[karaterobot]

> Engineers are exploring radical new designs for commercial planes that would use less energy and lower emissions. But will passengers be willing to board them?

They don't really explore the question in this subtitle very well. There's like one line late in the article about "passenger acceptability is one of the criteria built into its contest", so the short answer must be yes.

I assume the longer answer is "Yeah, of course. Passengers of commercial airlines already put up with a lot of terrifying, uncomfortable, dehumanizing things, there's no reason to suspect they'd be so spooked by airplanes that look different that they decide never to travel."

[S201]

Yeah, I always roll my eyes at the phrase "passenger acceptability." For example, a few years ago there was this idea that passengers would not fly on the 737 Max after it re-entered service in the US. Which is nonsense since I'm willing to bet that 90% of passengers can't identify if the plane they're on is Boeing or Airbus let alone care about individual models. The only "passenger acceptability" metric is what does the ticket cost?