We've heard terrible news stories of humans occasionally being accidentally ingested into commercial jet engines. It is possible to design the engines in a way that would prevent that from ever happening, like with some type of cage screen in front of the engines, or would that be impossible since it would disturb the air flow to the engines too much?
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Ito prevent this inflight, sure, just put all the seats behind the front of the engine intakes... But all design decisions have associated costs as well as benefits... – Charles Bretana Jan 04 '23 at 14:00
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Mounting the engines really high, like this would reduce the risk, but wouldn't eliminate it entirely, and it would generate its own set of problems, i.e. with engine maintenance. Procedural safeguards make these sorts of accidents rare, but sadly, not impossible. – Ralph J Jan 04 '23 at 19:33
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Would a cage screen in front of a jet engine even do a good job of catching humans? How much negative pressure do those things generate? Standard atmospheric pressure is something like 1.7 elephants sitting on you - we don't notice because it cancels out in all directions - so if the engine is sucking half that away behind you, you have 0.85 elephants sitting on you not canceled out, and you probably still get squished. – user253751 Jan 04 '23 at 23:49