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Airbus has unveiled a bird-like conceptual airliner design
- alwaysanagenda 7y agoBring back commercial supersonic flight, everything else is just wasting time.
- mey 7y agotl;dr It's not an actual design. "While not intended to represent an actual aircraft, Airbus’ “Bird of Prey” is based on realistic ideas – providing an insight into what a future regional aircraft could look like." “Our ‘Bird of Prey’ is designed to be an inspiration to young people and create a ‘wow’ factor that will help them consider an exciting career in the crucially-important aerospace sector,” explained Martin Aston, a senior manager at Airbus.
- TremendousJudge 7y agoThis press release looks like an Onion article
- steverb 7y agoYeah, it's basically concept art with some hand waving so we can pretend that it's in the realm of eventual possibility. It does look cool though. :-)
- lame-robot-hoax 7y agoMartin Aston should quit his job at Airbus and get a job at Aston Martin. Martin Aston working for Aston Martin only seems fitting, right?
- sadjad 7y agoI don't know, it seems backwards to me.
- throwanem 7y agoActually a pretty smart design; raptors' spread primaries provide considerable extra lift. It probably can't be built as depicted without some pretty impressive materials science work and maybe a novel discovery or two, but that's okay; it isn't intended to be built as depicted in the first place. I'll be interested to see if anything comes out of it over the next couple of decades.
- rdtsc 7y agoIt's interesting how a propeller design would be quieter. I always associated those types of planes with noise. Is the noise mostly from the engines and not the propeller blades themselves?
- NikkiA 7y agoIt's not just any propeller: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scimitar_propeller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scimitar_propeller
- erokar 7y agoChrist, that's ridiculous. I love it.
- JanSolo 7y agoWhere's the rudder? How do they propose to control yaw without a rudder? Perhaps those long winglet-feathers can be modulated for yaw control?
- djtriptych 7y agoThe article does mention that the feathers would be active control surfaces, so yes.
- throwanem 7y agoIt's at the back, where birds keep theirs too.
- kmano8 7y agoRead the title as "Airbnb has unveiled..", and got pretty nervous.
- slowmovintarget 7y agoDo you want ornithopters? ...because this is how you get ornithopters. (This makes the Dune fan in me happy.)
- etothepi 7y agoAnd this racing stripe i feel is pretty sharp.
- baybal2 7y ago1. Wingtips — many dissimilar winglets will create different wingtip vortices. Are few smaller vortices better than one big? 2. The centre of gravity seem to be off 3. Yaw control - I believe it will have to be synthesized by fly by wire, as there are no prominent rudder 4. Wingspar??? 5. Chassis — gonna be behind the centre of mass? It still looks to me way to narrow for a plane with such long wing. 6. High wing design — should have lots of cargo space at expense of passenger fuselage volume 7. Quad engine? — why not 2?
- Gibbon1 7y ago> Quad engine? — why not 2? Because thrust is proportional to mass flow times delta v. But power is proportional to mass flow times delta v squared. So the way to increase efficiency is to increase the mass flow as much as possible. A limiting factor is the prop/fan diameter <--> ground clearance. See the 737 MAX. But more prop/fans means more engines. And the complexity costs that come with that. Hence the popularity of two engine airliners. I think there is a realization that with hybrid electric designs, you can have one engine + battery driving four prop/fans. My read on the depiction is an aircraft with one engine and four props.
- de_watcher 7y agoDoesn't flap the wings though...