
Airbus patents aircraft cabins shaped like doughnuts - mwc
http://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/originalDocument?CC=US&NR=2014319274A1&KC=A1&FT=D&ND=3&date=20141030&DB=EPODOC&locale=en_EP
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mwc
Interesting from the FT [1]:

 _Airbus said although the design was worthwhile enough to protect with a
patent — like about 6,000 other ideas its engineers devise every year — it was
not an immediate prospect for shuttling passengers from Heathrow to JFK. “This
is not something that’s currently under active development,” Airbus said._

[1]
[http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ba80c518-6492-11e4-b219-00144...](http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/ba80c518-6492-11e4-b219-00144feabdc0.html?ftcamp=published_links%2Frss%2Fhome_uk%2Ffeed%2F%2Fproduct#axzz3JGVAqlXi)

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caoilte
Make patents 100x more expensive and see if they still think that.

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whacker
it will create a market where only the rich can get patents - precisely the
opposite of what I presume you hope to achieve.

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toomuchtodo
Keep patent costs the same, but reduce their lifetime to 5 years.

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gameshot911
I imagine it'd be uncomfortable to be seated at an angle askew to the
takeoff/landing vector.

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ChuckMcM
This, if you've ever ridden in the jump seats of a jet and felt your head and
guts go sideways during climb out it is very disconcerting. You know that
feeling that the jet it tilting way up when your sitting forward? You get the
tilt is really sideways when you are sitting sideways. I expect you get used
to it but it no doubt makes those seats hard to sell.

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stefan_kendall3
The seats of a plane are never sold uniform price, I guess except on
southwest.

I'd take the side seats to save money, and others would as well. I also sit
behind the engine when it's cheaper.

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Gravityloss
My bet is that airplanes will look just the same in 2070 as they did in
1970...

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k-mcgrady
The only thing that needs to change imo is space. If you got an extra ft width
on the seat and an extra 2-3 ft between each row the increase in comfort would
significantly improve the experience. I'm not a big guy or a very tall guy
(6ft1in) but space is my one complaint about air travel. I can deal with all
the other BS but being uncomfortable with practically no way of improving it
when on a flight longer than a couple of hours is so frustrating.

Edit: Obviously this is from the perspective of a passenger. Planes could
become more energy efficient, faster etc. etc.

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saryant
It exists: first and business class.

In fact, domestic first class fares in the US have been really cheap lately,
often just a $100-200 premium over coach.

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themartorana
Only? That's a lot of cash, man. At least for me it is. And that "only" is a
25-50% premium.

That's another night in a hotel, or slightly nicer meals, or an extra drink,
or...

I wish I could flippantly toss around a few hundred bucks without a second
thought. One day, maybe.

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prawn
If they offered the same space for economy seats, the prices would be higher.
This way you can make the judgement for yourself.

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themartorana
Seriously?

I had plenty of space before about a decade of whittling away space in coach
without whittling away at the price (plus removing meals, adding bag fees, and
so on).

I've had a choice for decades. Coach used to be a half-way pleasant one. Now
it's steerage, and the passengers treated as such.

Well, most airlines. I'm partial to Southwest, for a number of reasons - one
being I don't have to sit with my legs spread to accommodate the seat in front
of me (6' tall).

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prawn
I wonder how much rising fuel prices have balanced that reduction in services.

I am taller than you and struggle for leg room on any airline. I just deal
with it and spend the money saved missing premium classes on other things.

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jpatokal
Any aeronautical engineers around who could give us the TL;DR of just why it's
a good idea to have a hole in the middle? To a layman (me) it would seem
seriously destabilizing to have a hole that's perpendicular to the direction
of flight, esp. since a delta wing seems to pull off more or less the same
shape without the hole.

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whiskypeters
Initially I thought the "hole" was meant to be enclosed within the airframe,
but it is there. See Fig 2 - Fig 8 in the patent application. They have even
diagrammed a method for boarding passengers using retractable escalators from
parallel hatches located on the forward and aft planes of the inner-torus, as
well as using an elevator to board passengers from within the hole! Fig 9 -
Fig 16 diagram the invention applied to a more conventional airframe (without
the hole).

The patent title is "aircraft including a passenger cabin extending around a
space defined outside the cabin and inside the aircraft." My understanding is
that the patent covers the torus-shaped passenger cabin within any larger
aerodynamic envelope as a method of reducing constraints related to cabin
pressurization (the "hole" is incidental). Very interesting stuff. I'm not an
aeronautical engineer or patent attorney.

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dalke
Paragraph 0030 says that figure 2 is without the aerodynamic envelope. The
aerodynamic envelope is labeled 22, and visible in figure 7. Other parts of
the description mention how the hole can be filled with cargo or other items,
and that a non-pressure skin can be used as a cover.

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josaka
Neat idea. Minor correction: This is a published patent application, not a
patent. According to USPTO records, it published last month, but examination
has not begun.

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davidw
> AIRCRAFT INCLUDING A PASSENGER CABIN EXTENDING AROUND A SPACE DEFINED
> OUTSIDE THE CABIN AND INSIDE THE AIRCRAFT

So then they're not deck chairs on top of the plane? I'm not much up on plane
design, but where exactly is "outside the cabin, but inside the aircraft" ?

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jpatokal
Read the friendly headline: it's a doughnut-shaped plane, meaning there's a
hole ("outside the cabin") in the middle ("inside the aircraft").

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davidw
I get it, it's just worded in a really strange way.

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jpatokal
On closer inspection, it looks like it's not an actual hole, but merely
unpressurized space: in the fuselage, but not in the (pressurized) cabin.

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damon_c
Will there be windows in the doughnut hole?

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mwc
It looks like 2 exit doors.

On that note, how would this affect the all important question of how to most
efficiently board an aircraft?

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SchizoDuckie
Am I the only one here wondering why the layout of an airplane interior be
something patentable?

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xpda
It should not be patentable, but, unfortunately, the bar is very low at the
moment.

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cscurmudgeon
The silly aircraft engineers and their obvious physics. /s

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hcarvalhoalves
Spaceplane?

This doughnut creates a neat lifting body design.

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jbinto
Airbus. That makes a lot more sense. I initially read that as Airbnb.

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marak830
Me too haha, insufficient coffee -.-

