Stuff That Never Made It - but why?

[JayBee]

All right. So I did not make it clear. Off course I meant the Eurofighter Typhoon.
Hey there is an idea for a WhIf, the Hawker Typhoon turned round so it is a canard configuration.

JimB

[jcf]

Hey there is an idea for a WhIf, the Hawker Typhoon turned round so it is a canard configuration.

JimB

Cool, that way the nose could break off instead of the tail.

[nev]

Conservatism in the civil field, really? Ya, they were so slow to embrace all-metal construction, pressurisation,
the turbo-jet, strut-mounted turbo-jets on highly flexible wings, the turbo-fan and, of course, the Jumbo Jet.  
Yep way too conservative those boring airline folks.

What was the last major airliner to enter service that wasn't a variation on the Boeing 707?  ie tube fuselage, swept wings, engines in pods hung underneath said swept wings.  A few tried sticking the engines on the tail, but that was given up on several decades ago.  Hell, rear-facing seats is too radical a life-saving concept for the airlines to consider.

Oh, and how old are all those innovations you mentioned?

[kitnut617]

 

tumty tum, tum tum tum   

I know, coat, hat, stage left -------

[Mossie]

I'll throw in my tuppence worth too, they're not exactly prolific!  The Beechcraft Starship only managed sales of fifty odd, the Piaggio Avanti less than 200.  The Pilatus PC-12 on the other hand has managed sales of around 800 in a similar period of service as the Avanti.   Beechcraft's own King Air has managed over three thousand, although it's been around forever.  IIRC the advantages of canards are supposedly greater than a conventional wing arrangement, the main problems mostly being in design.  So why are they less prolific?

I can understand why the airliner industry is quite conservative.  You don't want to be messing around with peoples lives, it's bad for business.  My own guess as to why rearward facing seats haven't been adopted is passenger perception & comfort.  Many people don't like traveling backwards & it can make people who suffer from motion sickness feel much worse.

[nev]

tumty tum, tum tum tum   

I know, coat, hat, stage left -------

Is that a "major airliner"? 

No.

[McColm]

The VC-10 was the only airliner to have rear facing seating, that I know of.

[JayBee]

The Comet in RAF service had rear facing seats.

[Weaver]

The propfan died on the rocks of cheap oil, if prices had stayed high then it would have been pursued because it
did hold promise of conveying a practical advantage.

Which demonstates conservatism: let's not spend any extra money or take any risk on something which is BOUND to be an advantage in the long run because then we can make a shade more profit this year.

In the military field, the USAF has a well-known bias against canards,

So it is repeatedly claimed, do you have documentation that proves the claim?
I guess that also applies to the USN? Again with what proof?

Of course I don't: it's an attitude of mind which has been repeatedly commented on, not a written policy statement.

I'm sure the Russians would love to know that they slavishly adopt whatever the USAF does.

They don't slavishly copy, but they are undoubtedly influenced. They adopted VG after the F-111 proved it was workable and they responded to the F-14/15/16/18 generation by designing highly agile fighters of their own which show the clear influence of those designs.

As to the the MiG and the Berkut, from what I've read neither was truly a prototype for a next-gen anything.
Seems they were more on the lines of tech demonstrators/research projects similar to the many other TsAGi
driven projects in Russian aviation history, while they may have eventually led to a new fighter, no one can
say for sure whether or not it would have featured canards.

Well they indicate Russian thinking on their next generation and both of them have canards. Where is the alternative tailplane-equipped technology demonstrator?

Personally I think canards are cool, but I wouldn't be too surprised if they eventually go the way of variable-geometry.

I doubt it if agility continues to be a priority, but I do think that, if current trends continue, canards AND tailplanes might both be sacrificed on the altar of stealth in favour of blended flying-wing/body designs.

[jcf]

What was the last major airliner to enter service that wasn't a variation on the Boeing 707?  ie tube fuselage, swept wings, engines in pods hung underneath said swept wings.  A few tried sticking the engines on the tail, but that was given up on several decades ago.  Hell, rear-facing seats is too radical a life-saving concept for the airlines to consider.

Oh, and how old are all those innovations you mentioned?

Funny thing about the history of technology, particularly the physical technology of transport and commerce, periods of
invention and innovation are soon followed by a steady state of incremental, and often invisible (you might be surprised
just how different the modern tubes are to the 707), improvement once the basic form has been developed. The train,
truck, automobile, cargo ship and aircraft all demonstrate this phenomenon, so when it happened - the age of the dominant
innovations, is largely irrelevant. Change then becomes a matter of degree and the engineers have to ask themselves "why mess
unnecessarily with a successful formula? ".

Rear-facing seats are only beneficial within a fairly narrow range of accident types, mostly those that may occur at take-off
or landing, and if the governments or the airlines saw some definite benefit in such an arrangement it would probably
be mandated. The fact is that the average modern airline customer, particularly in the North America with the dominance of
the personal automobile, is conditioned to facing forward while traveling, and, as Simon says, there are other comfort factors
to be considered.

Now one of my favorite unbuilt canard designs, the Lockheed Model 27 of the late 1930s.
Span 105'; length 76' 8"; loaded weight 35,000 lbs; max speed 285 mph; cruising speed 240 mph, ceiling 26,050'.

[Weaver]

Rear-facing seats are only beneficial within a fairly narrow range of accident types, mostly those that may occur at take-off
or landing, and if the governments or the airlines saw some definite benefit in such an arrangement it would probably
be mandated.

Most accidents take place at take-off or landing.

Ever read a book called The Tombstone Imperative? Airlines don't introduce safety improvements that cost them money until there's enough public clamour to make the government override their HUGE lobbying efforts and force them to.

[Hobbes]

If the AEW Nimrod had...and a all woman crew, like the Candians ...

what are you refering to?

[jcf]

Which demonstates conservatism: let's not spend any extra money or take any risk on something which is BOUND to be an advantage in the long run because then we can make a shade more profit this year.

Of course I don't: it's an attitude of mind which has been repeatedly commented on, not a written policy statement.

They don't slavishly copy, but they are undoubtedly influenced. They adopted VG after the F-111 proved it was workable and they responded to the F-14/15/16/18 generation by designing highly agile fighters of their own which show the clear influence of those designs.

Well they indicate Russian thinking on their next generation and both of them have canards. Where is the alternative tailplane-equipped technology demonstrator?

I doubt it if agility continues to be a priority, but I do think that, if current trends continue, canards AND tailplanes might both be sacrificed on the altar of stealth in favour of blended flying-wing/body designs.

1) fiscal conservatism but not design conservatism, which was the original charge.

2) So anecdotal commentary from those involved or observations by outsiders?

3) Some Russian writers will take you task over that one and ask what you mean by influeneced.   Also if they really had wanted an advantage over the US types, why didn't they go for the supposedly superior canard?

4) The MiG and Sukhoi reflect 1980s thinking so how much, if any, influence they have on current work is conjectural. As to where is the
current demonstrator, well go take a gander a the 30 page long PAK-FA thread on Secretprojects and you'll see everyone is wondering
the same thing.  

5) Again the agility issue is limited to military aircraft and more specifically canard-delta fighters (the canard nicely filling the hole in the delta's performance curve), which pretty much makes my case.

[jcf]

tumty tum, tum tum tum   

I know, coat, hat, stage left -------

One of my favourite aircraft and has been since I first read about it back in the '80s.
Of course technically the Avanti is a 'three-surface' design.

[Sauragnmon]

1) With Airlines, they go hand in hand.  They want to make as much money as they possibly can, so they don't bother with R&D into new innovations because that goes against the almighty principle - Make More Money.  They're design conservatives because they're Fiscal conservatives - you can't have new innovations if you don't spend money.  They live by the axiom "if it ain't broke, Don't Fix it."  Unless somebody with power Clubs them over the head with the proof, they won't change their habits.

2) I hardly see any proof to the contrary, that the US Administration has ANY association with canard aircraft since the XP-55.  Hell, they don't even like Deltas all that much, since they take the axe to any design competitor with one.

3/4) Because for the most part, the Soviets were in a system of sticking to what works, and what doesn't require retraining on.  Even when the pilots said they preferred the performance of the Analog, did they go with it over the standard Fishbed? Nope.  They've been pretty hidebound until recently, with the MFI and the Berkut, they explore things, test them, consider them.  Oddly enough the Su-35 is dispensing with canards in the face of Thrust Vectoring, as in the case of the Flanker Airframe, the canards are nothing more than extra mechanical weight.  Now, in a Canard design, they'd probably stay, and the benefit would still be noticable.  Canards go well on a Delta for additional control, they go well on a conventional airframe for additional maneuverability, but TVC idles them out in most cases.

5) The Delta Fighters have their own benefits, primarily the fact that they have more optimized area ruling for higher speeds, with more of their weight balanced towards the tail.  Unlike conventional aircraft that have to fiddle with weights and waists and put divots in their CFT's and all those wonderful things that need to shift the balance of the Area Rule.