Aviation Geeks unite?! Anybody else care about planes here?

Have to agree. Bar some technological miracle huge airliners are to be no more sigh

 

Quad Engine AirCraft are dead in the market for Civilian Passenger purposes, nobody is going to buy Quad Engine AvGas guzzling for:
1) Less Fuel Cost Reasons; 2x Engines consume "Less Gas" than 4x Engines
2) Less Maintenance Cost Reasons; 2x Engines are cheaper to maintain than 4x Engines
3) Less Mass & Drag to design around; 2x Engines weigh less & provide less Drag Penalties.

Only Military & Transport would use them when necessary to lift their maximum loads.

We'll still have large Airliners. The 777X is comparable to the 747 / A380 in length, minus the "hump / 2nd Deck".

If the 747X ever gets turned into a real Aircraft, the Double-Decker Boeing airline would need to be 2x Engine using the largest Engines possible.

The Upper Deck would need to be Single Aisle while the Lower Deck would be Double Aisle to probably meet the Weight Requirements & not suffer significant excess drag penalties compared to the 747

Personally, I would want to add in a STARC-ABL Tail Mounted Ducted Electric-Fan propulsor and T-Tail to help reduce Fuel Consumption.

Also add in a Forward Canard that is mounted behind the pilots to create a 3LS Wing Configuration. This would let you design a more efficient Wing Configuration for Cruise speeds and offer more stability.

 

That's interesting. Be neat if it happens with two larger engines instead of four

 

That would require Boeing to gain leadership that has Cajones and willing to go after the empty Market Segment that the A380's failure and 747's retirement has left.

But right now, Boeing is run by "Bean Counters". Not an AeroSpace Engineer like in the past.

So it's a matter of changing of leadership and being willing to take some risks.

 

True, very true

 

And what's so bad about that idea if it works?

 

The idea for UDF or UnDucted Fan has been around since the Early 1970's - 1980's.

It's more commonly known as "Prop Fan".

It started up because of the 1979 Oil Crisis.

It has the best Specific Fuel Burn for it's given speed, even compared to modern Ultra High Bypass Jet Engines.

Spoiler: Specific Fuel Consumption of PropFan ProtoTypes

The only reason that the engine failed to get into service was the Oil Crisis was over and the Airline & Aircraft Engine makers + Aircraft manufacturers didn't want to go through the Certification of a New Engine, Re-training of Maintenance Personnel, and setup of new Logistics to support it.

But we could've been saving THAT much more fuel since the 1980's.

Here's the working prototype at the 1988 Farnborough Airshow:

It flew across the Atlantic to get to the show.

Here's the proposed plane design that would've replaced the 737

The design was cancelled when the engine design stopped receiving R&D to complete it and to go to certificiation.

We obviously need to get the engine into completion.

The version you showed me closely resembles the Russian PropFan where the propeller was Foreward mounted.
But IMO, the only real solution to solve the noise issue is to have one set of Propellers foreward, the other set of Propellers on the back of the engine.
But you need to test my theory with real world models to validate that my configuration would lower the noise output.

With today's Climate Crisis, converting all 737 class Twin Engine aircraft to this engine design should be imperative along with having them getting STARC ABL rear Ducted Fan propulsor to be commonly produced.

That and the integrated Electric Motor "Wheel Tug" into the front landing wheel.

Also, replace your traditional Winglet with Tamarack Active Winglet.

We need FlexSys FlexFoil on all Control Surfaces for smoother and more AeroDynamically efficient control surfaces.

Stacking all these technologies would SAVE ALOT of fuel.

 

I have always loved the look of T-tails.

While the outlandish concept of a lounge in one is "for the birds," I do notice some T-tails are as large as the wingspan of some civilian craft. I wonder if you could put the cockpit there as an escape craft all its own---with its own set of controls.

Looks like there is an all-in-one way to make jet fuel via solar power:
https://techxplore.com/news/2022-07-all-in-one-solar-powered-tower-carbon-neutral-jet.html

Ghost Blimp
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-80-year-mystery-of-the-us-navys-ghost-blimp-180980531/

Kite power
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/science-environment-62513387

Positioning tech
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-hollow-core-fibers-precise-positioning-space.html
This is why a German-Polish consortium has come together to develop a reliable means to transmit light to make gyroscopes less susceptible to interference. Their secret: Hollow-core fibers that can channel light with minimal loss.

Buzz's felt tip pen used to throw a switch
https://up-ship.com/blog/?p=50062

Arsenal planes


Get to tha choppa’


Declassification for fun and profit
https://www.wired.com/story/pentagon-data-profit-freedom-information-of-information-act/

 

it would be interesting if, long term, quad jets never returned but an open-rotor fan system with one turbo fan in the tail led to a sort-of return of the tri-jet. I think Fed-Ex still flies DC-10s

 

and again.. quad-jet, though just on the design table

 

I think they did quad-jet engines for noise reasons vs 3x larger engines.

They need to deal with ever tightening Aircraft noise regulations around the world.

And to do that, they might have had to make compromises to get to that point along with fuel efficiency.

None the less, the Final Design looks REALLY Sweet.

Looks like they followed the Whitcomb Area Rule

 

Think if you're looking at supersonic aircraft then you'll need 4 engines - to get enough thrust with two would probably require some pretty large engines at which point you've got issues like drag to contend with.

I know you can do it with two (or even one) in fighter jets but they're much smaller.

Though if you went with two large engines mounted in the fuselarge at the rear it might be possible to have physically larger engines by shaping the fuselage out but again you're having to deal with drag and other design issues the air intakes.

 

Hmm...the art looks familiar...
https://up-ship.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/2707.jpg

Blackstar
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/havent-seen-that-blackstar-recently.328/page-4#post-547683
HALO
https://books.google.com/books?id=A...age&q=Hypersonic Air-Launching Option&f=false

New Frontier:
https://www.nfaero.com/

 

Those Olympus engines the Concorde used were really special, highly efficient too at those speeds and yeah, they're quite big indeed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolls-Royce/Snecma_Olympus_593

 

Well there are only so many ways you can design a plane especially you're dealing with supersonic flight or 5th gen fighters with stealth capabilities.

Though digging in QANTAS and supersonic history turns up an a article that talks about how the airline was looking at buying (and indeed did place an order for the Concorde and Boeing's 2707 (which is the one pictured in your link).

https://www.executivetraveller.com/news/qantas-concorde-supersonic

Long haul from Australia would be quite suited to supersonic flight given that's largely over water when heading to the U.K and North America.

Wouldn't have been non-stop though. According to wiki both designs had a range of ~4000 miles.

Trans-continetal in Australia would have worked well too. Most of the middle is empty so could have flown balls to the wall from Sydney to Perth (well to and from most of the capital cities as well).

but imagine how big they'd have to be to do the job with two of them

 

That would be a real challenge, for example, if you increase the diameter of the engine you might have to lower its rotational speed because of the centrifugal forces on the turbine blades, you could strengthen them but that would make them heavier etc etc etc, wouldn't be a walk in the park in any case..

 

Avgas is short for "aviation gasoline," which is what piston-engined planes run on. Jets and turboprops run on jet fuel (basically kerosene).

 

Duly Noted.

 

Av gas is leaded. Has to be.