Some good news about innovations. Will it work? Only time will tell.
Airliners haven’t traditionally been a lightning rod for innovation. Commercial wide-body planes haven’t changed all that much over the last few decades. But amid an industrywide push to reduce carbon emissions, a bonkers new jumbo jet concept is aiming to change that.
This Bonkers Tri-Wing Jumbo Jet Concept Reduces Fuel Consumption by 70%
Cool. But I thought technology had plateaued. 
What a magnificently absurd claim. Where’s the Cray model? Who’s going to build the $10 bn prototype?
I guess we’ll see if it works.
I will say that the concept looks a bit silly, but that’s because I’m not used to that sort of structure for a plane.
We will when somebody does a proper billion dollar super computer simulation. Knowing the Chinese, it will be them. This century and the next three at least are theirs.
Maybe. But, out of curiosity, how do you figure that?
Who’s going to pay for you to get more fiber in your diet?
They’re putting all their command economy bet on science and technology, which means education. The Silk Road, sucking Afghanistan dry of lithium and making its populous fat on cushions, a 100 mile square algal farm, the same and more for industrial hemp, paving the Gobi with PV, they’ll do it all and more. Think Robert A. Heinlein, Kurt Vonnegut, John Brunner. Technocracy with traditional folk culture for ‘meaning’.
I grow it. Just had it for lunch.
Well, that’s more information than I had before. I guess time will tell.
China is a technological super power. And they don’t have to worry about voter approval, human rights, and other inconveniences. But four centuries?
Yeah. Oppression can easily last that long. Look at Rome. Christendom, particularly post-Soviet Russia. Islam. Self-oppression too. I hear what you say. Empires fall. Collapsology fascinates me, but I can’t see Hindu, Muslim, Confucian, Catholic, Orthodox, Southern Baptist cultures collapsing. Only secular cultures that don’t level up. Britain is the most likely candidate. Fascism is waiting in the wings everywhere to ‘save’ collapsing societies. I really cannot see how China can possibly fail to dominate Eurasia and Africa except demographically, that will start to show mid-century on. She’ll have to initiate immigration next century, but from where? India?! Nigeria?!?! Europe will turn black first. Sooooo, no, China won’t have plain sailing after this century, but she’ll get so far ahead with deeply extended infrastructure. China may go like America had to and accept non-Han as Chinese, become a melting pot but never be politically or religiously plural.
Bonkers is the right word for this.
Those wings don’t look very swept back at all, so I have a hard time believing it gets anywhere near mach .9.
That jet might produce enough thrust…but what happens when it fails? Jumbo Jets have 2-4 engines for redundancy, this has none.
Why would they put that fuel bladder on top? I get not being in the wing for thinner more aerodynamic. But why not stick the bladder below? The CG/stability of that top engine mount and fuel on top can’t work out well.
Any investor in this I could guarantee has never piloted a plane.
And the entire “can take off and land in small airfields”. I might be able to theoretically take off and land on shorter runways, but shorter runways aren’t made to handle the weight of such a massive plane, so this will still only be able to land on the same ‘beefed up’ long runways at major airports. Sure, smaller airports could improve their short runways to be able to handle that weight, but one, then why not just extend the runway if that was the case, and two, the reason they have smaller runways to fit smaller planes is because less people live there and need service of a larger plane. So making a massive plane that could service a short runway is a futile ‘benefit’.
If there is investment in future of aircraft, it is electric/hydrogen, which is happening slowly but are limited to propellers which have limited speeds and altitudes but has 0 emissions. Or the more promising super sonic planes boom sonic is developing https://boomsupersonic.com/
This is fascinating technology that I don’t understand but somehow is so fast it utilizes the carbon in the air and turns that into fuel so thought it might not be reducing emissions, it sure is utilizing 70% less fossil fuel. I would invest it that a thousand times before this laughable “jumbo jet”. I am not even sure if this was a joke plane to troll aviators.
The article says it has two.
You think SE Aeronautics isn’t a real company?
We need a better future!
We need a future where people can read.
Sorry, you are right, I read two and it does say engines (plural). I skimmed through it, my mistake. After all it is the engines that would have 70% less emissions and I guess what you would want.
But I stand by what else I said in that they developed a solution for which there is no problem. Being that it is a high lift and shorter take off and landing is useless. There isn’t the infrastructure for it and there never will be as none is needed as explained in my other post.
I still don’t see any benefit in having tanks up top either.
I have no clue, I never heard of them. But there are so many pop up companies now I days. I never heard of boom sonic but they have contract with United already.
ha, good one.
carbon emissions is not a problem?
They are called start-up companies.
no…creating a jumbo jet that can take off and land on a short runway due to it’s high lift is not a problem that needs a solution.
Saying that multi engine jet that can reduce emissions by 70% is innovative, I wish they expanded on how. But that concept aircraft was quite unnecessary. Simply slapping those engines on current planes would be a great idea if it did what they claim it could.
What I think is a bonkers concept is a short take of and land jumbo jet, and one that has fuel on top of the fuselage.
Yes start up companies, thanks.
It’s a useful innovation. Jets like this could land on a shorter runway.
I’ll just requote myself there…
I would assume lack of aviation knowledge… but runways have a weight threshold on them. It is much cheaper to make runways that can hold less weight, especially if you don’t need to, because only smaller planes land there. And since you only have less weight smaller planes landing there, you also don’t need a long runway.
So if you were to spend the tons of money to allow the runway to hold a hevier aircraft, you might was well lengthen that runway. But if you didn’t lengthen it, but wasted that large sum of money to increase the weight capacity, you wouldn’t have enough people that travel from there to pay for that or to have a jumbo jet land there. So you would now have an insanely huge bill for a runway that only these special jets could land on, that would never land there…
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