While redundancy makes it a moot issue, if I am not mistaken, 777s already use some of the most powerful engines available. As for how fast they fly, I believe it is mostly set by the speed of sound.
Yes they use two of the most powerful engines... and just one of those is more than enough to fly the plane just fine almost as fast as they are allowed to... so why else would they have two of them if not redundancy?
Fundamentally people can look it up themselves - 'ETOPS' - the redundancy requirement is a written regulation.
I think it should be obvious that I am responding to the claim "they could go faster with a single larger engine." no-one is arguing against redundancy (in which matter, ETOPS is just one aspect.)
If they needed to go faster, they could do that with a single larger engine if they wanted to (which they may have to develop.) But they don't, because they're limited as you've explained.
> no-one is arguing against redundancy
Sn0wCoder said they reason they had two engines was to go faster and not redundancy, and m00dy thinks they can't fly without two engines.
Point taken that some people had mistaken ideas about twin-engine airplanes, but those mistakes are most straightforwardly resolved by the redundancy consideration alone, which dominates other issues.
> If they needed to go faster, they could do that with a single larger engine if they wanted to (which they may have to develop.)
Plus a significantly different airframe and perhaps engine intakes to deal with the transonic issue that I also mentioned. It is an idea that bubbles up perennially [1], but so far, the economics have ensured that it doesn't go much beyond the concept stage.
This has become rather silly, but it seques into a related issue: It seems to me that fan-blade failure incidents (or at least uncontained fan-blade failure incidents) have increased in frequency in the last few years. If so, maybe this is a sign that we are already pushing a bit too hard on the limits of current technology?
