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."

Supersonic?!?

[AnonymousClown]

I thought the British and the French proved that to be unprofitable?

The other planes....I just imagined the airline packing those suckers and having more than one middle seat. And you know they'll be charging extra for the window or the isle seat.

Obvious question

[Ryvar]

You say you want to save massive amounts of energy, and then you show me a design that is not a flying wing. Slashdot, you have some aerospace engineers lying around, so help me out: what gives?

Re:Obvious question

[dziban303]

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.

Re:Props

[Marillion]

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 [wikipedia.org] 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 [wikipedia.org] 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}.

Re:Obvious question

[magarity]

I am no aerospace engineer, about as far from it as you can get, but I would think that wing = drag.
 
Congrats on accidentally making the wrongest statement ever on /. 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)
 
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).

Re:Always 25 years

[mangu]

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 te goddamn future!

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.

Re:Forget Electric Hybrids

[icegreentea]

They tried building a hydrogen powered spy plane back in the 70s or something. LH2 is kind of a nightmare to deal with compared to jet fuel. For one thing, its a cryogenic. The US Air Force decided that playing with LH2 was a) too dangerous and b) too much of a logistics headache. And even with LH2, your energy density is still significantly lower than jet fuel. They had a nightmare trying to get the range required on that spy plane. Wiki-link for you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_CL-400_Suntan. If you're interested, try finding Ben Rich's Shunkworks. He spends a chapter talking about trying to build this thing (and all the wonderful fun they had playing with LH2... they apparently went ahead and did all the usual Liquid Nitrogen fun stuff... except with LH2).

Re:Props

[jbengt]

Jet engines are, by definition, not fans. They produce thrust by the acceleration of a jet of combustion products exiting the rear of the engine through a nozzle. Rockets are jet engines; but the term jet engine usually implies air-breathing and rockets are assumed to carry their own oxidizer. Propellers/fans produce thrust pushing air back by rotation of the fan blades/fan wheels/propellers .
Fans can be propellers or otherwise. When talking about aircraft it's usually meant that a prop is un-ducted but a fan is ducted.
Pure jet engines are efficient at high speeds, but very inefficient at low speeds like at takeoff where fans can be a big help. That's one of the main reasons fans are included in the "jet engines" found on most commercial aircraft. (Unducted) Props don't work very well at the high cruising speeds of most airliners because the velocity of the propeller tip gets added (vector-wise) to the airspeed of the plane, which result in velocities near or above the speed of sound. The ducting can be designed to slow down the air and somewhat mitigate that issue.
Commercial airliners usually use combination fan/jet engines.

Re:Always 25 years

[khallow]

maybe our ability to walk on the moon depends on our ability to understand that if we keep fucking with the earth the earth will one day say fuck us all. after we are all gone, it can happily continue and look beautiful again in a few million years. but we're a pretty nasty virus and we'll respawn pretty quick. we'll be back on earth some day...

We're not a virus. We're the most interesting thing that has yet happened on Earth, perhaps in our whole galaxy. Just because there are minor teething problems coming from our heritage, doesn't mean that we aren't trying and don't deserve to exist.

Re:Obvious question

[khallow]

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.

Why do you think it'd feel like a 15 foot drop or rise? I doubt it would, if the turn were done smoothly. From what I'm reading, roll control (the control of rotation of the axis along the direction of travel) is not a serious issue with flying wings. That seems to indicate to me that the issue of storms and such (most which wouldn't generate a significant rolling motion in the vehicle) is a bit exaggerated.