alt Hacker NewsLol.
Do you think todays aircraft are not designed with the idea that the engine can fail?
And if you have unreliable components do you think redundancy is going to save you?
And lets be real - there already exist a aerospace arena where you have a higher number of CAT-events - it's called the military. And they deal with it by having a parachute for each passenger..
No - in effect building jet-engines (that are commercially viable i.e. fuel and efficeny) is not a easy to disrupt business. And the cost of entering it would be - high. And the benefit, well less obvious.
> Do you think todays aircraft are not designed with the idea that the engine can fail?
Of course they are - but the engines are also designed to be extremely reliable, and that's why you get away with two engines on long flights over water, something previously only available for planes with four engines.
> No - in effect building jet-engines (that are commercially viable i.e. fuel and efficeny) is not a easy to disrupt business.
That's true. My point being that building a better jet engine might be the hardest way to disrupt the business - making a better propulsion system, which might or not include a jet engine, is a less difficult approach. If you have an electric plane with two motors, a big APU-like turbine charging a battery and powering the motors, you might get away with a cheaper turbine, running in less extreme regimes, and still have a more fuel efficient plane requiring less maintenance than a pure turboprop would.
You don't win a stacked game by playing it by the rules. You win by changing the game to another one you can actually win. China did that with cars already.