Tuesday Tech Links {2016.10.27}

Oscar Gordon

A Navy Turbine Tech who learned to spin wrenches on old cars, Oscar has since been trained as an Engineer & Software Developer & now writes tools for other engineers. When not in his shop or at work, he can be found spending time with his family, gardening, hiking, kayaking, gaming, or whatever strikes his fancy & fits in the budget.

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74 Responses

  1. Morat20 says:

    Random notes:

    The C02 to ethanol is also noteworthy because it directly produces ethanol, not methanol with byproducts. C02 in water, run across the catalyst, produces very pure ethanol — very little further processing needed. The most likely potential use? Storing excess power from solar. It’s not the most efficient battery, but it’s closed loop and cheap.

    Bendable Concrete: There’s another group who might be very interested in bendable concrete: Architects.Report

    • Jaybird in reply to Morat20 says:

      Imagine the Neo-brutalism that bendy concrete would make possible.Report

      • Morat20 in reply to Jaybird says:

        I’m really trying not to. Giant curved cylindrical buildings, thrust menacingly against the sky. Odd curves and weird angles, designed to frustrate people trying to put up shelving or use corner desks.

        Cursing tilers and carpet layers. Carpenters thrilled at all the custom work…

        (Yes, I’ve lived in a house with a curved wall. Why do you ask?)Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to Jaybird says:

        Stop it, you’ll get Will started…Report

    • Michael Cain in reply to Morat20 says:

      As long as they still use rebar. I’ve always liked watching them build the large complex rebar structures for things like bridge supports.Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to Michael Cain says:

        I would suspect they would still use rebar, since it lends a lot of tensile & bending strength. The biggest advantage is the fact that if the concrete can flex that much, it won’t crack & shatter under bending loads, which doesn’t always immediately compromise the strength of the concrete structure, but it does risk allowing water penetration & exposing the rebar to water & corrosion, which will cause expansion from the rust or from freezing, further cracking the concrete, etc.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Morat20 says:

      The questions about the ethanol catalyst will be mostly about how quickly the catalyst gets fouled, how easy can it be cleaned, how long does it last, how much is needed to produce a given volume of ethanol per time, and how cheaply can the catalyst be produced.

      None of these are difficult questions, they just weren’t questions the initial study looked at too hard.Report

      • Morat20 in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        I suspect they’ll get looked at pretty hard, because one-step C02 to ethanol without having to filter out impurities is pretty sweet.

        Useful enough to throw engineering effort because it’s got solid, already understood, uses that would be thrilled to find a simpler, more reliable method. Cheaper’s just bonus. 🙂Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to Morat20 says:

          Agreed. I don’t think this will be a one note story, it’s a big enough game changer that there is a lot of excitement brewing over it. Either this method will get refined to industrial scale, or it’ll give birth to something even better.Report

          • Morat20 in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            Nanoscale engineering is just now starting to mature, to the point where individual labs can start playing with it (or custom ordering pieces) — you don’t need massive upfront investments to start poking at it in a lab.

            Where, you know, grad students at mid-range colleges (not just the heavily endowed ones) might actually get a chance to do work with it.

            Which means a lot more eyeballs playing with a lot more ideas, so I expect the actually applied uses to jump significantly over the next few decades, in a lot more fields.

            In short, it’s becoming another reliable tool in the engineer’s toolbox.Report

            • Oscar Gordon in reply to Morat20 says:

              This. Our materials breakthrough won’t be a macro thing, it’ll be nano.

              Also, it’s good to see people starting to understand that nanoscience isn’t just about building nanobots and risking grey goo.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                It’s stain resistance, better 3D printers, and interesting materials in general. 🙂

                The fun part will be when nanoscale engineering meets bio-printing and 3D printing.

                Bioengineering is on the horizon. What we end up being able to do with it? No idea. If we’re lucky, at the very least, being able to replace organs more effectively. And not via the icky method of digging them out of someone who just died and slapping them in.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Morat20 says:

                I think you are being a bit glib about stain resistance, but (as I’m sure you know), keeping things clean in industrial process is a big deal.Report

              • Morat20 in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Oh yeah. It’s not just khaki pants.

                I’m still wishing you could get aerogel insulation for houses….Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Morat20 says:

                Few more years and I bet they’ll get the cost down to the point it can compete with foam or fiberglass.Report

      • Separation of water and ethanol remains a problem. IIRC, that’s the most energy-intense step in the traditional process.Report

    • dragonfrog in reply to Morat20 says:

      An interesting thing to me is that the traditional way of producing ethanol – with yeast and fermentable sugars – produces about as much CO2 as ethanol by weight, plus some heat. If most of that CO2 can also become ethanol, it seems that could be very efficient- the biofuel factory / distillery already has all the infrastructure and shipping logistics for sending out ethanol.

      I don’t know if the heat part of the fermentation is too little, or if it could usefully supply some of the electricity for the catalyst…Report

      • Morat20 in reply to dragonfrog says:

        There’s already a number of processes to turn C02 into ethanol, but they require high temperatures to run, often expensive catalysts, and I think all of them turn C02 into methanol that then requires further processing to turn into ethanol.

        This one uses a cheap catalyst (nitrogen on nanoscale engineered copper and some voltage) and runs at room temperature, and has a pretty high (60-ish percent, I think) efficiency.

        It’s pretty good for turning power into ethanol, which can then be burned later for fuel, while being entirely C02 neutral.Report

    • Burt Likko in reply to Morat20 says:

      What “wastewater” are we talking about? My homebrewing doesn’t yield the sort of wastewater that seems likely to produce good ethanol.

      There’s cleaning water, which has a variety of cleaning and sanitizing components (soap, bleach, sanitizing acid). This has to be discarded: it will kill plants or animals, and it isn’t a re-usable cleaning solution with crud left over from beermaking in it. In particular, I keep the stuff away from my dogs (well, “dog,” singular, for now, although I suspect we’ll be getting a second one again soon enough) because the rhizomes in hops are very dangerous for dogs to consume.

      Then there’s rinse water, which will have residual amounts of this stuff in it but mainly will be basically tap water. I recirculate ice water in my wort chilling device, which gets a bit of salt in it before the chill but otherwise is tap water again. Other brewers use different means of chilling boiled wort down to a proper temperature for pitching yeast that may not use so much water. But this “waste” product is impure but probably just less-than-potable tap water. I use it to water my potted plants in the back yard.

      I periodically take out trivially-small samples of the fermenting liquid to measure the specific gravity during fermentation. Obviously, the sugary water which I turn into mash, then wort, then beer, is not “waste” in any meaningful sense of the word. Creating this (delicious, ethanol-rich) product is the object of the exercise.

      Finally, there’s the trub, which is mostly expended yeast, which is an unappealing-looking goo, more solid than liquid, that settles at the bottom of the fermentation vessels. A craft brewery, unlike a homebrewer of my caliber, will have a small laboratory or other similar space where the expended yeasts are revived from a portion of trub, for use in the next batch.

      So I suppose if the remainder of the trub that wasn’t recaptured were rinsed out of the fermentation vessels with potable water, before more water with soap was used to scrub and sanitize the vessel, that could yield a solution of liquid which would be rich in depleted organic material and some revivable yeasts. Is that the kind of wastewater that they’re talking about using to create high-grade ethanol for battery/quasi-battery use?Report

      • Morat20 in reply to Burt Likko says:

        Was that meant to be a reply to me? I was responding to the nano-structured catalyst one, not the beer one.Report

        • Burt Likko in reply to Morat20 says:

          I misunderstood. I thought you were talking about beer.

          Because, beer.Report

          • Morat20 in reply to Burt Likko says:

            Nah, I was talking about cool nanoscale engineering that led to a rather large, and highly interesting, shortcut in the C02->Ethanol process.

            (It was literally billed as an “accidental discovery”. The lab that found it thought it might be a cheaper “Stage 1” of the usual multi-stage process. It was, in fact, all the stages.)

            Although, in all honesty, give it 10 years after coming out as some useful process or module for whatever, and it’ll somehow be incorporated into beer making.Report

  2. Kazzy says:

    Did you mean to put this in Linkage?Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Kazzy says:

      Is that not appropriate?Report

      • For future reference, we generally use “Linkage” to put an isolated link for something interesting up quickly. It takes the form of an excerpt from the Linked article, a link to the article with attribution to the source, and in almost all cases no additional editorial commentary. There’s a different technical setup for a post marked “Linkage” to make it appear in a different place on the front page.

        Compendiums like this show a substantially higher level of intellectual input by the author, so we treat them like standalone articles. You’ll notice the popular Morning Edition and Linky Friday posts that @will-truman often posts show up amongst the other regular articles on the front page.Report

  3. Doctor Jay says:

    I too, wonder about those concrete blocks. My suspicion is that the manufacture of concrete blocks is a very low-margin business, which means a very low rate of innovation. Making the new blocks probably requires a whole new manufacturing process, as well as new shipping methods, because they aren’t square.Report

    • The story says that they don’t use a binder. That would seem to disqualify them from a variety of applications due to water ingress issues — leakage if they’re below grade, damage from freeze-thaw cycles, etc. In the areas where they’re being used, those aren’t problems. And the need to avoid mixing cement may make up for shipping the irregular shapes.Report

      • Oscar Gordon in reply to Michael Cain says:

        They don’t need a binder (I read that as mortar between the blocks), but that doesn’t mean one can’t be applied. The interlocking design would make for a much stronger wall that straight blocks do.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to Doctor Jay says:

      Blocks are made with a forming machine fitted with multi-part molds (I think). One should be able to take the same machine and swap out the old molds with new ones without having to build a whole new machine.

      I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a low margin business, especially for blocks sold to contractors & construction companies, who buy in large volume. Blocks sold to big box stores probably have slightly better profits, but don’t move a lot of volume.Report

  4. LeeEsq says:

    This post has been provided by the Sons of Ether.Report

  5. Kolohe says:

    Great set o links.

    I’m a little more bearish on the bendable concrete though. They seem to be really pushing the roadway & roadbed, which makes me think it’s better at plastic deformation under periodic rated load, (which is great for roads) but not so much that you’re able to do a whole lot more with it along the z axis.Report

  6. Michael Cain says:

    This reminds me in a way of using plants to extract heavy metals from soils, since plants often draw the metals up in through their roots.

    When they dismantled the former Rocky Flats plutonium processing plant in Colorado, some of the plutonium was left in the ground because it didn’t migrate with the ground water (and no one knew how to actually separate it anyway). Unfortunately, one of the native plants mistakes plutonium for some other trace element it uses and moves it to the surface. Another emerging problem is burrowing rodents, who are bringing plutonium-contaminated soil up out of their tunnels.Report

  7. DensityDuck says:

    RE: Body Cameras

    One thing I’d like to see is the number of *upheld* complaints.

    Here’s a report from a few years ago where body cameras caused complaints to fall from 81 to 51, year-on-year. Upheld complaints also fell, from 24 to 19.

    …which means that the percentage of upheld complaints increased by nearly nine percent.

    So with body cameras, maybe there will be less complaints overall, but if one is filed it’s more likely to be upheld. Small surprise that so many officers are opposed to the idea! Dealing with complaints is just part of the job (and they pay you the same whether you’re cooling your heels in court or out on the street getting screamed at) so a reduction in the overall number doesn’t matter to them, but if you say “wearing this body camera means an extra one-in-ten chance that any complaint against you gets upheld”, whoops my body camera fell on the ground and I ran over it a couple times on accident.Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to DensityDuck says:

      Well, that is a stat I didn’t know. Thanks for that.Report

      • Morat20 in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        It makes sense. People are less likely to file frivolous complaints (complaints they KNOW are baseless, as opposed to complaints they think are sound but are bunk to rational observers) if they know there’s footage of the incident.

        Therefore, people persisting in pursuing complaints — knowing the footage exists — are more likely have what they think are valid complaints. They think the tape will back them.

        Conversely, knowing there’s footage — they’re less likely to make stuff up to try to stir things up (revenge, angry, whatever motive) because they know there’s film of it.Report

    • dragonfrog in reply to DensityDuck says:

      I think that analysis is flawed. It’s entirely possible that that flawed analysis is in fact behind opposition to body cameras, but it’s still flawed.

      Number of complaints per cop fell
      Number of upheld complaints per cop fell, but not by as much

      So, setting out at the beginning of one’s shift with a body cam reduces both the chance of having a complaint filed, and the chance of having a complaint upheld.

      The only scenario where not wearing the body cam is advantageous is after a complaint has been filed, you travel back in time and forget to wear the body cam for that day only.

      (This is similar to some of the unclear stats about the various effects of bike helmets – they definitely reduce risk of head injury given that you’ve been in a crash, but it’s also possible that they increase the risk of getting in a crash in the first place, possibly by enough that the risk of injury to all parts of the body offsets the utility of wearing them. So the ideal situation is to not wear a helmet, except on the one day you get in a crash)Report

      • DensityDuck in reply to dragonfrog says:

        “So, setting out at the beginning of one’s shift with a body cam reduces both the chance of having a complaint filed, and the chance of having a complaint upheld.”

        No cameras: 24 upheld / 81 complaints = 29.63% upheld
        With cameras: 19 upheld / 51 complaints = 37.25% upheld

        So complaints filed with cameras were more likely to be upheld.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to DensityDuck says:

          The problem here is that at this point, anyone is taking the officers opinion into account.

          Imagine we are talking about new welfare* reporting requirements. Using the new requirements, the welfare fraud division is able to reduce not only the number of investigations by 50%, but they can also reduce the number of baseless investigations, such that their resources are more effectively used to uncover actual cases of fraud more consistently. How much attention should be paid to welfare recipients or agencies that complain about the extra paperwork?

          I get the officers position, but A) there is the bigger picture in that investigating and dealing with citizen complaints costs departments, and thus communities, money, so a large reduction in those is a win. Likewise, more upheld complaints mean more evidence against bad officers who should be removed from the force, hopefully before they do something really bad and cost the community millions. And B) If officers are doing the job right, they should trust that the camera will exonerate them (remember my comment about honest officers); or, alternatively, the department has policies in place that are not based in anything approaching the reality of police work, in which case the union will have better ammunition to get those policies adjusted.

          So it starts coming down to, officers either haven’t thought it through, or they are officers who shouldn’t be carrying a badge & gun.

          *Or replace welfare with the SEC, whatever irks your priors.Report

          • DensityDuck in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

            I’m not saying that the officers’ opinions ought to be taken into account. I’m explaining why “you should totally wear body cameras!” is not as easy a sell for cops as one might think.Report

            • Oscar Gordon in reply to DensityDuck says:

              Fair enoughReport

              • Jaybird in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                I think that we’re entering “if you don’t have anything to hide, you don’t have anything to fear” territory.

                I mean, rhetorically.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Jaybird says:

                Perhaps, but I lean heavily toward the idea that public employees, while performing their duties have no right to privacy (aside from going to the bathroom). There may be times when those duties require privacy, such as closed door meetings to discuss sensitive subjects, or hearings dealing with children and abuse, etc., but in general, while at work and not on break, the right to privacy doesn’t exist with regard to those duties.Report

              • Kim in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Oscar,
                When you spy on a person, you spy on them in the bathroom too.
                Right to privacy should not be misconstrued to mean “don’t film” — it really means “unless you’ve got a damn good reason, don’t look”Report

              • Jaybird in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

                Oh, I agree.

                The problem, of course, is that cops have been saying for years “if you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear” and there are *SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO* many things wrong with that.

                In the short term, it might be fun to say it back just to get them to wear the damn cameras.

                In doing so, however, we’d be conceding the issue of whether people who have nothing to hide have nothing to fear and we’d end up regretting that in short time…

                But, immediately, there would be the benefit of seeing the sauce for the goose being sauce for the gander.Report

              • Oscar Gordon in reply to Jaybird says:

                Except I’m not saying that. It isn’t about nothing to hide, nothing to fear; it’s about public employees interacting with the public can not be hidden at all, without the consent of the members of the public they are currently interacting with.Report

        • dragonfrog in reply to DensityDuck says:

          Exactly – they were less likely to be filed at all, and more likely to be upheld when filed at all, but by less than the reduction in filing rate, so the odds of having a complaint filed and upheld is still lower with the camera.

          Applying that as an argument against body cameras, from the cop’s perspective, only makes sense if you figure cops enjoy the process of a complaint investigation enough that it is on net preferable to have a complaint filed and dismissed, compared to not having a complaint filed at all. “Gee it’s a shame about these body cameras, I haven’t been hauled in front of a citizen complaint tribunal and lost sleep waiting for the result in ages.”

          I have to imagine that’s not the case – having a complaint filed and ultimately dismissed has got to be a stressful and frustrating experience even if ultimately not as bad as having one filed and upheld.

          Odds of a complaint being filed and dismissed based on some interaction I have at work today:
          No camera: (81 complaints filed – 24 upheld) / (100 officers * 200 shifts) = 0.29%
          Camera: (51 complaints filed – 19 upheld) / (100 officers * 200 shifts) = 0.16%

          Odds of a complaint being filed and upheld based on some interaction I have at work today:
          No camera: (24 complaints upheld) / (100 officers * 200 shifts) = 0.12%
          Camera: (19 complaints upheld) / (100 officers * 200 shifts) = 0.10%Report

          • dragonfrog in reply to dragonfrog says:

            Which makes sense – the cameras could easily deter two things
            – police brutality by a little bit
            – false complaints of police brutality by a lot

            By analogy: imagine you work in a job with a significant hazard from fire. A new safety device is available that reduces burns leading to injury by 80%, and fatal burns by only 40% (because it’s more effective against medium intensity flames than against extremely high intensity flames).

            If you adopt the device you’re much less likely to be burned leading to injury and significantly less likely to burn to death.

            Do you reject the device because it increases the odds that the remaining burn incidents will be fatal?

            Like I say above – just because it would be poor risk management to reject the safety device, doesn’t mean some folks won’t use that flawed logic and reject it.Report

          • DensityDuck in reply to dragonfrog says:

            “Applying that as an argument against body cameras, from the cop’s perspective, only makes sense if you figure cops enjoy the process of a complaint investigation enough that it is on net preferable to have a complaint filed and dismissed, compared to not having a complaint filed at all.”

            “enjoy”, no, but it’s part of the job, and probably one of the easier parts, and they get paid for doing it.

            So introducing body cameras:
            *Reduces but doesn’t eliminate complaints
            *Increases the likelihood that a filed complaint will be upheld.

            While these are not at all reasons to not have cameras, they’re reasons why you shouldn’t necessarily expect enthusiastic and voluntary compliance from officers.Report

        • J_A in reply to DensityDuck says:

          @densityduck

          That’s a very strange math (in anyone is still reading)

          If I’m a cop, I worry about upheld complaints per cop

          If 100 cops have 81 complaints (very sleazy cops, don’t you think) without cameras, each cop has an 81% chance of getting a complaint, and a 29.63% chance of it being upheald

          So each cop without cameras faces a 24.00% chance of facing an upheld complaint.

          With cameras, there’s only a 51% chance of receiving a complaint, and even though the complaints themselves have a higher chance of being upheld, each cop is facing only an 18.00% chance of facing an upheld complaint.

          Cameras are a win for cops too

          (It’s a similar math than that that says that, even though whites have a higher chance of being shot in a police encounter than blacks, blacks have so many more encounters, that the end result is that more blacks than white die in police encounters)

          (Please don’t tell me that treating the chance of a complaint, and the chance of it being upheld are not random, independent events in the life of a sleazy cop. Maybe some opposition might be rooted in the fact that the events are not random at all)Report

          • DensityDuck in reply to J_A says:

            You’re not actually addressing the fact that a filed complaint has a higher chance of being upheld. You’re still looking at overall rate. And from a non-officer viewpoint an improvement in the overall rate is desirable, but you’re still telling an officer “if an event occurs there’s a higher risk that it’ll have serious consequences”.

            Please note that I am not arguing against body cameras.Report

            • Morat20 in reply to DensityDuck says:

              Taking human nature into account I think if you stress “less complaints” and “less frivolous complaints”, you’ll get cop buy-in because what they’ll think is: “Complaints against me are frivolous, but Doug there is a fricking idiot. So I’ll be getting no complaints, ’cause they know I got tape, but Doug there? His idiocy is gonna be on tape and the Captain ain’t gonna cover for it”.

              And the best part is, Doug’s thinking the same thinking the same thing — only the other way around.

              Because we’re arguing over phrasing, but what we’re talking about here is “The number of frivolous complaints is dropping. The people with valid complaints continue to complain”.

              The folks who really want to argue with that are going to be cops who KNOW they’re generating valid complaints, and those are probably a small fraction of the cops who are actually generating valid complaints.Report

              • DensityDuck in reply to Morat20 says:

                See Jaybird’s answer above, about “if you don’t do anything wrong then you won’t have any cause to worry about this”.

                Which, again, is not wrong, but it’s also not an argument that will get people on your side.

                I guess what I’m saying here is, there isn’t a way that you’re going to get cops to like this very much, so body-camera deployment plans that depend on the cops liking them probably won’t get very far.Report

  8. Kazzy says:

    Just want to say that I really appreciate setting the links to open in separate tabs. Saves me a step!Report

    • switters in reply to Kazzy says:

      You may know this Kazzy, but in most browsers (I think), you can just hold the control button down when you click a link and it will open it in a new tab.Report

      • DavidTC in reply to switters says:

        switters:
        You may know this Kazzy, but in most browsers (I think), you can just hold the control button down when you click a link and it will open it in a newtab.

        Or middle click, if you can manage it with the mouse wheel everyone has now.

        I have a side button I assigned to middle click, just because trying to click with a scroll wheel is a good way to slightly scroll the wheel and click in the wrong place.

        …incidentally, speaking of misclicking, I think I just accidentally reported switters’ post.Report

      • Kazzy in reply to switters says:

        Oh, I know… but I’m often on mobile which requires holding the ‘click’ and then selecting the “Open in New Tab” button.

        Or doing what you describe on my laptop which has a slightly wonky touchpad.

        Both of which I consider a “step”.

        Yea… I’m lazy.

        But on another blog, I actually participated in an extended debate about whether linky posts should open in new tabs or not. It was… surprisingly intense.Report

  9. DavidTC says:

    I don’t understand ‘The Double Bubble Airliner’ thing.

    What is the difference between this and just making the airplane body wider, and why don’t they just make the airplane wider?Report

    • Oscar Gordon in reply to DavidTC says:

      On my way to see Dr Strange, so this will be brief.

      Airliner hulls are pressure vessels. Circular cross sections are very efficient shapes for pressure vessels, especially ones that are also carrying flight loads. An elliptical cross section is doable, but involves additional structure (read: weight).

      Double bubble gives you additional width while still enjoying the efficiencies for a minimum of additional structure.Report

      • DavidTC in reply to Oscar Gordon says:

        Nope, still not following.

        A circle is, indeed, the best design, but *neither* an elliptical cross section or a double hull actually has any full circles.

        The only difference I can see between the two shapes is that a double hull would bend inward at the center of the top and bottom.

        But from what *I* understand of engineering, I’m having trouble figuring out how that would make anything more sturdy unless those circles *completed*. If they don’t complete, they don’t get any bonus…a C isn’t more sturdy than a U.

        Which, I mean, I guess they could complete, at some points in the plane. Or curve inward to meet at a vertical support.

        But I don’t understand how that’s any different than the ‘additional structure’ need for an elliptical cross section. Which could also do the same thing.

        Meanwhile, talking about additional weight, a double hull would result in *more surface area*, which results in more weight! Unless you built a bridge across the top and bottom, but then that’s just an elliptical cross section with a weird curved support internally!

        I mean, maybe I’m imagining this wrong. Holding the fingers and thumbs together of my two hands, I can make an elliptical cross section. And then I can curve my fingers some more and make a double hull cross section. And I notice the double hull is not only smaller (I.e., takes more surface area for the same size), it can actually crumple in a way the elliptical can’t, at the intersection of the two hulls.

        In other words, I don’t understand any of what you’re talking about, and I’m not sure I *can* understand without some sort of diagram.Report

        • Michael Cain in reply to DavidTC says:

          Per the brochure, any weight increase to accommodate the added structure of the double-bubble cross section is much more than made up by increased efficiencies from integrating/aligning the fuselage and engines. It’s a classic “systems” thing — making one part somewhat less efficient allows greater efficiencies in other parts of the system.Report

        • Oscar Gordon in reply to DavidTC says:

          So this explanation would be a bit more involved, enough so that it might be worth doing as a standalone post. Then I will be able to bring in pictures more easily, & also I can expand upon @michael-cain point about systems tradeoffs.

          So show of hands, whose interested in something more indepth regarding the double bubble airliner?Report

  10. Michael Cain says:

    They’ve announced a reboot of Starship Troopers. Please, please, please can we have powered armor suits this time?Report