Originally Posted by
Bend alot
More the point why did it's authority need to be increased during initial testing?
I guess a valid question to the FAA as a feedback question.
If my memory serves, MCAS was designed to address an issue in high-speed high-g turns at high AOA, based on wind tunnel tests and simulations. When they did the flight tests with the real aircraft they found similar issue at low-speed and high AOA (and with no g-dependency), which had not been found in wind tunnel or simulation. So they extended MCAS to work in larger area of flight envelope and removed the g threshold so it triggered solely on AOA. Because speed was lower in the new target area, the maximum authority was increased to have the same effect.
Note that:
1. I am not sure if there was also an altitude dependency (which was then removed), some reports mention altitude but they may be mistaken or it may be that the original target area of flight envelope (or target manoeuvre) would only occur at high altitude.
2. I am not definitely sure if authority was increased across the board or only in the new lower-speed areas - I suspect the latter (i.e. the original authority for the original problem was not changed)