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NASA's Next-Generation Airplane Concepts
faisy writes "NASA has taken the wraps off three concept designs for quiet, energy efficient aircraft that could potentially be ready to fly as soon as 2025. The designs come from Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and The Boeing Company. In the final months of 2010, each of these companies won a contract from NASA to research and test their concepts during 2011."
The 4th picture in TFA reminds me of Cloud City...
A spamblog with two boring images. Bravo, editors.
Bears against the Seahawks. I'm torn. I'm a Bears fan, but we all want to see a losing team win the Superbowl.
I now return you to your usual spam fest...
I think we are reaching the end of the internet if this is /.worthy.
Seriously, a few poorly rendered concept drawings? There aren't words. There isn't anything to discuss here...
Timothy, have you been drinking?
You see, by bio-engineering giant birds, and strapping a freight container to the back, we can eliminate the need for pilots.
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/flight_2025.html
A while back I watched a documentary on flying wings and with all the their advantages, they have two major drawbacks. Firstly, we don't have the airport infrastructure to support their form factor. Secondly, passengers would be seated further away from the centerline of the aircraft. That means whenever you're making turns, passengers will experience pronounced pitching. That means more air sickness, discomfort, complaints, etc.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
I remember design drawings that looked like this in the 1980s.
You mean 2030, after NASA's next budget cut, then 2035 after the prototype is over budget and under-preforms, then 2040 after the project is taken over by new management, 2044 because of a new presidential administration's dislike of NASA, and finally canceled in 2503 for a different presidential administration's bid for re-election, showing that they can cut budgets and save money.
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
Just looking at the pics, Lockheed wins. It is enough of a departure from the standard to believe they can gain significant efficiency while at the same time it's recognizable enough to current aircraft that it should fit into existing infrastructure without too much issue.
Can't wait to fly in one in 20 years!
According to "Sustainable Energy--- without the hot air," it's pretty much impossible to get anything but small gains in energy efficiency in aircraft.
The Lockheed design has a single engine... Which is a bad idea on an airplane. It's good to think to the future, but none of these ideas are practical, and I don't think they're meant to be. Airplanes don't change in leaps and bounds they evolve slowly, building on proven technology and designs. These are just concepts produced because these companies feel they have to show something new and radical in return for taking all of nasa's money.
In nature, there are neither rewards or punishments, there are only consequences.
of paper airplanes worthy of this article and also of our tax paying dollars. 1. Fold in half, then open 2. Put paper in palm of open hand (pick one) 3. Crumple paper rigoriously 4. Lean back in rocker and shoot for the downtown shot and swish. 5. Send a bill for 5 million dollars to NASA for a superior design flaw, used paper.
NASA existed only because of the Soviet Union. The SU is gone, all the NASA fanboys need a fat sandwich of reality.
Boeing needs to stop fucking around with pie in the sky bullshit and focus on, you know, not going bankrupt because their main product line (Dreamliner) is 2+ years behind schedule and still full of bugs, while their main competitor (Airbus) is kicking their ass in the marketplace.
You know, the marketplace. That thing America was supposed to understand and be good at. Because of all our freedom or something. Whatever.
Next thing you know, we will be flying on Chinese jets while we listen to our Chinese ipods through our Chinese earbuds eating our Chinese peanuts wearing our Chinese shoes.
Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman, unless I am mistaken, are supposed to be making robots that kill people. Not this milk toast hippie bullshit 'green airplane' stuff. When was the last time the US ever sold a Northrup Grumman passenger plane to Denmark or Saudi Arabia? Didn't think so.
Oh, and if we dont need killer robots anymore, then maybe Lockrop Grumtin should merge and/or shut down just like every other @#$@# obsolete company, ever, you know, the way things are supposed to work in a capitalist system.
We need to wake the fuck up and realize some things.
1. The only reason we went to the moon was to beat the Commies there, so they wouldnt put a nuke base and start raining down 50 megaton Tsar Bombas on Omaha Nebraska.
2. The only reason we had Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, the Shuttle, etc, was because of Sputnik, Voshkod, Buran, Borscht, whatever the hell their stuff was called. That's the only reason Congress approved the money, and the only reason the executive branch approved it. We could have fucking annexed Canada and given every goddamn person a fucking lifetime supply of refrigerators and Chryslers for what we spent going to the moon, but we chose the latter because we hate Commies.
3. The commies are gone. The only commie left is Castro, and he loves baseball. not shooting protestors like Mao's friends over in the Great People's Wal-Mart/Apple Production Facility On The Yangtze.
conclusion: suck it up. NASA should be abolished and replaced with something called Starfleet, with one mission, to explore and seek out new life and new civilizations. or something. as long as its cheap and uses unmanned robots that can be controlled by teenagers working for minimum wage, preferably (better yet, outsource it to india)
Boeing should build fucking airliners and sell them to foreigners.
Luckup should shut the fuckup and build robot bombers or close down. The air force should be abolished.
Our aircraft carriers, which are gigantic fucking floating three-mile-islands waiting to happen, should be scrapped.
Preferably in an Indian shipyard where workers have no rights or pollution controls, to reduce costs.
The navy, thus, could be abolished, its actual useful duties taken over by the Marines.
And NASA, well, NASA needs to do what the Russiands did with Buran. Leave it in a crappy hanger until it collapses and
saves us all a lot of maintenance costs.
End of interview!
A friend of mine is a aerospace engineer at Lockheed, and about four years ago we were talking about future improvements to airplanes. I don't recall how it came up, but I was wondering how the design could really develop much beyond where it already is... a tube full of people, with wings. He sketched out something almost identical to Lockheed's submission here, and bemoaned the fact that buyers tend to reject out of hand anything they don't immediately recognize. He told me that modern design software makes it possible to design far more efficient planes that would look very different from the ones we now have, but it's difficult (read: impossible) to get anyone to invest in a plan that deviates from the known-good designs that have been working for decades.
Seriously, the two Boeing models could have come straing from an episode of Thunderbirds.
I was reminded of that only this week as Jerry Anderson was on the BBC talking about his plans for 'Thunderbirds, the next generation' (or whatever)
flying/delta wings are so 1950's in concept. Look at the designs from that period.
Concorde and the Avro Vulcan come to mind. They were not so popular in N. Americal though.
more Tax Dollars wasted methinks.
There's a much better article on this in Cnet, by the excellent Chris Matyszczyk:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20028638-71.html?tag=mncol;title
Those are them nutjobs thinking that the climate is changing, and that it's our fault. Now they want us to fly "energy efficient" airplanes. That's code for socialist airplanes! And they'll probably be serving vegan food on them as well. Don't fall for it!
My UID is prime. Hah!
Where is my flying car?
It's a shame Northrop and Boeing don't have resources to pay for their own R&D.
I've never seen less need for the US govt to step in and fund research. This is the next generation of planes for two established companies in a mature industry. So first these companies get 'paid' by NASA for the R&D, then they'll get paid to build and test prototypes, and things will cycle like that until a new plane design proves out and Northrop and/or Boeing own it, build it, and privatize the profits.
This is hardly next generation. There isn't even a saucer section to separate. Where is the holodeck? This isn't even a galaxy class starship. NASA is so far behind it's going backwards. I bet they don't even do warp 3.
What if NASA were sneaking grammar up to the moon,
thus our grammar would be deprived,
we would be deprived of grammar
we would be deprived of grammar
therefore, NASA cannot exist.
Miracle on the Hudson
Infuriate left and right
This is starting to look a lot like when the first few pathetic, failure-prone Japanese and European cars came into the American market. Yeah, they sucked. Twenty years later, they'd driven the US auto industry to the verge of bankruptcy.
So now we have three US aerospace/defense industry companies that are pretty much useless without all that good, old-fashioned American payola putting out three or four concepts that are supposed to leave us all swooning.
So why do I have the feeling that the rest of the world is going to opt for something faster, louder and marginally less safe that the Russians will build for 25% of the cost?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
conglomerate in 7he the official GAY despite the = 1400 NetBSD Whole has lost
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this design looks very alike to the Horten Ho 229 design.
NASA's goals for a 2030-era aircraft, compared with an aircraft entering service today, are:
A 71-decibel reduction below current Federal Aviation Administration noise standards, which aim to contain objectionable noise within airport boundaries.
A greater than 75 percent reduction on the International Civil Aviation Organization's Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection Sixth Meeting, or CAEP/6, standard for nitrogen oxide emissions, which aims to improve air quality around airports.
A greater than 70 percent reduction in fuel burn performance, which could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the cost of air travel. The ability to exploit metroplex concepts that enable optimal use of runways at multiple airports within metropolitan areas, as a means of reducing air traffic congestion and delays.
There's also an image gallery link for more concept art and some PDF-converted presentations from Boeing, GE, MIT and Northrop Grumman.
That's one way to deter would-be hijackers: require a wing walk to get to the cockpit.
I get that these are quirky designs. Why would we be interested in the bottom one as opposed to say a very long aircraft, possible with a different wing configuration. The middle one appears to be a biplane, effectively. Is this a good idea? Presumably, yes, but why?
I think the rants of design is off the mark. these design seem to be using the logic of kiss (keep it simple stupid).
The DOD needs a new tanker and ideally, it could use new Continent-to-Continent cargo crafts, as well as a new bomber to fill in for B-52s. Rather than use a 767 or a 320, it would be better for DOD to push the BWB and use it. In particular, with the BWB, it should have a smaller profile, be more fuel efficient and interestingly, be capable of re-fueling 3 aircrafts at one time (each wing and then one underneath). That is very useful for when you send a wing elsewhere.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
We could focus on rail infrastructure and reducing ticketing costs there. You could easily cope with demand and capacity efficiently by adding/removing engines and cars as needed.
You see people trotting down a runway with bird cages on their heads, all kinds of awful colors mixed together, and various body parts showing that maybe shouldn't be showing. Half a year later, the shops are actually selling normal clothes in the general average color of the ones you were shown on the show, with a few accents of the other colors, and no longer showing all those body parts.
Airplanes are exactly the same.
Suppose we did spend the ridiculous amount of money to forcibly purchase enough land by right of eminent domain. (yeah, right!)
Nobody wants a slow-ass train. How do you make a train go 600 miles per hour? (1000 km per hour) The very fastest and most exotic trains can almost do half of that. Note that this is still going to be slower than a plane because there just isn't a way to do straight point-to-point links for every pair of major cities.
Never minding the track itself, air friction will be a problem. There is a lot less air 6 to 10 miles up. For trains, the noise at ground level will be horrible.
I just unveiled concept drawings of monkeys flying out of my ass. Can I have a contract to fuck around for a year doing nothing too?
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