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Comment by ordinaryradical | Hacker News Reader

Airplanes have changed, but in ways not immediately visible.

The Dreamliner is something like 80% composites by volume now, a material profile almost unthinkable 30 years ago.

But the visual dynamics of the design changes have been far less dramatic.

I do think we may see things change significantly with eVTOLs and battery tech improvements.

Major increases in energy density plus solid state (for safety) would probably trigger a Tesla-fication, and at that point the incumbents will inevitably be late adopters and some upstart is going to build something new looking.

Finally, if shape-memory polymers ever really take off, we could see some exciting things. Imagine a dynamically shaping airfoil, or, way out there, a wing which can translate itself from wide body to delta with almost no moving parts required to do so.

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> Dreamliner is something like 80% composites by volume now, a material profile almost unthinkable 30 years ago

This—and no bleed air, fly by wire, et cetera—are big. But not on the level of air frame improvements. We’ve been stuck in a local optimum due to overconsolidation for decades now. We’re seeing it bleed into safety simply because complacence evolved into corruption.

Excellently said.

I would love to see a regulatory world where experimentation outside of the high-end is more prolific. Even the constraints that were put on UAVs by the FAA have stifled that spirit in a real way.

Where is the hacker culture in aviation that we've been amazed by in the AI space? Even people doing cool things as small groups, like the black arrow guys, are just building in the same local minima.

> Where is the hacker culture in aviation that we've been amazed by in the AI space? Even people doing cool things as small groups, like the black arrow guys, are just building in the same local minima.

Well, a basic body + wings shape, anyone with moderate skill can construct that with a kit in their garden shed and fly it.

But all these exotic design ideas? These require immense amounts of compute power to design them so that they'll actually take off and substantial investment into manufacturing tooling to manufacture them, far surpassing the capabilities of all but a very few very rich hobbyists, and people with that kind of money generally don't subject themselves to the high operational risk of general aviation. Even in cars there's no one working on home-builds for carbon composite stuff, and the potential for failures and the risk of said failures to not just the pilot but everyone on the ground there is orders of magnitude lower than with planes.

And on top of that come the regulatory issues associated with anything that flies. There are many MANY MANY orders of magnitude less people with pilot licenses in the first place, most of Europe doesn't allow flights from anything else than a licensed airstrip (although the US is different there IIRC), and new designs require an immense amount of certification paperwork, which is also the reason why it took until last year to get unleaded fuel certified (whose rollout will take at least 3-5 years).

> Where is the hacker culture in aviation that we've been amazed by in the AI space?

I mean, if you mess up your AI model, it generates photos of black Nazis or people with an extra arm. Everyone laughs at you a bit.

If you mess up your plane, it kills people. There are absolutely people building experimental aircraft, but for good reasons there's a bit more caution involved.

Planes that kill freely consenting adults would be fine. But the tricky part is that this would also exclude employees of aircraft companies since they can't be directed to fly on such a plane. If the CEO of Boeing were willing to pilot an uncertified deathtrap of their own making over the ocean that should be allowed.

But it’s ok though, because the rest of us will just pick up the bill and clean everything up when Timmy-the-cowboys-unhinged-plane falls out of the sky over a populated area, or the ocean or something. No big deal right? Fuel and emissions don’t have an environmental impact, so people can just fly whatever they please around and the rest of us should just put up with it, because god forbid we put a stumbling block for those mighty captains of industry.

"sky over a populated area" seems like you're putting words in my mouth. I explictly said that having them fly over the ocean to avoid exactly this kind of externalty.

As for the environment, well, this is a self-limiting problem. Either it was only a small aircraft or they're rich and now dead and their money can be used for cleanup.

Modern airliners are drastically more fuel-efficient than planes like the 707. Fuel efficiency is often what drives a new design. The 757 I worked on came about because of a 35% more efficient engine design. The MAX came about because (drum roll) 15% more fuel efficient engines. These make for enormous operational cost savings.

Pressurisation is better. In the 90s I would always have ear pains, which happened to me only once in the last 15 years, on an old brazilian b777.

Not sure if this is true, you can see that on any device with pressure meter (basically all 'smart' watches and phones), the standards are 2000-2500m altitude. Once you can create an altitude X inside the plane, you can do say 70% of X too.

Maybe just your condition improved?

New composite ones like A350 and Dreamliner have cabin altitude of ~1800m

Higher humidity too.

I don't know. My bottles of water aren't completely flatten when we land, something that I remember was always the case. Keeping in mind flying in the 90s means taking planes manufactured in the 70s and 80s (including a Caravelle!).

And yet Boeing has yet to backport all that fancy carbon fiber and stuff to their bread and butter 737…

Just because a 737 is used for shorter flights doesn’t mean people wouldn’t want higher air pressure, higher humidity, larger windows, quieter cabins, etc…

So disappointing they keep cranking out the current 737 lineage.

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