3 ms·

There are a lot of people commenting on how difficult this will be to achieve, but it’s worth keeping in mind that even the “conventional” roadmap for improving

There are a lot of people commenting on how difficult this will be to achieve, but it’s worth keeping in mind that even the “conventional” roadmap for improving aircraft efficiency is full of enormous challenges. Some of the proposed technologies include variable-pitch turbofans, laminar flow wings, blended wing body aircraft designs, all of which are risky R&D projects which might cost tens of billions of dollars to bring into production. Just an incremental improvement like the last GE9X engine cost several billion to develop, for a 10% fuel efficiency improvement. While these hydrogen concepts are incredible risky, it’s worth putting into context how difficult it will be to get to the next level of efficiency in aviation even without them.

HPsquared 5y ago
Sometimes it can be better return on investment to try a new approach than to thoroughly optimize every detail of the existing approach. Edit: but, of course, complete failure is now possible when trying a new concept: it may not work at all. On the other hand, when making 1000 small optimisations the 100 unsuccessful ones can be left out.
- tatersolid 5y ago
  Complete failure is not an option in the aerospace industry. There are in fact lives at stake.
  - jnsie 5y ago
    Your definition of complete failure is something making it to production and catastrophically failing. I would have imagined complete failure in this case as being significant R&D expense with no returns.
- fransje26 5y ago
  Nah. A new approach is not what the investors want to hear. They want their dividends tomorrow. Better to squeeze an old design until the last drop of profit was extracted from it. No matter if crashes a few times in the process. You can always boast about the Jedi tricks you played on the (corrupt) "certification" authorities, and blame the crash on poor 3rd world piloting skills.
iancmceachern 5y ago
Exactly. This is how we progress, by identifying things that are really worth doing, despite being hard and risky, because the payoff is worth the investment.

HPsquared 5y ago

Sometimes it can be better return on investment to try a new approach than to thoroughly optimize every detail of the existing approach. Edit: but, of course, complete failure is now possible when trying a new concept: it may not work at all. On the other hand, when making 1000 small optimisations the 100 unsuccessful ones can be left out.

tatersolid 5y ago
Complete failure is not an option in the aerospace industry. There are in fact lives at stake.
- jnsie 5y ago
  Your definition of complete failure is something making it to production and catastrophically failing. I would have imagined complete failure in this case as being significant R&D expense with no returns.
fransje26 5y ago
Nah. A new approach is not what the investors want to hear. They want their dividends tomorrow. Better to squeeze an old design until the last drop of profit was extracted from it. No matter if crashes a few times in the process. You can always boast about the Jedi tricks you played on the (corrupt) "certification" authorities, and blame the crash on poor 3rd world piloting skills.

iancmceachern 5y ago

Exactly. This is how we progress, by identifying things that are really worth doing, despite being hard and risky, because the payoff is worth the investment.