7 ms·

I feel like I see these kinds of proposed improvements to air travel (e.g. this, improved seat designs, improved volumes, etc), and yet, we're still flying in t

I feel like I see these kinds of proposed improvements to air travel (e.g. this, improved seat designs, improved volumes, etc), and yet, we're still flying in the same basic design with ever-smaller seat allocations as we have for decades. What are the chances planes like this will actually see the light of day in our lifetimes? It feels like i'm more likely to see fusion become a realistic contributor to the power grid than I am to see air travel change in any noticeable way (for the common flier at least, discounting fares like transoceanic business class).

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> we're still flying in the same basic design with ever-smaller seat allocations as we have for decades We have a rent-seeking duopoly of airframe designers. The history of commercial air frames ended in the era of the Concorde. What we need is competition, and national leadership willing to bet on it.
- tekla 3y ago
  No, aircraft frames are the way they are because they balance the billion different requirements the best. A blended wing body is nothing new.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > aircraft frames are the way they are because they balance the billion different requirements the best. A blended wing body is nothing new One big one being the fixed cost of new air frame development and certification. Nobody would incur that expense unless forced to by the competition.
    - tekla 3y ago
      And yet new airframes do get certified.
      - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > yet new airframes do get certified Last one was the 737 Max in 2017. It’s a derivative. The last truly new frames were the 787 in 2011 and A380 in 2006. Both focussed on subsystems, propulsion and materials for their novelty; only one has been a commercial success. One successful (two attempted) new airframes in over two decades is extraordinarily slower than the pre-consolidation frequency. It is also notable that neither attempted to introduce a new air frame that directly competes with the other’s; Airbus and Boeing trade market segments. There is zero head-to-head competition. Modern planes are a marvel of engineering. And newer planes are more comfortable. That doesn’t change that we’re stuck in a local optimum due to a cessation of risk taking.
        tekla 3y ago
        Why do you keep thinking competition is what prevented blended wing bodies? Blended wing bodies make big trade offs that don't neatly fit with commercial flight. The analysis of different lifting bodies is fairly fundamental aeronautical engineering work every student learns. There is no weird conspiracy here.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > Why do you keep thinking competition is what prevented blended wing bodies? Never said as much. OP asked why all planes since the 70s look about the same. It’s because there isn’t a sustained budget for experimentation. > no weird conspiracy Never said as much. It’s not exactly groundbreaking for entrenched supplies to cease innovating and focus on extraction.
        tekla 3y ago
        > Never said as much. OP asked why all planes since the 70s look about the same. It’s because there isn’t a sustained budget for experimentation. Bullshit. There is tons of money for innovation, every single manufacturer is trying to squeeze 1-2% efficient improvements across the board. To say there is no funding for innovation is hilariously ignorant. > Never said as much. It’s not exactly groundbreaking for entrenched supplies to cease innovating and focus on extraction. Cool, can you show me what numbers you're looking at that even hint that these blended wing bodies are better than contemporary commercial designs?
  - shash 3y ago
    Both of you are correct - there is a duopoly because of the complexity, and the duopoly has no real incentive to change, given that the current local optimum seems to be working for the foreseeable future. There is no pressure to innovate, and a strong one to keep the status quo.
    - mannykannot 3y ago
      And yet efficiency gains are vigorously pursued and adopted, where real - and most recently, that has been with engines and composites. Meanwhile, the blended-wing concept has been experimented with for over a century, and it has never demonstrated a compelling improvement. Until I see a proposal that comes with a paper explaining what recent innovation has made things different this time, I will remain skeptical.
      - RachelF 3y ago
        I am sceptical, too. There are no efficiency numbers on their website, just marketing boilerplate. In terms of pure frontal area, their design looks fatter. Would be interesting to see some drag data from wind tunnel tests.
- stetrain 3y ago
  The airframe designers don't decide the seat space per passenger. They can include all of the spacious reclining seats and lounge sofas as they want in the design, and airlines will spec it with seats and seat pitches that produce the greatest profit per flight by maximizing the number of passengers within the limits of safety regulations.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > airframe designers don't decide the seat space per passenger Sure? Seats aren't part of an airframe.
- redrove 3y ago
  National? Which nation?
ordinaryradical 3y ago
Airplanes have changed, but in ways not immediately visible. The Dreamliner is something like 80% composites by volume now, a material profile almost unthinkable 30 years ago. But the visual dynamics of the design changes have been far less dramatic. I do think we may see things change significantly with eVTOLs and battery tech improvements. Major increases in energy density plus solid state (for safety) would probably trigger a Tesla-fication, and at that point the incumbents will inevitably be late adopters and some upstart is going to build something new looking. Finally, if shape-memory polymers ever really take off, we could see some exciting things. Imagine a dynamically shaping airfoil, or, way out there, a wing which can translate itself from wide body to delta with almost no moving parts required to do so.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > Dreamliner is something like 80% composites by volume now, a material profile almost unthinkable 30 years ago This—and no bleed air, fly by wire, et cetera—are big. But not on the level of air frame improvements. We’ve been stuck in a local optimum due to overconsolidation for decades now. We’re seeing it bleed into safety simply because complacence evolved into corruption.
  - nurple 3y ago
    Excellently said. I would love to see a regulatory world where experimentation outside of the high-end is more prolific. Even the constraints that were put on UAVs by the FAA have stifled that spirit in a real way. Where is the hacker culture in aviation that we've been amazed by in the AI space? Even people doing cool things as small groups, like the black arrow guys, are just building in the same local minima.
    - ceejayoz 3y ago
      > Where is the hacker culture in aviation that we've been amazed by in the AI space? I mean, if you mess up your AI model, it generates photos of black Nazis or people with an extra arm. Everyone laughs at you a bit. If you mess up your plane, it kills people. There are absolutely people building experimental aircraft, but for good reasons there's a bit more caution involved.
zonkerdonker 3y ago
This is a multifaceted issue, involving the duopoly of commercial airline manufacturers, strict regulation, and massive subsidies. It costs Boeing 10s of billions of dollars and usually around a decade to design an aircraft from a clean sheet, with very little incentive for truly disruptive innovation. Developing and testing a wholly new design like this would probably take double the time and more than double the cost. When your assembly, all testing, designs, control systems, and pilots have been optimized "wings on a tube" shape for 70+ years, I'd imagine it's difficult to pivot the core design that drastically. I'm hoping to see some of the government subsidies shifted towards more competition with Boeing's recent failures, but lobbying is powerful, so we'll see.
nurple 3y ago
I agree. I am disappointed that NASA abdigated its role in driving forward not only space but aviation to commercial interests. It made, and still makes, many people very rich, but profit motives lead to the masses to feeling, and being handled, like cattle. I'm particularly frustrated by the dearth of general aviation as a means of travel outside of the wealthy. We built small airports EVERYWHERE, and in most cases they sit rotting in rural areas instead of being hubs of inter-city trade. I have plans to change that, but the aviation space is notoriously coin-operated and high impedance. Even with funding it's going to require some serious SV-style hacking to change anything meaningfully.
notatoad 3y ago
I don’t think you’re likely to see a significant change to the flying experience (at least not for the better) as long as most customers continue to prefer the cheapest, most terrible option. Maybe somebody succeeds with a delta-wing design, but the highest-profit configuration will still be to make the seats as cheap and terrible as possible.
- rgmerk 3y ago
  There is a demand for more luxurious aircraft travel, but at the moment it's too costly to provide. If BWBs become a thing, maybe the value of cabin space will decrease to the point where paying for a business class - or even premium economy - seat for long-haul travel is attractive for more people. I did some Googling and apparently the base price ratio for business class to economy class is about 3.6 to 1. Some of that is all the other frippery - lounge access, priority baggage, better food, more personal service etc. etc. So at a rough guess providing just the bigger seat would attract a premium of maybe 3x economy class. At the moment, New York-London with United is about $600 and business maybe $1800-$2000 (so perhaps a little bit under the expected premium, but in the ballpark). For most people, an extra $1400 is a big ask. But imagine a world where the economy flight is $200 and business class $700. I suspect a lot more people would choose business class in those circumstances.
  - 6yyyyyy 3y ago
    Some of the people who currently fly economy would start flying business, but a huge number of people who are currently taking Greyhound buses, driving, or choosing not to travel at all, would start flying economy.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

> we're still flying in the same basic design with ever-smaller seat allocations as we have for decades We have a rent-seeking duopoly of airframe designers. The history of commercial air frames ended in the era of the Concorde. What we need is competition, and national leadership willing to bet on it.

tekla 3y ago
No, aircraft frames are the way they are because they balance the billion different requirements the best. A blended wing body is nothing new.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > aircraft frames are the way they are because they balance the billion different requirements the best. A blended wing body is nothing new One big one being the fixed cost of new air frame development and certification. Nobody would incur that expense unless forced to by the competition.
  - tekla 3y ago
    And yet new airframes do get certified.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > yet new airframes do get certified Last one was the 737 Max in 2017. It’s a derivative. The last truly new frames were the 787 in 2011 and A380 in 2006. Both focussed on subsystems, propulsion and materials for their novelty; only one has been a commercial success. One successful (two attempted) new airframes in over two decades is extraordinarily slower than the pre-consolidation frequency. It is also notable that neither attempted to introduce a new air frame that directly competes with the other’s; Airbus and Boeing trade market segments. There is zero head-to-head competition. Modern planes are a marvel of engineering. And newer planes are more comfortable. That doesn’t change that we’re stuck in a local optimum due to a cessation of risk taking.
      - tekla 3y ago
        Why do you keep thinking competition is what prevented blended wing bodies? Blended wing bodies make big trade offs that don't neatly fit with commercial flight. The analysis of different lifting bodies is fairly fundamental aeronautical engineering work every student learns. There is no weird conspiracy here.
        JumpCrisscross 3y ago
        > Why do you keep thinking competition is what prevented blended wing bodies? Never said as much. OP asked why all planes since the 70s look about the same. It’s because there isn’t a sustained budget for experimentation. > no weird conspiracy Never said as much. It’s not exactly groundbreaking for entrenched supplies to cease innovating and focus on extraction.
        tekla 3y ago
        > Never said as much. OP asked why all planes since the 70s look about the same. It’s because there isn’t a sustained budget for experimentation. Bullshit. There is tons of money for innovation, every single manufacturer is trying to squeeze 1-2% efficient improvements across the board. To say there is no funding for innovation is hilariously ignorant. > Never said as much. It’s not exactly groundbreaking for entrenched supplies to cease innovating and focus on extraction. Cool, can you show me what numbers you're looking at that even hint that these blended wing bodies are better than contemporary commercial designs?
- shash 3y ago
  Both of you are correct - there is a duopoly because of the complexity, and the duopoly has no real incentive to change, given that the current local optimum seems to be working for the foreseeable future. There is no pressure to innovate, and a strong one to keep the status quo.
  - mannykannot 3y ago
    And yet efficiency gains are vigorously pursued and adopted, where real - and most recently, that has been with engines and composites. Meanwhile, the blended-wing concept has been experimented with for over a century, and it has never demonstrated a compelling improvement. Until I see a proposal that comes with a paper explaining what recent innovation has made things different this time, I will remain skeptical.
    - RachelF 3y ago
      I am sceptical, too. There are no efficiency numbers on their website, just marketing boilerplate. In terms of pure frontal area, their design looks fatter. Would be interesting to see some drag data from wind tunnel tests.
stetrain 3y ago
The airframe designers don't decide the seat space per passenger. They can include all of the spacious reclining seats and lounge sofas as they want in the design, and airlines will spec it with seats and seat pitches that produce the greatest profit per flight by maximizing the number of passengers within the limits of safety regulations.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > airframe designers don't decide the seat space per passenger Sure? Seats aren't part of an airframe.
redrove 3y ago
National? Which nation?

ordinaryradical 3y ago

Airplanes have changed, but in ways not immediately visible. The Dreamliner is something like 80% composites by volume now, a material profile almost unthinkable 30 years ago. But the visual dynamics of the design changes have been far less dramatic. I do think we may see things change significantly with eVTOLs and battery tech improvements. Major increases in energy density plus solid state (for safety) would probably trigger a Tesla-fication, and at that point the incumbents will inevitably be late adopters and some upstart is going to build something new looking. Finally, if shape-memory polymers ever really take off, we could see some exciting things. Imagine a dynamically shaping airfoil, or, way out there, a wing which can translate itself from wide body to delta with almost no moving parts required to do so.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> Dreamliner is something like 80% composites by volume now, a material profile almost unthinkable 30 years ago This—and no bleed air, fly by wire, et cetera—are big. But not on the level of air frame improvements. We’ve been stuck in a local optimum due to overconsolidation for decades now. We’re seeing it bleed into safety simply because complacence evolved into corruption.
- nurple 3y ago
  Excellently said. I would love to see a regulatory world where experimentation outside of the high-end is more prolific. Even the constraints that were put on UAVs by the FAA have stifled that spirit in a real way. Where is the hacker culture in aviation that we've been amazed by in the AI space? Even people doing cool things as small groups, like the black arrow guys, are just building in the same local minima.
  - ceejayoz 3y ago
    > Where is the hacker culture in aviation that we've been amazed by in the AI space? I mean, if you mess up your AI model, it generates photos of black Nazis or people with an extra arm. Everyone laughs at you a bit. If you mess up your plane, it kills people. There are absolutely people building experimental aircraft, but for good reasons there's a bit more caution involved.

zonkerdonker 3y ago

This is a multifaceted issue, involving the duopoly of commercial airline manufacturers, strict regulation, and massive subsidies. It costs Boeing 10s of billions of dollars and usually around a decade to design an aircraft from a clean sheet, with very little incentive for truly disruptive innovation. Developing and testing a wholly new design like this would probably take double the time and more than double the cost. When your assembly, all testing, designs, control systems, and pilots have been optimized "wings on a tube" shape for 70+ years, I'd imagine it's difficult to pivot the core design that drastically. I'm hoping to see some of the government subsidies shifted towards more competition with Boeing's recent failures, but lobbying is powerful, so we'll see.

nurple 3y ago

I agree. I am disappointed that NASA abdigated its role in driving forward not only space but aviation to commercial interests. It made, and still makes, many people very rich, but profit motives lead to the masses to feeling, and being handled, like cattle. I'm particularly frustrated by the dearth of general aviation as a means of travel outside of the wealthy. We built small airports EVERYWHERE, and in most cases they sit rotting in rural areas instead of being hubs of inter-city trade. I have plans to change that, but the aviation space is notoriously coin-operated and high impedance. Even with funding it's going to require some serious SV-style hacking to change anything meaningfully.

notatoad 3y ago

I don’t think you’re likely to see a significant change to the flying experience (at least not for the better) as long as most customers continue to prefer the cheapest, most terrible option. Maybe somebody succeeds with a delta-wing design, but the highest-profit configuration will still be to make the seats as cheap and terrible as possible.

rgmerk 3y ago
There is a demand for more luxurious aircraft travel, but at the moment it's too costly to provide. If BWBs become a thing, maybe the value of cabin space will decrease to the point where paying for a business class - or even premium economy - seat for long-haul travel is attractive for more people. I did some Googling and apparently the base price ratio for business class to economy class is about 3.6 to 1. Some of that is all the other frippery - lounge access, priority baggage, better food, more personal service etc. etc. So at a rough guess providing just the bigger seat would attract a premium of maybe 3x economy class. At the moment, New York-London with United is about $600 and business maybe $1800-$2000 (so perhaps a little bit under the expected premium, but in the ballpark). For most people, an extra $1400 is a big ask. But imagine a world where the economy flight is $200 and business class $700. I suspect a lot more people would choose business class in those circumstances.
- 6yyyyyy 3y ago
  Some of the people who currently fly economy would start flying business, but a huge number of people who are currently taking Greyhound buses, driving, or choosing not to travel at all, would start flying economy.