NASA's New Airliner Experiment To Make Flying Less Expensive

This week NASA signed onto a Space Act Agreement with Boeing on a project to build a full size version of the Transonic Truss Braced Wing design with a goal of demonstrating significant improvements in efficiency that will directly translate to improved fuel consumption and lower costs.

This may be a blueprint for a future airliner, fuel cost is one of the major considerations to aircraft operators and technologies which provide even small improvements can pay off handsome rewards over the lifetime of the aircraft.

Or maybe the technology developed will end up being used in some completely different form....

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[buttersPbutters]

Jets are evolving to look more like propellers. Monoplanes are evolving to look more like biplanes. Very retrofuturistic!

[robertkb]

“Control surfaces that can curve instead of just fold”

It’ll be nice to see 120 year old technology return. The Wright Brothers original patent on the first aircraft included wing warping as the control mechanism. Nice to see that come back.

[leflavius_nl]

Another neat thing about the extremely high mounted wings, they allow for HUGE diameter engines, which seems to be the way we're going, if CFM doesn't turn out to be that great after all.

[gove]

The other big advantage of the high wing that wasn't mentioned is that you can more easily put bigger bypass fans on the engines. Boeing has already hit the wall with fan size on the 737.

[diegobob]

Maybe it would be fun, or at the very least informative, to do a video one day about all the aeronautical innovations developed by NASA that eventually led to practical improvements for not only our military aircraft but passenger planes as well. I'm aware of a couple examples, but I'm guessing you know of many more

[mattkeetc]

And even better example would be the RQ-4B global hawk. it's got about 130 ft wingspan and is only 45 ft long nose to tip. It also flies at 60, 000 ft with the engine at idle.

[tulsatrash]

It's good to see more coverage of NASA's work in aeronautics.

[ericrawson]

I have always marvelled at how wings can be so strong, given their long thin shape. The thumbnail, once seen, is a brilliant solution that I never would have thought of. I guess you can get themore stiffness and strength with a lot less structural weight.

[eclogite]

High aspect wings like this are exactly how modern racing sailboats go so fast. Excited to see how this turns out

[richb]

Thanks Scott for keeping us informed about this aspect of aviation research and development.

[lewisvanatta]

Your comments about the DeHaviland Beaver brought back a good memory: in about 1994, my wife and I took a two-week vacation in northern Minnesota; we arranged a fly-in and paddle-out canoe trip. The outfitters set us up with a local pilot flying....a DeHaviland Beaver, and sure enough, he strapped our rented canoe to the aircraft's floats and did a fine job of flying us to our put-in lake. Good times!

[DriveCarToBar]

One big benefit to mounting the wings that high on the fuselage is the new unducted fan (propfan) engines being developed by CFM will fit without hitting the ground or the fuselage. The props are rather large and getting enough clearance is kind of a challenge on current aircraft like the 737 or A320. So much so that when Pratt and Whitney was testing their version a few decades ago, they used the MD-80 because it's engines were mounted higher and at the back of the aircraft.

[rthrux]

When I first arrived at my aviation support Army assignment in Germany we had several Beavers flying out of that airport, which was also the Stuttgart commercial airport serving jet airliners. When you heard the noise of a Beaver taking off, it looked almost like it was hovering. I asked one of the old hands about a story I had heard - "Is it true that their takeoff speed is the same as their cruising speed?" He replied, "Some of them aren't that fast". 🙂

[vpscttm]

Scott's last comment about the early 707 getting 45 miles per gallon versus 125 miles per gallon for the 787 really hit home. As he eluded to, keeping competitive will require continual research and testing of new tech and new ideas, some very radical!

[stephenfestus]

If you recall the high ratio aspect wing was used exclusively on the B-24 and was called the Davis Airfoil. It allowed a higher speed and a greater angle of attack during flight. It is interesting how older technology is making a comeback.

[nus.]

Love the Saturn V stand in the back. I made that same one and it was a massive pain in the ass but 100% worth it. I had to snip *every single one* of the red straws that go diagonal all the way up and hammer down the baseplates. Yay off-brand lego!

[WasatchWind]

I'm glad to hear that Scott knows what the first A in NASA stands for.

[LeonardoDaVinci]

Drones are a great example of high aspect ratio wings and their benefits. My DIY drone has high aspect wings and flies phenomenally well at high altitudes

[titter]

Reinventing the good old box-wing.
Also the reason for the winglets is because a high aspect wing that achieves the same will not fit in the gates at the airports.

[capitalpm]

Thanks for covering this Scott! This is a super interesting topic, and I'd love to hear more perspectives on it. If I remember right, one of the reasons they dropped the blended wing body concept was more aligned with human factors issues than technical limitations. Basically, imagine sitting in a movie theater knowing that theater is flying at close to the speed of sound at 35, 000 feet, and you're nowhere near an exit sign. Apparently that thought freaked passengers out enough during evaluations to tank much of the work as untenable to actually use for a real world airline.