2 ms·

> Wings work for what we want them to do, and have since they were first tried. Pretty sure people have been messing with wings for centuries longer than they

• dredmorbius 9y ago
  What held aircraft back was prime movers, fuel, and materials. Once petrol-fueled engines and aluminium were available, the Wright beothers were flying within a few years of the Ford Model T. Monocoque airframes followed another few years later. The most perfect aircraft ever, the DC-3, which remains in active commercial use, was developed within the next 3 decades, largely thanks to aluminium alloys. Aivionics and wing design were largely solved by then. With the gas turbine, jet aircraft appeared, and Boeing is still effectively building and selling scaled-up versions of its 707 airframe (1957). The USAF will be flying the very same aircraft for over 80 years, the B-52. First flight 1952, last date af manufature: 1962. What progress has been made in aircraft over the last 65 years is largely limited to improved controls (both linkages and avionics), novel materials, and more recently, improved modeling duringg design and development. Outside military applications, that still has exceptionaally limited commercial impacts. See various sources, though Robert Gordon's The Rise and Fall of American Growth has a good overview. The contrast, particularly with man-years of effort and billions in spending, to fusion, couldn't be starker.