NASA isn't just considering a futuristic plane on Mars. It's developing the future of your commercial planes, too.
The space agency's Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project — intended to slash the fuel commercial airliners burn — is developing the novel X-66 plane. Working with Boeing, the project aims to reengineer the single-aisle aircraft that you typically fly on. As NASA noted, these planes (like the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737) are the "workhorse of passenger airlines around the world."
In a wind tunnel at the agency's Langley Research Center, aviation engineers recently tested a model of the X-66, which you can see below.
The model, with a six-foot wingspan, shows the major X-66 innovation: a "transonic truss-braced wing," wherein diagonal struts attached to the fuselage support an extra-long wing. (Wings with more surface area can generate more lift.)
Engineers will assess measurements of the demonstration plane's lift, drag, aerodynamics, and more to see if it requires any design alterations. Next, the plane will move into a faster wind tunnel (Langley has multiple wind tunnels) and other models will be tested before Boeing introduces these changes to an actual plane.
At its facility in Palmdale, California, Boeing will convert an MD-90 aircraft — a single-aisle plane that's no longer in service — into the X-66. The novel design could offer significant benefits. "When combined with other advancements in propulsion systems, materials, and systems architecture, this configuration could result in up to 30 percent less fuel consumption and reduced emissions when compared with today’s best-in-class aircraft," NASA explained.
Electric planes will likely fill a niche in future commercial aviation, too. But such craft would transport people on shorter regional hops, perhaps some 300 miles or less (long electric flights would require giant batteries, making the planes much too heavy to fly). The main commercial workhorse planes will be similar to the popular planes we see today, but with design enhancements like the X-66.
More efficient planes might not only mean lower fuel costs, for both airlines and the cost passed onto passengers. Aviation has an outsized role in emitting heat-trapping carbon into the atmosphere, as planes contribute two percent of total annual global carbon emissions — more than most nations in the world. "Someone flying from London to New York and back generates roughly the same level of emissions as the average person in the EU does by heating their home for a whole year," the European Commission notes.
In the coming decades, the X-66 — or a craft like it — may ferry you across the country.
