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Comment by verelo | Hacker News Reader

I’d agree with most of this but frankly when was the last time your car engine stopped on the highway? Or was hard to start because it was hot, or cold, or just because? These problems are solved in cars. The old Cessna 172 models I’ve flown all continue to have these issues, even a friends SR22 from the mid 2000s was a nightmare.

Plane engines are well understood, but they are old and clumsy designs that could be drastically improved upon.

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I can't remember the last time I commuted and didn't see a car broken down on the side of the road.

But thousands of cars pass that way each day, and one breaks down. The (admittedly anecdotal) issue rate described for planes sounded much higher.

The anecdotes above I read as difficulty getting an airplane engine started, which is definitely true compared to a modern car engine. Even using proper technique, mine can be frustrating to get and stay started after a fuel stop. (It’s a vapor lock issue that arises from heat-soaking while stopped for fueling, not something that makes for a safety-of-flight issue.)

It's more to do with the relative consequences. A car engine goes out and you cal AAA, an airplane engine goes out and you have a serious problem.

I was responding to "when's the last time your engine gave out"

If you have at least two engines on your plane, one failing ain't so bad?

As the saying goes, when you have an engine failure in a twin, the remaining engine takes you to the crash site faster. ;)

Not necessarily engine problems.

That is freaking wild to me.

Hmmm. Something to do with lack of state warrant of fitness in US?

Aircraft engines are running on full load for almost all the time, with added load during take off. Car engines are not, a modern car engine would blow up running under the same load patterns then aircraft engines.

And sincr ICE engines are dying bread when it comes to aircraft, why bother if the current ones work perfectly fine for what they are supposed to do?

> And since ICE engines are dying bread when it comes to aircraft, [...]

Are they actually? I'd expect air-travel (and rockets) to remain the last holdouts for combustion engines for quite a while to come.

Cars will definitely move to being electric.

Big ships, maybe too?

Wouldn't surprise me if aviation engines would move to turbines (see TurbAero and Turbotech for turboprops designed for the GA end of the market), and electric for short range. Leaving little if any space for piston engines. Though of course existing planes aren't going away for a long time.

Turbines are internal combustion engines. But I guess the comment I originally replied to meant non-turbine ICE only?

> But I guess the comment I originally replied to meant non-turbine ICE only?

I would guess that yes, otherwise the comment would be pretty outlandish if the poster is predicting the imminent death of turbine powered aircraft.

Obviously claiming turbine powered aircraft are a dying breed would be outlandish. I wrote ICEs, and meant piston powered aircraft... my bad...

No worries. I thought you were looking into some far future of electric aircraft?

At the moment, that seems outlandish, but also not totally implausible.

Short distance electrical aircraft can and will will soon enough, by aerospace standards so in the next decade.

Long distance, what is currently served by exisiting commercial airliners, batteries are by far too heavy for now. Green fuel alternatives will happen sooner I guess.

Aerospace is changing fast currebtly, I haven't seen anything like it in the last 20-30 years. Interesting times in deed.

Modern aircraft use turbines, either as turboprops or jet engines. Those burn kerosene.

Turbines are ICEs.

And yet many light aircraft are powered by very simply-adapted car engines.

And those are following totally different certification requirements.

The most frequent problems I’ve had with cars in the last 20 years have been engine cooling systems and battery charging.

When was the last time an issue with the car engine caused you to fall out of the sky?

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