The big idea behind the transonic truss-braced wing concept is an update to the aircraft configuration, or the plane’s architecture. “What we’re trying to do now is skip a generation.” “If you think that, or have the perception that, aviation hasn’t been working on sustainability or environmentally friendliness, that’s a bad perception because every generation of aircraft that’s come out has been 15, 20, 25 percent better than the one it replaces,” Rich Wahls, NASA’s sustainable flight national partnership mission integration manager, told Vox in January. The Boeing “vision system” single-aisle aircraft concepts show off the truss-braced wing design that will make the X-66A so special. ![]() The space agency will now help Boeing build, test, and fly a demonstrator aircraft - and its X-plane status, which the Air Force grants to revolutionary experimental aircraft configuration projects, could lead to additional support. That’s exactly the kind of leap NASA wanted to get out of the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, which Boeing won. Boeing says the innovations in the new truss-braced wing concept will amount to a 30 percent reduction. Typically, a single-digit reduction in an aircraft’s fuel consumption would be meaningful. (Making an electric vehicle is more complicated than that, but you get the point.) Improvements to airplanes happen in small increments over the course of decades. Unlike cars, you can’t simply bolt a battery onto a plane and make it electric. A transatlantic flight produces about a ton of CO2 per passenger, which amounts to about half the carbon footprint a person would produce by eating food for a year. Flying accounts for up to 4 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, and as more and more people fly, the United Nations expects carbon dioxide emissions from planes to triple by 2050. ![]() “With the learnings gained from design, construction, and flight-testing, we’ll have an opportunity to shape the future of flight and contribute to the decarbonization of aerospace.”Īir travel is a massive contributor to climate change, and it’s getting more popular. “We’re incredibly proud of this designation, because it means that the X-66A will be the next in a long line of experimental aircraft used to validate breakthrough designs that have transformed aviation,” said Todd Citron, Boeing chief technology officer. The new X-66A is also the first X-plane designed specifically to achieve the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions for airplanes. If widely adopted, the truss-winged design could transform sustainable air travel as we know it. The new aircraft looks like a giant glider with long, skinny wings propped up by diagonal struts to reduce drag. ![]() The design is a product of the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, a NASA-Boeing partnership to produce a single-aisle plane that promises to slash fuel consumption for commercial aircraft. ![]() NASA and Boeing announced on Tuesday that the Air Force had designated a new transonic, truss-winged aircraft as the X-66A. This one is designed to fight climate change. Unlike most of the space agency’s experimental aircraft, however, the new X-plane isn’t built to break speed barriers, carry astronauts, or test the possibilities of unmanned air combat. There’s a new NASA X-plane in town, and like its predecessors, it’s a little bit goofy-looking.
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