Boeing 787 Quotes

And long-distance electricity-powered commercial flight (equivalent to a kerosene-powered Boeing 787 from New York to Tokyo) is the outstanding example of the last category: as we will see, this is an energy conversion that will remain unrealistic for a long time to come.

In 1977 GM’s Oldsmobile Toronado was the first production car with an electronic control unit (ECU) to govern spark timing. Four years later GM had about 50,000 lines of engine control software code in its domestic car line (Madden 2015). Now even inexpensive cars have up to 50 ECUs, and some premium brands (including the Mercedes-Benz S class) have up to 100 networked ECUs supported by software containing close to 100 million lines—compared to 5.7 million lines of software needed to operate the F-35, the U.S. Air Force’s joint Strike Fighter, or 6.5 million lines for the Boeing 787, the latest model of the company’s commercial jetliners (Charette 2009).

These size gains boosted the vehicle-to-passenger weight ratio (assuming a 70-kilogram adult driver) from 7.7 for the Model T to just over 38 for the Lexus LX and to nearly as much for the Yukon GMC.66 For comparison, the ratio is about 18 for my Honda Civic—and, looking at a few transportation alternatives, it is just over 6 for a Boeing 787, no more than 5 for a modern intercity bus, and a mere 0.1 for a light 7-kilogram bicycle.

In aeronautics, the Mach number (named after the German physicist Ernst Mach) is the ratio of object speed to the speed of sound. At sea level (and at 20°C), sound travels 340 m/s, or about 1,224 km/h; the speed of sound declines slightly with altitude, and at 11 kilometers above sea level, a typical cruising altitude for jetliners, it is about 295 m/s or 1,063 km/h, and hence a Boeing 787 cruising at 903 km/h will fly at M 0.85. All speeds of M < 1 are subsonic; transonic is the term used for speed in the vicinity of M, and the supersonic range is 1 < M < 3.

To fly Boeing or not to fly Boeing, that is the question.