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That is the great news I needed today. It is sobering to know that humanity is continuing to make wholesale mistakes that are only offset by a wonderful minori

That is the great news I needed today. It is sobering to know that humanity is continuing to make wholesale mistakes that are only offset by a wonderful minority. You could be the next person to save a different Flip. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP_FLIP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RP_FLIP

kylehotchkiss 2y ago
The next big flip to disappear is A380s :( quite a few have been decommissioned already (so soon), production has ended, and we’re left only with a350s and 777x (lol) to follow in its footsteps. Meanwhile airports haven’t gotten bigger and more people are flying.
- rootusrootus 2y ago
  Seems like Boeing made the right call when they canceled their own plan for a new superjumbo back in the 90s. The A380 is cool, but not economical to fly. The future is more planes like the 777X.
  - AdamJacobMuller 2y ago
    Deeply ironic considering how wrong Boeing has been in so many other ways, but, its been fairly obvious that the hub-and-spoke model the A380 was built for was dying in favor of the point-to-point model of the 787/777x. Airbus will adjust far better than Boeing could have, had they been wrong.
  - nradov 2y ago
    Around the same time that Airbus was designing the A380, Boeing did waste a lot of time and money designing the Sonic Cruiser. The bet was that customers would pay for faster point-to-point travel, bypassing large hubs. This strategic error is one of the reasons why they still haven't built a new single-aisle airliner. https://simpleflying.com/boeing-sonic-cruiser/ https://simpleflying.com/boeing-sonic-cruiser/
    - mandevil 2y ago
      Boeing actually pitched a "787, but 737 sized" to airlines, who all said "No, what we really want is a plane with a 737 Type Certificate (so all of our pilots don't need expensive training) that matches the fuel efficiency of the A320neo" and so Boeing found themselves promising a plane that would be a normal 737 so all the pilots didn't need expensive training on it, but would have the same fuel efficiency as a A320neo. It was 100% the airlines that killed Boeing's attempt to pitch them on a clean-sheet airliner. I still believe that if Boeing had a CEO who was an engineer (and not a Harvard MBA who spent two decades at GE under Jack "Company Killer" Welch) at the time they would have not made that promise, because it was impossible to get the larger, more fuel efficient engines under a 737 wing without changing the flight characteristics too much to keep the type certificate. But... the Sonic Cruiser is a minor footnote compared to the A380. That was an enormous business disaster (if any A380 ever turned a profit on fly-away costs alone, ignoring the initial up front costs, it was only just barely). The thing about building a new clean-sheet jetliner like this is that you are betting the company's financial performance for the next 10 years on this working out. Because Boeing was actively killing people and there are only the two companies (C919 notwithstanding) Airbus came out of the era looking great, but the A380 was orders of magnitude bigger corporate problem than the Sonic Cruiser.
      - nradov 2y ago
        Well maybe not impossible. Boeing designed extending landing gear for the 737 Max 10 (although it was mainly done to allow for stretching the fuselage). That didn't require any major breakthroughs and presumably could have been brought forward to the Max 8 in order to allow lower engine placement, although it would have delayed development.
        mandevil 2y ago
        I didn't think the 9 inches added to the gears on the telescoping mechanism were enough to fit the LEAP or the PW1000, I thought that they needed more clearance than that.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    You do not want to be heading towards Immigration, just after one of those puppies lands.
    - kylehotchkiss 2y ago
      I had global entry each time I was flying them so there was no wait for me. Most passengers into the US were not US nationals and had to wait in the non-citizen lines. Waiting for your bags on the other hand...
  - stephen_g 2y ago
    It does work very well for certain parts of the world, like the Gulf carriers (hence why Emirates has so many). For the US and inter-Europe, totally uneconomical but not everywhere. With newer engines and a slightly redesigned wing (if I recall correctly it was designed a bit oversized than what was needed for the -800, to be able to accommodate a stretch variant which was never introduced) it could probably be made to have 15% lower fuel burn per passenger which would make it work even better for those specific kind of routes, but it's not economical for Airbus to do that when only Emirates and a very small handful of other customers would buy it...
    - mmooss 2y ago
      > It does work very well for certain parts of the world, like the Gulf carriers (hence why Emirates has so many). I know they purchased many, but how did it work out for their bottom lines? Also, are these carriers concerned with bottom lines as much as national prestige?
      - rob74 2y ago
        Seems to work out pretty well: https://www.emirates.com/media-centre/emirates-group-announces-2023-24-results https://www.emirates.com/media-centre/emirates-group-announc... "Emirates reports new record profit of AED 17.2 billion (US$ 4.7 billion), up 63% from AED 10.6 billion (US$ 2.9 billion) last year." ...of course it helps to have direct access to cheap fuel. Also, if you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_airlines_in_the_world#Scheduled_passenger-kilometers_flown_(billions) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_airlines_in_the_world#..., you'll see that Emirates is the fourth largest individual airline in the world by passenger-kilometers, and the first three are US-based airlines with more complicated networks, while Emirates only has one major hub in Dubai and isn't really that into direct A-to-B flights (unless B is Dubai of course) - so if it makes sense for any airline to operate the A380, then that airline is Emirates.
- fsckboy 2y ago
  >Meanwhile airports haven’t gotten bigger and more people are flying. many smaller market airports have spare capacity and point-to-point flying from one to another reduces demand on the large hubs, which is what Boeing (lol) told Airbus (i am very smart) before they even started on the A380.
- DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
  > The next big flip to disappear is A380 Just like with wildlife charities, those dang charismatic-megaavians get all the public-attention - so the nonthreatening and cuddly appearance of the A380 gets to be on the sponsor-an-airframe marketing posters, but people need to be aware of the importance of strong aerodiversity and the need to protect and preserve smaller planes, like a Piper Club or an Ekranoplane.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
    > Ekranoplane I don’t think any of those ever really “took off,” so to speak. I think they had a lot of trouble, with even slightly rough weather. There’s a reason that every photo you see of them, has them zipping over a calm, smooth body of water, on a clear day.
    - aspenmayer 2y ago
      I thought those relied on ground effect to achieve the required lift, which would prevent them from flying above the ground or water beyond the altitude at which ground effects exist?
      - seabass-labrax 2y ago
        Yes; parent was making a pun about it not taking off (in fact, the A-90 Ekranoplane could fly without the ground effect, albeit poorly). The substantive point though is that using the ground effect isn't as viable over rough seas such as those of the Atlantic as it is over calm, flat water due to the irregular astrodynamic shear forces among other reasons.
        DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
        Out of curiosity, what would happen if a giant saltwater wave got into those jet engines?
        p_l 2y ago
- kortilla 2y ago
  >Meanwhile airports haven’t gotten bigger and more people are flying. This was the flawed thinking that led to the production of the a380 and its ultimate demise. It turns out that people mostly don’t like layovers and more efficient mid sized planes flying between cities people actually want to go to is much better. I don’t have to care about the capacity of ORD when I can just fly to SFO directly from the east coast. The airports with the worst capacity problems (cough LHR) generally had that issue because they were major layover hubs too. The economics will just eliminate them as a hub and life will move on. The 777ER came in and wrecked the other pillar supporting the layover life by opening up direct long range routes from NA to Asia that would have previously made sense on an A380 to NRT with fanouts to other destinations in Asia. The a380 is super cool, but it is not filling a need.
  - alexey-salmin 2y ago
    This wasn't really what killed a380. Many major airports are near the limit of their runways with planes landings/takeoffs every 2-3 minutes. Constructing 3th/4th/5th runway is often impossible. Yearly traffic keeps growing. A reasonable forecast would be that it's only a matter of time until demand for planes like a380 will rise. But evidently it came too early and then the 2008 recession and then COVID moved that point even further into the future. Will see in 20 years I guess.
    - kortilla 2y ago
      This is incorrect. Very few airports are anywhere near their limits and the ones that are have alternatives close by that it turns out people prefer airports once the options become available and they are cheaper and/or more convenient for their destination. SFO is at the heavy capacity you are referring to, yet it still operates as a united hub and there is plenty of capacity in SJC and OAK. The area is nowhere near its ceiling. LHR has also been at that limit for 20 years and has been shedding layovers and locals to other regionals easily. The flawed thinking is that “at max runway operations per second” implies a max capacity. It turns out a lot of that was really inefficient usage of resources.
      - 2y ago
- andrewflnr 2y ago
  RP Flip is absolutely unique worldwide. Nothing else, to my knowledge anyway, is even remotely close in shape or function. A whole class of conventional commercial aircraft is not remotely comparable.
sitkack 2y ago
The failure here, is that ONR and Scripps, and maybe they did, but this is not only a historic scientific instrument, but one that is still valuable. They should have shopped it around to see who else could use it before letting it sit idle and then scraping it. At the same time, I have seen working electron microscopes, oscilloscopes, etc just get "surplussed" but in the process of surplussing them, they are rendered inoperable. When we have a resource of such a magnitude, it is our duty to ensure that someone else uses it for its designed purpose, science.

kylehotchkiss 2y ago

The next big flip to disappear is A380s :( quite a few have been decommissioned already (so soon), production has ended, and we’re left only with a350s and 777x (lol) to follow in its footsteps. Meanwhile airports haven’t gotten bigger and more people are flying.

rootusrootus 2y ago
Seems like Boeing made the right call when they canceled their own plan for a new superjumbo back in the 90s. The A380 is cool, but not economical to fly. The future is more planes like the 777X.
- AdamJacobMuller 2y ago
  Deeply ironic considering how wrong Boeing has been in so many other ways, but, its been fairly obvious that the hub-and-spoke model the A380 was built for was dying in favor of the point-to-point model of the 787/777x. Airbus will adjust far better than Boeing could have, had they been wrong.
- nradov 2y ago
  Around the same time that Airbus was designing the A380, Boeing did waste a lot of time and money designing the Sonic Cruiser. The bet was that customers would pay for faster point-to-point travel, bypassing large hubs. This strategic error is one of the reasons why they still haven't built a new single-aisle airliner. https://simpleflying.com/boeing-sonic-cruiser/ https://simpleflying.com/boeing-sonic-cruiser/
  - mandevil 2y ago
    Boeing actually pitched a "787, but 737 sized" to airlines, who all said "No, what we really want is a plane with a 737 Type Certificate (so all of our pilots don't need expensive training) that matches the fuel efficiency of the A320neo" and so Boeing found themselves promising a plane that would be a normal 737 so all the pilots didn't need expensive training on it, but would have the same fuel efficiency as a A320neo. It was 100% the airlines that killed Boeing's attempt to pitch them on a clean-sheet airliner. I still believe that if Boeing had a CEO who was an engineer (and not a Harvard MBA who spent two decades at GE under Jack "Company Killer" Welch) at the time they would have not made that promise, because it was impossible to get the larger, more fuel efficient engines under a 737 wing without changing the flight characteristics too much to keep the type certificate. But... the Sonic Cruiser is a minor footnote compared to the A380. That was an enormous business disaster (if any A380 ever turned a profit on fly-away costs alone, ignoring the initial up front costs, it was only just barely). The thing about building a new clean-sheet jetliner like this is that you are betting the company's financial performance for the next 10 years on this working out. Because Boeing was actively killing people and there are only the two companies (C919 notwithstanding) Airbus came out of the era looking great, but the A380 was orders of magnitude bigger corporate problem than the Sonic Cruiser.
    - nradov 2y ago
      Well maybe not impossible. Boeing designed extending landing gear for the 737 Max 10 (although it was mainly done to allow for stretching the fuselage). That didn't require any major breakthroughs and presumably could have been brought forward to the Max 8 in order to allow lower engine placement, although it would have delayed development.
      - mandevil 2y ago
        I didn't think the 9 inches added to the gears on the telescoping mechanism were enough to fit the LEAP or the PW1000, I thought that they needed more clearance than that.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  You do not want to be heading towards Immigration, just after one of those puppies lands.
  - kylehotchkiss 2y ago
    I had global entry each time I was flying them so there was no wait for me. Most passengers into the US were not US nationals and had to wait in the non-citizen lines. Waiting for your bags on the other hand...
- stephen_g 2y ago
  It does work very well for certain parts of the world, like the Gulf carriers (hence why Emirates has so many). For the US and inter-Europe, totally uneconomical but not everywhere. With newer engines and a slightly redesigned wing (if I recall correctly it was designed a bit oversized than what was needed for the -800, to be able to accommodate a stretch variant which was never introduced) it could probably be made to have 15% lower fuel burn per passenger which would make it work even better for those specific kind of routes, but it's not economical for Airbus to do that when only Emirates and a very small handful of other customers would buy it...
  - mmooss 2y ago
    > It does work very well for certain parts of the world, like the Gulf carriers (hence why Emirates has so many). I know they purchased many, but how did it work out for their bottom lines? Also, are these carriers concerned with bottom lines as much as national prestige?
    - rob74 2y ago
      Seems to work out pretty well: https://www.emirates.com/media-centre/emirates-group-announces-2023-24-results https://www.emirates.com/media-centre/emirates-group-announc... "Emirates reports new record profit of AED 17.2 billion (US$ 4.7 billion), up 63% from AED 10.6 billion (US$ 2.9 billion) last year." ...of course it helps to have direct access to cheap fuel. Also, if you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_airlines_in_the_world#Scheduled_passenger-kilometers_flown_(billions) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Largest_airlines_in_the_world#..., you'll see that Emirates is the fourth largest individual airline in the world by passenger-kilometers, and the first three are US-based airlines with more complicated networks, while Emirates only has one major hub in Dubai and isn't really that into direct A-to-B flights (unless B is Dubai of course) - so if it makes sense for any airline to operate the A380, then that airline is Emirates.
fsckboy 2y ago
>Meanwhile airports haven’t gotten bigger and more people are flying. many smaller market airports have spare capacity and point-to-point flying from one to another reduces demand on the large hubs, which is what Boeing (lol) told Airbus (i am very smart) before they even started on the A380.
DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
> The next big flip to disappear is A380 Just like with wildlife charities, those dang charismatic-megaavians get all the public-attention - so the nonthreatening and cuddly appearance of the A380 gets to be on the sponsor-an-airframe marketing posters, but people need to be aware of the importance of strong aerodiversity and the need to protect and preserve smaller planes, like a Piper Club or an Ekranoplane.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y ago
  > Ekranoplane I don’t think any of those ever really “took off,” so to speak. I think they had a lot of trouble, with even slightly rough weather. There’s a reason that every photo you see of them, has them zipping over a calm, smooth body of water, on a clear day.
  - aspenmayer 2y ago
    I thought those relied on ground effect to achieve the required lift, which would prevent them from flying above the ground or water beyond the altitude at which ground effects exist?
    - seabass-labrax 2y ago
      Yes; parent was making a pun about it not taking off (in fact, the A-90 Ekranoplane could fly without the ground effect, albeit poorly). The substantive point though is that using the ground effect isn't as viable over rough seas such as those of the Atlantic as it is over calm, flat water due to the irregular astrodynamic shear forces among other reasons.
      - DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
        Out of curiosity, what would happen if a giant saltwater wave got into those jet engines?
        p_l 2y ago
kortilla 2y ago
>Meanwhile airports haven’t gotten bigger and more people are flying. This was the flawed thinking that led to the production of the a380 and its ultimate demise. It turns out that people mostly don’t like layovers and more efficient mid sized planes flying between cities people actually want to go to is much better. I don’t have to care about the capacity of ORD when I can just fly to SFO directly from the east coast. The airports with the worst capacity problems (cough LHR) generally had that issue because they were major layover hubs too. The economics will just eliminate them as a hub and life will move on. The 777ER came in and wrecked the other pillar supporting the layover life by opening up direct long range routes from NA to Asia that would have previously made sense on an A380 to NRT with fanouts to other destinations in Asia. The a380 is super cool, but it is not filling a need.
- alexey-salmin 2y ago
  This wasn't really what killed a380. Many major airports are near the limit of their runways with planes landings/takeoffs every 2-3 minutes. Constructing 3th/4th/5th runway is often impossible. Yearly traffic keeps growing. A reasonable forecast would be that it's only a matter of time until demand for planes like a380 will rise. But evidently it came too early and then the 2008 recession and then COVID moved that point even further into the future. Will see in 20 years I guess.
  - kortilla 2y ago
    This is incorrect. Very few airports are anywhere near their limits and the ones that are have alternatives close by that it turns out people prefer airports once the options become available and they are cheaper and/or more convenient for their destination. SFO is at the heavy capacity you are referring to, yet it still operates as a united hub and there is plenty of capacity in SJC and OAK. The area is nowhere near its ceiling. LHR has also been at that limit for 20 years and has been shedding layovers and locals to other regionals easily. The flawed thinking is that “at max runway operations per second” implies a max capacity. It turns out a lot of that was really inefficient usage of resources.
    - 2y ago
andrewflnr 2y ago
RP Flip is absolutely unique worldwide. Nothing else, to my knowledge anyway, is even remotely close in shape or function. A whole class of conventional commercial aircraft is not remotely comparable.

sitkack 2y ago

The failure here, is that ONR and Scripps, and maybe they did, but this is not only a historic scientific instrument, but one that is still valuable. They should have shopped it around to see who else could use it before letting it sit idle and then scraping it. At the same time, I have seen working electron microscopes, oscilloscopes, etc just get "surplussed" but in the process of surplussing them, they are rendered inoperable. When we have a resource of such a magnitude, it is our duty to ensure that someone else uses it for its designed purpose, science.