I'm not surprised either. Boeing seem to have decided that technical innovation - at least in their civil sector - is not worth the risk. The company decided not to compete with the Airbus A380, has left plans for super-stretched 747s on the drawing board and has now concluded that trying for a new and probably very small niche just isn't worth it.
At the risk of making one of those broad predictions that in fifty years will look either obvious or stupid, we've now hit a technical plateau with the design of long-haul large-capacity civil aircraft. Much aircraft design is evolutionary, and to use Richard Dawkins' metaphor of a 'landscape of fitness', the current consensus design for a wide-body airliner is on an evolutionary peak with little obvious direction for improvement. Better designs do exist, but the evolutionary cost of getting to them is too high, and will remain so until some major change reshapes the landscape and makes certain directions of development more attractive. A sharp increase in fuel cost is one such pressure; another might be significant developments in materials technology, which has usually been the factor that has driven revolutions in aircraft design.
If airliners do change, my guess is that it will be as a result of improvements in on-board entertainments. Once your personal screen is good enough it can replace a window - indeed, it already has if you're sat in one of the middle 4 seats on a 747. A move away from the long tube towards a blended wing/body would give much more internal volume for a similar ground footprint. Such designs have their own problems but it does look a promising way ahead - but someone will have to be very brave to build the first one.
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branchandroot
no subject
Date: 2002-12-22 02:32 (UTC)At the risk of making one of those broad predictions that in fifty years will look either obvious or stupid, we've now hit a technical plateau with the design of long-haul large-capacity civil aircraft. Much aircraft design is evolutionary, and to use Richard Dawkins' metaphor of a 'landscape of fitness', the current consensus design for a wide-body airliner is on an evolutionary peak with little obvious direction for improvement. Better designs do exist, but the evolutionary cost of getting to them is too high, and will remain so until some major change reshapes the landscape and makes certain directions of development more attractive. A sharp increase in fuel cost is one such pressure; another might be significant developments in materials technology, which has usually been the factor that has driven revolutions in aircraft design.
If airliners do change, my guess is that it will be as a result of improvements in on-board entertainments. Once your personal screen is good enough it can replace a window - indeed, it already has if you're sat in one of the middle 4 seats on a 747. A move away from the long tube towards a blended wing/body would give much more internal volume for a similar ground footprint. Such designs have their own problems but it does look a promising way ahead - but someone will have to be very brave to build the first one.
MC