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NASA Green-lights $16.5M To Advance Future Jets
coondoggie writes "NASA said this week four research teams would split $16.5 million to continue developing quieter, cleaner, and more fuel-efficient jets that the agency says will be three generations ahead of airliners in use today. NASA said the money was awarded after an 18-month study of all manner of advanced technologies from alloys, ceramic or fiber composites, carbon nanotube and fiber optic cabling to self-healing skin, hybrid electric engines, folding wings, double fuselages and virtual reality windows to come up with a series of aircraft designs that could end up taking you on a business trip by about 2030."
I think the study cost more than that.
Award that money to a university and you might get something for it. To a private company and you might get a mock up, which says "Huggies" on the composite carbon hull, if you peek around the back side of it.
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I'm always surprised with the editorial tone of slashdot when they post a figure like $16.5 million and try to draw gasps, as if that's a huge amount of money. I'm on a military contract, and the training portion alone is at about $5 million. $16.5 million for something like a new jet is peanuts.
That's great, can we get that budget approved for high speed trains too while we're at it? I'm sick of having a horrid public transportation infrastructure. And highways are so 1950s...new please!
I was wondering this too. Surely there are two better generations somewhere according to this. Why aren't the airlines using these?
Three generation better than ones "currently in use today." The ones they commonly use today are a couple generations old. Southwest Flight 812, which recently lost a bit of skin, was built in 1996. 737's in general started being built in 1968 and the technology hasn't changed that much.
Help! Help! I'm being repressed!
No, no, Southwest was on the right track all along, using in-flight weight reduction to increase fuel economy! Don't think of it as "the fucking plane falling apart in the air", think of it as the new "737-cabriolet"!
It's like when Shick went to 5 blades, they are just going to not bother producing the next logical step in jets and go directly to the one after that.
"Sacrifice for the good of The State" - The State
The technology sure has. In 1968 would never have flown them without the roof.
It depends what they mean, I assume they mean the most recently approve engines. But with a date like 2030, it sounds like it will take them several generations worth of engines to actually use them. Meaning that they'd be basically on time.
That doesn't mean the effort isn't worth it, but it does make one wonder about whether or not the hyperbole is warranted.
This is why I have already started stockpiling bottle caps.
This is why I have already started stockpiling bottle caps.
haha, i'm gonna get a bottling set and head east, maybe start makin nuka-cola
I just cant put my finger on it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockwell_X-30
This is why I have already started stockpiling bottle caps.
stockpiling guns would be a better use of both time and space...although a fatboy mini nuke would be even better :)
Chump change to Bill Gates, Nathan Myrhvold, Steve Jobs. But, being government money, most of it will go to bureaucratic waste.
And then there's the whole "quieter, cleaner, more efficient" angle. That hasn't really paid off well with cars, has it? Well, per car, yes, but how many people switched to pickup trucks and SUV's simply because the cars with these new requirements no longer met their needs/wants?
That is only a few thousand caps.
Airlines are extremely slow to take on new technology. Not because they don't want it, but because there is a huge lag time between technology inception, development, practical application, production of said technology, integration of technology into newer aircraft designs, ordering of aircraft (or retrofitting), and the aircraft actually becoming part of that airline's fleet. That span can easily be greater than a decade or two. Which means, by the time a technology is entering public use, its very likely to be a generation, or two, or three, beyond what's currently being researched.
It's a lengthy, costly, pipeline adoption doesn't happen overnight because the costs are so large. Which means, in many cases, retrofitting is simply not an option. Which means, the only way the technology is going to enter a fleet is from new aircraft purchases.
Any clue how this 'hybrid turbo-electric engine' is supposed to work? Jet fuel is a good two orders of magnitude more dense than conventional batteries. Even taking account for projected advances in nanowire batteries, and the inefficiencies of gas turbine engines, you're still looking at kerosene containing several times the usable energy per unit mass than batteries. Weight is everything in aircraft, and fuel already accounts for the bulk of weight in airliners. The only thing I could see this useful for is for taxiing on the runway, powered by the APU in the back of the aircraft, rather than having those big engines needlessly idle for extended duration while waiting for takeoff clearance.
This sounds great, but why does NASA have to fund this? Can't the plane manufacturers pay for their own R&D?
Three generation better than ones "currently in use today." The ones they commonly use today are a couple generations old. Southwest Flight 812, which recently lost a bit of skin, was built in 1996. 737's in general started being built in 1968 and the technology hasn't changed that much.
Actually the technology has changed quite a bit. The newer generation 737's are made differently, albeit with the same undlerlying aluminium / spar / rivet technology as the older planes. The 787 is really a transformational aircraft - should Boeing actually quit shooting themselves in the foot and get the thing into production. The 787 does underscore the difficulty in bringing new technology into commercial aircraft (along with stupid MBA-think but that's another rant).
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Like Nick Nolte said in 48 Hrs. "I'm a rag-top man"
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
We're gonna' need that more and more!
Tethered solar satellites will be providing juice to compose aircraft fuel straight from CHON by then.
"Who is the Journal of Quantum Physics going to believe?" --Stephen Hawking
Yes, jet engines are pretty capable of burning a wide variety of fuels, the airlines and militaries like the US DoD have been certifying aircraft to run on biofuels, mixes of biofuels and regular fuels.
Plus the USAF has been wanting to build synth fuel plants for some time, only to have it blocked by Congress.
It wasn't a structural failure, it was just a beta test of new convertible jets..
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Well, I ain't going to switch until they get up to 50 blades at least. If you were to go with the latect computer technology, would you prefer a measly 5 core processor, or would you prefer a 50 core one? The next version of Windows will probably need at least that many just to boot, and a lot more if you want to run the maximum limit of three programs at a time.
For those needing a car analagy, would you prefer to drive a 5 cylinder car, or a 50 cylinder one?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
The current airlines are like Chevy's and Chrystler's. They want to switch over to something like Kia's and Yugo's.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
I was thinking about this a couple of days ago - the LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) might actually be a feasible candidate for providing the heat energy to run one or two really big fans. One of the many advantages of the LFTR is that it can be sized for particular applications, and it's just possible that it might be made small enough to fit on a large airplane. The LFTR is a high temperature, low pressure reactor and also (IIRC) requires much less shielding than U-238 reactors.
So it's possible that an LFTR-powered plane using superheated water to drive the turbines might just work. If so, then the 'jet' output would have zero emissions (except for heat). The planes would only have to be refueled once in a while.
I'm too lazy to figure out just how big a plane it would have to be.
Full disclosure: my dad was a builder, who built some of the buildings for the very ill-fated Atomic Airplane project back in the 1950s - GE actually built a successful test engine, but the entire rest of the program was a complete mess. He got screwed for $400,000 in 1950s dollars and never got it back.
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Yay! Slower, less comfortable clean, green jets. The wildlife will be thrilled.
an ill wind that blows no good
The world isn't lacking good ideas, it's lacking people who make them real.
We can barely find people who know the difference between crippling buckling. The not-horrible ones we can find have been working on the F35 for so long they think 2 years to finish one rib is about right.
If anyone wants to make an ambitiously weird new plane, they are going to have to invest billions just to get bright people back into this business. I wouldn't be surprised if it would cost hundreds of billions to get get a commercial carbon-fiber spanlifter into service because this industry is just so moribund. The organizations that are around right now couldn't make a go of it on any finite budget.
Equine Mammals Are Considerably Smaller
This is just the next version of "space age materials".
Oh, it might be more than that.
The "Virtual Reality Windows" sounds a lot like Super-Chromatic Peril Sensitive Sunglasses which have been specially designed to help people develop a relaxed attitude to danger. At the first hint of trouble, they turn totally black and thus prevent you from seeing anything that might alarm you.
No more screaming and crying when things go horribly wrong.
Douglas Adams should get royalties.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
True, but by the same token it takes almost no time to get out of older technology.
I remember recently Alaska Airlines decided to dump all MD-83 aircraft a year after one lost elevator control and dove into the Pacific.
It took precious little time to dump those planes partly because they already had a mixed fleet of 737s and MD-8x airframes.
To the extent any airline stays with a given supplier, migrating to newer models is made easy by manufacturers retaining some
interoperability of ground support requirements, and some cabin equipment. Engines and avionics often get upgraded before
the airframe is retired.
So some of these features can be be in place sooner than you might think. The Boeing Dreamliner already uses a great deal
of new materials. It remains to be seen if that is going to be a problem for carriers introducing it to their fleet.
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You forgot the FAA and EASA testing and certification phase, which has to take place for every new plane the technology will be used in as well as *every* plane you plan on retrofitting it into. Depending on how new the technology is or how well the FAA understands it, this could take a very, very long time. One of the reasons commonly given for the commercial failure of the Beechcraft Starship is the length of time it spent in testing due to it's completely composite airframe, a novelty at the time, allowing time for small business jets (4-6 passengers) to be introduced first in direct competition to the Beechcraft (previous business jets were larger, like Gulfstreams seating 10-14).
No trespassing. Violators will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
or one bullet into the head of the holder of them caps....as you can tell I played fallout as an evil person *Mwahahahaha*
I remember recently Alaska Airlines decided to dump all MD-83 aircraft a year after one lost elevator control and dove into the Pacific.
It took precious little time to dump those planes partly because they already had a mixed fleet of 737s and MD-8x airframes.
Dumping aircraft is not the same as purchasing new aircraft. And the ability to shed aircraft is largely governed by the airline's routes, corresponding passenger and cargo loads, planned expansion or consolidation (which is what it really sounds like).
Do we already know what they are?
Since the current planes were mostly built in the 70's, 40 years ago, and these new ones NASA makes won't be out until 2030, which is another generation, and generations are usually 20 years, wouldn't any new jet be considered 3 generations ahead. I want a jet released this year that is a generation or two ahead of now!