SomeGuy509
Registered
I find the comparison to airplanes interesting since I come from an aerospace background. The older tri-jets existed largely because engine reliability had not reached point where you could safely go over the ocean with just two engines. Yeah there were some thrust considerations but a lot of it was redundancy.
From a maintenance and cost and fuel burn standpoint there is no question that 2 is more cost effective then 3 or four. If that translates to boats I don't know. I suppose there is a reason some large container ships seem to have a single massive engine rather than multiple smaller ones.
Even now a lot of having two engines is to provide redundancy in the even of the loss of one. You still have hydraulics, power, etc. You then light the apu in case you lose that one too. If all 3 fail you still have the RAT (ram air turbine) to provide bare minimum to control the plane as a glider.
So I guess I would liken a modern airplane to a set of manifolded doubles. And then an engine failure would be like losing a first stage. You shut down that post but still have most of your functionality and and all your gas.
For the plane you can still complete a takeoff and land and even fly for 3+ hours in some cases with one engine out. You are still getting your ass back on the ground as fast as you can though.
From a maintenance and cost and fuel burn standpoint there is no question that 2 is more cost effective then 3 or four. If that translates to boats I don't know. I suppose there is a reason some large container ships seem to have a single massive engine rather than multiple smaller ones.
Even now a lot of having two engines is to provide redundancy in the even of the loss of one. You still have hydraulics, power, etc. You then light the apu in case you lose that one too. If all 3 fail you still have the RAT (ram air turbine) to provide bare minimum to control the plane as a glider.
So I guess I would liken a modern airplane to a set of manifolded doubles. And then an engine failure would be like losing a first stage. You shut down that post but still have most of your functionality and and all your gas.
For the plane you can still complete a takeoff and land and even fly for 3+ hours in some cases with one engine out. You are still getting your ass back on the ground as fast as you can though.