Kevin's Watch

This is pretty cool:
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6120132.stm
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6113418.stm

I have to wonder... there's no tail (and therefore no rudder) and no flaps, so are the exhaust ports going to be able to provide enough stability in tighter maneuvers, or in turbulent conditions. Are they gonna be able to get this thing out of a tailspin?

Improvements in airframe design have been heralded as the best way to increase fuel efficiency and reduce noise for a few years now and this seems like a well thought out design to me. Vectored thrust should be well capable of providing pilots with a 'virtual rudder' and might give them more control options than they have currently.

The unconventional control surfaces put me in mind of other 'flying wing' planes, like the B2 bomber, which are aerodynamically unstable. It sounds bad, but it just means that the plane requires a constant stream of tiny adjustments to keep it stable in the air, way too many for a human pilot, so such planes are completely dependent on their computer systems. These days it shouldn't be an issue; flight computers are always improving and they build planes with multiple redundancy up the wazoo anyway. I'm sure there are still some air passengers who won't be comfortable if the pilot can't lad the plane in the even of a computer failure.

Better believe it. Because computers do fail, no matter how much redundancy is built in. And of course, people sometimes push the wrong button, or forget to turn the mode selector when making inputs...

(Not a huge fan of the glass cockpit. )

--A