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Everything old is new again... McDonnell Douglas looked into the propfan thing. Boeing looked into the propfan thing. Now it's Airbus' turn. IIRC the technology has been ready for years but the passengers are freaked out by it.

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Real problem was noise, not passengers. Immense advances in aeroacoustics over the past 40 years thanks to CFD is the main enabler here.

I think it’s a cool idea but I also know that the nacelles have a safety function of containing the rotor blades in the event of disintegration (e.g. from a bird strike).

If these fans have blades with anywhere near the same kinetic energy, I would be nervous.

Southwest 1380[0] is a case where the cowling didn't quite contain the thrown rotor blade.

They were very lucky that only one person died.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_Flight_1380

Turboprops have already existed for decades, so perhaps you should already be nervous.

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