/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11358289
I just don't understand this reusable airplane meme.

The amount of money you can save from reusing planes isn’t enough to justify how much harder it makes it to complete the difficult flights that usually make money in the air travel world. I’m sure one day reusability will be more effective, but the truth is that when you have all the challenges that come with aeronautical engineering in general, it’s almost always much more effective to throw away the plane after it’s done its job than to figure out how to make recovery part of the mission. I know of no major technology on the near term horizon that would change that.

Even if reusable planes are possible now, but when reliability is THE number one priority (in this case the cargo takes up 2/3rds of the cost and the actual plane only 1/3rd) it makes absolutely no sense. Like, look at this jet engine (pic related). This represents some of the most advanced technologies in the propulsion engineering world. Do you honestly think that such a complicated machine can be made tough and reliable enough to be reusable? I doubt it. Best example in my opinion is condoms, sure you could reuse them but making sure that they do not suffer a drop in reliability will cost a lot of money and time.

Just because some company made reusing planes popular, then that doesn't mean that we will have the sci-fi future of millions of flights per year. We'll be lucky to see more than a couple dozen per year. Dial down your expectations, don't buy into the 'reusability for airplanes' meme.

I just don't understand this reusable plane meme.

The amount of money you can save from reusing planes isn’t enough to justify how much harder it makes it to complete the difficult flights that actually make money in the air transport world. I’m sure one day reusability will be more effective, but the truth is that when you have all the challenges that come with jet science in general, it’s almost always much more effective to throw away the plane after it’s done its job than to figure out how to make recovery part of the mission. I know of no major technology on the near term horizon that would change that.

Even if reusable planes are possible now, but when reliability is THE number one priority (in this case cargo takes up 2/3rds of the flight cost and the actual flight only 1/3rd) it makes absolutely no sense. Like, look at this engine (pic related). This represents some of the most advanced technologies in the aeronautical world. Do you honestly think that such a complicated machine can be made tough and reliable enough to be reusable? I doubt it. Best example in my opinion is condoms, sure you could reuse them but making sure that they do not suffer a drop in reliability will cost a lot of money and time.

Just because some company made reusing planes popular, then that doesn't mean that we will have the sci-fi future of millions of flights per year. We'll be lucky to see more than a couple dozen per year. Dial down your expectations, don't buy into the 'reusability for planes' meme.