But is it limited by good enough, or is it actually limited by approaching the plateau of what is possible? (this is where a presentation would silently flash a

But is it limited by good enough, or is it actually limited by approaching the plateau of what is possible? (this is where a presentation would silently flash a picture of a B52) My bet is on the latter, because if you could build a decisively better aircraft you'd own a massive market and all the old stuff would lose any semblance of good enough in a blink. Consider high bypass turbofans, the most important change of the last fifty years (change, not innovation, the turbofan principle had been studied since before the first turbojet took to the air). If we had airframe geometries supporting arbitrarily big fans, would we eventually see bypass ratios that could only be accurately described with the term ferris wheel? I highly doubt it. Diminishing returns, maybe even some identifiable theoretic optimum long before (just guessing, I might be wrong). Thought experiment: imagine Star Trek engineering (recent-ish stuff, not Kirk), if they had a competition in building the best airplane without star trek energy sources and all that force field stuff. I'm not sure that the winner would look much different from what we have, if the goals are consistent with those of our designers. Some things are just mostly find. There'll still be development because in a market of a plateauing technology even the tiniest refinement can separate winners from losers, but there wouldn't be a meaningful increase in innovation of you funneled half of the world's economy into r&d. (until some day, maybe there is a sudden major jump, think of foiling in sports sailing) The single most amazing aviation innovation by the way is the bug wiper. Amazing stuff. Unfortunately no English language Wikipedia, Google it if you never heard of it.