KLM Airlines To Fund Development of Fuel-Efficient Flying-V Plane (cnn.com) 112
KLM Royal Dutch Airlines announced that it will help fund the development of a V-shaped, fuel-efficient airplane design known as the Flying-V. CNN reports: Intended to improve the sustainability of air travel, the Flying-V was conceived by Justus Benad, then a student at the Technical University of Berlin, and developed by researchers at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, also known as TU Delft. Its futuristic design incorporates the passenger cabin, fuel tanks and cargo hold into the wings. It's claimed the plane will use 20% less fuel than the Airbus A350-900 while carrying a similar number of passengers -- the Flying-V will seat 314, while the Airbus A350 seats between 300 and 350. The design also mirrors the A350's 65-meter (213 feet) wingspan, enabling it to use existing airport infrastructure.
TU Delft project leader Roelof Vos said such innovation was needed as a stepping stone to greater efficiency while technology was still being developed to create large-scale electric airplanes. The plane's increased fuel efficiency is largely a result of its aerodynamic design, Vos explained, although its reduced weight also contributes. The researchers hope to fly a scale model this September, Vos said, while a mock-up of the new cabin design will be open to the public at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport in October, as part of KLM's 100th anniversary celebrations. The completed plane is expected to enter service between 2040 and 2050.
TU Delft project leader Roelof Vos said such innovation was needed as a stepping stone to greater efficiency while technology was still being developed to create large-scale electric airplanes. The plane's increased fuel efficiency is largely a result of its aerodynamic design, Vos explained, although its reduced weight also contributes. The researchers hope to fly a scale model this September, Vos said, while a mock-up of the new cabin design will be open to the public at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport in October, as part of KLM's 100th anniversary celebrations. The completed plane is expected to enter service between 2040 and 2050.
Re:So flying in a wing, wouldn't that be great? (Score:4, Interesting)
Doubtful, a flying-wing design is usually more rigid overall than a conventional design with a rigid fuselage and flexible wings.
I would actually expect it to be a smoother ride, because a lot of the wing movement is translated to the fuselage in a conventional plane. The connection between the wing and fuselage is rigid, not hinged, so any wing motion must result in fuselage movement. The difference in flexibility means you experience the average motion over the period of time that the wing is flexing; maybe a quarter second. So the flexible wings help a lot to turn heavy turbulence into moderate turbulence.
When the whole thing is rigid, there is less motion, so a smoother ride. With a conventional design you have to make the wings flexible to make them strong enough. The motion spreads out the force. With a flying wing, the overall design starts out with more even forces, so it allows for more rigidity.
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Why are forces more even?
Other problems are pressurization---hard to manufacture efficiently and with low mass in other than long tubes with round cross-section. B2's don't pressurize the bomb bay. And the accelerations on outboard seats in turns. Fun for the kids, for about 10 minutes. First class will be the center. Economy minus on the outside, plus you pay for each barf.
They might be f
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Does it work this way? When your tires and wheels are rigid and connected to a bumpy ground, is the ride smoother?
Why are forces more even?
Re-read the parent, particularly the phrase:
The connection between the wing and fuselage is rigid, not hinged,
Your wheels and tyres are a hinged connection (axle to chassis) with suspension. Bad comparison. But like the curiousity.
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The wings on a relatively large passenger plane are flexible. That does help a lot to reduce turbulence (like GGP actually did say), just like suspension on a car. Therefore it's very strange that he then went on to say that a rigid design would have less motion. GP's car analogy perfectly points out this contradiction.
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Like the inertia of a car without suspension? I doubt it.
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Your wheels and tyres are a hinged connection (axle to chassis) with suspension. Bad comparison. But like the curiousity.
Yes, but they don't flop around. There's springs and dampers.
Aircraft wing tips aren't rigidly connected to the fuselage, they can move up/down about as independently as the wheels on a car can, hence the original comparison.
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Well, it is nothing like a car wheel because that has a hing and spring oriented in a different direction that the movement of the car, and the arrangement shifts the forces around for the comfort of the human. But the whole car bounces around more because of the suspension. A car without modern suspension has way less movement, but it is sudden shocks. Without suspension you can control the car more precisely, because it is bouncing around less. Saying it is more rigid is already saying it will have smalle
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That is only true on a perfectly smooth road. On normal roads, the suspension does smooth out the irregularities in the road (all assuming the car has working shocks of course). Without suspension, on any normal road, the car gets very difficult to control because the whee
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Can you clarify a bit? I don't understand your reasoning. On one hand you say flexibility is good for smoothing out turbulence:
But on the other hand you say that it's rigidity that makes for a smoother ride:
Also y
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Can you clarify a bit? I don't understand your reasoning. On one hand you say flexibility is good for smoothing out turbulence:
Flexibility isn't good or bad, and it doesn't have the same effect everywhere. Here I'm talking about the difference in flexibility between the wing and the fuselage. It is like a low-pass filter; the wings bounce up and down quickly, and the average of each wing gets transferred to the fuselage.
But on the other hand you say that it's rigidity that makes for a smoother ride:
Total rigidity across the whole craft will have a lot to do with how much motion there is, and how much force gets put on the structure of the craft. These add up to the same total forces, but only one turns into tu
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Ok, that's clearer.
I'm not totally convinced though: flexible wings not only average out over space (over the wingspan), but also over time, like a car's suspension. A flying wing only averages out over space, like a rigid boat. Intuitively I would think the former is more effective for getting a smooth ride.
Or in other words: in automobile design, one strives to have as little as possible unsprung mass. In a tube-and-wings design, the tube is sprung mass and the wings are mixed sprung/unsprung. In a flying
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The tube is mostly-unsprung mass. So the difference is smaller. And the wing would be like sprung mass, but with super-stiff springs.
The car analogies are difficult, as you say.
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I think there's something wrong with you logic there. You admit that flexible wings help a lot to reduce the effect of turbulence, yet you say there's less motion if the whole thing is rigid.
To make a car analogy, that would be like saying that the suspension of a car helps a lot to reduce the effect of bumps, but it would be better not to have suspension at all since there's less motion if the whole thing is rigid. That doesn't make sense, does it?
I think a rigid design will make the high frequency compone
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To make a car analogy, that would be like saying that the suspension of a car helps a lot to reduce the effect of bumps, but it would be better not to have suspension at all since there's less motion if the whole thing is rigid.
That is exactly correct, if you subtract the word "better" which is a subjective value judgment. There is less motion with stiff suspension. But it gets transferred faster.
Or to put it another way, the suspension increase the amplitude of the signal while decreasing the frequency.
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Depends on the kind of motion. When driving over cobblestones, soft suspension definitely results in less motion. Going over a large speed bump, though, will result in less motion with a stiff suspension. So in the airplane, large vertical motions may be amplified somewhat by flexible wings, but the high frequency components are certainly reduced.
Flexible wings on modern fly by wire aircraft have the extra advantage of being able to add active turbulence damping, reducing precisely the low frequency compone
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The car analogy doesn't work if you take it that far, that much is certain.
For the analogy to work on cobblestones, you'd have to drive slow enough that you're not bouncing off of the slopes. Airplanes don't bounce off of air turbulence like that. So creep slowly enough that the edges hitting the tires involves friction (drag), instead of collisions, and now it will be just like the large speed bump and the airplane.
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I would actually expect it to be a smoother ride, because a lot of the wing movement is translated to the fuselage in a conventional plane.
In a straight line I would agree. Unfortunately soon after takeoff when the plane banks the people towards the back at the V will rename the "flying-wing" "The Vomitron"
Unless this thing can turn without banking.
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In a straight line I would agree. Unfortunately soon after takeoff when the plane banks the people towards the back at the V will rename the "flying-wing" "The Vomitron"
Unless this thing can turn without banking.
All planes bank to turn. There will be no more banking required in a V wing plane.
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In a straight line I would agree. Unfortunately soon after takeoff when the plane banks the people towards the back at the V will rename the "flying-wing" "The Vomitron"
Unless this thing can turn without banking.
Huh?
a) All the passengers inside a rigid body will move the same and feel the same forces, there's no "vomit zones".
b) Why will it be different than any other aircraft? That's nonsense.
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Those further away from the axis of rotation most certainly move differently and feel different forces. In a conventional aircraft the passengers are all very close to the axis of rotation during a banking (rolling) maneuver and see roughly the same forces.
So a V-Wing may make most sense and show more profit on longer flights where the banking can be done more slowly. It may not make sense on flights that are hopping from one city to a neighbouring city where the extra time spent turning more slowly eats into the fuel saved from going straight.
As with many things in life, one improved technology might not work for all applications and we still need to rely on older technologies for some tasks.
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Actually the problem is roll, banking for turns (Score:2)
Actually, the comfort issue is banking for turns. In a conventional plane the passengers are all near the roll axis. In a flying wing they can be far out. The farther from the axis
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There is no reason you have to dip the one side as much as you raise the other side, though. Relative to each other you do, but not relative to your original position. You could operate the controls such that one side felt increased weight, instead; you gain a few feet of elevation while turning, and then angle back down.
It isn't like they're intended to make sharp turns. So this requires comfort testing, it isn't something we can determine from base principles.
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"I am no scientist but isn't wings flexing more then fuselage? Seems to be the ride would be a lot worse in a wing then in the center? I could be way off base on that, but just seems like a V design isn't so great for passengers"
You mean if the toilets in one wing don't work, people will queue in the other wing thereby crashing the plane?
Re: Bigger air sickness bags needed! (Score:4, Informative)
most course correction is done with the rudder
No. It's called a banked turn and involves both rolling the airplane (with the ailerons) as well as yawing (with the rudder)*. So yeah. The poor people sitting out near the ends of the wings are going to get a wild ride up and down.
*And a bit of elevator, to counteract the airplanes tendency to slide downwards toward the lower wing.
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no lateral forces
Correct. But it's not lateral forces that are the problem. It's acceleration/deceleration along the vertical axis of the passengers. Which is what make roller-coaster rides so much fun.
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The lift required to keep the plane in the air equals the weight of the plane. The plane can't be made "denser" without increasing the lift per unit area, which degrades the lift/drag ratio, thus reducing efficiency - so it's probably not going to be that way.
I think there are structural advantages to this design that will allow it to be lighter for a given cargo capacity, assuming that the aerodynamics work out OK, and that helps efficiency. But it looks like the horizontal span of the plane will be smalle
Re: Bigger air sickness bags needed! (Score:5, Informative)
You've never flown inside an airplane, have you? Planes turn by banking. If a pilot uses the rudder to turn, the passengers will get sick very very quickly (especially in the back).
The main purposes of the rudder are:
1. To compensate for engine failure
2. To coordinate turns (make sure yaw matches bank so no lateral force is felt by the passengers) and keep the plane from yawing during straight and level flight. These functions are handled automatically by the yaw damper (except in very small planes).
3. To steer during the take-off and landing roll (i.e. while on the ground)
4. To compensate for crosswind during the flare, i.e. the very last seconds before touchdown
Except for the take-off roll, flare and landing roll, airline pilots normally don't use the rudder at all. Turns are made by banking the airplane, just like on an F15 (but not quite as steeply, obviously). I am an airpline pilot on the B777, by the way.
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You've never flown inside an airplane, have you? Planes turn by banking.
Yep.
If a pilot uses the rudder to turn, the passengers will get sick very very quickly (especially in the back).
There will be no difference front/back at rates of turn typically employed in large passenger aircraft.
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If a pilot uses the rudder to turn, the passengers will get sick very very quickly (especially in the back).
There will be no difference front/back at rates of turn typically employed in large passenger aircraft.
O, yes there will be. Any cabin crew member will confirm that the yaw component of turbulence is much worse in the back. The take-off and landing rolls in gusty conditions, with a lot of rudder corrections, are also felt much harder in the back than in the front. I've been a passenger in the back and felt like my seat was being knocked left and right quite violently.
Using the rudder during normal flight is a big no-no for several reasons, and passenger comfort is definitely one of them. (Not crashing the ai [wikipedia.org]
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Using the rudder during normal flight is a big no-no for several reasons, and passenger comfort is definitely one of them. (Not crashing the airplane [wikipedia.org] being another one)
Nobody's proposing using the rudder to turn, just pointing out that on a slow turn there wouldn't be much difference - all passengers would be equally ill.
During turbulence? I never mentioned turbulence but unless you're suggesting that aircraft yaw around their nose instead of their center of gravity then the most comfortable place will be right over the wings. Sitting up front in first class will be just as bad as sitting in the back.
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The yaw component of turbulence is because of changing wind components on the vertical tail surface. The resulting motion (combination of rotation and translation) is most noticeable in the back. The pivot point is maybe not quite the nose, but certainly in front of the center of mass.
I sit in the very front, even better than first class ;-)
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The farther seats are placed off the central axis, the more the seats will tilt when the plane banks.
Some seats in a rigid body will tilt more than others?
The lack of basic spacial reasoning is astounding.
Obvious bullshit project is obvious (Score:5, Informative)
Let's all take a quick look at why this whole article is nonsense, shall we?
-Blended wing/body (BWB) design. Major fail right from the whole concept. BWB designs are maintenance nightmares because they bury so many critical parts in the wing and body. This makes upkeep very difficult. It also forces a very thick, high drag wing that in practice almost never overcomes the claimed efficiency gain of losing control surfaces.
-Highly unconventional design. Just look at how the Beechcraft 2000 Starship killed Beech. Certification of unusual designs like this is borderline impossible, even for large companies, hence why Boeing and Airbus ditched their BWB designs.
-Limited to no expansion options. Everything is built into one large airframe, making any stretched version a partial to complete redesign and recertification far in excess of the conventional tube/wing approach.
-Fake designer. Justus Benad is NOT a known engineer. He is a research assistant just getting started in the field. Doesn't even hold a PhD. His work has very low impact factor. Almost no significance in the field at this time.
-KLM needs their 100th anniversary mockup. Buried in the article is that they will fly a 'scale model' in September, then have a cabin concept of the future of air travel. They know that this is a non-started for any of the usual classes, because 90% of the passenger space is buried deep in the BWB, far from windows. How do you feel about flying in a big room with no view at all and poor evacuation pathways for 5 hours?
-Known poor evacuation pathways. BWB airliners have been studied and are known to have terrible safety exit routing, because people in the middle of the wing have no routes to easy escapes.
-Eternal development timeline. The A380 was conceived, designed, and flew in 15 years. This aircraft is "expected" to fly in 2050, a solid 31 years from now---long after this quick PR pump will have been forgotten.
BeauHD, can you please stop submitting to /.? This article being fluff shit is obvious. Did you get paid to push this too? Your whole role in Slashdot contributes to massive site-rot, with ~80% of your submissions being low effort crap, and the rest obviously slanted.
Re:Obvious bullshit project is obvious (Score:4, Informative)
OTOH, similar designs are working well for the USAF.
But yeah, original credit for this style of craft goes to J. W. Dunne and Hugo Junkers, both from 1910.
Re:Obvious bullshit project is obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Bombs don't need pressurized cabins, don't get airsick, and they have an evacuation route that isn't FAA approved for humans.
Re:Obvious bullshit project is obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
No USAF blended wing body designs carry more than a handful of people, 2 or 3 at most, and their design criteria are very very very different to a passenger aircraft.
Right now, these people have a computer rendering and some marketing pamphlets (infact, it sounds like a university degree final year project...) - to develop this into a fully operational aircraft will require at a minimum $15Billion, and probably more like double that - and thats assuming they are starting from the position of having an engineering background that allows them to hit the ground running. Which they don't.
Airbus and Boeing are in an interesting market - their customers will buy anything if its the most efficient aircraft to be had (or within a percentage point of the most efficient), so Airbus and Boeing strive to build the most efficient aircraft they can. So why haven't either of them announced this for a circa 2050 entry into service? Because its not viable, thats why.
The large civil aircraft industry is one of those industries that works - its customer driven, and customer focused. If either Airbus or Boeing simply put out a substandard product then their competitor would pick up the orders - and as has been shown with the 737MAX, neither manufacturer leaves anything on the table if they can help it.
This isn't an industry where companies like SpaceX can swan in with a game changer, simply because the incumbents here aren't sitting on their laurels and getting fat from a locked in customer base - they eek out every bit of performance and efficiency that they can with each model.
So when Airbus or Boeing, or Bombardier or Embraer start talking about these designs beyond a mere marketing pamphlet level, thats when you can start thinking its going to actually happen.
But these people? Nope. They will fade into obscurity and a year from now this will be forgotten.
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I wonder if this could have application in cargo. You can get the gains in efficiency, but don't have to worry about passenger comfort, and probably have an easier regulatory path for certification. Fedex is probably not going to pony up for the development costs all on its own, though.
Keyword: sharing dev costs. (Score:2)
Fedex is probably not going to pony up for the development costs all on its own, though.
That's the key point. FedEx is probably only going to put money for development of planes that *other companies* are also putting money in, these includes all the passenger carrying companies.
In other words: it's not cost efficient to develop a very expensive *cargo-only* plane.
It's better to to develop the expensive planes in such a way that you can sell them to as many companies as possible, which means "passenger" is as much needed as "cargo" on your bullter list.
Only some military (mostly the US) have a
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The large civil aircraft industry is one of those industries that works - its customer driven, and customer focused. If either Airbus or Boeing simply put out a substandard product then their competitor would pick up the orders - and as has been shown with the 737MAX, neither manufacturer leaves anything on the table if they can help it.
This isn't an industry where companies like SpaceX can swan in with a game changer, simply because the incumbents here aren't sitting on their laurels and getting fat from a locked in customer base - they eek out every bit of performance and efficiency that they can with each model.
The thing is, Boeing or Airbus aren't thinking about radical redesigns and wont until some random company (or more likely university or military project) swans in with a radical new design. Likely it will come from the military as they've got the money to toy with new ideas.
As the 737-MAX has shown, manufacturers are alergic to developing new designs, especially when you can just whack new engines on the old one (no matter how bad an idea that gets).
So when Airbus or Boeing, or Bombardier or Embraer start talking about these designs beyond a mere marketing pamphlet level, that's when you can start thinking its going to actually happen.
But these people? Nope. They will fade into obscurity and a year from now this will be forgotten.
Boeing purchased Embraer in response to Airbus' acquisi
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The thing is, Boeing or Airbus aren't thinking about radical redesigns
They are thinking about:
- designs that sells (enough unit, thus bringing enough money in)
- designs that are cheap enough to be worth it (in regards of the afore mentioned money bringing).
There isn't currently widely crazy designs that :
- aren't crazy expensive to research and certify, pe se.
- will sell in high enough numbers and bring enough money in to justify the R+D costs.
and wont until some random company (or more likely university
Nope.
Even less budget?
Even less likely.
or military project) {...} Likely it will come from the military as they've got the money to toy with new ideas.
Yup.
Some military have even more budget and can justify spending crazy money on outlandish desi
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The 737MAX shows nothing, because it's purely a result of the same economics I was talking about.
Boeing was studying a new single aisle design, but Airbus launched the A320NEO - Airbus has more development capability in the A320 due to its younger heritage, and the NEO upgrade was a low cost one.
Boeing simply couldn't launch a new design st that point, because it would have cost them ten times more in cost than Airbus spent on the NEO - Airbus would have cornered the market purely based on cost alone, as th
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Nope. No more analysis than "nope" is needed, either, because you forgot to describe in words whatever the point floating around your head was.
Presumptively you didn't look up the history of the design, and though I was talking about only modern designs? What happens when you find out most of the research was done prior to the switch to jet engines?
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Doesn't mean that sometimes one of their designs doesn't escape and survives in the wild
After all the Python programming language with the silly structure-through-indentation concept was invented by a Dutch guy...
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I understand your skepticism but not your cynicism. You make it sound like BeauHD is asking you to invest in this project.
I'm no aerospace guy, but to my untrained eye this thing looks like it has some significant differences from traditional BWB aircraft. It might not work out, but if people only pursued sure things there would be no innovation. Before Mazda developed the Wankel, rotary engines were considered to be theoretically nice but impractical for actual production cars. While I, too, am skeptical t
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And after Mazda developed the Wankel, rotary engines were still considered to be theoretically nice but impractical for actual production cars. Total number of Wankel powered cars Mazda currently produces: 0.
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They were successful for several decades, which isn't bad considering how different they were from traditional motors (plus, I believe it was regulations regarding fuel mileage that killed them, not technical infeasibility). And if you look at the automotive market, electrics are becoming quite successful even though they were considered impractical a decade ago. That's the cool thing about technological progress—real innovation occurs when the impractical becomes practical and it happens all the time
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While you may be right about this being impractical, you seem to be assuming this is a triangular BWB. Instead, it appears to be two cylinders joined in a Vee. So that conceptually addresses a couple of the points you raise.
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How do you feel about flying in a big room with no view at all and poor evacuation pathways for 5 hours?
Huh? As opposed to the current method of flying where you're in a small room with no view at all, and poor evacuation pathways? People over the age of 12 generally don't get excited to sit in a plane and look out of the window. They generally are earbuds in turning out the world, and god forbid some sun comes in, better shut that crap away, to say nothing about flying longer than 5 hours which can often be accompanied by a mandated window shade down time.
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How do you feel about flying in a big room with no view at all and poor evacuation pathways for 5 hours?
Huh? As opposed to the current method of flying where you're in a small room with no view at all, and poor evacuation pathways? People over the age of 12 generally don't get excited to sit in a plane and look out of the window. They generally are earbuds in turning out the world, and god forbid some sun comes in, better shut that crap away, to say nothing about flying longer than 5 hours which can often be accompanied by a mandated window shade down time.
I'd rather sit by a window and look out then have to look at my fellow passengers. Plus it's a wall you can lean up against to escape Porky in the seat next to you. I've always preferred a window seat when I can get one.
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- If you are sitting near the wing tips every time the aircraft banks you get thrown around like a fairground ride.
Actually that might be attractive to airlines. They could charge extra to be nearer the middle.
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Starship would be around today and I'd probably own one if they didn't use composites everywhere. It's an awesome plane! Just wasn't structurally sound for more than 5-10 years.
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The wing span of a 747 is almost 60 m (195 ft). For a 30 degree banked turn, the wing tips go up/down 15 meters, that's 5 stories, in a matter of seconds (or less during heavy turbulence). I would not want to ride in the wing tip of a 747.
Flying wing (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it just me, it are they just trying yet again to sell the flying wing? But with the middle cut out.
This seems worse in every way. Gives up the structural cohesion of the simple fuselage shape and adds more complex surface shapes (great for aero... not), but in return you get... less interior volume. Well, at least more people get windows due to the cutout. Oh wait, they don't because there aren't windows there.
This seems like a solution looking for a problem.
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Right, and a classic flying wing does even better, but with more interior volume. So... what is this solving?
Unwanted intermediate concept (Score:3)
There seems to be marked reluctance to stop using fossil fuel for air transport. It requires a shift in attitude: High speed long distance travel is out; it's beyond our carbon budget. Much like Concorde.
The obvious solution to long distance air travel is to use airships. We're waaay past Hindenberg-era technology. They'll cross the Atlantic on the fuel needed to get an A380 to from the departure gate to the runway at Heathrow. They can run on biofuel, batteries, solar, whatever. They're limited by weight, not volume, which means plenty of cabin space for R&R on the inevitably longer flight. Sure it takes longer, but when the alternatives are not flying or scorching the planet people might come round to the concept of a more leisurely, comfortable flight.
(This is very similar to the "we need natural gas power stations as a temporary measure" gambit. The gas plants are obsolete already, and only hold up the installation of carbon-neutral plant.)
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The jet set dont want "longer" time to get from say the UK to the USA. They had ships for that.
Bring back a very expensive Concorde for the wealthy and people who can "budget" money.
People want a leisurely, comfortable flight - its called a jet and has worked well for decades.
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An airship would take several days to cross the Atlantic. Imagine US vacationers using half their annual vacation to sit cooped up in a box in the sky, and only half at their destination. Or imagine business trips taking three times as long, and thus not happening. This is not an alternative to jet air travel, this means the end of air travel.
There is a high speed environmentally friendly alternative though. Just fly in the boring regular planes, and add a tax to the ticket price corresponding to the carbon
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1910 called (Score:2)
I Saw Superman (Score:2)
Ars says You Won't Like the Body Roll (Score:2)
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... [arstechnica.com]
As you get further from the roll axis of an aircraft (think "main aisle") then any turn which requires a bank or partial roll
will cause you to go UP or DOWN a LOT compared to normal flight.
In a normal cabin the pilots experience the same as what you, the first class, and normal cabin passengers do, and they
set a typical bank roll of 15. In a V aircraft where the passenger seats divert outward, that same 15 will still be the same,
except it will move you twice as much up and
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Airliners have a yaw damper to make sure the plane does not yaw. Turns are made by banking the airplane, and the yaw damper then makes sure that the yaw perfectly matches the bank so no lateral force is felt by the passengers. Their drinks stay "level" in the cup on the tray in front of them (i.e. parallel to the floor of the airplane even though that floor is not parallel to the ground at all).
The only times you really feel yaw in an airplane is during turbulence, and during the take-off and landing rolls
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Airliners have a yaw damper to make sure the plane does not yaw.
Grand parent was mentioning up/down movements of seats at extreme front or extreme rear during take off and landing, so I think he had pitch in mind, rather than yaw (or roll...).
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First off, the human body responds differently to different movements. A lateral roll is considerably more icky than a tilting upwards or downwards.
Second, passenger jets rotate gently on ascent at a rate of 2 to 3 degrees per second and to a maximum of about 15 degrees specifically to avoid puking passengers. Descent is even more shallow, at 2 to 6 degrees maximum, and as you will know if you've ever been on a plane, the front does not point downwards like a roller coaster during descent, which again speci
Passenger seat orientation? (Score:5, Interesting)
Will passengers be seated perpendicular to the direction of forward motion? In this case, there will be a bunch of space wasted, as the seat rows will be at an odd angle relative to the "fuselage" walls. Or perpendicular to the wing tip? It'll be a thrill ride then! Either way, it'd feel pretty disorienting, I'd love to try!
If the design is solid and superior (big if), but there are concerns about evacuation and claustrophobia, why not first use them as cargo planes? 20% in fuel savings, if materializes, is huge for freight. KLM, you read it here first.
Costs vs earnings. (Score:2)
why not first use them as cargo planes? 20% in fuel savings, if materializes, is huge for freight.
But in that case, it could be only exclusively sold to freight.
And the big question is:
will this 20% fuel savings generate enough sales to freights, to compensate for the lost sales (you won't sell to any passenger flying company),
so that you can still make back all the expensive R+D you spent on the plane ?
Re: (Score:1)
Some people are wasted space.
Case in point - politicians.
Your sister (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
Vicky likes to fly and her last name is Dubous, they call her VD for short.