There are many reasons for a lot of things, until you overcome those reasons. That's the point of innovation. There are many reasons not to make a reusable rocket too.
So far, I see zero evidence that this company has addressed any of the aforementioned challenges beyond theoretical fuel consumption and theoretical passenger logistics.
As someone who has 31 hours towards their single-engine ppl cert, I absolutely abhor the stagnation of general and commercial aviation due, largely, to certification barriers, BUT even having a viable flight-worthy blended-wing concept does not make for a viable mass market product.
Not related, see the near half-century of "alternative" wing and airframe designs that are absolutely better at a few pieces of the puzzle, but also absolutely failed to be viable when integrated into a fully functional and safe airplane.
This company needs to focus on success in a niche product role before addressing the safety, integration, and manufacturing needs of the mass commercial aviation market. They are not (atm) backed by this sort of "patient capital".
Not related, see all of the VC and failures required by Whittle (in wartime no less) to develop the jet engine or Tesla's corporate journey from Roadster -> S -> Y.
FFS, have some self-awareness! This is the Dunning-Kruger Effect in practice.
They are not saying "hold my beer while I put the industry to rights!"
If anything, it's taught me how little I know about "real flying" compared to CFD and systems engineering.
Commercial aviation is conservative because aviation is "hard" and mistakes in aviation are "extremely costly".
Or the difference between a (noob) software user and a software engineer.
We wouldn't take airliner design advice today from the Wright brothers, either.
traditional looking commercial jets, their designs, their manufacturing processes, their innovations (yes boeing/airbus do innovate and have for a long time even though it doesnt seem that way) have all been shaped heavily by human blood. to some degree a radical new design almost guarantees more deaths at a commercial level there's really no shortcutting this without it.
dont get me wrong im super open to the possibility that something like this is possible itd be better for the whole world, but there's no way we get there without re-experiencing some hard lessons if we want to push it pash some sort of proverbial finish line
This assumes the lessons were specific to the body type and aren’t generalizable?
Pressurizing a tube vs pressurizing a pancake (or flattened sphere, or some other easy approximation) will have very different mechanical loading characteristics. Turbulence (differences in air speed/pressure) across a large flat-ish surface that also has a signifiant pressure differential will also prove challenging to design for and scale up.
Aerospace is a very high dimensional design process. Doing anything different puts you into unknown territory real fast.
Look at this world we live in. Billionaires are living it up and climate change is wrecking winter and here we are in the mud, someone like you can't even afford a simple shift key.
It's all so crushing.