Even if Moore's Law slow down, there is still a lot of progress that can be made with architectural improvement. Chip technology has advanced so fast that we probably don't have optimal designs to take advantage of a given number of transistors available now.
Aviation Week article on "Reston Elders" concept
on
Building the A380
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· Score: 2, Interesting
This is the first part of an article from Aviation Week last December. This group of retired airplane designers has some interesting ideas on reducing the cost of transporting passengers.
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Thinking Outside the Box Without Getting Too Far
16-Dec-2002
By James R. Asker
For decades, it seems two types of new civil aircraft have been discussed. Those that actually get developed tend to offer modest, incremental improvements on existing technologies arranged in patterns that are familiar. Then there are those that involve radical departures from the familiar long silver tubes. Typically, these remain "paper airplanes" never getting past a set of interesting drawings and studies.
There's nothing wrong with evolving a product line. Airbus, Boeing and the engine makers have been making commercial aviation safer and more efficient for decades doing that. Nor am I saying that radically different aircraft never go into production and airline service. The supersonic Concorde was certainly a dramatic departure from the state of the art.
But it seems all too rare that an aircraft comes along that shakes up assumptions about what passenger airplanes must be like but that is not so radical that it can't succeed commercially. The Boeing 747 comes to mind. There are so many inefficiencies in other areas of the process of getting people from one place to another by air that seem ripe for improvement. And almost all of them are related to things that take place on the ground. There's a lot more time wasted on the ground than in the air.
That's why I am intrigued by the approach of a group of veteran engineers who call themselves the Reston Elders and have been working for several years on designs to bring a little radical change to air travel. Chas Willits, a member I met more than a decade ago when he was working at NASA's old space station program office in Reston, Va., candidly describes the group as "a bunch of old guys with a lot of experience."
The Reston Elders' design philosophy involves approaching aircraft and ground facilities together as elements of the air transportation system, looking at unexamined assumptions, concentrating on areas in which the biggest savings can be had and then trying to apply existing technologies to lower costs and increase passenger satisfaction--and airline profit margins.
The specific goal they have laid out for themselves is to design a family of passenger-friendly air vehicles and associated ground equipment that could allow a doubling of air transport capacity at one-third less manufacturing cost and half the current average seat-mile operating cost.
How do you cut seat-mile costs? Labor is the biggest single component of costs. Give labor tools that allow workers to be more productive and costs go down. If you can both reduce the number of ground workers and cut the time required to ready an aircraft for its next flight, allowing higher asset utilization, you have attacked the problem from two directions.
So the Elders aimed for a system that allows even a 600-passenger aircraft's turn time to be kept under 30 min. "The idea is not to be a carbon copy of Southwest Airlines," Willits says. "But we need to move in that direction."
To accomplish that, the group would build aircraft that can "crab taxi" so that it is parallel to the loading pier, easily allowing multiple loading ramps (see drawing). More importantly, it would allow a dramatic change in baggage handling. Airports/airlines would provide baggage carts at curbside to all passengers free, as some in Europe now do. There's a type of cart that can go on escalators. After clearing security, passengers would bring all their bags to the gate, where they would place them in containers. The containers could be loaded and unloaded on the aircraft via conveyor belts, eliminating baggage handling labor and vehicles. Fueling would be done by a system that pops up from the pavement, as done now in Stockholm and Singapore.
Getting vehicles off the ramp would reduce air pollution associated with airline activity by 20% and eliminate what the Elders claim is a $5-billion annual bill for airport "fender-benders."
The Reston Elders have ended up with designs for a family of constant cross-section subsonic aircraft having two decks with double-aisle, six-to-a-row seating in 250-, 364- and 528-coach seat variants. The 528-seater would be 208 ft. long and have a wingspan of 200 ft.
No center seats would enhance safety and comfort. Even with the comfortable 34-in. seat pitch planned, the pressure shell would use only 110 cu. ft. per passenger, a more efficient use of the volume than that of the Boeing 777-300, which uses 145 cu. ft. per passenger, according to Willits.
Obviously, to be able to park parallel to existing terminals' piers, the aircraft have to have a high-wing design. Placing the engines over the wing, with other refinements, would achieve about 10-dB. noise reduction on the ground because noise is reflected "up and out" off the wing, allowing 24-hr. operations at all airports. It would also virtually eliminate ground-sourced foreign-object damage. The aircraft would use full-span flaperons and caster landing gear, as on a B-52, which would allow for no rotation at V 1 and wings-level landings.
A company called Orbital Technologies Corporation has developed a vortex rocket engine. The propellant is injected around the outer edge of the combustion chamber. As I understand, they don't know exactly how it works.
Cold storage: cooling phase change materials by running the cooling system at night, then using the cold material for daytime cooling (lower nighttime electric rates, better efficiencies due to cooler nighttime air temp)
Slashdot Mirror
Or, if you live in Washington, you recharge with hydroelectric electricity which costs 1.6c KW/h wholesale.
Even if Moore's Law slow down, there is still a lot of progress that can be made with architectural improvement. Chip technology has advanced so fast that we probably don't have optimal designs to take advantage of a given number of transistors available now.
This is the first part of an article from Aviation Week last December. This group of retired airplane designers has some interesting ideas on reducing the cost of transporting passengers.
--
Thinking Outside the Box Without Getting Too Far
16-Dec-2002
By James R. Asker
For decades, it seems two types of new civil aircraft have been discussed. Those that actually get developed tend to offer modest, incremental improvements on existing technologies arranged in patterns that are familiar. Then there are those that involve radical departures from the familiar long silver tubes. Typically, these remain "paper airplanes" never getting past a set of interesting drawings and studies.
There's nothing wrong with evolving a product line. Airbus, Boeing and the engine makers have been making commercial aviation safer and more efficient for decades doing that. Nor am I saying that radically different aircraft never go into production and airline service. The supersonic Concorde was certainly a dramatic departure from the state of the art.
But it seems all too rare that an aircraft comes along that shakes up assumptions about what passenger airplanes must be like but that is not so radical that it can't succeed commercially. The Boeing 747 comes to mind. There are so many inefficiencies in other areas of the process of getting people from one place to another by air that seem ripe for improvement. And almost all of them are related to things that take place on the ground. There's a lot more time wasted on the ground than in the air.
That's why I am intrigued by the approach of a group of veteran engineers who call themselves the Reston Elders and have been working for several years on designs to bring a little radical change to air travel. Chas Willits, a member I met more than a decade ago when he was working at NASA's old space station program office in Reston, Va., candidly describes the group as "a bunch of old guys with a lot of experience."
The Reston Elders' design philosophy involves approaching aircraft and ground facilities together as elements of the air transportation system, looking at unexamined assumptions, concentrating on areas in which the biggest savings can be had and then trying to apply existing technologies to lower costs and increase passenger satisfaction--and airline profit margins.
The specific goal they have laid out for themselves is to design a family of passenger-friendly air vehicles and associated ground equipment that could allow a doubling of air transport capacity at one-third less manufacturing cost and half the current average seat-mile operating cost.
How do you cut seat-mile costs? Labor is the biggest single component of costs. Give labor tools that allow workers to be more productive and costs go down. If you can both reduce the number of ground workers and cut the time required to ready an aircraft for its next flight, allowing higher asset utilization, you have attacked the problem from two directions.
So the Elders aimed for a system that allows even a 600-passenger aircraft's turn time to be kept under 30 min. "The idea is not to be a carbon copy of Southwest Airlines," Willits says. "But we need to move in that direction."
To accomplish that, the group would build aircraft that can "crab taxi" so that it is parallel to the loading pier, easily allowing multiple loading ramps (see drawing). More importantly, it would allow a dramatic change in baggage handling. Airports/airlines would provide baggage carts at curbside to all passengers free, as some in Europe now do. There's a type of cart that can go on escalators. After clearing security, passengers would bring all their bags to the gate, where they would place them in containers. The containers could be loaded and unloaded on the aircraft via conveyor belts, eliminating baggage handling labor and vehicles. Fueling would be done by a system that pops up from the pavement, as done now in Stockholm and Singapore.
Getting vehicles off the ramp would reduce air pollution associated with airline activity by 20% and eliminate what the Elders claim is a $5-billion annual bill for airport "fender-benders."
The Reston Elders have ended up with designs for a family of constant cross-section subsonic aircraft having two decks with double-aisle, six-to-a-row seating in 250-, 364- and 528-coach seat variants. The 528-seater would be 208 ft. long and have a wingspan of 200 ft.
No center seats would enhance safety and comfort. Even with the comfortable 34-in. seat pitch planned, the pressure shell would use only 110 cu. ft. per passenger, a more efficient use of the volume than that of the Boeing 777-300, which uses 145 cu. ft. per passenger, according to Willits.
Obviously, to be able to park parallel to existing terminals' piers, the aircraft have to have a high-wing design. Placing the engines over the wing, with other refinements, would achieve about 10-dB. noise reduction on the ground because noise is reflected "up and out" off the wing, allowing 24-hr. operations at all airports. It would also virtually eliminate ground-sourced foreign-object damage. The aircraft would use full-span flaperons and caster landing gear, as on a B-52, which would allow for no rotation at V 1 and wings-level landings.
www.nasatech.com/Briefs/Sept00/MFS31477.html
Cold storage: cooling phase change materials by running the cooling system at night, then using the cold material for daytime cooling (lower nighttime electric rates, better efficiencies due to cooler nighttime air temp)
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http://www.cogeneration.net/thermalenergystorag
Using high efficiency solid state thermionics for no-moving-parts cooling:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/nr/2001/electrici
Storing nighttime coolness in phase change materials embedded in drywall:
http://doityourself.com/wall/phasechangedrywall
Windows which can switch on and off to reject or transmit infrared radiation:
http://www.consumerenergycenter.org/homeandwork
CO2 based automobile air conditioning system:
http://www.spacedaily.com/2002/021204065123.7v5
Use a .jpg that says "The music is recorded on a CD-R" and it is very unlikely eBay will catch it.