GE’s new turbofan engine is as wide as a Boeing 737 fuselage
wired.com
wired.com
Wired's really gone down the clickbait hole in the last few years - not that it was ever as substantial as it liked to make itself out, but still disappointing to see.
[1] http://imgproc.airliners.net/photos/airliners/2/0/5/0881502....
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric_GE90#GE9X
It just struck me as one of those things that makes perfect sense, but I never really thought that much about it before seeing it.
I'm surprised I haven't seen more of this in automobiles these days, (maybe Tesla?) but I can't imagine it will be long before it's common place. There would of course be privacy concerns, but it's something that I could live with in order prevent break downs or things of that nature.
The big difference vs automobiles is that most airlines buy their planes but only lease the engines. GE and Rolls Royce monitor the engines at all times because the own them and are responsible for them at all times.
"Right sizing" and fuel economy are massive factors in aviation. The 737 clearly fits the niche that airlines are looking for more so than the 757.
It's the same reason Honda Civics sell so we'll compared to more powerful/larger vehicles.
Anecdotally there is a lot of buzz in the airport world over the CS-100 right now due to the potential impact on airport noise due to the stage 5 engines and recent DAL order.
For routes that have thin margins and relatively low passenger loads, the 737 makes a lot of sense.
For similar reasons, the Embraer 175 is popular with regional airlines. The CS100 [0] would compete for orders with the newer Embraer E2 [1] series.
I don't love flying in 737s. Although I'm not sure 757s are all that much better. But the link sorta points to the basic issue. Upgraded 737s mostly do the workhorse job at a reasonable level. Building a new airframe for that space would be really expensive and would have to clearly surpass the 737 economics.
(etc., etc. -- "old" does not mean "bad"; the 757 is a perennial example of people claiming to want something they don't really want; and the 737 is a proven, successful design, so there's absolutely no "embarrassment" in the fact that it's still being manufactured and flown)
You might even zoom out a bit more and go with, "It's embarrassing that manufacturers are still making ATX cases". Just as ATX cases have been able to accommodate several generations of computing, modern 737s are effectively different aircraft than early 737s even though they share common properties.
I have read on forums (but don't know enough to confidently claim personally) that Boeing changes as little as possible between 737 generations to keep everything under that same certificate. And that the 737 MAX would never pass certification as a brand new airplane; instead it's just considered a new variant of a 49 year old plane (and largely grandfathered into those regulations)
I flew with Qatar Airways, and in Doha they had a mobile staircase plus a bus, and with business class the entrance was just a few meters ahead of the engine. Or at at least it felt that way.
Seems like the diameter of the 777X engine is just a tiny bit larger than the old 777 engine: 339 cm vs 325 cm.
That one fact really brought home to me what a huge beast the 777 was...
A GE exec told me that 80% of this technology makes up the electric power generators and that one of these units can power 300,000 homes.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1361920911...
Which happens to first see service in the Boeing 777X, but there's no reason to assume it couldn't go into other airframes or even other manufacturer's aircraft.
To attribute it to Boeing like that makes no rational sense. More information on GE's site:
https://www.geaviation.com/commercial/engines/ge9x-commercia...
Many of the medical articles are not full of complete information or an understanding of healthcare and public health.
Also, many stories on Israel are lacking context and completeness perhaps in some attempts to be "balanced." For example, the NYT does not discuss that the current Fatah Palestinian administration names childrens schools and streets after terrorists. They don't bring up enough that Fatah pays money to the families of terrorists, both dead and those in Israeli jails. That money they use to pay for terrorists comes from American taxpayers.