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Airbus Patent Shows Modular, Removable Aircraft Cabins (gizmag.com)
Zothecula writes: According to a recently-granted patent, Airbus is exploring the potential of creating a new breed of versatile, modular aircraft that would see detachable passenger cabins slot into a hole in an aeroplane's fuselage. The concept has the potential to revolutionize air travel, while providing significant savings for airlines by reducing the time that planes spend idle on the ground.
Flying with incompetent pilots, the cabin may automatically detach, open a bunch of parachutes and land smoothly somewhere. Makes sense.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The idea of detachable cabins is obvious: I've heard it discussed before.
What's distinctly not obvious is how to make it structurally sound and lightweight. The problem with detachable cabins is the attachment/detachment mechanisms introduce weight and both the plane without the cabin and the cabin itself (probably to a lesser extent) both need to be structurally sound, so one is more or less doubling up on the number of structural components.
One also has to get the detach-remove-slot-in-reattach new cabin turnaround significantly faster than what it takes to clean a plane in order to offset the inevitable extra costs. The turnaround time for cleaning short haul planes is already pretty fast.
Long haul planes have a substantially longer turnaround time, so it could help there. However, long haul flights are a bit variable in time, so if you squeeze the expected turnaround time too far, any delays will cascade as there's no buffer. Also, longer turn around times are still a small fraction of the total journey time, so even dropping it to zero wouldn't have a vast increase in the number of flights per day.
Oh and of course there's the extra ground crew needed to operate the attachment/detachment thing, versus extra crew to turnaround the plane faster.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
They didn't hear of the Fairchild XC-120 Packplane? The patent should not have been granted in the first place.
You really don't understand patents do you? The patent is not the title. The patent is a method for accomplishing the title. If it's a different method for doing it than the Fairchild XC-120 used, then the XC-120 is not prior art.
As an analogy, if I come up with a method for shutting up arrogant morons, and title the patent, "A method for shutting up arrogant morons," it doesn't mean my patent applies to all methods of shutting up arrogant morons, only the method that I specify in the patent. If somebody else comes along with another method of shutting up arrogant morons that is not the method in my patent or one that I have used before, then my method doesn't count as prior art to their patent.
A rather smaller example was that Boeing tried to sell the idea of 777s with folding wing tips, so they could use then-current terminal gates (for which the 777 wingspan was too large.) Nobody took them up on it.
That idea has made a comeback with the 777X series, but with a much better design - the reason it failed before was because it added a lot of weight, as the fold was inboard of the ailerons, meaning that there had to be a complicated system for attaching and detaching the control mechanisms which was heavy. The new design is outboard of the ailerons, meaning its just dumb wing and thus the locking mechanism is a lot lighter.