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Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

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Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#161

Post by throwaway2037 »

rippercushions wrote: post #112
wahern wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, it's obviously a matter of diminishing returns and opportunity cost. But the re-engine for the A380 was basically a rote, low-risk, B-team exercise for Rolls Royce. All they had to do was tweak their existing generation stuff. The program was already well underway, and they still dropped it; they all but explicitly said the reason was, "meh, we lost interest". Something seems to have changed. Putting my cynical…

Boeing, Airbus, and Rolls-Royce are going to be in for a rude awakening if/when the Chinese aircraft industry ever gets their shit together, and/or if batteries ever become light/dense enough to support electric passenger flight. That said, watching the Comac C919 shitshow (14 years and still not in revenue service, and this is for a 737/A320 clone), I'm not holding my breath. The twin-aisle C929 is still a decade aw…

    That said, watching the Comac C919 shitshow (14 years and still not in revenue service, and this is for a 737/A320 clone), I'm not holding my breath.
This is true, but this is also a command economy. They can do that for a long time. At least 10 more years with gov't support. They'll get there eventually, plus the order book is essentially infinitely large because gov't will immediately force all domestic carriers to cancel foreign orders and only buy Comac C919. I am guessing it can handle 100% of internal flights (size / distance / etc.)

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#163

Post by WalterBright »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #94
WalterBright wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you have a log from a tree you just chopped down. You have the same amount of wood dug up as coal. Each emits the same CO2 when burned. Where is the net decrease in CO2? What difference does it make being fossilized?

You're missing the fact that I'm also growing said trees. If I plant a bunch of trees to sell the lumber as firewood, I turn around and plant more trees so I can sell more wood in the future. Those trees capture the C02 released by the first batch, and then I sell them again. This is especially true with algae ponds, because 1) there's no chance there was an existing algae pond that would put me 1 batch in the hole o…

> You're missing the fact that I'm also growing said trees.

But you can grow trees and capture carbon anyway, and not burn them.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#164

Post by speedgoose »

zuhsetaqi wrote: post #158
diebeforei485 wrote: post #4

It's a magnificent plane. It's very unfortunate that they launched the "shortened" version. The design and engineering was done for longer fuselage, so it actually has extra structure (and extra weight!) and larger wings than necessary. And it launched just before engines got a lot more efficient. The upside for passengers is that it's still the smoothest flying experience, even in turbulence. Boeing's 747 was incred…

Maybe a dumb question but can’t you switch the engines to the more efficient ones? I mean it’s surely not cheap but maybe cheaper and faster than building whole new planes!?

More efficient engines fitting the A380 requirements do not exist.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#166

Post by WalterBright »

rainsford wrote: post #89
WalterBright wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you have a log from a tree you just chopped down. You have the same amount of wood dug up as coal. Each emits the same CO2 when burned. Where is the net decrease in CO2? What difference does it make being fossilized?

I'll caveat this by stating I'm not an expert in the area, but the obvious difference seems to be that I can keep growing more trees to burn, while the only way to keep burning coal is to dig up more of it. Burning a tree may release the same amount of CO2 as burning the coal, but the carbon in the tree was taken out of the air during the growing process, so the total amount of CO2 hasn't changed over the lifetime of…

Nobody said you had to burn the trees you grow. If you want to remove CO2 from the air, just grow the trees.

There's no difference between burning the tree you grew and burning the tree you dug up in the coal bed.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#167

Post by WalterBright »

OkayPhysicist wrote: post #97
WalterBright wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do know what the words mean. Throwing the log in a landfill (or building a house with it) would accomplish the same thing, and is a heluva lot cheaper.

The difference is that no one is paying me to bury a bunch of logs. The fact is, there is ample demand for high density energy storage. People want to go places, people want stuff brought to them. Until battery technology makes a massive leap into the realm of eating roses and shitting rainbows, combustible fuels are the only economically feasible option. In that realm, our options are A) keep digging up fossil fuels…

Your equation overlooks simply growing trees. Build houses with the lumber instead of burning them.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#168

Post by CaptainZapp »

reisse wrote: post #28
rob74 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's not get too carried away, shall we? At least the 346 people that died in the two 737-MAX crashes would probably question your "unqualified success" statement. But yes, no one can deny that the 737 has been a cash cow for Boeing (for far too long, some would say).

737 MAX MCAS issue pale in comparison to 737 classic rudder issues (two crashes confirmed because of the issue, three crashes suspected, and a few more cases where pilots were able to overcome the plane). Yet it happened in the era without social networks and Internet news, so few people remember about it.

That's true.

Then again the 737s with rudder issues were not brand spanking new planes.

Without Boeing's negligence and corner cutting this never would have happened.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#169

Post by WalterBright »

bsk26 wrote: post #90
WalterBright wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do know what the words mean. Throwing the log in a landfill (or building a house with it) would accomplish the same thing, and is a heluva lot cheaper.

Except it'll probably still decay into co2 in the landfill while the coal underground is stable

Block off the oxygen supply (like how coal became coal) and they won't decay into CO2.

Re: Qantas is bringing back Airbus A380s from the California desert

#170

Post by sumedh »

wahern wrote: post #66
kylehotchkiss wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emirates, the largest owner of A380s, is asking for a bigger one https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/emirates-boss-tim-clark-o... Apparently the slot limitations at major city airports are becoming a harder constraint to work with, especially as a larger swatch of Asia gain the ability to travel long haul. Losing the A380 in 15-20 years is going to make flying between big city pairs more expensive.

None of the engine manufacturers are interested. That's what killed the A380--Rolls Royce pulled out of a re-engine deal that would've brought A380 engines into the 21st century. "Green" concept showcases notwithstanding, all the engine manufactures seem to have decided to cut back on investment and coast for awhile. Something will need to change to spur competition in the engine space, and then we might see hungrier…

> Something will need to change to spur competition in the engine space,

Isn't SpaceX going to use Starship for international travel. That might motivate these engine makers.

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