NASA presents airliner concepts for 2025
 

Three radical airliner layouts are intended to be efficient, environmentally friendly and quiet.
pictures:
NASA zeigt Passagierflugzeugkonzepte für das Jahr 2025 - FLUG REVUE

That's why Boeing is still considering a clean sheet design for the replacement of the 737. HE he....

Seriously
 

All NASA has been able to do for 40 years is draw pictures and beg for money. Oh, and try to remember how to fuel the clapped out Shuttles.

Until Old School hacks die out, NASA is irrelevant. They are recently Gore's Whore's, eg Global Warming, see Hansen, et al.

The clean sheet should be saved for redesigning the Bureau.

Well they are flight testing scale models of the X-48B already aren't they?

http://www.aeronautics.nasa.gov/videos/x-48B_tt.mov

That a/c (model) flew in the late sixties. Subtract the winglets, and one has the "Lifting Body" developed for the not yet built Shuttle. Further back in time google the "Goblin" a parasite fighter slung from the B-36. From the Fifties, before Sputnik, even. Use a critical eye, NASA is not even the primary on this 'project'. Even the B-2 is old hat, and proven to be an enormous loss of treasure, for a relocation of taxpayer dough into "Defense Contractor" pockets. Without a jaundiced eye, we are doomed to sign checks for these posers until your great grand children erase us from the history books, and for good reason.

The Blended Wing was developed for the F-16 in the late sixties, and has been operational for fourty years. Refrigerators for Eskimos??


:ugh::ugh::ugh:

I can't see how design number 2 could possibly be considered efficient with the frontal area of two fuselages, two/three wing/fuselage junctions and a centre wing box that is going to have to cope with a heck of a lot of torsional loads. Is it hydrogen powered? I can't think why else it would be that shape.

Bearfoil, I would say that the Mcdonnell XP-67 predates the F16 by a few years, and that's ignoring the various Hortens and such like which must also qualify as 'blended wings'.

http://www.air-boyne.com/Moonbat%20P-67.jpg