|
Life in tha UK :) (pg. 8)
|
View this Thread in Original format
| MrSquirrel |
| quote: | Originally posted by lethal
Just to clarify, the 777 GE engine is not the size of the CURRENT 747 (thats just silly :p), but the original 747-100 series, had a smaller fuselage size and thats what the new series 777 engines equal! Unfortunately i havent been able to find any sites with data on the 747-100 fuselage to back this up but if you disagree go talk 2 my propulsion lecturer - its his statement!!! :D:D:D
Anyway all of the engine manufacturers have said that this is as large as the engines are gonna get because to go larger you start losing efficency and adding to weight BIG TIME! :)
Oh and Wade just for you mate: Some facts about 747's.
A 747-400 with maximum fuel (ie doing the Melbourne - Los Angeles route) weighs over 400 tonnes.
Of this 130 tonnes is fuel! Thats the same capacity as roughly 100 road tankers, just to fill the bastard for one flight!! You will find that at ALL airports there are underground pipelines directly from the refinery to provide the fuel for the aircraft - theres just not enough trucks in the world to fill all the aircraft flying atm!
Another 20 tonnes is lead weights located in the ailerons and elevators (the control surfaces that allow the plane to pitch (ie rotate up and down) and roll (ie rotate along its axis)). These lead weights are their to counterbalance the control surfaces and prevent them from flapping and destabilising the aircraft. 20 tonnes is a lot of extra weight but you have to remember how big these surfaces are - there ing massive!! :eyes: So if you can invent a way to get rid of that 20 tonnes, you will be a billionaire over night (im working on it!:p) cause every aircraft would upgrade immediately cause thats an extra 20 tonnes of cargo you could carry or prolly around 15 tonnes less fuel youd have to carry!! Oh and hydraulics and the like dont work (its been tried and failed MISERABLY!!!)....
And one more useless fact - The tail of a 747 is as tall as a 20-storey building! (or is it 22? MrS?)
Arent i just full of facts atm? :p:p:p |
Info on 747-100 is HERE 20 ft internal diameter. Sorry mate lol.
And you must have some short floors on your buildings, because a 747-400 tail is only 63 feet 8 inches (19.4 m) tall, which at approx 10 feet a floor is only 7 floors. But yes they are tall, and they are really ing loud too.....when the wind is out of the southwest I get them taking off over my apartment from O'Hare. They are only about 500 feet up when they fly over my place and it is noisy. Though the semi-trucks going down the street I live on are a lot louder in comparison lol.
Ok....it may just be my bedtime.
All this tlak of 747's makes me want to fly back to oz now :( One good thing though....next trip to OZ I have enough miles to upgrade to business class both ways :D
MrS |
|
|
| matt.h |
from looking through MrS' link to the Boeing site, and some other plane fanatic fan sites, from the 747-100 through to the latest incarnation (the 400ER?), the interior cabin width, aswell as the diameter of the trunk has remained the same throughout.
i'm sure the aerospace engs will be able to explain in much more detail how much extra $$ and time (testing, dev, mainframes etc) would be required for boeing to adjust the measurements of the aircraft fuselage (width to a lesser extent compared to length i think?).
if they were going to make it wider, they might aswell invest that time and money into designing a new model (double deck supersonic airliner perhaps) :) |
|
|
| MrSquirrel |
| quote: | Originally posted by matt.h
i'm sure the aerospace engs will be able to explain in much more detail how much extra $$ and time (testing, dev, mainframes etc) would be required for boeing to adjust the measurements of the aircraft fuselage (width to a lesser extent compared to length i think?).
if they were going to make it wider, they might aswell invest that time and money into designing a new model (double deck supersonic airliner perhaps) :) |
The problems with wider fuselages is that the aircraft has to take more gradual turns for passenger comfort because the airplane rolls along the center axis of the wings. The passengers on the outer edges would be moving up and down a lot more than the ones in the middle. Thus why even the A380 is not especially wider than 20ft.
As for the price, the 747X program was going to cost Boeing more than 3 billion USD, and that was just a program to redesign a more efficient wing, re-engine, and extend the length of the fuselage by about 30 feet which is realtively simple.
MrS |
|
|
| Vigilante |
Plane nerds.......
:crazy: :crazy: :crazy: |
|
|
| PhloTron |
Boeing is too busy with both the 7E7 project which is well under way...and just yesterday signed a 4 billion dollar deal with the Navy for 737 (Mil Spec) Sub Hunters to replace the aging P3 Orion. That order if expanded to 20 years will be worth 25 billion.
Right now they could care less about the 74X...as the current aerospace market for widebody aircraft is suited nicely for the 777 and the 767-400ER, and for thinner trans-oceanic routes several carriers have ETOPS on their 737-700's (such as Aloha from Hawaii to the mainland) and 737-800's (such as Air Pacific driving the Vancouver-Hawaii-Fiji route)
The new(er) 777-300 competes very well with the Airbus 340-600, both of which are hogs (a good term) and vice versa. The 380 will have little impact on the commercial market at this time...most of the firm orders are for Cargo operations at this time.
Probably smart to stay away from the 74X for the time being.
/end worthless information from a pilot |
|
|
| lethal |
Well that info about the 777 engine i stated came from my lecturer - i think im going to go get up him about that - i dont like being made to look like a tit!! :p
The 7E7 Vs the A380 - the battle of the titans!!
I think your wrong about the A380 not making a big splash on the commercial market PhloTron.
129 orders to date (only 17 of which are cargo versions) when its still this far from entering service indicates to me that the A380 will be a huge market winner - and the potential for the future as populations grow is huge!
Cant wait for the 7E7 to come into play though! It should be a good aircraft and if it is efficent as they say their gonna make it - it will gain a big market share as well, replacing current aircraft like theres no tomorrow!! Though i do really hope that the claim that their gonna make 60% of the 7E7 from composites is just Boeing trying to scare Airbus cause thats just asking for trouble in my opinion....
Matt.h - Supersonic widebody travel is gone (RIP Concorde) and wont be back for a very long time! Boeing had a little bit of a go at with the Sonic Cruiser design (which is still debatable whether it was a real design or just an attempt to scare Airbus into jumping in that direction), but the airlines didnt want it. In fact Concorde was never a profitable aircraft, so yeah supersonic travel has taken a definite backseat recently (though i understand that a number of companies are looking into creating a supersonic business jet - though no-ones jumped into full scale design of one yet!:))
Oh and PhloTron id hardly call the 737 sub hunters a large project for boeing!! 4 billion dollars - pfffffttttttttt!!!!!! Im suprised they went to the effort of trying to win it!!! ;):p:p |
|
|
| eRRaTiK |
| quote: | Originally posted by Vigilante
Plane nerds.......
:crazy: :crazy: :crazy: |
+1 |
|
|
| MrSquirrel |
| quote: | Originally posted by lethal
|
The 7E7 and the A380 are nto competing for the same market at all. The A380 is designed for large numbers of passengers going relatively long distances. The 7E7 is being designed to be a more efficient long range smaller capacity aircraft. The target market for the 7E7 will be the spot that is currently serviced by the 757, 767, and A300. Trans-Atlantic and transcontinental flights. So there really is no "competition" between these two aircraft per se.
As for supersonic travel. I agree it is dead. I do not forsee supersonic travel again being feasible for at least another 2 decades when (hopefully) Scramjet technology will allow hypersonic passenger travel. And contrary to popular belief, the SonicCruiser was not a supersonic aircraft. It was being designed to fly at high subsonic speeds (above .95 mach). That way they would not have to deal with the problems that aarise in supersonic travel such as lowering the intake air velocities so the blades don't shred themselves.
As to the A380 not getting many freighter orders that is because it was not designed to carry cargo very well without a redesign of the cargo carrying systems currently used. The only access are the side doors and the side doors are considerably smaller than those on the 747 which means they cannot carry the large cargoes as well. FedEx has ordered a number of the A380s but FedEx has their own containers which they design to fit inside an airplane with virtually no extra room. They can do this because they have extreme restrictions on the size of packages they carry and they can thus fit things well. According to a FedEx MD-11 pilot I was tlaking to (in a pub in Sydney, actually) FedEx does not like the 747 because there is so much unused space at the top of the cargo hold. Thus why they like the DC-10/MD-11 freighters, the round tube makes the effiecient use of space much easier.
Oh ya, the passenger "orders" that airbus already has are all laced with conditions and several airlines have already postponed expected delivery dates due to either airport feasibilty concerns (Qantas in regards to LAX) and cabin set up concerns (Virgin Atlantic). Besides, Airbus is pretty dodgy in the way that they report both orders and deliveries. Boeing does not announce an order until the ink is dry on the actual purchase contract whereas Airbus sometimes announces agreements stating a "commitment to buy" as orders even if that commitment is just a "we think we are going to buy x number of your planes at y date.
Ok, time to go eat dinner lol.
MrS |
|
|
| lethal |
I know that the A380 and the 7E7 arent in direct competition (holding different places in the market) but both are seen as the way forward by their companies and as Boeing and Airbus are in competition, it will be interesting to see which one grabs the largest share of the market place!!!
I think were both saying the same thing about Airbus - cheap, relatively dodgy but i still like them (im applying for a job with them - if i get rejected THEN i can start bagging em out like theres no tomorrow!! :p:p:p)....
Are you sure the Sonic Cruiser was Mach 0.95 aircrfat i thought it was 1.3? ie just above the transonic regime! If Boeing was looking at flying at transonic speed no wonder no one wanted the bastard!! Its almost impossible to fly at a speed between M0.8-1.2 because the flow is so bloody unpredictable (it switches between supersonic and subsonic flow randomly and is impossible to predict!). If that is the case then i think its pretty safe to say the sonic cruiser was just an attempt by Boeing to scare Airbus into designing a supersonic widebody jet cause noone would be DUMB ENOUGH to try and build a transonic aircraft!!!!! |
|
|
| MrSquirrel |
http://www.boeing.com/news/feature/.../factsheet.html
Boeing still has the SC site up though no work has been done on the project in 18 months.... At least as a leading project. My guess is that the aerodynamics guys are still working on it to see how they can utilize the technologies for the future. Hell boeing has so many projects going on at one time that you can be certain that there is at least a skeleton team doing real work on the project.
Good luck with the Airbus application. I would never work for them directly myself, but then again when I was studying AAE I was looking more towards building either rollercoasters or working on some form of space vehicle.
MrS |
|
|
| Hyperdimension |
As disappointing as the Concorde has ended up, it must be one of the most ingenious aeronautical inventions at the time. Who would have thought that anyone from the general public in the 1970s and 1980s could hop on a passenger jet and travel at twice the speed of sound... and still get to sit comfortably in their seats?
Richard Branson (Virgin Atlantic founder) in October 1994 considered using Concordes. However just last year in April, after the Concorde was put out of service, he offered British Airways 1 pound for each Concorde.
Just last weekend on a TV show called "Speed" (all about humans moving fast in various ways and for various reasons), I learnt that the body of the Concorde stretches by around 1m (?) while travelling at full speed.
Learn more here: http://www.concordesst.com
Here's the one in which everyone on it (109 people) died, plus 4 on the ground.
 |
|
|
|
|
