Haven't heard of this company before. A good synopsis I dug up in their fundraising announcement:
> JetZero, co-founded in 2020 by start-up veteran Tom O’Leary and aerospace legend Mark Page, is developing the world’s first commercial all-wing airplane. With up to 50% better fuel efficiency and lower carbon emissions compared to existing commercial airliners, JetZero's Z4 will offer the aviation industry a clear path to achieving its 2050 net-zero goals while also elevating the passenger experience. Working alongside the US Air Force, NASA, and the FAA, and backed by decades of investment and research into blended wing technology. JetZero looks to enter commercial service in the early 2030s.
Where an "all-wing" airplane is, kudos to Gemini,
> one that merges the main body and wings into a single lifting surface. This can reduce drag, lower fuel burn, and expand interior space.
"A clear path to zero": what a joke. It will be 25% less fuel, 75% SAF which are nowhere close (how will one grow enough without fertilizers ?), or worse, hydrogen which is even more nowhere close (how much energy you need to produce H2 ?).
just ditch the plane. That will be so much money you can invest in net-positive technologies.
Except there is another issue, how many people do you fit in this shape ?
If you can only fly 30 people that's not very efficient as it would mean more flights.
Also I believe the further away you are from the rotation axis of the plane where it turns left or right, the more unpleasant your flight may be
Regarding capacity, iirc, one of the advantages of this style of body is greater internal volume.
And another company working in the same space, Natilus, is planning to fit 150-250 passengers on theirs, somewhat comparable capacity-wise to a 757, but about 30% smaller length/width.
Tangentially related Good news: You can avoid about half the greenhouse effects of flight by slightly changing the flight plan to avoid cloud forming regions
Bad news: this generally wasn't counted before and when counted roughly doubles the impact so in some senses you're back to where you started.
But it's a much lower hanging fruit than anything else and as yet we're not doing it.
I hope I'm not overinterpreting, but I get the sense that you think that's morally better than simply avoiding contrails. If so then this is surely a mistake! While an individual who imposes heavy costs on himself to do something socially valuable is certainly demonstrating commitment to the cause, the best solution for society is the one with the lowest costs.
Wandering can be slower paced, or to places that are magical but nearer and connected via alternative to planes. Also we can avoid using planes for less important things, like business meetings etc.
Just stop subsidizing flying, maybe even tax the fuel a fraction of the value it’s destroying and I bet most of flying will suddenly turn out to actually be completely avoidable.
It is a bit complicated as flying isn't much subsidised in cash terms and if you put large taxes on fuel, flights will divert to nearby countries with less tax.
In the UK there is air passenger duty which is for example £102 per passenger on economy seats to the US. I think they are reluctant to raise it too much incase business shifts elsewhere.
Insane take - this is just ensuring that the only people who get to enjoy travel are the rich. Nothing in our society is improved by taking a privilege that's widely enjoyed and restricting it to the wealthy or very wealthy.
In many instances there are alternatives. Amsterdam to Berlin is served by good rail (except when DB are crappy) and flight options. NYC to DC or Boston. Maybe, someday, SF to LA, and others.
IMHO you can remove the "good" and "except when". DB is 30% of the time a frustrating experience, which I've noticed makes me want to avoid it, even though I love trains. Trains in the rest of Western Europe are pretty great!
Fair, Deutsche Bahn is awful. Went to Berlin with them last November and instead of getting in at 9:00 PM we got in at 1 AM, which was especially horrible given we had a 6 and 8 year old with us.
We should be careful not to confound a call to reduce with a call to eliminate. I don't think most people want to completely abolish modern air travel.
So, getting better at manipulating clouds will help prevent planetary heating. I assume there is a huge amount of public support for this scientific research?
What I really want, is a plane that can load passengers like containers--or like a rollercoaster car. Of course, it should be comfortable. I just mean that the passenger compartment should be modular. So you can put your luggage in and get settled while sitting in the airport, and then when the plane comes in, it just side-loads everyone all at once. Once landed, it just slides everyone off, and you can just
I know that the crew uses the typical seating time to refuel and load luggage in the underbelly, but one can dream of not having to wait to get off the airplane.
Apart from just being highly unrealistic and not very practical, hospitals are much worse than airports in every way. Why not just get injected at the airport itself? And why an injection? Why not inhale some dream gas? Less intrusive and scales better.
So, essentially that's how it works in the game Elite: Dangerous where you load and unload the passengers in cabins which are measured in tons. They can even be stolen mid-flight by anyone with a hatch breaker drone. Unfortunately, you cannot jettison them in the void of space.
Then there are the Imperial slaves which are considered cargo and not passengers, but it's a different story...
An engineering nightmare. But as a passenger, it might be nice. Can take time getting on to the container and settled, and then the whole container gets loaded.
Big screens are an OK workaround for no passenger windows, but they still have to contend with severe structural pressurization challenges, strict emergency evacuation rules, and incompatibility with current airport gates.
In a conventional aircraft you sit on the roll axis. In a blended wing body design you can have off-axis motion that can increase motion sickness. Rather than rolling with the longitudinal axis of the aircraft, you move up and down when the aircraft banks. Not necessarily a deal breaker, but an additional difference to deal with.
> Note, too, that a larger lifting body needs to bank less to execute the same turn as a craft with more loading.
This is not really helpful for passenger comfort. For a turn to be comfortable, you want the turn to be such that the effective force the passengers feel has no sideways (relative to the passengers) component, and the required roll angle is only a function of the velocity and turning radius. The aircraft design is irrelevant.
Coördination stops lateral passenger movement. It does nothing for up and down. (Coördination is also about more than comfort. It keeps the flow attached to the wing. If your passengers are slipping, so is your wing.) In a roll, with a tubular fuselage, everyone—pilot and passengers—feel about the same vertical Gs. OP’s point is in a flying wing, the folks on the tips will lift up or drop down relative to the pilot and thus experience extra Gs.
My response is (a) this can be controlled in avionics and training, i.e. don’t do that, and (b) now that I think about it, vertical Gs aren’t as sickening as lateral ones.
Specify a maximum roll rate in training and normal-law software and this problem is solved
> Specify a maximum roll rate in training and normal-law software and this problem is solved
I’m wondering whether there are major airfields with traffic patterns that require roll rates that would exceed whatever maximum is desired for comfort. My intuition is that the situation would be tolerable at most airfields but that normal-law limits that are too restrictive could be dangerous.
A few years ago, I would your use of diaeresis an admirable quirk. But now, especially given the em-dashes, I'm wondering if you're an LLM overtrained on the New Yorker.
I learnt on mentour pilot (or maybe captains speaking?) that the airbus most of the time optimizes for comfort by having a constant g force as you ascend or descend or something like that. Unless you are high aoa. So there are systems that so this sort of passenger comfort thing for sure.
I don't understand your point. Does the wider passenger compartment leads to more extreme transitions at the edges? Is there something else at play I'm not thinking of?
Picture being on the end of the wing and how much you move up or down when the plane rolls.
An airliner entering a 30 degree roll over 3 seconds would have passengers pop up or down 25 feet, with at least +0.3 and -0.3G of acceleration. It would come with a "going over the top of the roller coaster" feeling. This is in addition to the roll / rotation.
No way. Looking out the window is one of the joys of flying.
Picking out my house, seeing tiny cars on a remote highway, etc. Even 100+ MP cameras and high resolution screens won't come close to that level of detail.
I've been that guy, but only if the scenery is interesting. Still, my attitude is that at noon, people don't need to have a blanket placed over their cage like parrots to make them sleep.
I also was on a flight once that had a very bouncy landing with all the windows down - when I didn't realize we were anywhere near the ground yet. I'm not into tuning out reality to that degree, and don't really feel obligated to help anyone else do so either ;)
Regulations require that window shades be up (open) during take off and landing.
I was sitting next to a passenger once who was asked by the steward to raise the window shade.
While doing it, they asked "why". Answering for the steward I said "it's so Fire and Rescue can see into the plane if we crash". (Which is true, I used to work at airport fire and rescue.)
The steward looked at me with a "that's not helpful" look. My bad :( .
Although I think it's still useful for people to understand things are done for their safety. Not that we expect to crash, and most don't, but every little thing that might improve survival is done. That encourages rather than discourages me.
Im with you. I watched Mayday. So I am not gonna inflate my life jacket on the plane as I don't want to drown in the sinking fuselage. But the briefing makes it sound like a suggestion so the briefing people hardly listen to hardly presses the point. But if you know why you wouldn't do it.
My home airport is Sky Harbor in Phoenix. There has been at least one instance where the flight crew has required all passengers to close all our window shades while the aircraft was not in motion. And they said this was to prevent overheating from sunlight coming inside.
And I was rather miffed about missing out on the view outside, because as a technical guy, I totally enjoy seeing all the activity at an airport! Half the fun of flying!
While not in motion, or while I flight, it's not really an issue.
Takeoffs and landings are the biggest risk times (and also the best proximity to Fire and Rescue). In hot environments reducing heatload in the plane can definitely improve comfort. Bummer about missing the action though...
I love looking out plane windows at night. Distant lightning storms, cities, fishing boats, highways, country borders lit up and stretching as far as you can see.
But are you willing to pay 10-20% more for that joy? I personally would rather pay less money to fly, not get to see out the window, and spend those dollars on, say, a fancier meal at the destination. Or to have an extra day at the destination if my trip length is money-bound rather than time-bound. Or put those dollars towards an extra hour of childcare. Or … I have so many uses for dollars that give me more utility than “see out the window while flying”.
Where that number comes from: they claim 50% reduction in fuel consumption, which sounds doubtful to me, and fuel is about a third of flight costs, and I’m making some generous assumptions around perfect competition.
My primary destination is Europe <> NZ which is about 24 hours in air so personally I'd give up everything for flat seat. Doesn't have to be business class seat - just something barest of the bare, basically bunk beds.
Thing is with current structure airlines would dilute business class too much and airplane manufacturers would increase density all while decreasing fuel use per passenger - none of which is desirable.
Make the entire hull 'transparent' by wall covering screens. Think The Sphere in Vegas. Some fans to blow the wind through your hair, and now you are gladly paying extra for the bird-like experience ;)
I'm fine with not looking out of the window if the seat is comfortable and I can get to the bathroom more easily. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. Window enjoyers such as yourself will still be able to get the window seats.
I don’t know how many people are claustrophobic, but for me this would be a non-starter.
Edit: apparently 12.5% of the population has claustrophobia. If 5% of flyers choose a different airline due to simulated windows that would wipe out any cost benefit from fuel savings.
I don't think it is that simple. If a route has mixed offerings and the cheaper option is the windowless plane, it's likely to be full and they'll save on fuel costs for the full flight and can charge extra for a normal flight off hours and come out way ahead.
IIRC, minimum one window for each rows is a safety requirement, so that firefighters can see inside a burning plane or something. I think that is believed to be how that fence appeared.
Be nice to not have to deal with that one guy who didn’t close their window when it’s dark cabin time on long multi-Timezone flights; leaving the sun to blare in when you’re really trying to get some shut eye.
No, virtually all the radiation with the exception of UV is passing straight through the airframe. The protection an aircraft body offers is negligible.
Jeez way to ruin of the few remaining joys of flying. Lock everyone in a tin can. You will experience reality through screens only and you will enjoy it
Not this again. They’ve clearly hired a new PR firm
Suffice it to say, from stable aeronautics at-edge, jet way footprint efficiency, ground support efficiency, airframe pressurization, cargo & passenger logistics, lifespan, and certification, there are many, many reasons “tube + wings” is the dominant airframe architecture for all non-military aircraft.
There are many reasons for a lot of things, until you overcome those reasons. That's the point of innovation. There are many reasons not to make a reusable rocket too.
theres just some serious serious challenges here i dont think any of them are impossible to overcome but it would span so many more years and so much more funding to get thru. fuselage pressurization which they claim to have worked around (sus) is one of the spookiest imo.
traditional looking commercial jets, their designs, their manufacturing processes, their innovations (yes boeing/airbus do innovate and have for a long time even though it doesnt seem that way) have all been shaped heavily by human blood. to some degree a radical new design almost guarantees more deaths at a commercial level there's really no shortcutting this without it.
dont get me wrong im super open to the possibility that something like this is possible itd be better for the whole world, but there's no way we get there without re-experiencing some hard lessons if we want to push it pash some sort of proverbial finish line
Even small changes to time tested designs provide significant risk. A completely new body style will inevitably provide completely new failure modes.
Pressurizing a tube vs pressurizing a pancake (or flattened sphere, or some other easy approximation) will have very different mechanical loading characteristics. Turbulence (differences in air speed/pressure) across a large flat-ish surface that also has a signifiant pressure differential will also prove challenging to design for and scale up.
Aerospace is a very high dimensional design process. Doing anything different puts you into unknown territory real fast.
If some letters were capitalized it would be easier to read but without this gets downvoted as wordsalad. Almost illegible. Punctuation exists for a reason.
Yes, but this "innovation" (as sold) must exist as a viable commercial airplane.
So far, I see zero evidence that this company has addressed any of the aforementioned challenges beyond theoretical fuel consumption and theoretical passenger logistics.
As someone who has 31 hours towards their single-engine ppl cert, I absolutely abhor the stagnation of general and commercial aviation due, largely, to certification barriers, BUT even having a viable flight-worthy blended-wing concept does not make for a viable mass market product.
Not related, see the near half-century of "alternative" wing and airframe designs that are absolutely better at a few pieces of the puzzle, but also absolutely failed to be viable when integrated into a fully functional and safe airplane.
This company needs to focus on success in a niche product role before addressing the safety, integration, and manufacturing needs of the mass commercial aviation market. They are not (atm) backed by this sort of "patient capital".
Not related, see all of the VC and failures required by Whittle (in wartime no less) to develop the jet engine or Tesla's corporate journey from Roadster -> S -> Y.
It's a lot like saying, "as someone 5 hours into driver's ed in my mom's honda civic, I believe that future stability control algorithms in self-driving cars..."
Or the difference between a (noob) software user and a software engineer.
Agreed. There are always large amounts of money being poured into aviation and most of what comes out is knowledge.
It's always exciting to see futuristic designs and bleeding edge tech but there are a lot of footnotes in aviation history filled with these.
I think electric aviation (in general aviation) is probably the best/real frontier to watch for innovation currently. Many advances in aviation come from much smaller operations doing something successfully.
I love how the last image of the landing page is a model of the most efficient plane ever designed on a pole attached to what may be the least efficient vehicle ever made, the infamous US tax-loophole-pick-up truck
You mean the infamous best selling truck of all time globally? The vehicle that actual working people use everyday? Just because you see a few people use them not for work doesn't really mean anything.
An experimental/homebuilt of similar but not exactly the same design, the Dyke Delta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyke_Delta of which about 50 have been built, has its pilots reporting a comfortable ride.
It’s also much smaller. The main problem will be that the people sitting outside experience a lot of vertical motion when the aircraft rolls. That’s only a problem with the full scale design.
Interesting choice to build in Greensboro. That's also where Boom chose to build a factory and it looks massive as you leave the airport. The plan for this company's factory looks like it will be significantly larger.
JetZero’s Demonstrator is on track for first-flight in 2027. The Demonstrator is being built in partnership with Scaled Composites, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman.
Scaled Composites? Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time…
I always liked TU Delft’s similar Flying V concept which had KLM and Airbus backing, but I’ve no idea if they have a route to production. https://www.tudelft.nl/en/ae/flying-v
Why has one of the images in the header carrousel got it featuring what looks like a refueling probe for refueling other aircraft sticking out the back? The other two don't.
It looks like they've taken this mostly from an older Boeing BWB design for future air-to-air refueling aircraft (although the wing shape is a bit different).
Fluid dynamics is my jam (most of my masters was studying it)! Even in the intro to fluid mechanics book, they spent a good half+ chapter why a flying wing is superior and how you can have it designed similar to movie theater seating. But my professor spent a class explaining why regulation will kill it even though the design is great.
Pratt & Whitney PW2040 turbofan engine, same as the Boeing 757 and the C-17. They say that the plane itself is so efficient they don't need a cutting edge efficient engine.
This reeks of Vern Raburn and Eclipse Aviation all over again, haha. That failed terribly. SV’s ego is pretty funny sometimes. Eclipse even tried to develop their own avionics.
Hard to imagine it as a passenger aircraft any time soon, but if they manage to get the demonstrator built it looks like it could make a useful aerial refueling tanker.
The people they do that have a lot of experience and make a lot of money. Fortunately, most of the world doesn’t have the software business’ cavalier attitude about safety-related things being perfectly safe.
I wish them all the luck in the world. Aviation is in a massive rut and needs bold new designs and innovation. That being said, what makes this company different from the others that have come before? What makes their path to success more likely? The problem is likely less the technology and more the decade(s?) of burning money with no ability to sell anything because you have to certify everything. That cliff is so bad we got the 737 max instead of a real new design. In an industry where new tech should be bringing us new commercial designs yearly we are instead getting very minor iterations because even the massive players out there can't afford to bring a 'new' design to the table. I -really- want to see this succeed. Good luck.
> Aviation is in a massive rut and needs bold new designs and innovation.
Why does it need bold new design and innovation? More people (can afford to) fly every year, more safely, and with broadly more consistency than they ever have. The success of the commercial aviation industry as a whole is breathtaking.
From an engineering perspective, it's a solved task. Designing an airplane is on par with designing a suspension bridge.
From a regulatory perspective, the layers of bureaucracy needed to get approval to build a bridge has nothing on starting up an airline manufacturing company. Once you have a company with a history of approval, you can practically do what you want, but getting to that point is nearly impossible.
The difference is that there establishment space launch companies were basically monopolies using ancient technology and processes. That’s not true for commercial aviation, which is subject to pretty relentless cost pressures.
Seems like that’s what a lot of people say about a lot of legacy businesses though when facing pressure from a startup. Obviously doesn’t always work, but sometimes!
Bullshit i cant hear you. Commcercial airliners are sold at a loss and are basically giant jobs programs. Modern jetliners are enormously efficient already; there has been a continuous race over the last century to this end.
Feels like no windows is almost a deal-breaker? No? Do humans handle small enclosed spaces with no way to look outside well? The mock-up image looks like a small two-or-three seat compartment, which seems like it would be awful. Maybe an open space would be less claustrophobic, but still. Imagining just a normal jetliner today with no windows feels... not great. And I'm not sure having a giant flat screen wrapped around me would solve the problem.
I don't mind no windows at all if they have "digital windows" as substitutes. You're already 40,000ft in the air I think windows aren't really gonna help your claustrophobia. Not like you can open the door and walk out for a bit.
I get motion sickness when sitting sideways or backwards on a car. People tend to become nauseous when they sense motion but don't see it, or what they see doesn't align with their other senses. Even the small amount of lag that a "digital window" would likely have, will make things much worse.
Maybe. I think people could survive it, sure. But I also wonder if there's a part of our lizard brain that just for safety's sake prefers to be able to see out of any small enclosed space we might find ourselves in. And that lizard brain is smart enough to know that a flat screen is fake. Again, I just think of flying in a plane today but with no windows and I, at least, am immediately squigged out.
I also feel like a lot of modern air travel is designed around making something that's highly unnatural and inherently terrifying into something palatable for most people. I'm not talking about actual safety, but the perception of safety. Which isn't exactly a logic thing. More about keeping that lizard brain from freaking out too hard.
Actually no windows doesn't even pass Passenger Flight rules and regulations. In Asia, its mandatory that windows should be opened, visible during takeoff and landing.
Doesn’t that technically only mean that all windows that exist need to be open, and having no windows at all would satisfy the requirement “all windows are open”? Or is the second sentence an addition to the first?
Haven't heard of this company before. A good synopsis I dug up in their fundraising announcement:
> JetZero, co-founded in 2020 by start-up veteran Tom O’Leary and aerospace legend Mark Page, is developing the world’s first commercial all-wing airplane. With up to 50% better fuel efficiency and lower carbon emissions compared to existing commercial airliners, JetZero's Z4 will offer the aviation industry a clear path to achieving its 2050 net-zero goals while also elevating the passenger experience. Working alongside the US Air Force, NASA, and the FAA, and backed by decades of investment and research into blended wing technology. JetZero looks to enter commercial service in the early 2030s.
Where an "all-wing" airplane is, kudos to Gemini,
> one that merges the main body and wings into a single lifting surface. This can reduce drag, lower fuel burn, and expand interior space.
I think the more commonly used term is Blended Wing Body.
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blended_wing_body)
(And actually, now I've just noticed they do use the term further down in the body of the text).
"A clear path to zero": what a joke. It will be 25% less fuel, 75% SAF which are nowhere close (how will one grow enough without fertilizers ?), or worse, hydrogen which is even more nowhere close (how much energy you need to produce H2 ?).
just ditch the plane. That will be so much money you can invest in net-positive technologies.
If the design is more efficient, then eventually the fuel you put into it can be replaced by your magic solution.
Except there is another issue, how many people do you fit in this shape ? If you can only fly 30 people that's not very efficient as it would mean more flights.
Also I believe the further away you are from the rotation axis of the plane where it turns left or right, the more unpleasant your flight may be
Regarding capacity, iirc, one of the advantages of this style of body is greater internal volume.
And another company working in the same space, Natilus, is planning to fit 150-250 passengers on theirs, somewhat comparable capacity-wise to a 757, but about 30% smaller length/width.
Tangentially related Good news: You can avoid about half the greenhouse effects of flight by slightly changing the flight plan to avoid cloud forming regions
Bad news: this generally wasn't counted before and when counted roughly doubles the impact so in some senses you're back to where you started.
But it's a much lower hanging fruit than anything else and as yet we're not doing it.
A lot of us is avoiding more by choosing not to fly.
I hope I'm not overinterpreting, but I get the sense that you think that's morally better than simply avoiding contrails. If so then this is surely a mistake! While an individual who imposes heavy costs on himself to do something socially valuable is certainly demonstrating commitment to the cause, the best solution for society is the one with the lowest costs.
Please explain how more flights with optimal routing are environmentally cheaper than less flights with optimal routing.
Sounds like parent was taking into account all costs, not just certain ones.
Hint: It's performative. The people who are actually doing this don't come to HN to announce it.
wandering is human nature, we can not avoid it. with tech, almost 99% reason to travel can be avoided, we human as a nature, we will not skip it.
Wandering can be slower paced, or to places that are magical but nearer and connected via alternative to planes. Also we can avoid using planes for less important things, like business meetings etc.
I don't think that not travelling is the solution. A lot of people cannot avoid flying.
Most people on the planet can avoid flying alright.
The addicts cannot? Or who cannot? Anyone with money cannot?
Homo fricking economicus for you alright.
Just stop subsidizing flying, maybe even tax the fuel a fraction of the value it’s destroying and I bet most of flying will suddenly turn out to actually be completely avoidable.
Yup. Make the flyers pay the infrastructure costs based on the environmental effects. It's not too complicated.
It is a bit complicated as flying isn't much subsidised in cash terms and if you put large taxes on fuel, flights will divert to nearby countries with less tax.
In the UK there is air passenger duty which is for example £102 per passenger on economy seats to the US. I think they are reluctant to raise it too much incase business shifts elsewhere.
I think advances in remote work tech have had a huge impact on business travel.
Zoom beats Boom.
Zoom is also probably the worst software I'm forced to use. The UI and fat client are from 2000.
Insane take - this is just ensuring that the only people who get to enjoy travel are the rich. Nothing in our society is improved by taking a privilege that's widely enjoyed and restricting it to the wealthy or very wealthy.
Why is it still considered a 'privilege' if everyone should absolutely be able to use it?
In many instances there are alternatives. Amsterdam to Berlin is served by good rail (except when DB are crappy) and flight options. NYC to DC or Boston. Maybe, someday, SF to LA, and others.
IMHO you can remove the "good" and "except when". DB is 30% of the time a frustrating experience, which I've noticed makes me want to avoid it, even though I love trains. Trains in the rest of Western Europe are pretty great!
Fair, Deutsche Bahn is awful. Went to Berlin with them last November and instead of getting in at 9:00 PM we got in at 1 AM, which was especially horrible given we had a 6 and 8 year old with us.
But even more people can
We should be careful not to confound a call to reduce with a call to eliminate. I don't think most people want to completely abolish modern air travel.
contrails.org do a great job of explaining this and have some solid interactive tools that allow you to simulate the effect of flight plan changes: https://explore.contrails.org/explorer?time_start=2025-01&ti...
So, getting better at manipulating clouds will help prevent planetary heating. I assume there is a huge amount of public support for this scientific research?
No, you misunderstood what this is about
how do know if a route would go through cloud forming regions
Google Flights shows a “contrail warming potential” stat on each flight result.
Not you the airline operations using weather radar I assume.
because doing this will increase costs instead of performative actions.
What I really want, is a plane that can load passengers like containers--or like a rollercoaster car. Of course, it should be comfortable. I just mean that the passenger compartment should be modular. So you can put your luggage in and get settled while sitting in the airport, and then when the plane comes in, it just side-loads everyone all at once. Once landed, it just slides everyone off, and you can just
I know that the crew uses the typical seating time to refuel and load luggage in the underbelly, but one can dream of not having to wait to get off the airplane.
I just want to go to an hospital, get an injection, fall asleep and wake up on a bed at another hospital somewhere else.
Apart from just being highly unrealistic and not very practical, hospitals are much worse than airports in every way. Why not just get injected at the airport itself? And why an injection? Why not inhale some dream gas? Less intrusive and scales better.
So, essentially that's how it works in the game Elite: Dangerous where you load and unload the passengers in cabins which are measured in tons. They can even be stolen mid-flight by anyone with a hatch breaker drone. Unfortunately, you cannot jettison them in the void of space.
Then there are the Imperial slaves which are considered cargo and not passengers, but it's a different story...
That's an odd connection to make. The depiction of passengers in Elite Dangerous is limited to some numbers on a UI screen.
that sounds like an absolute nightmare haha
An engineering nightmare. But as a passenger, it might be nice. Can take time getting on to the container and settled, and then the whole container gets loaded.
Big screens are an OK workaround for no passenger windows, but they still have to contend with severe structural pressurization challenges, strict emergency evacuation rules, and incompatibility with current airport gates.
In a conventional aircraft you sit on the roll axis. In a blended wing body design you can have off-axis motion that can increase motion sickness. Rather than rolling with the longitudinal axis of the aircraft, you move up and down when the aircraft banks. Not necessarily a deal breaker, but an additional difference to deal with.
> In a blended wing body design you can have off-axis motion that can increase motion sickness
This sounds fixable in avionics and training. (Shallow, gradual banks.)
Note, too, that a larger lifting body needs to bank less to execute the same turn as a craft with more loading.
> Note, too, that a larger lifting body needs to bank less to execute the same turn as a craft with more loading.
This is not really helpful for passenger comfort. For a turn to be comfortable, you want the turn to be such that the effective force the passengers feel has no sideways (relative to the passengers) component, and the required roll angle is only a function of the velocity and turning radius. The aircraft design is irrelevant.
The Wikipedia article is mediocre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinated_flight
Coördination stops lateral passenger movement. It does nothing for up and down. (Coördination is also about more than comfort. It keeps the flow attached to the wing. If your passengers are slipping, so is your wing.) In a roll, with a tubular fuselage, everyone—pilot and passengers—feel about the same vertical Gs. OP’s point is in a flying wing, the folks on the tips will lift up or drop down relative to the pilot and thus experience extra Gs.
My response is (a) this can be controlled in avionics and training, i.e. don’t do that, and (b) now that I think about it, vertical Gs aren’t as sickening as lateral ones.
Specify a maximum roll rate in training and normal-law software and this problem is solved
> Specify a maximum roll rate in training and normal-law software and this problem is solved
I’m wondering whether there are major airfields with traffic patterns that require roll rates that would exceed whatever maximum is desired for comfort. My intuition is that the situation would be tolerable at most airfields but that normal-law limits that are too restrictive could be dangerous.
> Coördination
A few years ago, I would your use of diaeresis an admirable quirk. But now, especially given the em-dashes, I'm wondering if you're an LLM overtrained on the New Yorker.
I learnt on mentour pilot (or maybe captains speaking?) that the airbus most of the time optimizes for comfort by having a constant g force as you ascend or descend or something like that. Unless you are high aoa. So there are systems that so this sort of passenger comfort thing for sure.
Sounds fixable by making the outer seats cheaper.
I don't understand your point. Does the wider passenger compartment leads to more extreme transitions at the edges? Is there something else at play I'm not thinking of?
Picture being on the end of the wing and how much you move up or down when the plane rolls.
An airliner entering a 30 degree roll over 3 seconds would have passengers pop up or down 25 feet, with at least +0.3 and -0.3G of acceleration. It would come with a "going over the top of the roller coaster" feeling. This is in addition to the roll / rotation.
Yaw is interesting for similar reasons.
sin(bank_angle) x cabin_width/2 = max_vertical_displacement_at_angle
Just gimbal the seats.
New commercial seating design: Oops, All Pinch Points!
Bean bag chair seats solve every problem.
Gimbal the floor?
Doesn’t fix translation?
Simply noclip the passengers!
Might as well iddqd and idkfa at that point. Or grantme all. Pick your flavor.
That only works if the engines move the planet around the airplane.
Great, so there is the solution!
No way. Looking out the window is one of the joys of flying.
Picking out my house, seeing tiny cars on a remote highway, etc. Even 100+ MP cameras and high resolution screens won't come close to that level of detail.
Only a small fraction of current flyers get window seats. And the view from the isle seat or middle row is non-existent.
And that's before we talk about night flights when there's nothing to see, flights over water when there's nothing to see and so on.
So yes, I'm sure some people like windows. But the majority have demonstrated that they're just fine flying without them.
Not to mention the cretins who put their windows down for the whole flight.
Except when everyone is trying to sleep and one person has their window up
I've been that guy, but only if the scenery is interesting. Still, my attitude is that at noon, people don't need to have a blanket placed over their cage like parrots to make them sleep.
I also was on a flight once that had a very bouncy landing with all the windows down - when I didn't realize we were anywhere near the ground yet. I'm not into tuning out reality to that degree, and don't really feel obligated to help anyone else do so either ;)
Regulations require that window shades be up (open) during take off and landing.
I was sitting next to a passenger once who was asked by the steward to raise the window shade.
While doing it, they asked "why". Answering for the steward I said "it's so Fire and Rescue can see into the plane if we crash". (Which is true, I used to work at airport fire and rescue.)
The steward looked at me with a "that's not helpful" look. My bad :( .
Although I think it's still useful for people to understand things are done for their safety. Not that we expect to crash, and most don't, but every little thing that might improve survival is done. That encourages rather than discourages me.
Im with you. I watched Mayday. So I am not gonna inflate my life jacket on the plane as I don't want to drown in the sinking fuselage. But the briefing makes it sound like a suggestion so the briefing people hardly listen to hardly presses the point. But if you know why you wouldn't do it.
Isn’t it also so you can look out to see if the emergency exits on that side are usable or if there is a fire or excessive debris blocking the exit?
Yes, that's a factor as well. If you're opening a door (or emergency exit) you should look first to see if that side of the plane is on fire.
But obviously you can open it to look, and there's only a small number that would apply to.
So it's a factor, but the primary reason is being able to look in.
My home airport is Sky Harbor in Phoenix. There has been at least one instance where the flight crew has required all passengers to close all our window shades while the aircraft was not in motion. And they said this was to prevent overheating from sunlight coming inside.
And I was rather miffed about missing out on the view outside, because as a technical guy, I totally enjoy seeing all the activity at an airport! Half the fun of flying!
While not in motion, or while I flight, it's not really an issue.
Takeoffs and landings are the biggest risk times (and also the best proximity to Fire and Rescue). In hot environments reducing heatload in the plane can definitely improve comfort. Bummer about missing the action though...
On a airplane, one man's noon is another man's 4am. Your attitude is socially problematic.
Eye mask is requirement no matter the window position.
I love looking out plane windows at night. Distant lightning storms, cities, fishing boats, highways, country borders lit up and stretching as far as you can see.
But are you willing to pay 10-20% more for that joy? I personally would rather pay less money to fly, not get to see out the window, and spend those dollars on, say, a fancier meal at the destination. Or to have an extra day at the destination if my trip length is money-bound rather than time-bound. Or put those dollars towards an extra hour of childcare. Or … I have so many uses for dollars that give me more utility than “see out the window while flying”.
Where that number comes from: they claim 50% reduction in fuel consumption, which sounds doubtful to me, and fuel is about a third of flight costs, and I’m making some generous assumptions around perfect competition.
You would change the experience of the glory of flying for food instead? Live while you're alive!
My primary destination is Europe <> NZ which is about 24 hours in air so personally I'd give up everything for flat seat. Doesn't have to be business class seat - just something barest of the bare, basically bunk beds.
Thing is with current structure airlines would dilute business class too much and airplane manufacturers would increase density all while decreasing fuel use per passenger - none of which is desirable.
it’s cute you think that’s going to show up in lower ticket costs instead of the company’s profit margin.
Commercial air travel is extremely competitive and has very low margins.
Sounds like a race to the bottom. Mmm bad pun.
Make the entire hull 'transparent' by wall covering screens. Think The Sphere in Vegas. Some fans to blow the wind through your hair, and now you are gladly paying extra for the bird-like experience ;)
Skylights, Or floor windows for the freaky
Also the screen sizes they are showing have got to be exceedingly heavy.
I know every gram is accounted for in aerospace but OLEDs weighs so little, especially if you can just heatsink into existing metal structures nearby.
I'd wager a bunch of OLEDs will be lighter than built-in windows with all the structural reinforcing necessary to make them safe.
Make the floor transparent.
Bullshit. Last time I flew internationally, only two of the eight seats had window access.
Interior isle seats cost as much as window seats in airlines that charge for position. People just want space.
I'm fine with not looking out of the window if the seat is comfortable and I can get to the bathroom more easily. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. Window enjoyers such as yourself will still be able to get the window seats.
I don’t know how many people are claustrophobic, but for me this would be a non-starter.
Edit: apparently 12.5% of the population has claustrophobia. If 5% of flyers choose a different airline due to simulated windows that would wipe out any cost benefit from fuel savings.
I don't think it is that simple. If a route has mixed offerings and the cheaper option is the windowless plane, it's likely to be full and they'll save on fuel costs for the full flight and can charge extra for a normal flight off hours and come out way ahead.
I give absolutely less than zero f's about no windows for 2" more legroom.
IIRC, minimum one window for each rows is a safety requirement, so that firefighters can see inside a burning plane or something. I think that is believed to be how that fence appeared.
The gates thing was my first thought when I saw the design although a staircase on the tarmac could be a cheap workaround.
Be nice to not have to deal with that one guy who didn’t close their window when it’s dark cabin time on long multi-Timezone flights; leaving the sun to blare in when you’re really trying to get some shut eye.
Just bring a sleep mask.
I only travel in classes where I know they will provide one.
What do economy seats look like? I can't imagine they all have wrap-around video...
I imagine they would look similar to what they look now. You will have a 7" monitor in front. You can use it watch movies or look outside.
Would dropping airplane windows lower radiation exposure somewhat, especially on those polar routes?
No, virtually all the radiation with the exception of UV is passing straight through the airframe. The protection an aircraft body offers is negligible.
the biggest challenge would likely be training pilots to a new cockpit and flight profile
I wonder if it makes more sense to just get the latest batch of people doing the military -> civilian transition and starting them off on these
No passenger windows is the correct way to go. The screens can actually show anything, not just replace a window.
Jeez way to ruin of the few remaining joys of flying. Lock everyone in a tin can. You will experience reality through screens only and you will enjoy it
Yes, you will! :-)
Infinite ads in econom
With 60hz pwm. And you can't turn it off
Ah... A dream
Scott Kirby has joined the chat
True - unlike a car, it’s not like one could open a window in a plane.
Just hope they don’t make an “ad-free” window a premium upgrade…
Hell why even travel when you can just see Venice on a screen.
Not this again. They’ve clearly hired a new PR firm
Suffice it to say, from stable aeronautics at-edge, jet way footprint efficiency, ground support efficiency, airframe pressurization, cargo & passenger logistics, lifespan, and certification, there are many, many reasons “tube + wings” is the dominant airframe architecture for all non-military aircraft.
There are many reasons for a lot of things, until you overcome those reasons. That's the point of innovation. There are many reasons not to make a reusable rocket too.
theres just some serious serious challenges here i dont think any of them are impossible to overcome but it would span so many more years and so much more funding to get thru. fuselage pressurization which they claim to have worked around (sus) is one of the spookiest imo.
traditional looking commercial jets, their designs, their manufacturing processes, their innovations (yes boeing/airbus do innovate and have for a long time even though it doesnt seem that way) have all been shaped heavily by human blood. to some degree a radical new design almost guarantees more deaths at a commercial level there's really no shortcutting this without it.
dont get me wrong im super open to the possibility that something like this is possible itd be better for the whole world, but there's no way we get there without re-experiencing some hard lessons if we want to push it pash some sort of proverbial finish line
> have all been shaped heavily by human blood
This assumes the lessons were specific to the body type and aren’t generalizable?
Even small changes to time tested designs provide significant risk. A completely new body style will inevitably provide completely new failure modes.
Pressurizing a tube vs pressurizing a pancake (or flattened sphere, or some other easy approximation) will have very different mechanical loading characteristics. Turbulence (differences in air speed/pressure) across a large flat-ish surface that also has a signifiant pressure differential will also prove challenging to design for and scale up.
Aerospace is a very high dimensional design process. Doing anything different puts you into unknown territory real fast.
If some letters were capitalized it would be easier to read but without this gets downvoted as wordsalad. Almost illegible. Punctuation exists for a reason.
the misery it takes to make these types of comments lmao. behold lifes hidden fruits of simply scrolling past something that makes you irritable
Consider dropping spaces too. It'll make your comments even more Unique and Quirky! And it won't impact readability in a way you care about!
Yes, but this "innovation" (as sold) must exist as a viable commercial airplane.
So far, I see zero evidence that this company has addressed any of the aforementioned challenges beyond theoretical fuel consumption and theoretical passenger logistics.
As someone who has 31 hours towards their single-engine ppl cert, I absolutely abhor the stagnation of general and commercial aviation due, largely, to certification barriers, BUT even having a viable flight-worthy blended-wing concept does not make for a viable mass market product.
Not related, see the near half-century of "alternative" wing and airframe designs that are absolutely better at a few pieces of the puzzle, but also absolutely failed to be viable when integrated into a fully functional and safe airplane.
This company needs to focus on success in a niche product role before addressing the safety, integration, and manufacturing needs of the mass commercial aviation market. They are not (atm) backed by this sort of "patient capital".
Not related, see all of the VC and failures required by Whittle (in wartime no less) to develop the jet engine or Tesla's corporate journey from Roadster -> S -> Y.
> As someone who has 31 hours towards their single-engine ppl cert,
FFS, have some self-awareness! This is the Dunning-Kruger Effect in practice.
No because they used that point to say they have sympathy for the idea of innovating aircraft.
They are not saying "hold my beer while I put the industry to rights!"
I don't see how having a marginal amount of single-engine aviation flight experience is relevant to Dunning-Kruger.
If anything, it's taught me how little I know about "real flying" compared to CFD and systems engineering.
Commercial aviation is conservative because aviation is "hard" and mistakes in aviation are "extremely costly".
It's a lot like saying, "as someone 5 hours into driver's ed in my mom's honda civic, I believe that future stability control algorithms in self-driving cars..."
Or the difference between a (noob) software user and a software engineer.
Halving the fuel consumption may be worth the trouble with all above.
Novel things always look unviable. First cars, first planes, first EVs all looked like dubious gimmicks sorely lacking the required infrastructure.
Agreed. There are always large amounts of money being poured into aviation and most of what comes out is knowledge.
It's always exciting to see futuristic designs and bleeding edge tech but there are a lot of footnotes in aviation history filled with these.
I think electric aviation (in general aviation) is probably the best/real frontier to watch for innovation currently. Many advances in aviation come from much smaller operations doing something successfully.
I love how the last image of the landing page is a model of the most efficient plane ever designed on a pole attached to what may be the least efficient vehicle ever made, the infamous US tax-loophole-pick-up truck
You mean the infamous best selling truck of all time globally? The vehicle that actual working people use everyday? Just because you see a few people use them not for work doesn't really mean anything.
I'm interested in what you are referring to. Do you have link to this truck, the story..
An experimental/homebuilt of similar but not exactly the same design, the Dyke Delta https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyke_Delta of which about 50 have been built, has its pilots reporting a comfortable ride.
It’s also much smaller. The main problem will be that the people sitting outside experience a lot of vertical motion when the aircraft rolls. That’s only a problem with the full scale design.
Please lookup the flight envelope, cruise fuel utilization, and stall characteristics of the Dyke Delta along with its cargo capacity.
Then you'll understand why so many Cessna 172s were built.
Another one I'm familiar with: https://www.verheesengineering.com/d2-twoseater/
Interesting choice to build in Greensboro. That's also where Boom chose to build a factory and it looks massive as you leave the airport. The plan for this company's factory looks like it will be significantly larger.
JetZero’s Demonstrator is on track for first-flight in 2027. The Demonstrator is being built in partnership with Scaled Composites, a subsidiary of Northrop Grumman.
Scaled Composites? Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time…
Wow, I blinked and it's been 20+ years since Spaceship One? Yikes, time really does fly.
Presumably we haven't heard as much after Northrop bought them?
I think it's awesome that Scaled Composites is involved... they really have such specialized knowledge of all kinds of aeronautical engineering.
They should have started these as cargo planes. Less compliance issues and more flight times can make it more trustable.
I always liked TU Delft’s similar Flying V concept which had KLM and Airbus backing, but I’ve no idea if they have a route to production. https://www.tudelft.nl/en/ae/flying-v
Why has one of the images in the header carrousel got it featuring what looks like a refueling probe for refueling other aircraft sticking out the back? The other two don't.
It looks like they've taken this mostly from an older Boeing BWB design for future air-to-air refueling aircraft (although the wing shape is a bit different).
Maybe start with freight aircraft which are less subject to the standard airport gate configuration restrictions?
Avoids the issues about people sitting in the wing area and "enjoying" the roller coaster effect when the plane rolls or yaws?
Fluid dynamics is my jam (most of my masters was studying it)! Even in the intro to fluid mechanics book, they spent a good half+ chapter why a flying wing is superior and how you can have it designed similar to movie theater seating. But my professor spent a class explaining why regulation will kill it even though the design is great.
So you think JetZero's blended-wing body (BWB) aircraft design will be killed by regulators? Why?
Btw, it will take hydrogen propulsion for their planes to be zero CO2 emission.
Can you share more on why regulations will kill it please?
Aside from regulation, the edge-envelope characteristics of a flying wing mandate fly-by-wire and, essentially, full-time autopilot.
Even then, good luck recovering when you, even marginally, exceed the energy*altitude parameters during take-off/landing during high wind shear.
Even B2s, with all of their on-board systems, have highly restrictive TOGA envelopes.
What is their engine? An airframe without an engine is, best case, a drone programme.
Pratt & Whitney PW2040 turbofan engine, same as the Boeing 757 and the C-17. They say that the plane itself is so efficient they don't need a cutting edge efficient engine.
A glider?
et tu Boom?
This reeks of Vern Raburn and Eclipse Aviation all over again, haha. That failed terribly. SV’s ego is pretty funny sometimes. Eclipse even tried to develop their own avionics.
tell me more? I used to live in Albuquerque and always wondered what happened.
Hard to imagine it as a passenger aircraft any time soon, but if they manage to get the demonstrator built it looks like it could make a useful aerial refueling tanker.
An airplane is not something I would personally want to beta test
The people they do that have a lot of experience and make a lot of money. Fortunately, most of the world doesn’t have the software business’ cavalier attitude about safety-related things being perfectly safe.
Boeing comes to mind as a counter example.
A few of my Mom's uncles were test pilots. They're… an odd bunch.
Good job they have test pilots then.
Move fast and break things.
If they offer free flights to places people want to go they will not have any shortage of testers.
Could these flights prove to people that with their own eyes they can see the earth is not flat ?
Will this fit the dimensions of a typically airport gate and spacing?
No, but that's really the least of the problems in getting this thing into commercial flight.
More like JetHalfAtBest than JetZero.
I wish them all the luck in the world. Aviation is in a massive rut and needs bold new designs and innovation. That being said, what makes this company different from the others that have come before? What makes their path to success more likely? The problem is likely less the technology and more the decade(s?) of burning money with no ability to sell anything because you have to certify everything. That cliff is so bad we got the 737 max instead of a real new design. In an industry where new tech should be bringing us new commercial designs yearly we are instead getting very minor iterations because even the massive players out there can't afford to bring a 'new' design to the table. I -really- want to see this succeed. Good luck.
> Aviation is in a massive rut and needs bold new designs and innovation.
Why does it need bold new design and innovation? More people (can afford to) fly every year, more safely, and with broadly more consistency than they ever have. The success of the commercial aviation industry as a whole is breathtaking.
Looks a bit like Thunderbird 2. I approve.
isn't this just the boeing flying wing
The Shape is really cool.
While Boeing is too lazy to clean-sheet anything new
the cybertrucks of airplanes
the OceanGate Titan of airplanes
I wish them well but a startup building an airliner seems like an utterly impossible task.
On the plus side, the competition seems a bit lousy lately
If the numbers are what they claim. They’re going to make it.
From an engineering perspective, it's a solved task. Designing an airplane is on par with designing a suspension bridge.
From a regulatory perspective, the layers of bureaucracy needed to get approval to build a bridge has nothing on starting up an airline manufacturing company. Once you have a company with a history of approval, you can practically do what you want, but getting to that point is nearly impossible.
Eh, if SpaceX did rockets… I wouldn’t be surprised if they could be very nimble compared to the big ones.
The difference is that there establishment space launch companies were basically monopolies using ancient technology and processes. That’s not true for commercial aviation, which is subject to pretty relentless cost pressures.
Seems like that’s what a lot of people say about a lot of legacy businesses though when facing pressure from a startup. Obviously doesn’t always work, but sometimes!
Bullshit i cant hear you. Commcercial airliners are sold at a loss and are basically giant jobs programs. Modern jetliners are enormously efficient already; there has been a continuous race over the last century to this end.
Another pointless "up to x% better" specification.
I love it
looks expensive
Feels like no windows is almost a deal-breaker? No? Do humans handle small enclosed spaces with no way to look outside well? The mock-up image looks like a small two-or-three seat compartment, which seems like it would be awful. Maybe an open space would be less claustrophobic, but still. Imagining just a normal jetliner today with no windows feels... not great. And I'm not sure having a giant flat screen wrapped around me would solve the problem.
I don't mind no windows at all if they have "digital windows" as substitutes. You're already 40,000ft in the air I think windows aren't really gonna help your claustrophobia. Not like you can open the door and walk out for a bit.
I get motion sickness when sitting sideways or backwards on a car. People tend to become nauseous when they sense motion but don't see it, or what they see doesn't align with their other senses. Even the small amount of lag that a "digital window" would likely have, will make things much worse.
Maybe. I think people could survive it, sure. But I also wonder if there's a part of our lizard brain that just for safety's sake prefers to be able to see out of any small enclosed space we might find ourselves in. And that lizard brain is smart enough to know that a flat screen is fake. Again, I just think of flying in a plane today but with no windows and I, at least, am immediately squigged out.
I also feel like a lot of modern air travel is designed around making something that's highly unnatural and inherently terrifying into something palatable for most people. I'm not talking about actual safety, but the perception of safety. Which isn't exactly a logic thing. More about keeping that lizard brain from freaking out too hard.
Yes it's interesting and I'm by no means certain how I will feel inside one either. But people are also highly adaptable so we'll see how it goes.
Edit: also this older concept image shows windows: https://www.jetzero.aero/hs-fs/hubfs/JetZero-Z4-left.png?wid...
Actually no windows doesn't even pass Passenger Flight rules and regulations. In Asia, its mandatory that windows should be opened, visible during takeoff and landing.
Doesn’t that technically only mean that all windows that exist need to be open, and having no windows at all would satisfy the requirement “all windows are open”? Or is the second sentence an addition to the first?