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DailyDirt: Weird Airplane Designs
from the urls-we-dig-up dept
Airplane designs have evolved quite a bit over the years. Some new planes might as well be alien spacecraft compared to the designs most people recognize. Outside of the super secret stealth aircraft, though, there are some interesting planes that are more fuel efficient and have strikingly different silhouettes. Here are just a few examples.
- Honda has a luxury jet, Hondajet, going into commercial production. Hondajet's engines are mounted in an unconventional way -- sitting on pedestals above each wing. [url]
- More fuel efficient plane engines could incorporate open rotor designs. Open rotor engines can have pretty large diameters and not require heavy shielding... and they look cool. [url]
- This fuel efficient concept combines a fuselage that provides some lift along with rear-mounted engines. Placing two engines right next to each other in the rear might be a problem if one of them fails and takes out the only other engine on this plane. [url]
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I'm ashamed, Techdirt
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Fuel Efficiency
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The Honda design has been tried before
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JASDF orders
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I wonder...
http://www.instructables.com/id/Tubular-paper-airplane/
Made them as a kid. They flew really well.
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Re: Fuel Efficiency
Apparently these have now been solved - but at present it is held up by the need for the airframe manufacturers to agree with the engine manufacturers about the configuration. Since there are three engine manufacturers (PW,GE and RR) and two airframe manufacturers (Airbus Industrie and Boeing)it is likely that the engine manufacturers will go 2-1 and no-one wants to be the 1 or to be the aiframe manufacturer who backs the 1. So there is apparently an impasse.
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Re: Fuel Efficiency
It sounds like this would be a replacement for turbofan planes running shorter routes at lower speeds. What I want to know is why is the open design so much more efficient? The article didn't explain it.
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Re:
The MIT plane looks like it shares some characteristics with that plane, though not the semi-delta wing configuration.
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