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World's Largest Commercial Aircraft Engine Fired Up For The First Time (gizmag.com)
schwit1 quotes a report from Gizmag: With a front fan spreading a full 11 ft (3.35 m), the GE9X is a world record holder and generates thrust in the order of 100,000 lb. To accommodate the aeronautical behemoth, the Peebles facility was recently upgraded with a larger air intake, extra fuel tanks to feed the giant engine, and high temperature gear to deal with the hotter, more efficient design. GE says that the GE9X is currently undergoing its first Full Engine To Test (FETT). This is the next level of the test series, which began in 2011 at the component level, and marks the first test of the complete system, which comes only six months after the engine design was finalized. GE says that this relatively early testing was to ensure that the test data was available as soon as possible for the certification engines, which are scheduled to be installed in GE Aviation's flying test bed for certification of flight testing in 2018.
Any word on what manufacturers are likely to employ this engine, and on what platforms? Maybe an upgrade for the giant Airbus A380 to keep it competitive?
at the same rate as say, computer storage capacity? We'd have billions of pounds of thrust compared to the first jet engines! ...oh but we don't, almost as if comparing the physical world with the information world yields no useful comparison.
Finally, here's the long-awaited technological breakthrough to fight against climate change and peak oil!
Bigger engines are more efficient, so this will actually reduce the amount of fuel burned.
Hypermobility is where its at. Didn't you know its virtually a human right now for people to fly where they want, when they want at a moments notice? More aircraft, more flights, more pollution, just so long as people can go on that w/e break a thousand miles away its all worth it, screw the enviroment.
[The above is sarcasm btw for the hard of understanding]
Per passenger yes, but if larger planes means ever more passengers flying then its a rather pyrrhic victory.
For who? More passengers carried means better economics for the airline - smaller planes increase the number of pilots needed to move the same number of people, less cargo, shorter distances.
Stuff the airlines, I'm more concerned about the enviroment.
"Ladies & gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. If you look out the right side of the aircraft, you'll notice flight 195 challenging us to a race. I've turned the fasten your seat belt sign back on because this shit is about to get real."
I'd rather see fully electrical ones....hopefully these behemoths will be the last struggle of a dying hydrocarbon worldview...
By "Worlds Largest" the summary appears to mean "Worlds Most Powerful" http://www.guinnessworldrecord...
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
so me not being arsed with firing up the calculator, what's that in Newtons?
Political debates have me rolling my eyes so much I think I got optical whiplash. I should sue. - Foamy The Squirrel
More passengers per flight means fewer total flights, so less fuel used.
Bigger engines mean a few percent more efficiency, so you can increase double the amount of miles flown without feeling guilty.
explained: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Smaller planes have the benefit of reducing expenses for some shitty airlines who are more likely to be hit up the EU's consumer friendly flight delay compensation regulations.
Stuff the airlines, I'm more concerned about the enviroment.
What's the point in a pristine environment if you can't fly there to enjoy it?
Yes, I'm kidding. Mostly.
"Oh no... he found the
You say that as if there is a finite number of passengers. However as technology has allowed the cost of flying to come down it has only driven demand for travel up. There is nothing to suggest that this trend will reverse. Heck, even having the airlines think of passengers as cattle doesn't diminish the demand.
Per passenger yes, but if larger planes means ever more passengers flying then its a rather pyrrhic victory.
If you really believe humans are bad for the Earth, drop the fucking hypocrisy and off yourself.
Oh, what's that? It's all those OTHER humans who are bad, not precious look-at-how-much-better-than-you-I-am-because-I-care YOU?
"Heck, even having the airlines think of passengers as cattle doesn't diminish the demand."
So, you have also tried flying with Ryan Air? ;-)
Yeah, right.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Seriously, fuck off and die.
I've always said the environmentalists want us living in caves and scratching for nuts and berries.
You ACTUALLY want to restrict travel by aircraft? That is probably the one thing that could cripple the world's economy in one fell swoop.Next you'll want to ban cargo ships.
Fuck off you cunt.
Presumably it has already passed its Burner Overthrust Bearing Adjustment (BOBA).
You could take anybody out of that photo and put it in any (work related) group photo that I've ever been part of, and nobody would find anything amiss. It makes me shudder.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Bigger engines means more fossil fuels being burned. And that means more global warming. Why are we doing this?
You breathing means more CO2. And that means more global warming. Why are you doing that?
Larger engines do not mean larger planes (2 100K engines push a smaller airframe than 4 75K engines).
Larger planes do not mean more people flying - if anything, larger planes are less efficient in a business sense (higher % of empty seats / cargo space, on average), so cost to fly them is higher per passenger, a business fact reflected in the pricing of the routes they fly.
The cost of airfare, independently and in relation to alternatives like fast trains, is what determines how many people fly. Cheap airlines like SouthWest that fly exclusively small, full planes do increase the number of people travelling.
If a new, more efficient, airframe and engine are developed and deployed, it will increase air-travel's market share of the overall transportation market due to the lower cost to the customers - that's where the environment loses relative to "greener" modes of transport like fast trains. Start factoring the cost of relocating the world's coastal cities into the price of jet fuel and you'll see a shift away from air travel.
No, Ryan Air doesn't think of people as cattle. Cattle don't tend to have money to pay to use the bathroom or money for any of the 10's of other things Ryan Air wants to charge for. Cattle are cargo. Pre-paid ticket and no other charges. Packed in sure. But Southwest is probably a closer match for cattle...
If you are concerned about the environment then why are you using the Internet for frivolity? It is one of the biggest users of electricity out there.
Here's a 747 test bed with one of the previous generation GE90 engines (used on the current 777). You don't realize how big these are until you see them on another aircraft. http://www.turbokart.com/image...
Here is the older engine mounted on a 747 in action https://youtu.be/4B3gwMONxDQ
Why don't you go freeze in the dark?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I've never understood why they haven't used air-breathing engines like this as a first stage of rockets... Strap a dozen of these to a Falcon 9 to get it moving off the launch pad and up to 40-50k feet, then carry on with rocket propulsion from there. From a power:weight ratio, it would seem to me that they're much more efficient within the atmosphere because they don't have to carry their own oxidizer - and I've always heard that a rocket uses a very disproportional amount of fuel to just get off the launch pad and started moving.
Plus - turbofan technology is so reliable, it'd be much less risky than a rocket-powered first stage even if you still need two additional stages to get to orbit.
Just my thoughts.
This engine is actually lower thrust than the previous generation, hence "greener." Likewise, the plane's passenger capacity isn't meaningfully higher than the previous generation...
Your concern is probably in the wrong place - aviation is only 2% of carbon dioxide emissions. Banning aviation altogether (all things remaining equal) wouldn't make a difference in our current trajectory.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Spare us your silly exaggerations. Got any half decent arguments or is shrieking like a silly teenager about it?
...said this would be Historically Inevitable. Like the rule of the proles.
Don't say it is not true !!!!!!
Time to consider high wing passenger jets. Better ground clearance with large diameter engines.
Have gnu, will travel.
Enjoy all the shafting from mafia and big mafia.
To a point. Bigger engines weigh more. If you keep making the engine larger and larger, the engine is more efficient, but the plane is carrying around a lot of extra weight it doesn't need. Additionally, gas turbines have efficiency curves which usually have a peak somewhere between 30% and 95% load, depending on the design. If that peak isn't where the engine would usually operate on a given aircraft, the engine would not be a particularly good fit for that aircraft. When considering efficiency, there is an ideal engine size/weight for any given aircraft. Larger is not always better.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
After the drone strike at Heathrow, pilots and aviation officials are concerned about the risk of having a drone strike and get sucked through an engine. As I look at the picture in the article, I wonder how spectacularly catastrophic it could be to suck a drone into that monster of a machine while it's running.
With 4 engines on a 747 or 3 engines on older 727 or DC-10 designs, there were at least two engines left if one failed, How well can modern 2-engine airplanes like 737, A320 or 777 fly on just one engine? Does it really work? Or does the plane need to limp along losing altitude?
Hard to believe the progenitor of this engine - the GE90 - and the airplane that uses it - 777 - are over 20 years old now.
It still boggles my mind that a single GE90 will make a 747 take off, cruise and land. GE has a 747 testbed, and the GE90 looks positively gargantuan next to the once-huge JT9s the 747 was born with. Yes, once upon a time the JT9 was the biggest fan. (note that the GE test bed uses GE CF6 fans, which are roughly analogous to the JT9, size-wise)
Thrust-wise, the GE90 and now this one are just ludicrous. So's the Trent from RR.
I miss the 707 with the JT3D. That's a proper airliner! ;o) The screaming bzzzz of the baby fan, and the whiiine of the old turbine leaving behind perfume of kerosene and four trails of smoke!
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
"if anything, larger planes are less efficient in a business sense"
To a point perhaps, but if that was a general rule we'd all still be flying on DC-3 size craft with about 25 other people instead of Boeing 777s with well over 300 passengers. The aircraft size limitations at the moment are the size of airports, the customers who could afford/utilize larger aircraft and/or the number of people society is willing to lose in a single aircraft crash (for some reason 300 seems quite acceptable, more than 500 not so much).
"I'm your biggest fan"
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
Per passenger yes, but if larger planes means ever more passengers flying then its a rather pyrrhic victory.
The aircraft that will be using these engines is the Boeing 777X. The 777X is a big airplane (maximum takeoff weight 351.5 tonnes), but smaller than the largest airplanes currently flying like the largest variant of the 747 (the 747-8, MTOW 448 tonnes), or the Airbus A380 (MTOW 590 tonnes). It is about the same size as the smaller 747 variants currently flying (MTOW 333-378 tonnes, depending on model).
The difference is that all of these other aircraft have four engines, the 777X will only have two. Result: greater weight savings and increased efficiency.
Larger planes aren't creating flight demand anyway, they are satisfying it - making it easier for limited airport space to handle more customers. It is reasonable to argue that airfares affect airline travel demand, but larger aircraft aren't driving airfares down - airlines do not cut flight prices when they buy bigger airplanes (if you think they do, please cite some evidence of this phenomenon).
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
You say that as if there is a finite number of passengers. However as technology has allowed the cost of flying to come down it has only driven demand for travel up. There is nothing to suggest that this trend will reverse. Heck, even having the airlines think of passengers as cattle doesn't diminish the demand.
That would be because those "cattle flights" reduce airfare cost, and it is airfare cost, along with rising world-wide wealth (more people with money to fly), that drive air-travel demand. Why should we want to reverse these trends?
Improved technology does help drive down airfare costs, largely by increasing fuel efficiency, but operational changes have been the major driver in reducing airfare costs since the 1970s ("cattle flights", but also simply leaner and more efficient airline operations with better scheduling and higher flight loads). It would be perverse to argue that we should keep airliners fuel-inefficient, burning more fuel per passenger-mile, in order to keep airfare costs up to reduce flight demand as... some sort of environmental protection measure? Less fuel per passenger-mile is an absolute good, economically, socially and environmentally, not an "on the other hand, its bad" thing.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
"You say that as if there is a finite number of passengers. "
Are you suggesting there are an infinite number of people on Earth?
I never argued that we should keep less efficient planes. My point was that as more efficient planes, and operations as you pointed out, then the cost of flying goes down which opens the market to more people and we end up with more fossil fuels being used overall.
We should be making all forms of transportation more efficient and looking at getting them off of fossil fuels. However there is a side effect that by making them more efficient that they might get used more overtaking the efficiency gains. It's been seen with air travel and with lighting (I know it's not travel but it's a good example).
A 747 sized drone. Sweet!
fuck the environment, I am going around the world for shits and giggles. It is not like your CO2 footprint is any better arsehole.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
The consistently cheapest flights i can get from EU to NZ are almost always in A380s. So not sure what you mean by reflected in the price?
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
How long until RR puts out a lighter engine with more thrust ?
Great. So you have solar on your home, you are off-grid, and you use your solar to charge your Tesla. Right?
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
445kN
They almost got the metric translation complete.
"I'm not much interested in interoperability. I want substitutability. I want to be able to throw your software out."