Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Point taken that some people had mistaken ideas about twin-engine airplanes, but those mistakes are most straightforwardly resolved by the redundancy consideration alone, which dominates other issues.

> If they needed to go faster, they could do that with a single larger engine if they wanted to (which they may have to develop.)

Plus a significantly different airframe and perhaps engine intakes to deal with the transonic issue that I also mentioned. It is an idea that bubbles up perennially [1], but so far, the economics have ensured that it doesn't go much beyond the concept stage.

This has become rather silly, but it seques into a related issue: It seems to me that fan-blade failure incidents (or at least uncontained fan-blade failure incidents) have increased in frequency in the last few years. If so, maybe this is a sign that we are already pushing a bit too hard on the limits of current technology?

[1] https://www.boeing.com/features/2019/01/spreading-our-wings-...




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: