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."

Comments

Uh good job linking to a spamblog

[Anonymous Coward]

A spamblog with two boring images. Bravo, editors.

/. hm

[Konster]

I think we are reaching the end of the internet if this is /.worthy.

Was this story a mistake?

[nloop]

Seriously, a few poorly rendered concept drawings? There aren't words. There isn't anything to discuss here...

Timothy, have you been drinking?

Re:Was this story a mistake?

[wizardforce]

In all seriousness, I wonder how much of it is purposeful. Every time there's a blatant spelling error or TFA is irrelevant, what do we as Slashdotters do? We make a fair number of comments which tends to attract attention/page views. This time, the summary didn't even link to the actual article at NASA; TFA was just a re-hashing (almost copy pasta) of the original. The last time, he managed to misspell Photonic despite it being spelled correctly in the copy/paste of the first few sentences of TFA. So either we have a consistent editing problem or a problem of self interest gone awry.

Re:Was this story a mistake?

[Somewhat Delirious]

I've noticed that Timothy has been banning me for days, even weeks, at a time; because I exposed him as a Jew years ago. See the last article and other Israel-related articles on his watch as proof. Years ago, he made the mistake of posting in a discussion his trip to Israel.

See you all in a month. It's been good knowing you.

Let me clarify to you why you get banned:

I've noticed that Peter has been banning me for days, even weeks, at a time; because I exposed him as a Physicist years ago. See the last article and other Physics-related articles on his watch as proof. Years ago, he made the mistake of posting in a discussion his trip to the Tevatron.

Actual article link

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/aeronautics/features/flight_2025.html

Two problems with flying wings

[GodfatherofSoul]

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.

Re:Two problems with flying wings

[Anonymous Coward]

Sell it as a ride

Re:Two problems with flying wings

[Anonymous Coward]

Which airlines are concerned with discomfort or complaints?

Familiarity is important

[artor3]

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.

Re:Familiarity is important

[TheRaven64]

Concorde had a lot of problems. Supersonic flight over populated areas tends not to be permitted, so they were only really useful in transoceanic flights. They were very inefficient, so the ticket prices were high. In the '70s, there was a large market or expensive-but-fast flights. Now, they're competing with email, cheap international telephone calls, and video conferencing. Very few businesses can justify double the ticket cost to get to the destination a couple of hours earlier. Or, rather, having a couple of hours less time in the air - the small number of flights meant that if you suddenly had to be on another continent at short notice you could typically get there faster by taking the next flight than by waiting for the next Concorde. With power and Internet connections in business class, most executives could get some work done (or enjoy the champagne in first class) on other commercial flights, so the time in the air was no longer wasted. Add to that, Concorde was really small. Flying first class in Concorde was a lot less comfortable than in something like a 747, and 7 hours in comfort often beat 4 hours in much more cramped conditions for flyers.

In contrast, a more efficient aircraft has obvious advantages. Even if it's slightly slower, passengers will often pick the cheapest flight even if it's slightly longer. If it's about the same speed, then operators can keep prices the same and make more profits until their competitors try bringing the price down.

Much better article

[Urza9814]

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

Re:Much better article

[bazorg]

AKA Chris, the Unpronounceable!

Next Generation

[Reed Solomon]

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.

Re:Single Engine Lockheed?

[sapphire wyvern]

Actually, I don't think it does.

Here's a larger picture. Notice how the engine is mounted on a fin that does not emerge vertically from the tail of the aircraft. The engine mount comes out of the fuselage at an angle, and then curves up towards the vertical through the space occupied by the engine. If you look at the bottom of the fuselage, you can just make out the edge of a second engine's bluish cowling. It's mounted on the other side, also angled out from the aircraft, but largely obscured by the point of view of the image.

I don't think they chose a very good camera angle for showing off the concept.

Re:Old hat?

[sapphire wyvern]

Actually it looks like the Lockheed proposal is two-engined. I posted this comment downthread, but there's a pretty good chance it'll just get buried down there, so I thought I'd post it here too.

Here's a larger picture. Notice how the engine is mounted on a fin that does not emerge vertically from the tail of the aircraft. The engine mount comes out of the fuselage at an angle, and then curves up towards the vertical through the space occupied by the engine. If you look at the bottom of the fuselage, you can just make out the edge of a second engine's bluish cowling. It's mounted on the other side, also angled out from the aircraft, but almost completely obscured by the fuselage because of the point of view of the image.

I don't think they chose a very good camera angle for showing off the concept.