[bitemealienboi]

It looks cool and sounds cool but I doubt it will get popular.

You have entire companies, organizations, groups, standards, certifications, training and employees built around the current airframes. Its not going to be easy to change all of those overnight.

Not to mention, current airframes are the way they are because its what works best. Ever wondered why engines are always on the bottom of the wings, never on the top, or almost never on the back? Because its close to the ground and easy to maintain. Ever wonder why the wings are pointed upwards and swept back? Because those are the most fuel efficient and stable configurations. Flat fuselages like in the V plane means less heigh clearance which means passenger planes will have less space and freight planes will have trouble carrying certain shapes of cargo. All in all, that makes it hard to sell for any airplane manufacturers that want to make it

The current airframes are the way they are because of decades of incremental improvements and selections of which designs work and which don't. The entire industry or even a good enough chunk of it wont just drop that overnight

[caconym_]

So you think that no matter how much better technology gets, we're stuck with tube-with-wings _forever_ because that design was the first to be made practical? Nobody's saying we have to make an "overnight" switch, but you seem to be suggesting that nothing will ever change, and I think that's silly. It probably won't be this design, because change is definitely hard, but ultimately if some novel design can make the economics of commercial aviation (or some subset thereof) work then all the inertia of the current paradigms won't be able to stop progress over time.

[ARandomerDude]

I think you missed the parent's points in several places.

> So you think that no matter how much better technology gets, we're stuck with tube-with-wings _forever_ because that design was the first to be made practical?

Parent listed specific technological advantages of current designs over the flying wing configuration in question (maintenance, efficiency, etc.). The use of the word "overnight" twice suggests he wasn't making a "forever" claim.

And there is a real point regarding current infrastructure. For example, the entire 737 Max debacle exists because airlines want to avoid the expense of retraining pilots, and Boeing rushed to make that happen in the face of competition from Airbus.

[caconym_]

Actually, I don't think I missed anything.

I'm aware that their argument is very rooted in the status quo, and I agree that current infrastructure is a big roadblock to adoption of new technologies (in fact, you may have missed that part of my comment), but if they wanted to allow for eventual adoption of new technologies then they should have said so. Instead, their comment dismissed this new technology as impractical today without addressing the future at all, which I think is an incomplete analysis and potentially harmful if it were to be applied by the people actually making decisions about which developing technologies to invest in. That's why I replied.

[mmcconnell1618]

There is also the issue of structural complexity. Today, extending the body by another 10 feet for a couple of extra rows of seats is mostly repeating a section that already exists. Yes, there are a lot of calculations around rebalancing and flight characteristics but the construction of the extended body is pretty straight forward. How do you create smaller and larger variants of this v-wing design? Not as modular.

[fastball]

I don't know, the entire rocket industry is having to to re-orient itself around SpaceX's reusable rockets.

And given current usage, the gains in better rockets presumably pale in comparison to the potential savings / improvements that could be provided by new airframe designs.

[coredog64]

One could make the argument that prior to SpaceX’s entry into the market, there was stagnation due to limited market participants, cost-plus contracts, etc.

Commercial aviation is the exact opposite of this: Since deregulation, airlines have been operating in a highly competitive market with external pressures that have forced adoption of new technologies (oil prices => fuel efficiency, noise regulation => high bypass engines, labor costs => replacement of the flight engineer)

[fastball]

You're confusing airlines with manufacturers though. We're talking about an airplane design here, not the operation of it.

Effectively there are only two international long-haul airplane manufacturers (i.e. producers of planes that would compete with the OP) – Airbus and Boeing. That seems like "limited market participants" to me.

[iso1631]

What will be really interesting is if suborbital reusable rockets reach a similar cost per mile as long distance planes.

[mercurywells]

I would get some passenger evacuation tests done before I went any further with making this a passenger design.

[coredog64]

The FAA and JAA require series of evacuation tests as part of certification. During the JAA tests for the 737-NG, Boeing was unable to achieve the same evacuation rate as with the FAA tests. As a result, JAA capacity was lower than FAA capacity for these aircraft.