Think of how easily those things can be hosed down after they shred a whole flock of seagulls.
this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2026
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And how much more easily they could survive it. Conventional turbofans get the birds stuck inside and fail. These could effectively bounce them off.
Turbofans are tested by shooting a standardized frozen turkey into them. The engine must survive to be qualified.
I'm sure a bad luck event can have birds stuck inside, but in most cases they go all the way through.
Edit: found this reference: https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-C/part-33/subpart-E/section-33.76
And this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBHJvSJoX4k Not sure if it's the right thing, some comments say it's a blade separation test, which is much more violent than bird ingestion.
It makes sense, at that altitude birds are frozen solid.
Hehe, I expect they're thawed before the test, but who knows!
The GE9x is shown being tested by launching a block of solid ice at the fan, and it shreds the ice!
standardized frozen turkey
NIST frozen turkeys must cost as much as a house.
That's why plane tickets are so expensive...
Makes sense. The peanut butter jar alone is over $1,200. Imagine what a battery of frozen turkeys would cost.
Sure, a few seagulls would survive but that is something that could easily be fixed in another version.
Poor geese...
Is it any worse than what would happen to birds with conventional turbofans?
Mmmm, geese...
Not after going through a turbo fan. More like pâté.
Mmmm, pâté. Didn't even need a funnel or corn!
My friends a goose and I asked him what he thought about this design. Completely unphased by it, infact I'm not even sure he understood me.
They're claiming 20% more fuel efficiency which would be huge, but at the expense of a metric fuck load of moving parts. Also who the fuck knows that happens if you have to make a gear up landing with these things
How many more moving parts than a conventional turbofan? Maybe four gears and a rotor?
This thing looks like it has less moving paths than a normal turbofan... Look at cutouts of the CFM56, easily available online.
Uh all of those blades, including the fixed ones, are variable pitch. Every single blade has several precision moving parts
Tarmac will definitely be closed for a while
There would probably be less damage than from a conventional turbofan hitting it - the blades would shatter rather than the cowling digging in.
Metal confetti to celebrate
The amount of people in here that are complaining about non-issues as if they don't know that exposed props have existed for centuries now is baffling.
Loud. There, an actual complaint that would be applicable to this design.
Regular turbofans will kill geese at basically the same rate as this and would be just about as dangerous as well. But moving parts outside of shielding will be louder, as more sound energy will make it to the fuselage.
Uhm, that does not look safe. I mean, maybe it is, but looks dangerous to have it be open like that. What if one ofnthe blades comes off? In a closed one it won't accidentally cut into the passenger area? Maybe it would, not sure about the forces here. Can they not at least put a mesh around it for the illusion of saftey?
You never flew in a propeller plane?
Fair. Didn't think of those to be honest.
Still tho...
