

Emerging technologies usher in more fuel-efficient, comfortable aircraft - tokenadult
http://www.economist.com/node/21527035

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stcredzero
The "double bubble," with all of the engines located at the rear of the
aircraft could be a dynamite combination with the unducted fan. The unducted
fan would give a 40% fuel savings, but it has the disadvantage of failing fan
blades potentially flying into the fuselage. Locate the fan blades at the
rear, and this problem largely goes away. There's also the problem of noise,
but such technology could be limited to "cargo ports" located in remote
places, acting as hubs for intercontinental shipping.

The Aerion supersonic business jet has good potential for a trans-ocean jet
sharing business. Executives and VIPs could land at coastal airports, and
transfer to a supersonic jet parked close by on the tarmac. Actually, using
this scheme, there's no reason why one couldn't use rocket-planes with mid-air
refueling to shoot VIPs on sub-orbital ballistic trajectories across the
Atlantic or Pacific in well under an hour.

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bicknergseng
Is it just me or did the section about "creature comforts" seem completely out
of touch with reality? "...mood lighting and holographic entertainment
units..." I'd be happy if my flight just had free wifi. Not to be overly
cynical, but it's far more likely we'll see the airlines finding more ways add
fees and pack in passengers.

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lsc
meh, I actually prefer the 'pay for what you use' model. My big problem with
it is that they don't optimize for speed. For example, instead of charging you
extra for checked bags, I think they should charge you extra for those
overhead bins; loading/unloading would go twice as fast without those bins.
Don't tell me the weight makes that much difference; the difference between me
and some of my friends would be the weight of two or more checked bags, and
I'm not particularly unusual. (I mean, I'm what, 6', and 200# just over a 27
BMI, so yeah, I'm fat, but I'm not unusually so.)

I guess as Americans, what, with the TSA, we have already made the choice that
well, speed doesn't matter.

I can't complain too much, really; flights are almost miraculously cheap. It's
hard to complain about something being less than luxurious when you can get
halfway across the country for the price of taking someone out to a nice
dinner.

"The only area where technologists have failed to improve efficiency is in
reducing the weight of passengers, says John Corl of Flight Sciences"

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confluence
How far off are the VTOL, hypersonic, high altitude electric jets Musk always
talks about?

Why aren't the airlines pursuing this angle - seeing as both drag and landing
at airports consume the vast majority of fuel, time and cost of an airplane.

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zokier
I doubt that VTOL would save fuel. More likely it would consume more fuel than
conventional landing.

