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MIT Designs Aircraft That Uses 70% Less Fuel Than Conventional Planes
greenrainbow writes "Today a team of researchers at MIT unveiled their design for an airplane that uses 70% less fuel than conventional aircraft. The MIT design comes thanks to a NASA-funded initiative to increase fuel efficiency, lower emissions, and allow planes to take off on shorter runways. The team accomplished all of NASA's set goals with their innovative D-series plane, lovingly referred to as the 'double bubble,' which has thinner, longer wings and a smaller tail, and engine placement at the rear of the plane instead of on the wings."
Looks like it's fuselage is also a lifting body.
Long, thin wingspans taking off from shorter runways makes me think it's considerably slower.
;-)
However, TFA says it could replace the overseas market, so the range must be there. If it carries the same amount of fuel as a 777, it must fly faster than 30% of the speed of a 777
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in the mud. After a while, you realize the engineer enjoys it.
I wonder how the seating configurations are for these planes. There is no scale provided so you wonder what they are calculating on, is it fuel per mile per passenger? Anything else would be irrelevant.
One way they save fuel: flying slower than current aircraft. First, will customers accept that? And second, why not just fly current 737s a bit slower right now, to save on fuel?
A non-cylindrical cabin would be significantly heavier than a cylindrical cabin, if the plane is meant to fly at the same altitude as current planes.
Wtf, they aim to do this by 2035. There will be better designs by then. And probably not just in theory...
NASA's link says the 777 design flies 10% slower. A pretty good return!
Arguing with an engineer is like wrestling a pig in the mud. After a while, you realize the engineer enjoys it.
The picture of the plane raises all kinds of questions? What are the wings made of? Where do they store the fuel?
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
I remember watching a documentary on the new Airbus plane. There are regulations on wing length, and that plane *has* to use the perpendicular tips at the end of its wings to help with lift, or its wings would be too long. If you require longer wings per pound, you will fit less passengers per plane to fit in regulation. They will have to find a way to collapse the wings without adding significant weight or complications to make this practical for larger planes. That is a very big hurdle, maybe they should focus on that next.
I can't remember why, but I remember them stating that the wing length regulations had very good reasons behind them (logistics of current airports being a major one if I recall). I don't think changing the regulations would be practical if that was the case.
Who are fairly averse to risk and bold updates. Boeing was inching closer to something refreshing before 9/11 happened, and now even its "replacement" is riddled with delays.
With all these private rocket companies (SpaceX, Armadillo, Bigelow etc) why no venturing into the commerical airspace market? I would assume its too regulated and just impossible to compete with Boeing/Airbus/Tupolev and make a profit, even with a killer design.
http://blog.flightstory.net/272/airbus-a380-hits-hangar-in-bangkok/
http://home.iwichita.com/rh1/hold/av/avhist/abs/a380flys.htm
Does Airbus or Boeing not have the resources to do such R&D?
Don't tell they don't!
My ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.
Having a viable prototype design that's gone through simulations and the like is a lot more than artists renderings. What the hell do you think they do to make an airplane? Take some steel, rivets, and aluminum out to the hangar and just see where things end up?
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Now that the designs have been revealed the teams are awaiting news in the next few months of which designs will receive funding to go on to the second phase of the program.
You have to start somewhere. You can't just go around funding every breakthrough concept and building real-world prototypes with the necessary instrumentation to measure impact. But I agree. This would be more newsworthy if MIT had actually been chosen to receive further funding.
There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Well, that and a bottle of jack daniel's, yeah...
I would love to see a higher-resolution of these pictures to use as a wallpaper.
How close did they come to keeping all other factors equal? 70% less fuel actually doesn't sound like much of an improvement if they don't include all the mechanicals, safety equipment, navigation, expected weight of passengers and luggage, and other inevitable additions to a normal passenger aircraft. I've seen endless lists of super efficient cars that lack headlights, seat belts, air conditioning, power windows/locks, airbags, etc.
Nerd Rock In Progress
Yes, simulating the performance of an airplane is impossible, even for a computer!
The MIT H-series looks rather like the Boeing X-48B: http://www.boeing.com/news/releases/2006/q4/061027b_nr.html Regarding the D-series - is it using ducted Propfans? - I couldn't find any information. The biggest problem with the Propfan technology appeared to be the noise produced by blades spinning at near or above supersonic speed. But it didn't seem insurmountable and ducting would seem like an obvious place to start in order to mitigate it. Although obvious to someone who has no aerospace training whatsoever, probably means "obviously stupid" in engineering terms.
I've got news for Mr. Santayana: we're doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That's what it is to be alive.
I think it's more that it's really expensive than too regulated. To get a positive return on investment, the big aircraft companies need to sell hundreds of planes. You're investing billions before you get a penny back.
while teams from Boeing and Lockheed-Martin were entrusted with creating supersonic commercial aircraft — passenger planes traveling faster than the speed of sound!
Wow! Supersonic commercial aircraft! We haven't done that ever before!
Oh, no, wait, Mach 2 in the 60s...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde
You're forgetting about Embraer or Bombardier. Companies which start to introduce ever bigger planes, ever closer to competing directly with Boeing/Airbus/Tupolev mainstray (B737, A320). And also using "classical" design...
One that hath name thou can not otter
No, you're supposed to throw a bunch of airplane parts in a hangar and have a hurricane assemble them into a 747.
That's how creationists think evolution works, anyway.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I'm disappointed in both of the linked articles. Some real substance about the design would have been nice, but as it is, I'm left with a lot of questions:
-70% less fuel? How much of that is aerodynamic savings and how much of that is engine efficiency savings?
-Did they do any wind tunnel testing of their model? How close were their CFD and tunnel test results?
-Are they using engines based closely off existing ones, or are they projecting fuel savings 25 years into the future (the 2035 time frame from the article)?
-What sort of structural weight-saving advances are they assuming, or projecting from?
-So they made the tail smaller, what makes up for the reduction in control authority there?
-Plus other more detailed questions based on the answers to those questions. Would it have been so hard for MIT to link a design document pdf or something? I guess not being a public university, they don't have to if they don't want to. Too bad.
The hospital or the morgue, most likely.
Actually, that sounds like a really fun time. Back in college my pals & I used to do junkyard builds once or twice a year... go salvage parts and see what we could build. We never built anything cooler than a go-cart from scrap, but one of the guys made some pretty interesting bongs.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
So make the wings foldable. That's hardly beyond current capabilities. They mention in the article that they are trying to get the design to fit to current airport layouts so I'm sure they've considered the space problems.
I would like to give you the benefit of the doubt as a result of the flattering implication that engineering involves artistry, but on the whole you've got such an ignorant and insulting view of aerospace engineering that I can't call it anything but ignorant and insulting.
Burt Rutan drew up some "artists' renderings" (they're called CAD models usually) of a plane that in computer models appeared to be able to circumnavigate the world without refueling. Then they built it and it did.
Aerospace firms around the globe rely on computer models to predict the aerodynamic behavior of everything from commercial airliners to supersonic fighters. They use these models because they work. They may not be perfect, but they can be used to reliably predict the behavior of designs in the real world within a margin of error.
The idea that just having the computer model means there's "nothing to see here" is simply wrong. Anyone with a clue would be impressed that they could demonstrate these fuel savings even though they are just in a simulation.
The enemies of Democracy are
True, but think of what 70% fuel usage reduction would bring. Fuel accounts for 30 - 40% of the ticket price, so a 70% reduction in fuel would cut ticket prices by 20 - 30%.
In Norway or Sweden (can't really remember which) there was also a trial with fuel efficient approaches, which reduce fuel consumption by up to 10% for shorter hauls. Instead of coming in high and fast, the plane would more gradually descend and decelerate, basically glide itself down to the airport. This requires stricter planning of approaches, though, and if you were to have to break off your approach for some reason the advantage would be completely lost...
Never underestimate the power of stupidity
To err is human, to moo bovine
It's not impossible. I used to bullseye flow dynamic calculations on my Ti-15 back home, they're not much bigger than two OOM.
The type D is specifically designed to work with existing airports without drastically changing the terminals.
The type H, however, would require changes to current airports. The article says that these designs are planed for a 2035 deployment, though, so plenty of time to make the requisite changes, if the airlines so chose.
Argh, you're missing the point: designing a novel structure in a CAD tool optimised for some known series of simulations (i.e. knowing which parameters are relevant to each simulation and adjusting for them) is not the same as proposing a design which can be prototyped, built, tested, flown... and paid for.
According to the article, these designs are expected on the scene in 2035. WTF? That's a long time from now. Surely, they can have something flying long before then.
And even if it does take until 2035, how much more will technology change in the meantime? Maybe by then they'll be able to run the plane on what people leave behind in the bathroom, and they'll actually pay you to make a trip to the john, instead of the other way around, per the current trend.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
I'm still waiting for them to build a plane that can perform like my T-16 back home.
Promote proofreading. Don't mod up sloppy posts.
It's like MIT has a VP of Slashdot or something.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
It took FOREVER to get a composite commercial aircraft into production because the insurance companies had no data on hull integrity to do the underwriting. As a result, the proposed premiums were based on utter disaster.
It may have been the Beech Starship http://www.wingsoverkansas.com/legacy/article.asp?id=775 that provided some useful data. Although a turboprop, it is pressurized, and the more-frequent pressure cycling of a corporate hauler may have given them some idea that composites aren't highly more likely than conventional aluminum hulls to become convertibles (Aloha 737) in flight.
If the US gov't really wanted to help advance the aircraft industry, they'd create an insurance agency for new designs and materials.
Seems a smart way of outsourcing initial research and conceptual design of a project while working with a diminishing budget.
Of all the things I've lost; I miss my mind the most. - Mark Twain
It's not beyond current capability even in civil aviation, in fact Boeing offered a folding wing option for the 777 but (so far) no-one's bought it.
This is partly due to lack of driver (gates at airports were either wide enough or made wide enough) but also because any driver to wing folding's got to be pretty strong to overcome the weight penalty
If you were to see a _big_ increase in span for aircraft of these capacities I'd imagine that folding wings might become more popular...
In 20 years, we'll still be flying on broken-down MD-80s, praying that the fuel tanks don't ignite. But feel free to continue buying your carbon indulgences. Algore will thank you.
It's not impossible. I used to bullseye flow dynamic calculations on my Ti-15 back home, they're not much bigger than two OOM.
Then man your calculator. And may calculus be with you.
So far, two thirds of efficiency improvement has been gained by the engine makers, not the airframe designers. If those planes are intended for 2035, I suspect that the guys at MIT extrapolated the current engine efficiency a quarter of a century into the future and had already half of the savings pocketed, without having to improve the airframe a bit. Attaching glider-like winks did the rest, easily.
You know it's time for the next revolution when your rulers' names end with roman numerals.
The great majority of time spent on designing and testing a modern jet is done on a computer. For example, the 787 Dreamliner project used 800,000 hours of computation time on Cray supercomputers, 15,000 hours of wind tunnel testing and substantially less time for actual flight testing -- http://www.boeing.com/commercial/787family/programfacts.html
By the time a design is ready for wind tunnel testing all of its primary handling characteristics are almost fully established. Computers can model everything from aerodynamic characteristics of the airplane to static structural analysis of the airframe to even simulating resonance frequencies of the airplane body.
Who are fairly averse to risk and bold updates.
You say that like it's a bad thing. When designing commercial aircraft, I don't mind that aircraft engineers typically take very slow and deliberate steps. Slow and steady advancement saves lives.
Since we're talking about NASA here, just look at how environmental concerns already (arguably) doomed two Space Shuttles. I have nothing against environmentally motivated improvements, provided the new solutions aren't rushed into place without proving their viability against the track record of the old proven component it's replacing. The rush to introduce the latest and greatest must be tempered against the risk of ANY change in a field where the slightest flaw or miscalculation can result in a tragically fatal outcome.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
Interesting designs. Looking at the first one I have some reservation to this. Structural integrity of the wings is one. A wing has to effect a mass-flow large enough to lift the aircraft, and so has to be fantastically strong, as well as large enough to cause this massflow. A problem (or rather a limitation) with gliders is that when the aspect ratio gets very high that means that there is precious little internal volume to the wing for load bearing members. This is a very real limitation on sailplane wings and means that 20 metre wingspan is a real world limit (some types have gone longer, but the extreme flex of that length of wing means that they are impractical). This seems like a very real issue here.
Of course, high aspect ratio wings are more efficient due to a number of effects, an important one being wingtip vortices affecting a smaller percentage of the wing. I have no idea how that pans out at high speeds, though. When you're reaching M0.8 I would imagine that interesting effects might start happening, but I'm sure that the MIT kids have calculated all that as well as can be done (I doubt them being dumb).
Icing would also be a concern, both for the wing (high aspect ratio, laminar flow) and (more seriously) for the whole fuselage which pollutes the airflow into the engines. MD80's (and other jets with rear fuselage mounted engines, the CL60 is another example) had some accidents due to ill visible icing forming on the wings prior to take-off, detaching from the wing on take-off and flying into the engines. This design would be quite sensitive to this sort of problem.
But all in all, a very intriguing design idea. Would be interesting to see if the real world problems can be solved as well.
I had a mechanics professor who graded that way. You always wanted to time finishing your test to be in the middle of the stack. At the top of the stack, he was pissed off that he was grading tests. Halfway through the stack, and halfway through the bottle of Jack, he was drunk and happy. By the bottom of the stack, he was pissed off that he was out of Jack, and was still grading tests.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuous_Descent_Approach
Ahh, but designs for that sort of stuff need large wings, with lots of internal space for the structural members as well as the hydraulics and stuff for folding the wings. The design calls for extremely high aspect ratio wings which just can't do that.
I had a mechanics professor who graded that way. You always wanted to time finishing your test to be in the middle of the stack. At the top of the stack, he was pissed off that he was grading tests. Halfway through the stack, and halfway through the bottle of Jack, he was drunk and happy. By the bottom of the stack, he was pissed off that he was out of Jack, and was still grading tests.
From the Wiki article:
According to tests by Boeing and the FAA, CDA at a single airport can save millions of pounds of fuel, and reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide emissions by millions of pounds
Whoops... meant to reply this under fuzzyfuzzyfungus's comment.
System Passenger - Revenue Passenger Miles (Jan 1996 - Feb 2010)
http://www.bts.gov/xml/air_traffic/src/datadisp.xml
Jul 1996: 55,664,748
Jul 2007: 80,986,135 (peaked)
Jul 2009: 77,135,721 (due to recession)
Feb 2010 is nearly identical to Feb 2009, so if passenger miles stay FLAT, then the 70% reduction in fuel will result in more miles flown and more fuel consumed, per Jevon's Paradox
If fuel continues to rise in price, and nullifies Jeavon's paradox, but the growth in air travel from 1996 to present continues, then the savings of the 70% will be used up within 10 years.
Game over. Thanks for playing.
I think a better use of material would be high speed electric trains, and only use aircraft for transcontinental travel, and to implement this ASAP.
If the govt hadn't pissed a trillion bucks away on war and hundreds of billions on propping up criminals in the banking industry, we could have paid for the whole thing in advance...
The problem isn't technology, the problem is twofold: geological limits on resource production and the political will to deal with it rationally and develop plans to transition society into a different energy basis.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
I know there are engine designs that operate more efficiently at the expense of greatly increased noise. They have not been used because no airports will allow them to land. So is noise going to be a factor with these designs?
The article says that these planes won't be available until 2035. While the better fuel economy is great, getting these things to market in a more timely manner would be good too.
designing a novel structure in a CAD tool optimised for some known series of simulations (i.e. knowing which parameters are relevant to each simulation and adjusting for them)
Uh... yeah, parameters like "aerodynamics". People use these simulations to make real aircraft that have to work, really. You can't just optimize for "relevant parameters" to cut corners around optimizing for overall performance in reality, because the simulations are designed to mimic reality as closely as possible and do a demonstrably good job of doing so. That's the simulation's purpose!
is not the same as proposing a design which can be prototyped, built, tested, flown... and paid for.
For sure!
Which is not the same as saying the design in the CAD program will not have closely similar behavior in the real world if they could build it.
The enemies of Democracy are
Maybe an oil company is going to buy the patent and sit on it. Kerosene is a very lucrative market due to the high consumption...
Fuel is a HUGE expense for airlines. and it's only a 10% reduction in flight time!
Your just pulling numbers out of your ass
It falls by only 100m every 90 km, and a quick updraft resolves that issue. In case of no updraft there are pedals in the floor for manual acceleration. It’s called a glider.
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
the design mitigates some of the drawbacks of the BLI technique by traveling about 10 percent slower than a 737.
I wonder if they accounted for the added weight of beefing up the trailing edge of the wing to withstand bird strikes.
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
Get this down to 2020 and I'd be impressed.
It's not like there will be any reduction in ticket prices if the airlines save 70% of their fuel costs. Airlines will always pursue unscrupulous policies to ensure that people will pay as much as they are able. Remember, an MBA's goal is not to make a profit, it is to maximize profits.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Having a viable prototype design that's gone through simulations and the like is a lot more than artists renderings. What the hell do you think they do to make an airplane? Take some steel, rivets, and aluminum out to the hangar and just see where things end up?
But sometimes even simulations don't tell the whole picture. How many times have we seen technology projects that were supposed to be cheap and efficient turn out bad... especially in aviation and the military? Look at Boeing's new "Dreamliner". They thought they had everything figured out with the simulations, but when they actually tried putting one together, they ran into all sorts of problems the simulations didn't predict, from difficulty in fusing the new composite parts, to airframe stresses that the computers didn't account for. And while it'll be more fuel efficient than previous Boeings, it turns out that the actual productions aircraft won't be as efficient as the models suggested in its real production form.
This stuff sounds interesting, but I've seen too many instances of research products promising affordable, near-miraculous results, while the end product was a bust. I'll watch these designs with interest, but when one of them actually makes it into production, give me a call.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I believe that the Chinese are designing an airliner, but I doubt their first design will be anything unusual. Now their third or fourth design ...
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey
No, you're allowed to do it 1 billion times. We'll wait and see if you end up with anything...
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
The fees for adding on the fees for adding on the fees need calculus to calculate correctly, and since there are so many variations on the fees, a canned list won't so. Thus we need to make sure that all ticket agents know calculus!!!!!
Infuriate left and right
Most fuel is consumed during takeoff. It is very inefficient
The only problem is if he recognizes how bad his taste is, that he actually likes drinking Jack Daniels, and if he drinks mixed drinks you don't even have to worry about that.
Actually, Boeing has been testing models almost identical to the H series, for several years now. MIT seems to be reinventing the wheel with that particular design. Two scale models exist and there have been several successful flights. They're preparing for a new round of flights next year. Look up the X-48.
In 2035???
You have GOT to be kidding right?
I mean please, do you realize how fast technology is moving in these areas?
By 2035 that plane design will look stupid.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
Why can't our cool futuristic stuff look cool and futuristic?
sic transit gloria mundi
Those winglets are just a good idea period. lots of aircraft use them, not just aircraft that are having trouble with the wing length. Just google images with "winglets". Since winglets have been "discovered" it just makes sense to use them, because just making straight wings is wasteful.
And the wings on the designs just look long because they are so thin, they are not longer then current aircraft. They are just thinner, but that is not against regulations, just hard to engineer.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Two things the skeptical in me has not seen mentioned yet:
- how does the MIT team's achievement compare with the contenders? Or in other words, are the solutions genuinely original?
- how do they know how much less fuel with be spent? Simulations? Don't trust those when there are too many assumptions to make. Claiming the results of simulation as fact is bad practice.
I can design an aircraft that in simulation consumes no fuel at all.
Q: What's purple and works from home? A: A non-Abelian group. (It doesn't commute.)
If nobody is going to buy it, it doesn't matter how great or clever or fuel efficient it is.
Deleted
I think people defiantly compare flight time to, say, taking a train or car. But do customers really care that much about flight time? it's not like that's a big selling point when you chose your flight.
If your flight from new york to LA took an extra half hour and cost 30% less, i don't think anybody would complain
- yes Adamantly YES. - claustrophobic people, people whom get airsick , people whom dislike flying, Smokers- YES we DO care about how long we're locked in that flying brick, i'd honestly pay 30% more for 30% less time locked in there (im a smoker, i get airsick and i generally don't like flying) It already takes me 2 hours to get thru the airport, drink 3-4 drinks at the bar so im actually willing to get on the plane, and then add 45 minutes if i need to hunt down the only smoking lounge in an airport (like denver or atlanta) , then add the hour or two after we land to locate my baggage and get out. 30% flight time longer, sure , knockout the security lines, and let me smoke in flight , and i dont care if it takes a week, but currently No way no how, i already drive if its less than 800 miles because its plain cheaper, more comfortable, no GED-equipped minimum wage TSA agent goin thru my underwear, and almost as fast (12 hour drive time or 4 hours in the airports and 3 in the air).
That is, if you were saying that it is 10% slower than a 777. (Cruising speed: 0.84 Mach (560 mph, 905 km/h, 490 knots))
It would actually have to fly at about 10 percent slower than a 737. (Cruising speed: Next Generation 737-800 - Mach 0.785 (514 mph, 828 km/h).
And the reduction in speed is a must, cause it's there to prevent the engines falling off.
The engineers conceived of the D series by reconfiguring the tube-and-wing structure. Instead of using a single fuselage cylinder, they used two partial cylinders placed side by side to create a wider structure whose cross-section resembles two soap bubbles joined together.
They also moved the engines from the usual wing-mounted locations to the rear of the fuselage.
Unlike the engines on most transport aircraft that take in the high-speed, undisturbed air flow, the D-series engines take in slower moving air that is present in the wake of the fuselage.
Known as the Boundary Layer Ingestion (BLI), this technique allows the engines to use less fuel for the same amount of thrust, although the design has several practical drawbacks, such as creating more engine stress.
According to Mark Drela, the Terry L. Kohler Professor of Fluid Dynamics and lead designer of the D series, the design mitigates some of the drawbacks of the BLI technique by traveling about 10 percent slower than a 737.
Also, like all inhabitat.com articles, there is a catch. Besides the whole thing existing only in a computer somewhere - as usual.
It isn't really 70% reduction. The "higher technology version" will have that level of reduction. As soon as the technology or money to build it becomes available.
"Conventional" version would have a reduction of about 50%.
Not only does the D series meet NASA's long-term fuel burn, emissions reduction and runway length objectives, but it could also offer large benefits in the near future because the MIT team designed two versions: a higher technology version with 70 percent fuel-burn reduction, and a version that could be built with conventional aluminum and current jet technology that would burn 50 percent less fuel and might be more attractive as a lower risk, near-term alternative.
Oh, and I just love the "we don't actually have all the technology"-part.
The MIT team expects to hear from NASA within the next several months about whether it has been selected for the second phase of the program, which will provide additional funds to one or two of the subsonic teams in 2011 to research and develop the technologies identified during the first phase.
The researchers acknowledge that some propulsion system technology still needs to be explored.
We really need a new term for all these "we have a pretty picture and some untested numbers we came up with" articles. Vaporware doesn't really cut it anymore.
Something like renderware, or CGIware, or imagineware...
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Imagination and pixie dust. That is what makes them so light and durable.
From TFA:
The researchers acknowledge that some propulsion system technology still needs to be explored.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Wait, no, the HWB has been an ongoing project for years. Nothing to see here, just another bullshit MIT PR release.
Software piracy is victimless theft.
.640 OOM ought to be big enough for anyone to bullseye
Cause, if they are claiming it will have 70% reduction and in reality they can only MAYBE vouch for about 50%, who knows what else have they simply made up or jerry-rigged.
From TFA:
a higher technology version with 70 percent fuel-burn reduction, and a version that could be built with conventional aluminum and current jet technology that would burn 50 percent less fuel and might be more attractive as a lower risk, near-term alternative.
Also:
The researchers acknowledge that some propulsion system technology still needs to be explored.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
zeppelins might be coming soon!
http://www.skylite.aero/Welcome.html
Part of NASA's job is to distribute government cash to universities and companies for relevant research. Even though similar research may be being done at NASA, they like to have other entities' thoughts on problems.
You can't fly supersonically without making a boom. Not with any known technology anyway. You can however change the shape of the boom, reducing the "startle factor" by making the boom sound softer. Currently, it's illegal to fly supersonically over land in the USofA but the thinking is that if you can get the boom less startling, maybe the law can be changed.
Every time you optimize a transport aircraft, it turns out to be a hotdog with wings. But that doesn't LOOK innovative so you end up with stuff like this. Aerodynamically, we're pretty advanced right now - not a lot of innovation. Efficiency will come from lighter structures and better propulsion systems. Frankly, I'm still hoping for the anti-gravity modules to come on line. ;)
Where's the kaboom? There was supposed to be an earth-shattering kaboom!
I am the unwilling control for my Origin.
Welcome to the Jet Deck Lounge, Everett Washington. The site of many a design review meeting.
Have gnu, will travel.
Next year Princeton or Stanford will design an AA-series plane that is lighter still.
Duh, pushing is always better than pulling. RWD FTW.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Tony Stark built one, in a cave, from SCRAP!
The problem that they had wasn't with the sonic booms - all they had to do was slow down below Mach 1 (actually, about mach 0.81 or so) before/during their descent.
The problem that Concorde had was that was simply a gross fuel hog, making trips on the Concorde prohibitively expensive. Would you pay 3x as much for a trip to Australia if it got you there in half the time?
Neither would anybody else. In today's dollars, that's like paying $2,100 instead of $700. (rough prices, San Francisco, California to Sydney, Australia) That makes sitting on the plane pay over $150/hour - few people can afford those kinds of prices.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the rest of the story.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Prototypes are fun and all, but let's see the numbers once it has customers lined up and has gone through FAA certification. That's a bit like coming up with a car that gets 175MPG (of actual gasoline or diesel, not "gallons" of electricity) -- until you've gotten it past the EPA and the DOT and can still sell the thing to more than the wealthy toy market, it's just a show car.
Believe it or not, they actually have one or two smart people working at Boeing & Airbus (possibly one at each) and it's not like they're in bed with BIG OIL!!!! or whatever other tinfoil hatted fantasy people like to believe in this week.
And, in regard to some other post here, I seem to recall winglets being there to break up parasitic drag from vortices spewing off of the wing tips. But that's just my recollection from working on MD-11 (software, not mechanical design, so take that for what it's worth). They're fairly common now.
Wow - you know the word abiogenesis exists. Too bad you don't know what it means.
While they might look funny, strange, or even ugly to some, I have to wonder how soon we might start seeing these designs implemented. Fuel costs are becoming a major issue to the airline industry, if these airframes can be built for the same price as existing ones, Boeing will be all over this. Fuel economy is definitely becoming an important part of the game, also consider that if the aircraft uses less fuel it produces less emissions. Another attractive sales angle in today's society.
So we could see these in as little as ten years.
Nice Try, MIT, but it's all paper airplane stuff if the design cannot be certified for commercial flight.
Aerodynamicists have been trying different shapes, configurations, and designs for about 120 years now.
There are low-drag designs, but most of them are impractical in some way-- like no space for landing gear, or
customer's won't ride in them ( Flying Wings, scimitar props ), or the design won't pass FAA rules. Lots of
very picky FAA rules that make lots of designs impossible to certify for flight. The rules are mostly there to
assure safety and conservative margins. For instance, the plane has to be able to climb with all engines on one side out.
That rules out lots of designs with wingtip-mounted engines and designs with insufficient power. It has to be able to land with a certain crosswind component.
It has to have a certain maximum airspeed where one engine is out and the plane is still controllable. That rules out a lot of designs with small tails.
It has to be able to sustain a catastrophic failure of one engine without it affecting other engines. That rules out a lot of designs with multiple engines close together.
In addition the plane has to be manufacturable and inspectable and serviceable. That tosses out designs with complex wings that can't be easily assembled in pieces or later on opened up for inspection and service.
Plus the plane has to have space for all the accessories-- not just landing gear, but fuel tanks, hydraulic tanks, air-conditioning packs, batteries, surge tanks, hydraulic pumps, slats, speed-brakes. That rules out a lot of designs with very thin wings.
One may hope this MIT design kept all these real-world constraints in mind.
...while accounting for the changes in air travel in 2035 -- when air traffic is expected to double -- would require "a radical change,"
These guys are in a clusterfuck headspace. They are basically throwing fantasies off each other.
Given the present state of known oil reserves (and the difficulties in accessing those reserves), the current depletion rate, and the expanding rate of oil usage in the developing world, NO ONE seriously expects air traffic to double by 2035. No one except a handful of tech nerds in NASA and the Defense Department think-tanks who get paid big bucks to let their imaginations run wild without any consideration of the conditions in the real world.
The airlines will be lucky to exist at all by 2035. In all likelyhood, there will be one airline in the world that offers once daily flights across the major oceans at enormous cost for the public, and small-jet charter service for the ultra-rich. The hoards of lower-middle-class masses (that you and me and rest of the Slashdaughters reading this) are not going to jetting to Vegas or Hawaii for wild-weekends as they did during the millenium years 1985-2010. Every six months we read in the business sections about another national airline merging with a major carrier and the major carriers merging with each other. What was it last month? Oh yeah, United and Continental merging because they are both going broke as individual companies.
I also fail to see how a plane design that looks more or less exactly like all the other plane designs is going to be able to fly 100+ passengers with 70% less fuel. Maybe I missed the football-field-sized helium balloon that was attached to the fuselage (and cropped from the picture). Oh yeah, the front nose looks beveled. And this is supposed to give it 'super lift'. If this were the case, don't you think that Boeing and/or Tupolev would have figured that out twenty years ago?
Again, these guys get paid to fantasize. Not produce reality. They're the same type of guys who promised us Howard Johnson's restaurants on space stations and PanAm weekly service to luxury hotels on the moon in the film 2001:A Space Odyssey forty years ago. And what was 2001 in reality? Millions of screaming kids and dorks in shorts riding a trashy 30-year old 737 to Branson and Disneyland.
Trust your instincts. Don't trust MIT/NASA reports.
Actually, you try each incremental change variation a billion times, and keep most of the ones that work. That's a big effing difference.
But my guess you won't bother trying to understand. It might make you feel less persecuted, and where's the fun in that?
While they are at it, how about adding the capability to open up the whole side of the plane like a gull-wing door? Nothing is as frustrating as spending fifteen minutes moving a hundred feet to exit the plane immediately after traveling 500 miles in less than an hour.
Go and look at his designs of the 30's & 40's, along with his ideas and thoughts. He KNEW that a wing design would be more efficient & use less fuel, but his ideas were scrapped in the 50's, because of (then) Secretary of the Air Force Stuart Symington & his connections with Consolidated (who had a competing plane, the B-36). POLITICS kept a pure wing or blended body construction, along with the (lack of) technology of the time.
and engine placement at the rear of the plane instead of on the wings.
Rear wheel drive? Nuh-uh. Bigger chance of hydroplaning. ;)
Or as they like to say on WestJet... "should this flight become a cruise..."
Too bad it's got a command line interface and the documentation only describes the theory behind flight, not how to actually fly the plane.
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forgive me, but this doesn't seem more like wishful thinking on the 'designers' part, with a few nice drawings.
they haven't actually built a plane, to prove the fuel efficiency claim..
dreaming of more efficient planes & making nice drawings - kids do that all the time in elementary school...
life arising from natural acts; a la, an airplane arising from a hurricane. I think ac knew what he was talking about.
"airplane that uses 70% less fuel than conventional aircraft" - that is not surprising when you consider that fact that conventional aircraft are still using jet engine's designed in the 60's & 70's.
One of my clients works in the aircraft MRO (Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul) and it's through this client that I learnt that commercial jets (even the new A380, and the Boeing 787) still use jet engine designs from the 70's - I found that hard to believe, but the client said the reason for it is because to create a new engine for a commercial aircraft and then to get it certified with todays standards & regulations costs THAT much, it's just not worth it - that's why these old designs are still used, only "upgraded" from time to time...
Sounds kind of stupid to make the certification so expensive, but if you think about it ... there are a LOT of lives "riding" on these engines!
That's one of the advantages that both NASA and the Air Force have, they (currently) don't need to get things certified...
A Tu-155 has made a couple of flights on hydrogen and natural gas in the late eighties.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
So maybe there won't be a real one, but maybe MIT could export their design to make an X-Plane model.
Forget thrust, drag, lift and weight. Airplanes fly because of money.
You know, people, it is perhaps shameful to admit in front of this audience but despite working at the cutting edge of technology I only shrug at news like this one. Instead of all the exiting engineering/scientific thoughts that most of you exhibited and made the discussion interesting the only thing that crossed my mind was something like:
"So, we are going to save 70% of the fuel. What would happen in such "vacuum" Well, we will just build 70% more plains, fly even more people around, cheaper perhaps so the "gain" in efficiency will be quickly drowned by the increased volume of planes and passengers. Move along, nothing to see here..."
I don't want to rain on anybody's parade but every time when some new technological development frees us time, it is immediately filled with more work, not more recreation or hobbies or family life. When it comes to food and water it is even worst. Just consider the "green revolution" from the 70's. Population pressure due to the baby boom after the war. Solution - industrial agriculture which completely kills the taste of food (especially fruits and vegetables) but its efficient and easier to transport and preserve. When it was all over , did we wipe out the noble sweat and sat down to enjoy the fruits of our ingenuity (pun intended)?
No, because the population pressure was already pushing us again. We will never catch up with this. And as every scientist will tell you , every next step will require more energy and more effort to squeeze maximum yield from minimum volume. Asymptotic approach to use the proper term. Like trying to accelerate a mass to the speed of light. As long as we do not stop the geometrical progression of our multiplication we will never be able (most of us) to enjoy what the progress is all about - giving MORE time for ourselves and our personal development and personal life. Giving MORE and higher quality goods and services per person (population flat, but efficiency increases).
Globally as humans we experience what we people in the west experience with the constant inflation - you have to run ever harder just to stand still. Miss one year's promotion or a raise and your buying power goes down. The effect of missing one year only is accumulative like compound interest. I am sick to the teeth that I have to run like a mouse on an endless tread just to stand still. Just to exists. And being told all the time how good I have it.
And I firmly believe (from the failed X33 fuel tank issue), that Boeing still hasn't learned to adequately deal with large composite load-bearing structures - and that entirely too little is known about them.
We have 100+ years of steel and aluminum experience, not so much with composites.
In commercial aircraft design, we're taught that the cost of an aircraft is 25% the total cost of fuel over the lifespan. With the Concord, that wasn't true due to much, much higher fuel consumption and other complexities.
If a newer design allows supersonic flight with similar fuel consumption economics, then that aircraft will be a winner.
1: Oil
Yes, oil is going to go away. But known oil reserves are different from prospective oil reserves. Known reserves are where geologists went out, found, and measured it, but oil-men haven't sucked it up yet. As-yet-undiscovered oil fields and hard to get to fields will last us a little bit longer. Texas has assuredly hit peak oil and maybe America on the whole, but I don't think the world has hit that yet. And when it does run out, I'm pretty sure we're going to liquefy coal into jet fuel. It's a dirty process, but it's better then going dry. Remember, when gas is $5/gallon, all sorts of oil sources and alternatives become viable. Unfortunately, the last time we were in that position, we learned that $5 gas will stress the populace to the point of breaking and a bubble will burst. Economies collapse, demand for oil (and investors) wane, and the price of oil drops. Which sucks, but there will be planes in 2035 and we won't have to fight off wasteland barbarians. Probably.
2: Doomsayers
You are dangerously close to being one. I'm not sure why but societies always have people that proclaim the end of the world (or the end as we know it) is just around the corner. Maybe you're just a natural pessimist. I've become jaded. Unless you supply a little bit of evidence for said doomsday, then you're going to be ignored.
3: RFTA
Seriously, you think the design looks exactly like all other planes? Yes, it has wings. Woo. But it improves the fuel consumption by having longer thinner wings, a wider fusalage, engines nearer the rear, and yes, a fancy dancy new beveled nose. Did you want lasers and flame decals?
4:Imagineers
No, MIT students and NASA are not paid to fantasize. The dreamers who made those "promises" were science fiction writers and Hollywood. Guess what? They lied to you to make a buck. Mostly. We really do have satellites and flying cars. The engineers and scientists who have been at work for the last few decades made that possible.
So ignore this guy, have some hope for the future, and give MIT and NASA their due respect.
Since we're talking about NASA here, just look at how environmental concerns already (arguably) doomed two Space Shuttles. I have nothing against environmentally motivated improvements, provided the new solutions aren't rushed into place without proving their viability against the track record of the old proven component it's replacing.
That article is politically motivated BS. You should never rely on ideologues who want to abolish all government regulation for accurate reports about the effects of regulations.
Go google the actual accident reports on Columbia and Challenger. You can download them free. The Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) report is particularly detailed. You will find that while switching to CFC free foam wasn't completely trouble free, it definitely was not the cause of the accident. If I recall correctly from the last time I debunked this a few years ago, the CAIB considered that possibility, but found that on the tank in question, the large chunk of foam which put the fatal hole in Columbia's wing leading edge broke free from an area which had been sprayed using the original CFC formulation. (They didn't switch over in one fell swoop, you see.)
Also IIRC the CAIB more or less decided that the Shuttle was fundamentally flawed in that it is impossible for any foam formulation and/or application technique to be safe. It's almost impossible to 100% prevent bits and pieces of it from shedding, and the shuttle's TPS (thermal protection system aka the tiles, blankets, and reinforced carbon-carbon pieces) is delicate and easy to damage. The only safe shuttle design would be one which put the orbiter upwind of any cryogenic fuel tanks. (The whole reason the foam's there at all is to prevent ice formation, because ice impacts on the TPS would be much much worse than foam.)
Similar things apply with respect to the asbestos story on the Challenger O-Rings. It's been a while longer since I saw that one trotted out and I think it's even more bogus, but I don't really have time to look it up. You should though if you're going to be linking that website.
Yeah, GP still hasn't figured out he needs to be running the simulation with the computer unplugged.
Use the Force man!
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
The wings are thinner, not longer. The fuselage is a squatter double-bubble design that makes the wings look longer than they are. They are actually smaller (though I doubt shorter) than current 737 wings.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Given the present state of known oil reserves (and the difficulties in accessing those reserves), the current depletion rate, and the expanding rate of oil usage in the developing world, NO ONE seriously expects air traffic to double by 2035.
And we can see evidence of this, because the oil prices have been skyrocketing since the 50's, which directly corresponds to a drop in the amount of air traffic since that time.
Right? No?
It's reality we operate in, not fantasy land. The fact is, despite absurd cuts that dramatically decrease people's desire to fly (like smaller seats and more expensive tickets), air traffic has been steadily increasing. There is a very minor dip when the economy was at its worse, but it is already back close to peak levels and will continue to climb.
There will still be a lot of oil in 2035, I don't think you understand the way oil works, or how "tapped" the oil wells actually are. 20 years ago we were going to run out in 30 years, and today we are going to run out in 20-25. I expect in 2035 we'll be another 15-20 years away from oil exhaustion, and the target will continue to move slowly closer to the final day when oil is no longer a viable energy source. This is for a number of reasons: One, we find new oil. We find it in places we weren't expecting to find it, and if it is somewhere we can get at it it means we adjust our reserve figures. Two, technology improves. With current technology, we can reliably extract about 20-30% of the oil from an oil well, period. Beyond that we cannot get it to the surface. As technology improves, that number goes up. Also, previously inaccessible wells, like wells a mile below sea-level, are possible as technology improves. 50 years ago they may have only gotten 10% of the total oil in a reservoir. This causes us to shift our total numbers for peak oil, proved reserves, probable reserves, and possible reserves. Three, oil consuming processes are continually becoming more efficient. This means the demand for oil-consuming products may rise by 20% but our consumption will only rise by 10%. (those aren't actual figures, just examples to make the point)
So yes, it will continue to dwindle, but our projection constantly increases, offsetting that. Using just today's figures, we have oil to last about 20-30 years. If we can pull another 5% of oil out of every well in the world, that shoots up to 40-50 years. It's a moving target, and it always has been. Take a look at the Prudhoe Bay oil field, for an example. Five years ago we eclipsed the amount of oil that was expected to exist in the field when it was first discovered and surveyed by 10% (1 billion barrels - 11 billion total), which far, far exceeds what was possible to recover at the time, yet it is still producing a lot of oil - at a rate of almost 1 million barrels per day, half the field's peak of 2 million per day 12 years ago. Obviously the proved, probable, and possible reserve figures were way off, and have been adjusted significantly over the years. There isn't some magical technology up here that allows us to pull 110% of the oil out of the ground, it means the figures were wrong by about a factor of three (the new official number for barrels in Prudhoe Bay is 25 billion).
Proved and probable reserve estimates are actually pretty conservative. Proved reserves means they have a 90+% confidence that they can extract that much oil with today's technology. Probable reserves have a 50+% confidence in recovery. Possible reserves have a 10+% confidence. What's really interesting is when the price of oil goes up, these numbers all go up. That's because economic viability is a primary factor in determining how much can be spent to extract the oil, which heavily influences the amount of oil that can be extracted. Possible reserves shift into probable reserves, and probable reserves shift into proved reserves, all because the price of oil keeps going up.
The net effect of all this is that we probab
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller