Engineering news
Nasa has launched its New Aviation Horizons initiative to push forward the next generation of aircraft that will be powered by greener fuel, be more fuel efficient and half as loud as today's commercial planes.
In the past, various companies and government organisations created designs for pioneering aircraft, known as X-planes, exploring technology such as rocket power, scissor wing designs and even nuclear propulsion – although that particular technology never took to the skies. Perhaps the most famous of Nasa’s X-plane designs was the X-15 rocket plane. Flown 199 times between 1959 and 1968, the winged X-15 reached beyond the edge of space at hypersonic speeds, and informed the development of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo piloted spaceflight programmes, as well as the space shuttle.
Nasa’s aeronautical team are now looking to put an array of experimental aircraft back in the skies, to showcase how airliners can burn half the fuel and generate 75% less pollution during each flight compared to current aircraft, while also being much quieter than today’s jets – perhaps even when flying supersonic.
The New Aviation Horizons will design, build and fly the series of X-planes during the next 10 years as a means to accelerate the adoption of advanced green aviation technologies by industry.
Ed Waggoner, Nasa’s Integrated Aviation Systems programme director, said: “If we can build some of these X-planes and demonstrate some of these technologies, we expect that will make it much easier and faster for industry to pick them up and roll them out into the marketplace.”
Experimental aircraft currently under consideration include those with novel shapes and others that are propelled by hybrid electric power.
Nasa has already been design work already has begun on Quiet Supersonic Technology (QueSST). The project aims to fix the loud sonic boom that holds back commercial supersonic flight from travelling over land.
Recent research has shown it is possible for a supersonic airplane to be shaped in such a way that the shock waves it forms when flying faster than the speed of sound generate a sonic boom so quiet it hardly will be noticed by the public, if at all.
“We know the concept is going to work, but now the best way to continue our research is to demonstrate the capability to the public with an X-plane,” said Peter Coen, Nasa’s supersonic project manager.
A preliminary design contract for QueSST was awarded in February to a team led by Lockheed Martin. It is hoped the new supersonic X-plane could fly by 2020.
The team intends to use data gathered from flying QueSST to help the Federal Aviation Administration and its international counterparts establish noise-related regulations that will make it possible for commercial supersonic airliners to fly over land across country.