I’ve seen the exact same design years ago sold as a way to quickly prepare the plane for takeoff. Passengers would board the detached so the whole plane doesn’t have to sit there waiting. I imagine you would have more passenger modules than engine modules. The more expensive engine modules would fly non-stop: land, drop the passenger module, pick up another module and take off before even the first plane deboarded. No idea if this could actually work. It’s just strange to see the exact same design done for a dumber reason.
I’m a little surprised we don’t do it that way. It would make it a lot easier logistically, and it could be much more accessible. Time waiting on the tarmac for humans to shuffle single file is utility wasted.
That time is used by the ground crew to prepare the plane for the flight and go over safety systems. Planes can’t just land and takeoff again immediately. Things can go wrong, and you can’t pull over in the air. Sometimes those delays are mechanical, and some times those delays are shift changes, bad crew scheduling/staffing levels. Airports are pretty fucking efficient over all. From the planes flying people around perspective, not the human shuffling element. We are just cattle to them after all.
I’m sure technically we could build a plane like that but I don’t think we’re at a developmental level that would allow us to make them cheap and secure enough and to handle the logistics involved. Boeing is struggling to make normal planes safe and the entire flight control system in US is close to a breaking point. Imagine adding more possible failure points to the planes and more complex logistics at the airports…
I mean yes, but those problems are there because we refuse to work together and rather have “competition create progress”. If all the aviation firms would agree to share knowledge and adopt common standards and thus work together more than compete, we could have nicer things everywhere.
But people are stupid and selfish so we can’t have that, fight is all we can.
And I’m not saying aviation firms specifically are about that, rather all humans everywhere.
I’ve seen the exact same design years ago sold as a way to quickly prepare the plane for takeoff. Passengers would board the detached so the whole plane doesn’t have to sit there waiting. I imagine you would have more passenger modules than engine modules. The more expensive engine modules would fly non-stop: land, drop the passenger module, pick up another module and take off before even the first plane deboarded. No idea if this could actually work. It’s just strange to see the exact same design done for a dumber reason.
Pretty sure there was an episode of Thunderbirds that did this back in the 60s
you know eventually someone will dump the passengers during the flight
Boeing is gonna build the emergency jettison system with one sensor prone to misfiring
I’m a little surprised we don’t do it that way. It would make it a lot easier logistically, and it could be much more accessible. Time waiting on the tarmac for humans to shuffle single file is utility wasted.
That time is used by the ground crew to prepare the plane for the flight and go over safety systems. Planes can’t just land and takeoff again immediately. Things can go wrong, and you can’t pull over in the air. Sometimes those delays are mechanical, and some times those delays are shift changes, bad crew scheduling/staffing levels. Airports are pretty fucking efficient over all. From the planes flying people around perspective, not the human shuffling element. We are just cattle to them after all.
I’m sure technically we could build a plane like that but I don’t think we’re at a developmental level that would allow us to make them cheap and secure enough and to handle the logistics involved. Boeing is struggling to make normal planes safe and the entire flight control system in US is close to a breaking point. Imagine adding more possible failure points to the planes and more complex logistics at the airports…
I mean yes, but those problems are there because we refuse to work together and rather have “competition create progress”. If all the aviation firms would agree to share knowledge and adopt common standards and thus work together more than compete, we could have nicer things everywhere.
But people are stupid and selfish so we can’t have that, fight is all we can.
And I’m not saying aviation firms specifically are about that, rather all humans everywhere.