As long as they make the seating more comfortable than the cramped spaces they do now I would try it.

[deleted]

Reminds me of the catapult option in citymapper.

That your packages could be flying in*

Popular Science was telling me the same thing in the 80's.

The article is paywalled, but the implication is that passengers would potentially balk at radically different plane designs. The truth is that we suffer through modern day air travel - either by paying a fortune for moderate conveniences or by getting the equivalent to a 1970s school bus seat. Whoever makes a cheaper flight will win, as we will pay slightly more for another inch of personal space. The public doesn't care about the design - they care about the price and the comfort.

Maybe this? https://www.space.com/spinlaunch-test-flight-video

Never happen. Regardless of how efficient the plane the profits are based on how many seats that they can sell. The more people = more profit.

If they could get away with stuffing people in like a clown car they would.

Window seat price? $20,000

All other seats? $300

I’m tired of flying. I wish they could just fax me over.

> If they could get away with stuffing people in like a clown car they would.

They could offer sedation, being stuffed into a metal box, and I'd take it over what little is otherwise available as is. Unless you have something important or time is going to play a key part it'd be more comfortable as well.

I mean… it’s a metal box already, and you can take sedation if you like. No need to make the box smaller, lol.

I'm a (admittingly old) aerospace guy and I just can't see this becoming a thing.

Delta wings are super cool and have a lot of benefits but inherent safety isn't one of them.

Modern commercial jets as we know them are inherently stable and a LOT has to go wrong before they stop flying.

Delta designs are kind of always barely flying and rely a lot on stability augmentation for optimized flight.

Planes are essentially ICE cars. Boeing and the like have 0 incentive to make a drastic change.

Correct me if I’m wrong but most planes are what? 70s tech?

Maybe, spacex at some point will do international “flights” at first class prices but in a fraction of the time.

Need a disruptor in the industry to light fires under the people just maintaining status quo because it’s profitable.

And me in the 00's. These things might as well be fusion powered. They're just 20 years away.

Imagine the option to be gassed for your shit flight. Where you go to sleep, then wake up at your destination. They could stack everyone like legos or sardines like the amistad.

Or capsules ala capsule hotels in Japan. Let me slide in there, gas me for my claustrophobia or whatever phobias and wake me up when we land.

A smaller box of lets say 2 ft by 1.5 foot means it'd be harder to move around unconsciously or be bumped around while also letting more people be on the plane. Needing to sedate yourself is an additional task on your part and it's going to be more difficult to be exact (Too much, you're still asleep by the time you're landed. Too little and you're awake before you're there. Have someone wake everyone that opted to be sedated up and you limit the majority of those issues.).

As soon as they have cheap Starlink Wifi, I thnk people will be more amenable to being far from windows. I certainly would.

lol that would be congress. we should have speed rails but instead were told car and planes are whats best while both congress and companies do nothing about global warming.

Lol you’re telling me, check out the Hawaii rail system

I was excited when I first saw the Boeing 797 blended wing body concept.

I would look at it and be like “Yep, that looks like the future”

Enjoy the g forces when sitting in those wings

There are good reasons we didn't adopt these designs 80 years ago, and the same reasons are still true. Flying wing designs have some advantages, but a lot of disadvantages to go with them.

airbus zeroe hydrogen plane i posted this earlier by chance

Having seen some of this lifting body designs some 10-15 years ago (I think the Boeing had the 3 engines mounted on top) all I can think of is turbulence generated by departing/landing planes. The A380 requires two landing slots and I think these planes would need the same.

Plus, the concept designs at the top of the article are awesome. I'd love to see them become real!

So pretty much how spaceflight worked in The Fifth Element?

Hmm don’t remember much from that film besides the “multi pass”. But if it’s going into low orbit then coming back down, ya.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/visualizing-the-fastest-trains-in-the-world/

Just the amount of movement overall is going to be miserable if you're away from the central axis of rotation. You'd end up 30ft. higher than the other side of the plane in a banked turn.

What are the disadvantages?

This design could work for cargo planes. For passenger planes, every time it turns, it'll be like riding a roller coaster.

One is passenger comfort. The further you are from the roll center, the more you go up and down as the plane banks.

Couple that with poor views out the window to reconcile your inner ear, and anyone prone to motion sickness is going to have a bad time.

Just think about the risk a manufacturer would have to take. FAA certification for something revolutionary like this would be a nightmare.

1: Control issues. Missing significant vertical stabilizers makes stability an issue along multiple axis.

2: Central engine placement causes issues with cargo. Not a huge deal if all you needed was under slung bomb bays and fuel tanks in the wings, but a significant issue if you need to fill the plane with people or parcels.

3: Maintenance. Current commercial airplanes have easy access to the engines for inspection and maintenance. It's relatively simple to take off an entire engine and just swap in another if needed when your engine is bolted to the underside of your wing. When it's built into the place chassis? Not so much.

4: $$$$$$. Flying wing designs are more expensive in production because you can't manufacture different sections of the plane separately and basically lego things together at the end. Development would be pricey. Testing would be pricey. Getting approval to take passengers would be pricey. Construction is pricey. Maintenance is pricey. About the only thing less expensive for a flying wing design compared to a conventional plane is the fuel.

Saw these planes when I was in grade school in the 80/90’s. Supposed to be like the new design for planes and spaceships

My understanding was that flying wings were really hard to control back then. This has obviously been solved with computers, but I guess the aviation industry moves kinda slowly cause no one wants to spend a billion developing a new platform only for it to kill a few plane loads of people over some stupid issue.

Blue, disruptor found!

Red is attacking! Take your best shot!

Blue, disruptor destroyed!

FAA is the problem. They are extremely slow.

> On September 1st, the Federal Aviation Administration approved the first unleaded fuel found fit to power every spark-ignition engine on every airframe in the general aviation fleet

This fuel has been around for much, much, much longer. And yes, this is September 1st 2022.

Transport Canada is worse. Getting insured on certain makes and models (which are commercially available) is such a challenge that it takes less time to learn to fly acrobatic planes (not exaggerating).

All very good but, can we use that extra room to move my knees away from my chin?

Hawaii? Is this a joke?

Nah, check it out

Paywall. Does bromite have reader view?

I did. It’s more of a Honolulu rail system. I was imagining inter-island rail lol.

Fax complete. You’re now hard to see because they ran out of ink.

Oh, ya good luck with that. The current rail system is a complete joke. It’s under federal investigation lol

German design

Looks quite similiar

Flying wings are highly unstable, which (assuming you can control it with a flight computer) is a great feature in a military aircraft that might need to make sharp and sudden changes to it's flight path. It's not a great feature in a civilian aircraft where safety is #1 priority.

I'd totally be down for a 5th Element scenario where you get in a tiny pod and they straight up put you under sedation.

I'd be down with just the tiny pod.

If I could lay down and get some real sleep it would be amazing...

Oh good. Now I look the way people perceive me

Flying wings are inheriantly unstable. There's a reason there wasn't a safe design until you had computer controlled flight surfaces.

The Nazis were about to go hog wild on those too.

But what if someone left the stove on? Huh? Ya bet you didn’t think of that one.

Post non paywall please

Would you accept a sub-orbital rocket?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqE-ultsWt0

Nowadays you don’t need wings to fly.

I spent ~30 hours flying economy last month, never want to see the inside of a plane again. jks got a flight in Jan :/

Pretty much. Takes a LOT of time/money to certify an aircraft. People may whine, but I'd rather it be that way than have random aircraft falling out of the sky more often. Imagine if flying had the same lax regulations as driving, it'd be a bloodbath. New aircraft will be released eventually.

There are few climate gasses worse than water at aircraft cruising altitudes.

The controlling of these planes isn't the issue (that's solved. If the electronics fail you're screwed in a traditional jet just as much as you would be in a flying wing).

The issue is airports. Airports are built for planes with certain dimensions in mind. You can't just bring in an new (big) form factor - you'd have to revamp every (major) airport in the world. That's not going to happen.

I love how this article simplifies a super critical wing as "swept back"

Gives no justice to just how awesome they are.

> the equivalent to a 1970s school bus seat.

Mate that would be soooo much more leg space than currently. No way flight ceo's will allow for lowering profits

How so? Wouldn’t they just bank so you don’t feel it as much?

Ban leaded AvGas

Water makes up half the exhaust of conventional aircraft engines as well. Besides, unlike CO2, water precipitates.

The banking is the problem. Not so much on a small plane, but imagine sitting on the outside of a 747 wing when it banks into a turn...

Wouldn’t the forces be the same? If the aircraft banks the same angle to make the turn at the same speed?

“We’ve been working on advanced configurations for 20 years, but last time I went to the airport I didn’t see any of them flying around,” says Brent Cobleigh, NASA’s flight demonstrations and capabilities project manager.”

People have worked on heavier than air flight since Da Vinci. During all that time, people didn’t see them flying around.

I feel thin. Like butter scraped over too much bread.

The current wifi in planes is good enough for the majority of people

No. If you're on the outside of the wing, you're sitting at the long end of a lever. The barrel of a conventional airplane meanwhile is the fulcrum. So where you would barely feel the plane going into a bank if you're sitting in the barrel, even slight corrections would noticeably move passengers up and down significantly in a large flying wing.

Ohh the penny just dropped. Yeah, that would be a bit much.

Still good for cargo and I guess now first class would be in the center

A proper fax machine uses thermoelectric paper.

> But will passengers be willing to board them?

Is that a serious question? Passengers are willing to be packed in like sardines in poorly upholstered seats with shards of metal poking into their backs to save a few bucks on a plane ticket. They’re not going to balk because it looks like a spaceship.

Easiest way is to hold out your hands and tilt your top. Your head rotates a bit, but your hands go up and down a lot. Currently your head is where the person sits. In these designs your fingers will be where they sit.

No. They weren't. We developed them after ww2 also and then abandoned them until the computer age; because they were unstable and dangerous without a computer to do fast adjustments to control surfaces.

It's actually not profitable they just get bailed out when they lose.

High speed rail is really not gunna work in the us. Too sparsely populated in the middle of the country to be profitable and air travel is quite cost efficient.

we dont even take pay for fuel and what its going to cost future generations and what it will cost us in the coming decade with 1/3 less water which we need in the Midwest to make the land livable. how much do you think it will cost us to wipe out farm land and turn it into desert? if government is too corrupt and the people are too dumb and the billionaires are too selfish.

In one day? I think I probably need at least week of training before I fly one.

I can get you some more ink if you like—
Just tea, thank you

No, that would be practicality. The maps of where high speed rail lines are proposed reads like someone just looked at a map and went "Oh that looks short enough let's do that". Meanwhile they have these lines going through places where there's four tunnels and you can't exceed 75 MPH on the highway due to the sharpness of the turns. That's not feasible for a train that's supposed to go 150 plus.

There's a reason long-range passenger rail died in the US. Why go through something you can go over?

it died so the rich can keep making us pay a shit ton to travel. public transport has been dying since ford came out with cars and they started sabotaging it. even musk takes credit for fucking up the one they were going to build in ca. lol they have inanimate domain to build things like a rail system in america. they did it for all our roads.

Have you ever heard of insect politics?

The coasts are more than dense enough to support high speed rail. You don't have to connect Butfuck Iowa with the high speed rail system. Connect the busiest routes first, then expand the network from there ad necessary. ACELA should go down the entire east coast.

Hog wild is a exaggeration but they were definitely going to try, and ya gee I wonder where we got the idea /s since that is needed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horten_Ho_229

Being sedated and sitting up will guarantee my back will be in pain when I get off the plane. I'd be more comfortable laying down in the cargo space than sitting upright with a seat that reclines 1°

They don't even have places you can lay down in airports. All of air travel seems designed to torture people.

One problem I've had with these lifting-body airliners is that the seats further from the centerline of the plane would be awful during banking.

You do realize that in the era before planes and automobiles there was a well-functioning and world-class passenger rail service that went to every major city in the country right? And that was in the 1800's and early 1900's so we could make it work now if we really wanted to but we are collectively addicted to cars.

imminent domain

Eminent domain

well shit I was less wrong than the other person lol

Truly the 14.4kb modem was the pinnacle of communications technology.

/s

That must be a really simple flying school.

Even the new long range USA bomber looks like from star wars . I wonder how these movie people get ideas of the futuristic designs and vechile

They flew a prototype and was remarkably stable and efficient.

A prototype of KLM Royal Dutch Airlines' futuristic-looking flying-wing aircraft just took its first flight in Germany — take a look at the Flying-V

Hehe, maybe when "10,000 g" isn't part of the description.

No.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQUiIdre-MI

Water vapor doesn't hang around for decades the way CO2 does.

Flying wings are nothing new. Are they remarkably efficient? Yes. Remarkably stable? Maybe, but not without tons of help.

There’s a lot of flying wing shapes holes in the desert from failed flying wing designs.

Oh, come on, you don’t want to be able to fit into a soda can after launch?

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Yup. I remember seeing this same concept in pops I when I was in middle school in the early 2000s.

That's true.

But redbull