PPRuNe Forums - View Single Post - KLM and Delft University to Create New Flying V Airplane with Passengers in Wings
Old 6th Jun 2019, 05:09
  #32 (permalink)  
tdracer
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Location: Everett, WA
Age: 68
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I've posted this before, but new design concepts are a dime a dozen. Boeing has often played with a blended wing/body concept - apparently there is a pretty good drag carrot there if you can make it work - but even Boeing says if it ever happens, it'll probably start out as a military aircraft because it'll cost so that to do it commercially first would be corporate suicide if it goes badly.

Forty plus years ago I took a class on aircraft design in college (fun class - our prof literally wrote the book). You had to design an aircraft from scratch - and your final grade was determined by the quality (and documentation) of your design. Several of the people in the class initially tried to do 'revolutionary' designs (one was a vertical takeoff 'flying car', another a hydrogen fueled aircraft carrying fuel in the wings) - only to quickly discover that there is a pretty good reason why successful aircraft designs tend to look more or less the same.
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