Engineers Explore Radical New Designs for Commercial Planes To Cut Energy Consumption and Emission (wsj.com) 83
Modern airliner designs date from the 1950s: a metal tube and swept-back wings with jet engines slung underneath. They get you where you're going and back. But after decades of research, something very different could be flying you on vacation by the late 2030s. From a report: Unconventional designs such as "blended-wing" shapes now used for some military jets, which combine the cabin and wings in one piece, have been floated for years as possibilities for passenger aircraft. Now the rise of climate-change concerns and emergence of new manufacturing materials have brought a rethink a step closer to reality, scientists at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration say. Just about every fuel-saving aerodynamic efficiency has been wrung out of existing aircraft. The next generation will need bolder designs to meet new environmental standards and airline economics, and that's forcing plane makers back to the drawing board.
The designs now exist mainly as artists' renderings, models and small-scale prototypes. That could be set to finally change. NASA in June launched a competition for U.S. companies to design and build a full-scale demonstrator. The rules require entrants to target planes around the size of a Boeing Co. 737 that can carry 150 passengers. The agency wants a prototype that could fly as early as 2027 and be ready for mass production in the next decade. The agency won't comment on the proposals submitted by the September deadline, but points to the recent history of alternative designs by researchers and aircraft makers. These include plane bodies that look like flying wings with passengers seated 10 or more across, compared with rows of six on a Boeing 737. Others have long, thin wings that would have to fold to fit into airport gates. In some designs, jets under the wing are replaced by rear-facing propellers mounted on the back of the plane.
NASA held a similar competition 10 years ago that focused more on the efficiency of the designs than the ability to make them commercially feasible. Now, it is focused on aircraft that are more efficient and can enter the fleet to make a difference to aviation industry emissions. "We've been working on advanced configurations for 20 years, but last time I went to the airport I didn't see any of them flying around," says Brent Cobleigh, NASA's flight demonstrations and capabilities project manager. Aircraft designers have coalesced around three main designs, which people involved in the latest contest said are expected to feature prominently in the entries. They carry exotic names -- such as transonic truss-braced wings, blended-wing bodies and double bubbles -- that reflect how far removed they are from most of the conventional planes that now carry commercial passengers worldwide. NASA earmarked only around $1 billion of its $26 billion fiscal 2023 budget request for aircraft-related activities, in line with past years, but officials say its work has influenced every part of planes now flying.
The designs now exist mainly as artists' renderings, models and small-scale prototypes. That could be set to finally change. NASA in June launched a competition for U.S. companies to design and build a full-scale demonstrator. The rules require entrants to target planes around the size of a Boeing Co. 737 that can carry 150 passengers. The agency wants a prototype that could fly as early as 2027 and be ready for mass production in the next decade. The agency won't comment on the proposals submitted by the September deadline, but points to the recent history of alternative designs by researchers and aircraft makers. These include plane bodies that look like flying wings with passengers seated 10 or more across, compared with rows of six on a Boeing 737. Others have long, thin wings that would have to fold to fit into airport gates. In some designs, jets under the wing are replaced by rear-facing propellers mounted on the back of the plane.
NASA held a similar competition 10 years ago that focused more on the efficiency of the designs than the ability to make them commercially feasible. Now, it is focused on aircraft that are more efficient and can enter the fleet to make a difference to aviation industry emissions. "We've been working on advanced configurations for 20 years, but last time I went to the airport I didn't see any of them flying around," says Brent Cobleigh, NASA's flight demonstrations and capabilities project manager. Aircraft designers have coalesced around three main designs, which people involved in the latest contest said are expected to feature prominently in the entries. They carry exotic names -- such as transonic truss-braced wings, blended-wing bodies and double bubbles -- that reflect how far removed they are from most of the conventional planes that now carry commercial passengers worldwide. NASA earmarked only around $1 billion of its $26 billion fiscal 2023 budget request for aircraft-related activities, in line with past years, but officials say its work has influenced every part of planes now flying.
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Who else around these parts hates climate change alarmists? Yeah, that's what I thought. These smug, snide little douche nozzles are all about themselves.
Oh, you mean the people who were RIGHT ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE? The runaway heatwaves of last summer? The hottest 10 years in history being all in the last 12?
Douche Nozzles who are correct are the only hope of saving technical civilization.
More oil won't do it.
Radical thinking would be. (Score:5, Funny)
They even make chug chug sounds at it departs for the next station, er I mean port.
Re:Radical thinking would be. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wheels and no wings. The fuel savings could pay to install rails for those wheels to move upon.
They even make chug chug sounds at it departs for the next station, er I mean port.
And those rails go across the ocean to allow travel in a few hours?
Or will you create some type of tube system several thousand feet under the water which will allow for traveling at the same speeds while having the same or better safety record as aircraft do?
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When my boss says "they need you in Texas, get on an airplane", I don't say "but boss, what will Greta say?"
No you say "fuck you I'm not going to Texas" :)
Your 1000 miles to Florida is 1600km, to do it in 5 hours you'd need to be going 320km/h... which is the speed TGV can do right now. Obviously it's going to take longer if there are any stops but it's more or less doable. Just need to actually build it.
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There are parts of the US where you can actually do the same thing, except that when you buy your Amtrak ticket and show up at the station, the train will not do so until eight to twelve hours after its scheduled time. Bring lots of reading material.
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Or will you create some type of tube system several thousand feet under the water which will allow for traveling at the same speeds while having the same or better safety record as aircraft do?
You wouldn't put it thousands of feet below, just far enough to where ships don't run into it. It would be neutrally buoyant. It's still not realistic, but it's not as unrealistic as the thing you described :)
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Boats to go over the ocean. Containers transfer to trains.
As for travel times, current trains are faster for anything under about 1000km, and you can double that for maglev.
Maglev will eventually get up to just under the speed of sound, i.e. as fast a passenger jets.
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As for travel times, current trains are faster for anything under about 1000km, and you can double that for maglev.
That should be "As for travel times, current trains not in the US are faster for anything under about 1000km, and you can double that for maglev".
Re: Radical thinking would be. (Score:2)
That stuff is for super rich middle eastern countries with leaders who have far more money than understanding of logistics or science.
The rest of us poor countries have to stick with boring old airplanes.
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Or will you create some type of tube system several thousand feet under the water which will allow for traveling at the same speeds while having the same or better safety record as aircraft do?
Technically you can put tunnels underwater for trains that don't have to go along the bottom. They can simply float at a certain depth. It would just need to be lower than the draft of any ship (deepest I could find is 81 feet. There would need to be some regulation of where ships can weigh anchor of course. The actual practicality of building such a tunnel over an entire ocean is highly doubtful though. Plus, in order to compete with the speed and efficiency of planes, it would have to be an evacuated tunn
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Try going from Paris to NYC in one of those choo-choo in less than 8 hours
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I woulnd't mind seeing a return of airships. Plenty room for thin-film PV and lightweight batteries. Ocean passage in a day or two, with room to walk around and sit down for a proper meal. Add wifi and satnet, and get some work done.
Just don't coat them in flammable paint then fill them with hydrogen. Though note that most passengers of the Hindenburg survived, and most of those who died, did so because they tried jumping out. Had they waited, they could've walked (well, run) off. That's rather better tha
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Re: Radical thinking would be. (Score:1)
Many Amtrak trains run on the idea of a slow paced relaxing trip across the US. The people who buy those tickets aren't trying to get from A to B in a timely manner, but rather are on the train to enjoy the ride.
That's entirely because Amtrak is such a crippled, joke that it's useless for anything else.
An airship will be a market for the same...
An airship will get used according to its usefulness.
...except there's no scenery.
We're talking about transportation while you're fixated on leisure travel... which you're unable to even think about clearly.
You're just stuck in...
... whatever vehicle you're stuck in; pretty sure that's how it works.
Fly and you can cross the Atlantic in 8 hours.
Yep, hence this very conversation.
The food on trans-continental aircraft is pretty good these days.
Crackhead, the food was okay in the 70's and has proceeded to get shittier and shittier ever since. I would know; I grew up on Pan Am an
Re: Radical thinking would be. (Score:1)
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That's entirely because Amtrak is such a crippled, joke that it's useless for anything else.
You've clearly never traveled on a high speed train overseas...
gotten Indian entrees in the past and been amazed by what I got in coach
That's either an outlier, you have remarkably standards or you're one of the dumbest shills I've ever responded to.
nor have you recently traveled overseas. Airlines have made a genuine effort to vastly improve their food that is served when going overseas over the past 2 decades. I use airline points to go overseas business class and return coach, so I experience both and it's cheap. I only pay airport taxes as a result, so it costs me under $100 round trip.
High speed trains sound great, and for moderate distances to dense cities, they make sense. New York t
Re: Radical thinking would be. (Score:2)
Don't forget that most of the track Amtrak runs on is owned by the big freight companies, and freight trains have priority over passenger trains.
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Most airships, including the Hindenburg, died to wind. The Hindenburg was one of the few cases where most passengers survived. Indeed, it's one of the few where most passengers were found.
Airliners are phenomenally safe. Airships... not.
Re: Radical thinking would be. (Score:1)
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With that said, the high speed trains in Europe and Japan are pretty good, and in many cases beat air tr
Why not make it liquid hydrogen immediately? (Score:2)
Seems half assed to design a demonstrator for hydrocarbon fuels, the design parameters for liquid hydrogen are so fundamentally different it will be a lot of wasted effort.
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Lets say we only use biofuel for airplanes in the future, we'd still need to more than quadruple ethanol production worldwide. That's a lot of land competition against food crops. Meanwhile shipping is facing similar problems for net zero, if you try to solve that the same way we can all just starve.
We really need non crop ways of creating fuel for flight and shipping. That's more expensive than exploding food prices, so Boeing really doesn't wanna go that way, but fuck them.
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Sea water irrigation of the desert doesn't produce a salt water marsh, it produces a salt flat. This won't work at scale in the same cheap way as farming on arable land. Sand won't hold onto nutrients either.
You'd need to build an artificial marsh, ponds with constantly refreshed sea water on top (need to keep salinity down against the force of evaporation) and soil on the bottom in which nutrients are pumped without getting flushed away by the continuous sea water circulation on top. Expensive.
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Ethanol is a great alternative. Go search for "Boeing Ethanol" and see what's already being done.
Yes, ethanol can help when you're waiting for the Amtrak train to arrive.
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Still looking at blended body? Decide already (Score:3)
This is nowhere near new. I remember seeing this design proposed for commercial aircraft in the early 2000s.
Even made the cover of Popular Science, Nov 2003
https://books.google.com/books... [google.com]
Shit or get off the pot.
Re:Still looking at blended body? Decide already (Score:4, Insightful)
Uh, try 1940s: https://worldwarwings.com/the-... [worldwarwings.com]
technically, a different beast (Score:3)
The Horton brothers in Germany, and Jack Northrop in the USA, both worked on flying wings. A flying wing is all wing - the entire thing is the airfoil. Everything that would normally be in the fuselage is re-packaged to fit within the airfoil shape. The Northrop and Horton designs were clearly "wings", but not the only examples of the idea. Vought designed the other extreme of the idea, a very short span, large chord flying wing that is essentially a disk viewed from above: the V-173 [wikipedia.org] and the XF5U [wikipedia.org].
A lifting
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The only real problems are on the ground: Airports and maintenance facilities are not designed with these things in mind (MAJOR infrastructure expenses for airlines and airports).
That's going to be why these never ended up being a thing. A trend over the history of commercial jetliners has been to optimize for maintenance - engines used to be built into the wings, which was a maintenance nightmare, and later tail engines were also painful to maintain with their height (and partial enclosure in the structure of the plane). Likewise, the number of engines for long haul flights has gone from 3 or 4 to 2, partly because of reduced maintenance and partly for increased fuel efficiency
Tube
Re: Still looking at blended body? Decide already (Score:4, Insightful)
The story I heard is that they did passenger studies, and passengers absolutely hated them, which is why they died.
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Look I get it. Passengers can be a real handful. Irritable, noisy, no respect for their seatmates, coughing and drooling all over everything, crying and screaming for no discernible reason (usually the juvenile ones). Many of them deserve to be tranquilized and stuffed in an overhead compartment for the duration of the flight.
But killing passengers for not liking your aircraft? That's
Re: Still looking at blended body? Decide already (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes passenger studies going back decades revealed that the blended wing and flying wing designs were not liked at all by passengers in terms of comfort, view and motion sickness, but the real killer in terms of passengers, was their performance in simulated emergencies. With blended wing designs you have longer rows of seating, limited aisle space and limited options for emergency exits that aren't immediately on top of or under an engine. IIRC, blended wing evacuation drills and fire/smoke death simulations performed significantly worse in every scenario when compared to the typical tubular fuselage design pattern.
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On every flight I have done from Dubai to Australia for the last few years, they have the window shades drawn or electronically blacked out with some kind of darkening windows so not really much difference there to having no window at all.
If they had much more passenger room with these designs and actually used it to make economy seats more reasonably sized to actually fit real humans that would be nice.
Airline seats are apparently designed for people up to 5'10" and 180lb, which only accounts for about hal
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The story I heard is that they did passenger studies, and passengers absolutely hated them, which is why they died.
Passenger feelings have nothing to do with it. Airlines don't care how passengers "feel". They know passengers will put up with just about any abuse... long lines, tight spaces, shitty service, etc, in exchange for cheap tickets.
Radical designs like blended wing-body never get adopted because it's cost-prohibitive. Period. Airlines and aircraft companies have looked at alternatives time and again, and always come back to the tried and true formula of long tube with podded engines under the wings. The reason
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"The beginning footage for the Six Million Dollar Man was real. It was essentially an early single or blended wing plane test flight. The test pilot was severely injured"
But fortunately, they could rebuild him.
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They had the technology.
um, no (Score:3)
Two different aircraft are shown in the opening sequence of The Six Million Dollar Man. Both are lifting bodies, NOT blended wing bodies.
The captive-carry and drop footage at the beginning is from a safe and successful flight of of a Northrop HL-10 [wikipedia.org]
The crash footage [youtube.com] is from the 1967 crash of the Northrop M2-F2 [wikipedia.org], which the pilot, Bruce Peterson, actually survived (but with severe injuries)
Here [theaviationist.com] is a short article.
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Those aircraft were atmospheric versions of lifting-body spaceships. Sierra Nevada Corporation has been working on the Dream Chaser lifting-body spaceship for many years now. Here are some videos of the Dream Chaser:
The original manned version rejected by NASA for flights to the International Space Station
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The NASA-approved cargo version being built now
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
The first cargo model being assembled
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic (Score:5, Insightful)
If we really wanted to cut hydrocarbon use, we'd put, say, a $1.00 US per pound tax on all jet fuels. Because "It absolutely, positively, does NOT need to get there overnight." suck it, FedEx.
Or as another post points out, ride the rails.
Re:rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic (Score:4, Insightful)
If we really wanted to cut hydrocarbon use, we'd put, say, a $1.00 US per pound tax on all jet fuels. Because "It absolutely, positively, does NOT need to get there overnight." suck it, FedEx.
Or as another post points out, ride the rails.
The same should apply to Amazon delivery and all other delivery companies for their fuel. You don't need that pen in three hours.
Re:rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yeah, we do that crap here in Canada with massive "carbon taxes". Makes it difficult to afford to get to work. Also drives the prices of EVERYTHING up, since if it is in your hand then it came by truck. Food is massively more expensive, since tractors, harvesting and transport takes fuel. Go ahead and imagine a politician who wants to raise all your prices 8 to 15 percent. Then think of who is going to vote for them. Yeah, I think you can see why there's no "political will".
Here's an idea! Why don't YOU pay
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Here's an idea! Why don't YOU pay for it? I'd be very happy with that plan.
I do pay for it! There's 50% tax on fossil fuels here as well and we do just fine.
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You're describing a carbon tax. Sane places all have them. The reason you probably don't is because you have too many voters like the other guy who replied to you, bitching about carbon taxes.
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Elephant in the room (Score:2)
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On the other hand, for overnight delivery the fuel consumption per package will be hard to beat. You can't get into your car for that, not even if you save up weeks of shopping.
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Nothing.
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Really? How about sending an organ for transplant from LA to New York while it's still viable? Or getting a rare medicine to a patient in time to save a life? There are times, you know, when getting something across the country, or across an ocean as quickly as possible is quite literally a matter of life or death.
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The people involved in shipping perishable, life-saving medical goods will be willing to pay a hefty tax on fuel. The same with anything that's light, valuable, and perishable. The goal isn't to ban all plane travel. The goal is to charge enough to make people consider if they really need the speed or if something slower but much more fuel-efficient would do.
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Re: rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic (Score:2)
Just got a new starter for my tractor via FedEx. In this case, I needed it in a hurry, but not overnight. But there are other cases where parts like this are literally needed overnight or same day and not getting them on time would be a huge problem.
Do you have ANY concept of where that leads??? (Score:2)
Supply chains are VERY complex and messing with them can produce enormous unintended consequences.
Much of the efficiency of the modern supply and shipping industries (not the same thing, the supply people USE the shipping people) stems from quantities of scale effects. YOU can tell yourself that some rich teenager in NYC does not need a new designer carry bag for her little puppy shipped overnight, or some gamer in LA does not need the newest gaming hardware before the weekend, and that we could easily stop
Two problems... (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Safety in emergencies: When there's a sudden loss of engine power, a tube-with-wings design is a very effective glider, buying pilots lots of time to locate a safe landing spot. (Examples: the Gimley Glider [wikipedia.org], and the Miracle on the Hudson [wikipedia.org].) The weight distribution of the tube aircraft is symmetrically designed, and mobile sacks of weight, a.k.a. humans, are confined to motion only along this line of symmetry. With a blended-wing-body (or other unconventional-design) aircraft, engineers would have to determine a means of balancing the aircraft when there's an unequal distribution of weight along its body. (Random distribution of people or luggage could lead to one wing of the plane heavier than the other.) That unbalanced weight could easily cause the plane to bank and crash in the event of a power failure.
2) Increased demand: When we make airplanes more efficient, they become cheaper to fly, leading to a growth in demand, leading to airlines adding routes and buying more planes, creating more pollution. If we -really- wanted to put a dent in airplane pollution, we should tax jet fuel.
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nope, nope, nope... just... NOPE (Score:2)
Where's the computers on ANY of the flying wings designed, built and flown by the Horton brothers [wikipedia.org] in Germany in the 1930S AND 40s?
Where are the computers in Jack Northrop's Fling wings, like the YB-35 [wikipedia.org]?
Flying wings are extremely efficient flyers, and can be very easy to fly - ask any hobbyist who has built and flown flying wing models.
You may be thinking of something you might have read about the F-117A Nighthawk (AKA "wobbly Goblin"). THAT is an aircraft that lacks inherent aerodynamic stability, and requir
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If you didn't notice, commercial planes are fly-by-wire now. In Airbus specifically, the computers have full control and without them, the pilots basically can do nothing. Does this make them crash more? Think again.
Re:Two problems... (Score:5, Insightful)
3) Seating people too far from the roll axis of an airplane (along the sides of a BWB plane, for example) is going to end up causing a lot of air sickness every time it banks.
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Re: Two problems... (Score:2)
Jack Northrup (Score:1)
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Awesome picture. Nicer version:
https://external-preview.redd.... [external-preview.redd.it]
Smartfish (Score:1)
FWIW, The Problem (Score:2)
The issue with BWB aircraft is you cannot just extend the tube and have a new variant for $1B. As aircraft mature they get various Performance Improvements (PIPs). These might improve range or takeoff weight, but those benefits cannot always offer a useful benefit to the airframer or customer. The traditional response is to stretch the plane (or shrink in some cases) to help create additional value for the airline by holding more passengers or less empty weight making more profit per seat.
With a BWB, maki
Back to the 30s and 40s (Score:2)
The retro future design, stuff you would see in the old Fletcher Superman cartoons.
the old alternative (Score:1)
Too fast! (Score:1)
Will the new designs give me more legroom? (Score:2)