Boeing's 787 Dreamliner and the Decline of Innovation

[TheMadMonk]

7. It's also an example of failing to think just one more step...

...ahead. What happens when failmode activates?

And really, just how did such a boneheaded failure-mode blunder get made at all, let alone in fuel valves on a plane.

It is in all likelihood a good plane. It's also probably highly representative of the limits of refinement of a basic theme that's seen little radical development in decades.

Reshaping wings to look like the fins of a humpback whale could potentially shave fuel consumption by 10% alone.

Flying wings, lifting bodies and partial bouyancy are other ideas that offer multiple percentage point improvements in efficiency.

And we can't get the bloody things out of the wind tunnel because they don't fit anyone's preconceived ideas of what planes should look like. Same fate befell the silent vacuum cleaner. By the time it was technically feasible, people damned well knew what a vacuum cleaner sounded like, and that Charlie was clearly not doing its job.