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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2026
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You can rethink the engineering with electric motors.
The planes you are describing are designed assuming they will be lighter on landing because of fuel. So why design them for take off weight?
Electric motors are condusive of blown wing design for example, and would have a unique landing profile. (The plane can land at much slower velocity)
Edit: yeah they've moved the engine shroud which allows for lower speeds. Given the same runway you would be able to trim vertical speed.
That ain't gonna happen on a civilian airliner.
Blown wings are basically powered lift. You're planning on bringing a civilian passenger plane down final approach at a speed it can't glide at if the power plant fails?
I could see that for a carrier based aircraft where STOL is a factor but no you're not doing that in airline operations.
Why couldn't it actually be safer since you could have distributed power centers, across multiple motors?
You could also have hybrid approaches - there is space between not being able to glide and smashing your landing.
I'm just getting at it being a different system so some old assumptions can be reexamined.
Bigger challenge than landing is energy density.
Regardless it's a very interesting space.
Multiple redundant motors are heavy.
One of the other limitations is that you're stuck with propellers if you're using electric motors, so your top speed is going to be significantly slower than jets. Unless you do the Tu-95 thing with contra-rotating props whose tips exceed the speed of sound, and then you have monstrous noise problems.