Junior Member
Future of Aviation
Good day all! I found myself wondering today... what is the future of commercial aviation? The aviation community has made wonderful strides in terms of efficiency and safety. However, no major changes to the way we know and understand commercial aviation have been made in decades.
So I ask... if you could look through a crystal ball, what is your view of commercial aviation in, say, the year 2040?
Cheers all!
David
Junior Member
While we will be much more efficient on operating costs, I'm thinking speed and comfort will stay basically the same?Originally Posted by fixeagle
Junior Member
Although I’m not an aeronautical engineer or aviation expert, I'd have to say that there is a tendency to find alternative fuels to substitute petroleum-based ones. What with the recent global warming phenomenon due to the excess CO2 output from everyday human activities, especially in the industrial and transportation fields, we have witnessed technological breakthroughs with hybrid cars that use petroleum derivative fuels alternated with electricity (I don't see us going completely electrical with today's battery limitations, meaning you couldn't go much more than 150 Km without having to recharge for about 10 hours) or even hydrogen (this technology is still being developed/implemented, but some companies - like BMW, Toyota, etc. - have already managed to create engines that run solely on hydrogen or gasoline/diesel + hydrogen) as well as biofuel (less efficient than petroleum fuels in terms of net energy content, but a renewable source where emissions are offset by plantations - like sugar cane, corn, soy, etc. – from which the biofuel originates). The main reason for this is to decrease the pollution as well as the dependency we have on these fossil fuels that are becoming increasingly expensive (all while trying to increase combustion efficiency), and the same concepts apply to aviation that still relies one the good old turbine combustion for propulsion.
If most planes today rely on kerosene (or similar) fuel, which derives from petrol, then I guess that in the future we will start seeing new turbine technologies, just like we are seeing now for car engines (though I do realize that it is much more difficult to develop new turbines that can efficiently utilize new fuels that possess high net energy content in order to be able to carry a heavy aircraft at elevated velocities). There might be military advancements regarding this, but at the moment, I haven't seen anything too new at the commercial level. However, that might change by 2040.
I'm guessing speed and comfort will remain largely the same, for safety reasons, due to the design of our current airplanes. Nevertheless, in the near future, we might also see some changes in those aspects, which could enable higher speeds (nothing too drastic though) with maintained comfort. The Concorde is a good example of this, but its use was discontinued due to ever-increasing costs and some other issues.
I'm sure there are many other aspects that could be pondered upon, but these are my thoughts on a characteristic in the transportation area that will suffer significant mutations.
Last edited by fepro; 02-09-2014 at 12:33 AM.
Junior Member
Re: Future of Aviation
Hello David,
we are currently looking in to, as stated here in this post, more efficient aircraft (i.e. maximizing efficiency). There are many ways to complete this but that's easier said than done; one way is looking into structure. Look into the joined-wing aircraft which was patented by Wolkovitch years ago. An unfortunate drawback to aircraft such as this (also another aircraft being researched, the oblique wing) is appearance: not everyone wants to ride in a "weird" loooking airplane as was the case when canards first arose. I can almost guarantee that we will still be using the "cigar" shaped fuselage at 2040, just running better numbers where possible (e.g. loading/unloading passenger times).
Hope this helped a bit.
Regards.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks