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There is nothing technically preventing this. It's already being done. GE Aviation engines can be fitted with technology to report, in real time, the behavior of engines on a plane while it is still in the air.

It wouldn't be a stretch to extend the telemetry to other plane systems.

http://www.geae.com/services/information/diagnostics/tier.html

The reason you haven't seen anything so innovative in 70 years is that the last 70 years have had constant steady progress.

Not to rain on that parade, but in the mid-1930s we had V-8 engines for cars, which could accommodate no more than 6 passengers comfortably and got well under 30 MPG. Airplanes one the other hand had rotary engines a la the Armstrong-Siddeley or Pratt & Whitney, carrying up to 14 passengers and with flight range capabilities of up to 745 miles.

Today we have 4 cylinder engines in cars that can barely accommodate four adults comfortably, let alone six, with a few models sporting MPG ratings in the 40+ range, but with fleet averages still far below that. Contrast that with aircraft, which have enjoyed brutes like this one for decades, and whose carrying capacities have increased geometrically since the 1930's and whose range can extend to the thousands of miles.

Anti-lock brakes, power steering, GPS in-dash navigation, and all the other bells and whistles are all well and good. But aside from computer controls and fuel injection (another technology from the last century), we are still being driven by the same engine Henry Ford used, in little metal (though now increasingly plastic) compartments not radically different from those used in 1930.

If the same attention to innovation and invention had been nurtured in the automotive industry as it was in the aircraft industry who knows what we'd be "driving" now.

a particularly efficient turbofan might get 4 to 1

I call BS. You must be talking about the fan pressure ratio, which isn't a good figure of merit. The GE CF6-6 (over 35 years old) has a compressor pressure ratio of 25:1. That roughly corresponds to a compression ratio above 10:1. A more modern engine like the GP7277 has a peak pressure ratio of 45:1, giving a compression ratio around 15:1.

Newton's Second Law: thrust = (mass flow rate)*(change in velocity). The fan doesn't need a high pressure ratio (i.e., delta v) because it has a very high air flow rate.

Not to mention jet engines

I'm wondering if you really do know what you are talking about with the airports. Your the first one I have heard that says there is nothing that has to be done. Political gateway dot com seems to disagree with you. Here is one about the investment at Heathrow (London for those of us that don't know about Heathrow across the pond) airport business At Dulles Airport in Virginia, I understand that some construction going on over there is for the A380 to handle the 2nd deck. So do they have it wrong or do you? I can't seem to find anything that says nothing has to be modified at 747 airports. I dare say, you seem to be the one that is uninformed, or do those experts have it all wrong? I'm taking them for their word.

Comparing the fuel efficiency of the A380 to a 40 year old plane seems a bit odd to me. Update the 747 with the 777 engines and see what happens. Do you compare new cars efficiency to 40 year old cars too? Your comparison also assumes that the plane is fully loaded. The modern 747-400 seems to do better on fuel than the A380.

I'm still bothered that you think that every part of my argument is wrong. You don't think the SST was a white elephant? They would still be flying it if it was cost effective, especially after updating it after the takeoff crash. There was a conversion problem between the C-5 Galaxy and the A380 (darn metric). The two aircraft are very similar but the A380 is designed to take off with more weight. They are so similar (after I converted correctly) I wonder if they started with the C-5's plans and updated them (maybe they started with the 747's plans). By the way, if you take off in a fully loaded A380, one that weighs in at the max of 560 tonnes, the max landing weight is 386 tonnes. So you have to get rid of 174 tonnes to land if something goes wrong after takeoff. Seems that a C-5 could take more than 800 people, especially with 2 decks. There again, the C-5 has been around for decades. If there was a need, it would have already been put into service as a passenger plane. You would also have to update terminals to handle the C-5 as well. Top aircraft in the world - http://www.globalaircraft.org/50_largest.htm. The an-225 is still bigger than the A380. The spruce goose is larger, a prop plane that Howard Hughes built (a nearly 60 year old sea plane).

Well maybe I should be glad that someone is happy that Airbus with their big government subsidy has a new plane. Hurray for Airbus and the EU. I hope the US doesn't build something bigger.

I rather have a GE90 jet engine from a 777. At over 123,000 pounds of thrust, it would definitely make for some seriously fun game play.

Microsoft as world leader? I guess you've never witnessed such behemoths as GE, Disney and Time/Warner.

How about flying to Universal Studios, having a heart attack from all the flashing lights( do they make lights though?), getting an ECG at the hospital while watching the news story about your accident on TV?

Yes, all that and more courtesy just one might conglomorate. If only I wasn't lazy I'm sure I could have double the examples at least.

This?

building nuclear ramjets in the 50's

"Project Pluto" - a nuclear ramjet powered bomber project begun in the 50's - but it never flew and was cancelled in 1964. However, there were test-firings of a prototype engine. These produced 35,000 lbs of thrust - but that's only one quarter of today's most powerful aircraft engine (127,000 lbs thrust).

Has the EU ever even fired a nuclear engine?

It's a pity that the American nuclear rocket test firings nuked their own citizens.

FYI, the ESA is currently using ion plasma electric propulsion engines in their current generation of spacecraft. The SMART-1 probe, launched late last year and currently on it's way to the moon is powered by such a drive. NASA also has an ion drive on the Deep Space-1 probe.

Yeah, but General Electric makes fighter jet engines. Now how do you feel about on-the-fly patches from GE?