[murphyaa]

As I get older, I often find myself having random thoughts about aviation related subjects.

For instance: Today I saw an article where a test flight for the new 777-9X had to be aborted due to a problem with the engines.

This got me thinking to the design of airliners and the airline industries fascination with only using two engines, no matter how big they have to make them. The GE9X engines are supposed to produce 105,000 lbs of thrust each at takeoff. What happens when you're on taking off, and lose an engine? Suddenly you've got 105,000 pounds trying to push the plane to one side.

I realize they use the rudder to counteract a thrust imbalance, but that only works if there's enough speed for the rudder to work. Also, as the engines get more powerful, the rudder has to get bigger to be effective. As engines get bigger and more powerful, we're gonna end up with planes that look like the Lippisch DM-1, all tail fin.

I wonder if designers will start to think that it might be better to not concentrate all the thrust of the engines into only two engines, but instead go back to 4 engines.