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But is there room for innovation in the airliner industry anymore? Let's have a thought experiment If you use the same engines from the same vendors, same alum

But is there room for innovation in the airliner industry anymore? Let's have a thought experiment If you use the same engines from the same vendors, same aluminum, same carbon fiber, same landing gear. Almost everything just like the others, can you really differentiate anymore? Or if you are a component vendor, can you really innovate that much anymore? Ie maybe it can be argued it is the correct move, from the board's and investors' point of view. The machine is already pretty close to optimal, and has been since the nineties. Don't change the machine, just milk it. Fire most engineers, move production to the lowest cost non-unionised place, outsource as much as possible to vendors that you compete viciously against each other etc.

positron26 1y ago
> has been since the nineties There's still not a lot of ceramic fiber in use in the engines. That's a pure weight reduction and fuel efficiency increase, up to the point that NOx emissions can't be controlled. Given the rapidly advancing VTOL autonomous drone tech, harbor tug concepts may yet make an appearance. The funding for this could be driven from rescue aircraft, short range powerful VTOLs optimized to go pluck a struggling aircraft out of the sky and put it on the ground. The obvious evolution of that is ditching a lot of the landing weight. Reinforced undercarriage, landing gears, high-lift devices almost all exist to be used in a very short segment of the flight. Unlike roads, automation in the air has quite a bit less variability to deal with. Would you rather pilots try to put a plane with a mechanical issue on the ground by skillfully manipulating throttles or let an overgrown DJI take a swing?
- Gravityloss 1y ago
  Good ideas. Boeing will probably not be involved much in those things? (Though I could be wrong...) Probably innovative motivated people go to work in software, SpaceX, EVTOL startups or now AI and so on. Even Walter Bright moved already decades ago to software. But it's interesting to look at Arianespace's VTOL rocket development. Can a "dinosaur" do rapid innovation, when there's massive enough incentive? The answer looks like, maybe!

positron26 1y ago

> has been since the nineties There's still not a lot of ceramic fiber in use in the engines. That's a pure weight reduction and fuel efficiency increase, up to the point that NOx emissions can't be controlled. Given the rapidly advancing VTOL autonomous drone tech, harbor tug concepts may yet make an appearance. The funding for this could be driven from rescue aircraft, short range powerful VTOLs optimized to go pluck a struggling aircraft out of the sky and put it on the ground. The obvious evolution of that is ditching a lot of the landing weight. Reinforced undercarriage, landing gears, high-lift devices almost all exist to be used in a very short segment of the flight. Unlike roads, automation in the air has quite a bit less variability to deal with. Would you rather pilots try to put a plane with a mechanical issue on the ground by skillfully manipulating throttles or let an overgrown DJI take a swing?

Gravityloss 1y ago
Good ideas. Boeing will probably not be involved much in those things? (Though I could be wrong...) Probably innovative motivated people go to work in software, SpaceX, EVTOL startups or now AI and so on. Even Walter Bright moved already decades ago to software. But it's interesting to look at Arianespace's VTOL rocket development. Can a "dinosaur" do rapid innovation, when there's massive enough incentive? The answer looks like, maybe!