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ryanjshawtoday at 5:49 AM1 replyview on HN

> have all been shaped heavily by human blood

This assumes the lessons were specific to the body type and aren’t generalizable?


Replies

imoverclockedtoday at 6:27 AM

Even small changes to time tested designs provide significant risk. A completely new body style will inevitably provide completely new failure modes.

Pressurizing a tube vs pressurizing a pancake (or flattened sphere, or some other easy approximation) will have very different mechanical loading characteristics. Turbulence (differences in air speed/pressure) across a large flat-ish surface that also has a signifiant pressure differential will also prove challenging to design for and scale up.

Aerospace is a very high dimensional design process. Doing anything different puts you into unknown territory real fast.