I know this design was for safety, with a shit ton of parachutes on the passenger cabin, but modularity generally fucks the economics of a plane design. You have to have a self-contained module, a plane that is flyable (and landable) without it, and you need a way to securely connect one to the other. Things get chunky real quick, and chunky is expensive, and modern passengers are basically "walking mozzarella sticks who think that $300 and a photo I.D. gives them the right to fly through the air like one of the guardian owls of legend. (!30rock@dubvee.org) For cargo planes, a lot of older designs would drop capacity by 20-30%.
I know this design was for safety, with a shit ton of parachutes on the passenger cabin, but modularity generally fucks the economics of a plane design. You have to have a self-contained module, a plane that is flyable (and landable) without it, and you need a way to securely connect one to the other. Things get chunky real quick, and chunky is expensive, and modern passengers are basically "walking mozzarella sticks who think that $300 and a photo I.D. gives them the right to fly through the air like one of the guardian owls of legend. (!30rock@dubvee.org) For cargo planes, a lot of older designs would drop capacity by 20-30%.