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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?
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]
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.
"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."
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
so how do you charge the batteries?
Off the grid, maybe?
Which uses coal, oil, and gas?
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.
Energy density. We are decades away from a fully electric airliner.
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.
Won't happen for a long time because you could never charge the batteries of an airliner fast enough even assuming that you could work out the issue with the weight of the batteries. A quick charge for your car is 20 or 30 minutes. Now imagine how long it would take a plane to charge even allowing for higher currents. The airlines don't want their planes on the ground because they don't make money when the planes are there.
You can make carbon neutral jet fuel, you make natural gas in a bioreactor and turn it into synthetic kerosene or you use algae to make it directly. Given the realities of air travel that's a lot more likely to be the path forward than efans, though those are being explored as well (though to be competitive they'd need a leap in battery tech that would already make the entire ground transportation sector move to batteries)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
"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.
Won't happen for a long time because you could never charge the batteries of an airliner fast enough
You can replace the spent batteries for charged ones.
Remember that option every time you think about charging times.
Not while you are flying you cannot - used batteries still carry a massive weight penalty, while used fuel does not. Aircraft efficiencies are built around getting ever lighter during their cruise, as many aircraft cannot climb to their optimum cruise altitude when at maximum takeoff weight, and only reach optimum after some time in the air - you cant do that with batteries, because the aircraft never gets lighter.
So you will be carrying more weight for greater distances. That problem right there changes the entire airline industries view on battery powered aircraft, because it completely changes the way air travel needs to be handled.
This is dead-on.
I've had to explain this a few times to people that don't understand how it is cheaper and uses less fuel to go out of your way to stop in Alaska to refuel even when your airplane has the ability to fly from China to Tennessee without stopping.
It seems counter-intuitive that 2 flights with more miles is more fuel efficient until you realize how heavy a fully fueled jumbo cargo jet is, and how much fuel you burn just to carry fuel.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
A rather long, high-voltage tether attached to a rather small autonomous vehicle that travels at high speed along an electrified track? That oughtta work...
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.
A quick charge for your car is 20 or 30 minutes. Now imagine how long it would take a plane to charge even allowing for higher currents.
20 to 30 minutes.
Batteries can charge in parallel. You may need bigger cables, and more of them, but there's no reason why you can't charge them in the same amount of time.
The only problem for electric planes is the weight of the batteries. It will take a few enormous breakthroughs in battery technology before they're light enough to power an airliner with.
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
Time to consider high wing passenger jets. Better ground clearance with large diameter engines.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
Nope. Not going to happen for a long time for weight and recharge time reasons stated.
However, hybrid systems can be a thing. A couple of jet fuel powered engines with lots of excess generator capacity feeding electric ducted fans placed optimally on the aircraft. The aircraft is no longer constrained by the necessity of having large diameter fans to get a certain fan area.
Have gnu, will travel.
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.
"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?
Very well, which is why they are allowed to fly on e.g. transatlantic flights. It is a requirement that these aircraft can fly at least 120 minutes one one engine, most can fly 180 minutes. See ETOPS.
Question: aside from the obviously massively added complexity, could you even have an electric engine if you could just jettison the battery packs after take off?
e.g., have some sort of external unit to the plane that simply falls off and flies itself to the ground (like a battery pack drone).
Without knowing anything about it I imagine a significant chunk of power is required to take off and climb, but no idea how much would be required to stay in flight. So if you could periodically get rid of used packs it'd have the same benefit as burning off fuel.
Although if you were super clever you could have these drones return to base, recharge, and then reconnect to planes in flight?!@#
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).
There are obvious limits though beyond the environmental feasibility of intermediate stops even if you redesigned the aircraft for shorter ranges. Cost (crew/maintenance/landing fees), intermediate airport noise/location/capacity, flight crew hour limits.
Being that some routes (South America to Africa or Asia) largely lack feasible airports - you would either have to design two variants, a long range and a short range, to maintain those flights OR you could do more airport hopping with other flights. But one of the problems also is that many aircraft are owned by leasing companies and if you present the option of both a short and long range variant, would likely predominantly buy the long range variant to cover all customer needs.
Additionally there are limits to any benefits in terms of aircraft design range. The 767 classes can still see benefits from intermediate stops but the 737 classes do not and those are the most flown aircraft in the fleet. Yes the larger guys use more fuel but unless you find ways to mitigate their fuel consumption, intermediate stops really don't matter when future growth is considered. So odds are that manufacturers and airlines will largely not bother with this strategy unless fuel prices become quite significant.
Although the refreshed engines on many of the existing airframes will provide benefits, I had hoped Boeing was going to cleansheet the 737 but the A320 NEO kinda sucked the wind out of those sails and the 777 is obviously getting this engine in lieu of a 777/747 refresh. My hope is alternative fuels and operations research quickly finds more savings as the 30 year lifespan of aircraft limits what you can do in terms of improvements.
The point I was making is that not too long ago, DHL, FedEx, and UPS all did direct flights from China to the Midwest USA.
One of them (I think it was UPS) discovered the Alaska stop saved them money, and within a short amount of time, all 3 were doing it.
I don't think they'd be doing it if it cost more money. Sounds like even with all of the extra costs, the amount of fuel saved still makes up for it.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
You didn't say they were cargo hauls. Very different considerations! I would expect them to do much better as you don't have to haul flight attendants (additional costs that pare down the savings pretty significantly). I would imagine you also make better money per pound with cargo than passengers.
I did a lot of environmental research into the transportation side of things for range and speed reductions for aircraft. Never looked at cargo because of scope.
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?
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."