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."

Comments

Re:So Lets See,

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Well, that and a bottle of jack daniel's, yeah...

Re:So Lets See,

[EdZ]

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.

Hmmm... slower than a 737

[DieByWire]

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.