Engineers are exploring radical new designs for commercial planes
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Re: Engineers are exploring radical new designs for commercial planes
#2Re: Engineers are exploring radical new designs for commercial planes
#3paywalled, unfortunately, but just based on the headline and image, this is probably "flying cars" levels of speculation? No commercial manufacturer builds a completely new airplane and brings it to airline-industry-market in under 15 years. Especially designs that have been around for many decades already and aren't being used because economic sense is the only sense that drives the airline industry.
Re: Engineers are exploring radical new designs for commercial planes
#4I remember seeing renderings precisely like this in my middle school textbooks in the 90s, claiming the same thing. The truth is that commercial airliners are a solved engineering problem. We are at the absolute limits for speed, reliability, and safety that can be achieved with a flying machine in the earth’s atmosphere. Which is why the fundamental layout has not changed since the 707 was introduced over 60 years ago.
Blended wing designs fall short on many of these constraints, namely the complete lack of inherent stability. With total power loss, they become completely uncontrollable. This is an acceptable tradeoff for military aircraft (modern fighters have the same issue), but not for civil aviation.
Re: Engineers are exploring radical new designs for commercial planes
#5Interesting historical note on the blended wing design:
One of the main arguments against it was that designers weren't sure if people would be ok with sitting towards the center of the plane. The thought was that passengers wouldn't be comfortable without being able to at least see outside (even a little, looking at you 3/4/3 widebody planes).
I mention this b/c there is a quote in Mary Roach's Flying to Mars. She mentions concerns around how astronauts will be able to psychologically handle the remoteness of space. As a similar example. they talk about how in Victorian England people were concerned that trains would be traveling so quickly that it would induce a state of shock in the passengers. This turned out to not be the case at all.
In fact, she quotes a cosmonaut who says "Only people think this is problem is psychologists".
Re: Engineers are exploring radical new designs for commercial planes
#6I remember seeing renderings precisely like this in my middle school textbooks in the 90s, claiming the same thing. The truth is that commercial airliners are a solved engineering problem. We are at the absolute limits for speed, reliability, and safety that can be achieved with a flying machine in the earth’s atmosphere. Which is why the fundamental layout has not changed since the 707 was introduced over 60 years a…
Came to the comments to make nearly the exact same remark. I, too, remember seeing these in middle school in the 90s, as well as high school. Though, they weren't in my textbooks - but were in the supplemental "educational magazines" that the science teachers would supplement their coursework with, and "Popular Science" magazines that the school had in the library.
Re: Engineers are exploring radical new designs for commercial planes
#7I remember seeing renderings precisely like this in my middle school textbooks in the 90s, claiming the same thing. The truth is that commercial airliners are a solved engineering problem. We are at the absolute limits for speed, reliability, and safety that can be achieved with a flying machine in the earth’s atmosphere. Which is why the fundamental layout has not changed since the 707 was introduced over 60 years a…
Yup, I've been seeing these futuristic airplane concepts for most of my life, but commercial airframes seem to be converging to be more and more similar. Unusual elements like a third engine in the tail or horizontal stabilizers mounted above the rudder have largely disappeared. Given the thin margins in air travel, I suspect this is because this design is the most successful. It might be a local minimum, but when it comes to these radically different designs: "I'll believe it when I see it".
Re: Engineers are exploring radical new designs for commercial planes
#8Call me when they've solved seats in such planes.
If you put them in a central "barrel" like in a current plane it would be a bad use of the available space.
Yet you can't do otherwise. Because of the heavy banking when the plane turns, you can't seat people far away from the central axis and closer to the side edges of the V shape.
Re: Engineers are exploring radical new designs for commercial planes
#9No they aren’t. Airplanes like boats are certified in such a way that the regulations assume that all future airplanes will look like past airplanes.
As such any deviation from that standard form is super expensive because you need to have the regular create an updated set of rules. That takes years and years and tons of money/risk
It may make sense from a physics point of view but not from a business view.
Re: Engineers are exploring radical new designs for commercial planes
#10Puff piece as we head into the weekend. Not a bad summary of decades old concepts, but Boeing won't touch these things due to shareholder conservatism even though they are fundamentally better than the tube with wings. If there were a SpaceX of commercial jets, this is what they would build.