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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."
Another problem with a flying wing passenger aircraft is the fact that there won't be many, if any, window seats. Okay, minor problem? What about the forces that would act on people towards the wingtips when banking? A relatively minor turn that would barely be noticed in a tubular airframe would be magnified into a fifteen foot drop or rise towards the edges. Now imagine trying to land in turbulent, stormy weather, and being really far from the center axis of the aircraft. Whatever money would be saved by the efficient wing design would be eaten up by barf bags and steam cleanings of the cabin after every flight.
Jet engines are already de-facto propeller engines. If you call it a "Fan" it doesn't sound as scary as "Propeller." In a high bypass turbofan engine such as those found in most modern aircraft, most of the thrust is produced by the fan part of the turbofan. For example, the CF-34 jet engine has a bypass ratio of 80% or better. This means 80% of the thrust is produced by spinning a fan. Newer designs like the Rolls-Royce Trent 800 get 84% thrust from the bypass fan. Basically, anything that can create radial motion can be use to turn that fan. Electric, steam, compressed air, .... {insert physics here}.
This is a boring sig
I am no aerospace engineer, about as far from it as you can get, but I would think that wing = drag.
/. On an airplane, wing = lift. And since the purpose of the airplane is to go up, lift = good. The part the people sit in, that uniform shaped tube body, equals drag. An airplane shaped like a big wing could thus lift the most and drag the least. (see: Northrop YB-49)
Congrats on accidentally making the wrongest statement ever on
A tube body can actually produce some lift if it's shaped correctly but it's very expensive to manufacture and tricky to design (see: Super Constellation).
Your future is happening 40 years after I sat at my home watching (live) an Astronaut walking on the Moon.
I would gladly exchange all the cellphones in the world for being able to walk on the moon.