Hot air punditry
Desperate for any news from Rolls Royce, the pundits are generating much hot air and making connections where none exist. We should not get too excited about occasional engine failures – where the progress without breakages? except that you hope they happen mostly on the test stand.
I imagine a horizontal line representing engine reliability; on the left side are very conservative but overweight designs and on the right there is a not well defined limit represented by a theoretical engine having the least weight and fuel consumption for the least acceptable reliability. Somewhere on this line is your competitors’ engine. You, the designer are required to place your new engine in the very small space between the competition and the limit.
Advancing knowledge, breakages and technology improvements move the limit gradually to the right allowing progressive product improvement in service. Even so, a gap slowly opens up between your engine and the limit, into which gap your competitor will eventually jump. And on it goes, but it does mean that designers are continually seeking the limit of the possible, a place where hazards abound.
A relatively new factor to contend with is the short term press and public overreaction when things go wrong because people become used to living unnaturally safe and uneventful lives and forget that there is always a price to pay for advancement.