41–50 of 114 posts
Reconnaissance would work too.
I thought the issue was that it was hard to pressurize a blended wing design. All pressurized planes are pretty much a tube shape, which are easier to design to endure metal fatigue and lots of pressurization cycles. The skin of an airliner is 2-4mm thick, I think you would need a substantially thicker skin for this shape.
The fuel tanks don’t care. They’re not pressurized on a normal design. The cargo may not need it either.
The KC-46 program has not gone swimmingly. I'm curious how they think they're going to get a demonstrator flying in 5 years when they can't get a tanker that's based on an existing production airframe flying on schedule. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_KC-46_Pegasus
And I don't even blame the Air Force for deliberately underestimating. They have a legitimate need for this aircraft and the existing fleet has been worked to death.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually, the 737 MAX as a new plane would have been fine. The MCAS software was used to try to give it the same flight characteristics as the 737 so that existing 737 pilots did not have to get additional certification for it.
Yeah, but they didn’t just build a new plane (pilots perhaps?) and instead always seem to try to modify existing designs, which would argue that is cheaper than greenfield.
They say there's a lot more volume, but would it carry more weight, and where would the weight have to be placed? Why isn't this design used commercially?
> where would the weight have to be placed? In the body?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Has it been evaluated whether any real-life evacuations were time sensitive enough to where a wide bodied plane would have resulted in more deaths? Doesn't seem like a real problem intuitively, but I don't really have any data to back that up.
Do they do all those evacuation tests with able-bodied volunteers? How would they evacuate for example five wheelchair users within the 90 seconds or whatever is required for the test?
But - the test handles this by only giving them 90 seconds. In the real world it would take far longer, but rather than testing a longer, more realistic test, they do a really fast one instead.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If that were true why did we get the 737 MAX?
Not sure if you're being sarcastic or not, but I'll bite: The 747 MAX that killed 346 people in two separate accidents and was grounded for nearly two years and cost Boeing 10's of billions of dollars in fines, cancelled orders, etc.? It is perhaps not the best example of modifications to an existing design.
The KC-46 program has not gone swimmingly. I'm curious how they think they're going to get a demonstrator flying in 5 years when they can't get a tanker that's based on an existing production airframe flying on schedule. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_KC-46_Pegasus