4 ms·

Is this something we're actually going to see in reality? Call me a cynic, but I've seen innovative new designs for commercial planes since I was a kid, yet he

Is this something we're actually going to see in reality? Call me a cynic, but I've seen innovative new designs for commercial planes since I was a kid, yet here we are nearly 25 years later flying planes that look like they're from the 1950s.

drcoopster 5y ago
That's because lots of planes flying today are still from the 1950s.
- cryptoz 5y ago
  Is this true? Do you have a source? I have a hard time believing that lots of planes flying today are from the 1950s. That's 60-70 years ago. I did some searching but didn't find anything that would indicate there are any commercial aircraft that old still flying, much less lots - but if you have a source I'm curious about it. Thanks! Edit: A google image search for '1950s airplanes' shows me very weird-looking planes that don't much resemble what we have today, in my experience. I now disagree with OP too, I don't think there has been nearly as much stagnation in airplane design and flight over the last 70 years as is indicated in these comments.
  - Leherenn 5y ago
    It might be true for GA, there's a lot of stuff from the 60s still around, but not for commercial aircraft. The average fleet age in NA is 14 years old. [1] [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/751440/aviation-industry-aircraft-fleet-age-by-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/751440/aviation-industry...
  - outworlder 5y ago
    Commercial aircraft? As in passenger airliners? Not many from 1950. But plenty in use for the past 2 decades. Average age in North America is 14 years https://www.statista.com/statistics/751440/aviation-industry-aircraft-fleet-age-by-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/751440/aviation-industry... https://thepointsguy.com/news/airlines-oldest-fleets/ https://thepointsguy.com/news/airlines-oldest-fleets/ There are _plenty_ being used as freighters. Take the DC-3. First flight in 1935. Produced until 1942 (1950 in the URSS). Still in operation. However, the 737 design is from 1968. Is that better? In general aviation, there are lots of planes flying from that time. In flight schools you'll see a bunch of Cessna 150s, first flight in 1957. Thousands of aircraft still operational from that era, even some from the WW2 era (Ercoupe) In the military, we have the B-52. From 1955. It was only produced from 1952 to 1962. Expected retirement is sometime in 2050, maybe later. That's a full century of service. Planes are expensive. They are expected to be in service for many decades. Maintenance keeps them working almost indefinitely (even more so if they are not pressurized). Airlines will only retire them when there are other, more economically viable, options(which sometimes includes new models of essentially the same airframe).
  - hindsightbias 5y ago
    As the OP said designs, it would be true that many of those designs are still flying today. The 727 and 737 are derivatives of the 707 and the 757 isn't far off. Just different engine/gear/wing/length configurations. New 737's may have more composites and more modern manufacturing techniques but it's not any radical departure. For General Aviation, there are tens of thousands of planes from the 50's and 60's still around and the engines they use (Lycoming/Continental) are still based on designs from the 50s with modernized metallurgy, valves and fuel injection.
    - labcomputer 5y ago
      Yup. Even the fuel injection (in most cases) is based on 1950's designs though. Incidentally, aero engine makers were playing around with direct injection, electrically controlled turbo waste gates and turbo-compounding at the beginning of WWII.
  - labcomputer 5y ago
    > A google image search for '1950s airplanes' shows me very weird-looking planes that don't much resemble what we have today I'd be curious what you found. The Boeing 707 first flew in 1957, and it uses essentially the same configuration as airliners today (with some evolutionary improvements).
- notahacker 5y ago
  Not passenger airliners though. The most common passenger aircraft in active service shares the fuselage dimensions with the Boeing 707 which first saw service in the 1950s, but there aren't any 707s left in regular civil service. Commercial aircraft rarely continue in passenger service beyond 25 years, never mind 65, and the maintenance requirements as well as the fuel bill means it doesn't make financial sense to try.
caconym_ 5y ago
If humanity sticks around, I think we (well, not us, but you know what I mean) will eventually see change toward more advanced, more efficient designs. But when you have an effective duopoly of massive incumbents selling aircraft with decades of R&D behind each individual product (and that's on top of the broader academic foundation of aerodynamics and aeronautical engineering they rely on) to an industry with razor-thin margins and zero appetite for risk, that change is going to be slow. That said, making a habit of flying people and things across long distances seems kind of wasteful and inefficient, and if we do stick around I'd expect us to be making the kinds of decisions that would lead to us doing less of it. But I think we will have aircraft as long as we have industrialized society.
- firebaze 5y ago
  I suppose we both underestimate how far we've progressed in simulating physics. Either we're utterly, totally wrong in anything related to astrophysics or we have a basic grasp on fundamental stuff like aerodynamics. If the latter, we don't need to spend billions on R&D for more efficient designs. We just devote the same comparatively few bucks spent on GPT3 and other ML models to inventing a new, more efficient airplane design. If we did, maybe an improvement like the one in this linked article is bonkers. If so, we could invest in other assets.
  - caconym_ 5y ago
    I think the issue is less about coming up with shapes that fly well in the sim (or even in the wind tunnel), and more about turning those shapes into practical aircraft. Computers can’t really help us with that (yet) except at a really granular level, with human supervision. As an example, take the longitudinal fuel bladder in this design. I don’t know how you design a version of that that isn’t subject to very scary longitudinal sloshing and doesn’t have unprecedentedly complex plumbing that will be very, very, very expensive and risky to validate for normal flight operations, let alone emergencies. And that’s, like, the most obvious problem with it, and I’m not even counting all the normal, mundane airplane problems the incumbents have already spent millions of man-hours solving.
m4rtink 5y ago
Well, physics also didn't changed much since 1950s...
- mcphage 5y ago
  Engineering has, however.
mcphage 5y ago
> flying planes that look like they're from the 1950s The 1950s?! The DC-8's design has been around for at least 75 million years!
firebaze 5y ago
This could be caused by physics. Also, it could be caused by thousands and thousands of engineers working on aerodynamics, jet engine efficiency and of course economics all being totally stupid over those 25 years. By the way, I know someone who just inherited a few million dollars and is looking for someone to create an account for her to transfer the money to. This is bonkers. Sorry for the really snarky remark.

drcoopster 5y ago

That's because lots of planes flying today are still from the 1950s.

cryptoz 5y ago
Is this true? Do you have a source? I have a hard time believing that lots of planes flying today are from the 1950s. That's 60-70 years ago. I did some searching but didn't find anything that would indicate there are any commercial aircraft that old still flying, much less lots - but if you have a source I'm curious about it. Thanks! Edit: A google image search for '1950s airplanes' shows me very weird-looking planes that don't much resemble what we have today, in my experience. I now disagree with OP too, I don't think there has been nearly as much stagnation in airplane design and flight over the last 70 years as is indicated in these comments.
- Leherenn 5y ago
  It might be true for GA, there's a lot of stuff from the 60s still around, but not for commercial aircraft. The average fleet age in NA is 14 years old. [1] [1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/751440/aviation-industry-aircraft-fleet-age-by-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/751440/aviation-industry...
- outworlder 5y ago
  Commercial aircraft? As in passenger airliners? Not many from 1950. But plenty in use for the past 2 decades. Average age in North America is 14 years https://www.statista.com/statistics/751440/aviation-industry-aircraft-fleet-age-by-region/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/751440/aviation-industry... https://thepointsguy.com/news/airlines-oldest-fleets/ https://thepointsguy.com/news/airlines-oldest-fleets/ There are _plenty_ being used as freighters. Take the DC-3. First flight in 1935. Produced until 1942 (1950 in the URSS). Still in operation. However, the 737 design is from 1968. Is that better? In general aviation, there are lots of planes flying from that time. In flight schools you'll see a bunch of Cessna 150s, first flight in 1957. Thousands of aircraft still operational from that era, even some from the WW2 era (Ercoupe) In the military, we have the B-52. From 1955. It was only produced from 1952 to 1962. Expected retirement is sometime in 2050, maybe later. That's a full century of service. Planes are expensive. They are expected to be in service for many decades. Maintenance keeps them working almost indefinitely (even more so if they are not pressurized). Airlines will only retire them when there are other, more economically viable, options(which sometimes includes new models of essentially the same airframe).
- hindsightbias 5y ago
  As the OP said designs, it would be true that many of those designs are still flying today. The 727 and 737 are derivatives of the 707 and the 757 isn't far off. Just different engine/gear/wing/length configurations. New 737's may have more composites and more modern manufacturing techniques but it's not any radical departure. For General Aviation, there are tens of thousands of planes from the 50's and 60's still around and the engines they use (Lycoming/Continental) are still based on designs from the 50s with modernized metallurgy, valves and fuel injection.
  - labcomputer 5y ago
    Yup. Even the fuel injection (in most cases) is based on 1950's designs though. Incidentally, aero engine makers were playing around with direct injection, electrically controlled turbo waste gates and turbo-compounding at the beginning of WWII.
- labcomputer 5y ago
  > A google image search for '1950s airplanes' shows me very weird-looking planes that don't much resemble what we have today I'd be curious what you found. The Boeing 707 first flew in 1957, and it uses essentially the same configuration as airliners today (with some evolutionary improvements).
notahacker 5y ago
Not passenger airliners though. The most common passenger aircraft in active service shares the fuselage dimensions with the Boeing 707 which first saw service in the 1950s, but there aren't any 707s left in regular civil service. Commercial aircraft rarely continue in passenger service beyond 25 years, never mind 65, and the maintenance requirements as well as the fuel bill means it doesn't make financial sense to try.

caconym_ 5y ago

If humanity sticks around, I think we (well, not us, but you know what I mean) will eventually see change toward more advanced, more efficient designs. But when you have an effective duopoly of massive incumbents selling aircraft with decades of R&D behind each individual product (and that's on top of the broader academic foundation of aerodynamics and aeronautical engineering they rely on) to an industry with razor-thin margins and zero appetite for risk, that change is going to be slow. That said, making a habit of flying people and things across long distances seems kind of wasteful and inefficient, and if we do stick around I'd expect us to be making the kinds of decisions that would lead to us doing less of it. But I think we will have aircraft as long as we have industrialized society.

firebaze 5y ago
I suppose we both underestimate how far we've progressed in simulating physics. Either we're utterly, totally wrong in anything related to astrophysics or we have a basic grasp on fundamental stuff like aerodynamics. If the latter, we don't need to spend billions on R&D for more efficient designs. We just devote the same comparatively few bucks spent on GPT3 and other ML models to inventing a new, more efficient airplane design. If we did, maybe an improvement like the one in this linked article is bonkers. If so, we could invest in other assets.
- caconym_ 5y ago
  I think the issue is less about coming up with shapes that fly well in the sim (or even in the wind tunnel), and more about turning those shapes into practical aircraft. Computers can’t really help us with that (yet) except at a really granular level, with human supervision. As an example, take the longitudinal fuel bladder in this design. I don’t know how you design a version of that that isn’t subject to very scary longitudinal sloshing and doesn’t have unprecedentedly complex plumbing that will be very, very, very expensive and risky to validate for normal flight operations, let alone emergencies. And that’s, like, the most obvious problem with it, and I’m not even counting all the normal, mundane airplane problems the incumbents have already spent millions of man-hours solving.

m4rtink 5y ago

Well, physics also didn't changed much since 1950s...

mcphage 5y ago
Engineering has, however.

mcphage 5y ago

> flying planes that look like they're from the 1950s The 1950s?! The DC-8's design has been around for at least 75 million years!

firebaze 5y ago

This could be caused by physics. Also, it could be caused by thousands and thousands of engineers working on aerodynamics, jet engine efficiency and of course economics all being totally stupid over those 25 years. By the way, I know someone who just inherited a few million dollars and is looking for someone to create an account for her to transfer the money to. This is bonkers. Sorry for the really snarky remark.