want to break with them forever. They deserve no more admiration or loyalty. I don't believe in national pride or even of sports teams. My loyalty is always conditional, as long as my ethics align. I can imagine some Americans feel that way too.
- rootusrootus 3mo agoYes, some people have that viewpoint. Very transactional. I think there was a time when I might have agreed. But as I have gotten older I've gained more of an appreciation for shared mythology and how it promotes social cohesion. Historically in many places religion has been a primary source of shared mythology. In America, despite prominent Christian religions, a strong historical shared mythology has been of our own founding. It does not matter that it is myth, it matters that it is shared. What I want is when an American citizen goes into that theater at the US House of Representatives before the tour and watches the short film about the founding of the country, they should come out of it damn near shedding tears of pride in how great we are. Bullshit or not, the American Creed is a source of unity. That is failing, and I am sad to see it. When everyone becomes strictly transactional, society has failed.
- sidewndr46 3mo agoI find the whole thing a little odd. The 747 seems to be a great aircraft. It's also a quad jet and the change in regulations for ETOPS makes twinjets a no brainer for reducing cost. There's no reason to hurry and up and get rid of them, many will continue in cargo service for many years. But there isn't any reason to build big quad jets any longer
- nradov 3mo agoWe might still reach a point in a few decades where capacity constraints at major airports make larger quadjets economically viable again. That was the thesis behind the Airbus A380, and it didn't work. But is it possible that they weren't so much wrong as just too early?
- ggm 3mo ago"Didn't work" meaning did not result in 5,000 orders. The aircraft in use by the middle east and asian airlines (and Qantas) are doing fine. They are also less economic than the modern 2 engine widebodies, despite being more economic than a 747 on the same route, with higher comfort levels and less intrusive engine noise. They just didn't turn out to fit the emerging economics of flight. They "work" fine.
- sidewndr46 3mo agoI think what they mean is the A380 never made airbus any money. It makes plenty of money for many airlines
- ggm 3mo agoThanks. Good clarification, makes sense to me now I grokked context.
- s1artibartfast 3mo agoI think they mean work out for airbus. Financially was a huge program disaster. It sold half the number of airframes needed for cost break even in nominal value, before accounting for the cost of capital. This also doesnt account for billions in illegal EU government subsidies.
- jquery 3mo agoThe most interesting thing about SpaceX is how it convinced a lot of otherwise sober people that data centers in space was a $50 septillion addressable market. You might laugh and think I’m joking but a lot of people seriously fell for the nonsense in the public filing, which should’ve been a one way ticket to SEC jail.
- grosswait 3mo agoLet’s revisit this comment in 5 years. I’m not convinced HN critics know more about this than SpaceX does.
- GMoromisato 3mo agoWhat I find silly is the certainty that critics have that SpaceX will fail. No one can predict the future, and it's absolutely possible that orbital datacenters will fail (either for technology or business reasons). But: 1. Without a time machine, we cannot be certain. 2. If forced to choose, I would rather root for their success and be wrong than root for their failure and be right.
- WalterBright 3mo agoWhat I find silly is the certainty that critics have that SpaceX will fail. When I started my own business, everyone thought it was doomed to failure. Friends, enemies, acquaintances, all of them. Except my dad. He believed in me, though he had no idea what I was doing. Musk is in good company with the crazy people who build the first tunnel under the Thames, the nuts who laid the first transatlantic people, the morons who dug the Panama Canal, and the fools who built the first transcontinental railroad. Me, I bought me some SPCX.
- DangitBobby 3mo agoA bit strange that you started you comment with the exact same sentence as the previous commenter.
- shigawire 3mo agoWe've given up on the next generation of technology and choose to wallow in sweet hydrocarbons.
- rdiddly 3mo agoShoot, I should've replied under this comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48714519 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48714519