Planes, Trains and Supersonic Spaceships
Monday, May 4, 2009 - 12:28
in Mathematics & Economics
Commercial Flight: 2020 The long, skinny tube has to go. Tasked with improving the nation's air transportation, NASA wants airplanes to burn 40 percent less fuel than a 777 by 2020 and 70 percent less by 2030. Not only that, it wants those same planes to be whisper-quiet. The best -- and perhaps the only -- way to reach these ambitious benchmarks is to design commercial planes more like stealth bombers and less like pencils. read more