Boeing's Hybrid Electric Airliner of the Future

fergus07 writes "Borne out of the same NASA research program that gave birth to MIT's D 'double bubble,' Boeing's Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR) Volt concept is a twin-engine aircraft design notable for its trussed, elongated wings and electric battery gas turbine hybrid propulsion system — a system designed to reduce fuel burn by more than 70 percent and total energy use by 55 percent. The goal of the NASA supersonic research program is to find aircraft designs that will significantly reduce noise, nitrogen oxide emissions, fuel burn and air traffic congestion by the year 2035."

Comments

Re:Always 25 years

[EdZ]

A few month ago, I sat in a pub watching (live) an Astronaut operating on the internals of the Hubble Space Telescope. On my phone.
We live in the goddamn future!

Re:Always 25 years

[AdmiralXyz]

This story is somewhat of a dupe (too lazy to look up the original, though it was less than a year ago), and this point was brought up then too.

When you're talking about advanced aircraft, the "25 years effect" is not the same as it is for overhyped things like fusion power; here, there's actually a reason. Aircraft take a loooooooong time to go from concept to flight: recall that Airbus starting thinking about the A380 in 1988, made it an official project in 1994, and it started commercial flight in 2007. And that's for a conservative design that was just building on existing principles. For a radical, untested design it would be considerably longer. Looking at it from that point of view, 2035 is actually a very reasonable target.

Re:"supersonic"

[h00manist]

obscure?

Definitely obscure. "Ecological" cars and airplanes? Carbon-powered? Obscure motivations? Trains are 100% electric, infinitely safer, more spacious, smaller footprint than roads, etc. On short routes, they can be faster than flying, after factoring taxis and airport waits. And, there are bar-cars. -- http://gizmodo.com/5434582/the-fastest-train-in-the-world