WEBVTT - What will airplanes look like in 2025?

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<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff from house stuff works dot com,

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<v Speaker 1>where smart happens him Marshall Brain with today's question, what

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<v Speaker 1>are airplanes in going to look like in the United States?

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<v Speaker 1>If you think about the airplanes that are flying in

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<v Speaker 1>the United States today, they all look pretty much the same.

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<v Speaker 1>If you think about a seven thirty seven or a

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<v Speaker 1>seven forty seven, or a seven fifty seven or a

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<v Speaker 1>d C ten, it's pretty much a big aluminum tube

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<v Speaker 1>with two wings sticking out of it and a tail.

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<v Speaker 1>All airplanes have looked like this pretty much since World

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<v Speaker 1>War Two for a couple of different reasons, but the

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<v Speaker 1>main reason is because this is a very easy design

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<v Speaker 1>to manufacture and aluminum. In order to shake up the

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<v Speaker 1>design world a little bit and get people thinking in

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<v Speaker 1>different ways about new aircraft, NaSTA has been working with

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<v Speaker 1>the big aircraft ARAFT manufacturers on a set of new

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<v Speaker 1>designs for the year. The most important goal that NASA

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<v Speaker 1>is pushing in these new designs is much better fuel economy.

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<v Speaker 1>NASA has set an incredibly aggressive goal of reducing fuel

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<v Speaker 1>consumption by se in the new airplanes. That's great for

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<v Speaker 1>the environment, but it's also great for consumers because when

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<v Speaker 1>you buy a ticket on an airplane. The main thing

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<v Speaker 1>that's controlling the cost of that ticket is the cost

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<v Speaker 1>of the fuel. NASA has some other goals, like much

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<v Speaker 1>cleaner exhaust and lower noise production. In addition, NASA wants

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<v Speaker 1>these airplanes to not be too radical. They have to

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<v Speaker 1>fit into the existing air traffic control structure, and they

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<v Speaker 1>have to be able to land and take off at

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<v Speaker 1>the existing airports and also fit into the airport gate structure.

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<v Speaker 1>If NASA made too radical a change and you had

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<v Speaker 1>to retrofit all the airports in the United States or

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<v Speaker 1>make the runways longer, something like that, it would probably

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<v Speaker 1>be too expensive to carry off. So NASA has chosen

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<v Speaker 1>three designs, and they've awarded contracts to three of the

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<v Speaker 1>big aircraft manufacturers, Boeing, lockeed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. By

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<v Speaker 1>looking at these three designs, we can see what NASA

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<v Speaker 1>is thinking. The least radical of the three designs is

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<v Speaker 1>the one that lockeed Martin is building. It looks pretty

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<v Speaker 1>much like any airplane that we see today. It's a

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<v Speaker 1>tube with two wings, but the engines have been reduced

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<v Speaker 1>to one and they've been moved to the very back

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<v Speaker 1>of the plane. The idea here is to use something

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<v Speaker 1>called boundary layer ingestion, taking slower moving air off the

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<v Speaker 1>back of the fuselage and running it through the engine

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<v Speaker 1>to produce thrust. That step alone could produce some pretty

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<v Speaker 1>amazing fuel savings, and by putting the engine up on

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<v Speaker 1>top of the fuselage, you lower noise quite a bit.

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<v Speaker 1>Northrop Grumman's design looks a lot more radical, but uses

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<v Speaker 1>the same basic manufacturing infrastructure that's available today. In this design,

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<v Speaker 1>and the plane has not one but two fuselages hanging

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<v Speaker 1>side by side under the wings. The idea is that

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<v Speaker 1>a fuselage doesn't really add that much extra drag, but

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<v Speaker 1>you can get a lot more passengers on the plane,

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<v Speaker 1>so you increase the fuel economy per passenger quite a bit.

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<v Speaker 1>M I. T did some research around this idea and

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<v Speaker 1>they came up with something they called the double bubble fuselage,

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<v Speaker 1>where the two fuselages are actually blended together in the

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<v Speaker 1>middle of the airplane. And then they put the boundary

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<v Speaker 1>layer and gestion engines on the back of the plane

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<v Speaker 1>as well, and this gave some pretty remarkable improvements in

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<v Speaker 1>fuel economy and noise reduction. And then Boeing's airplane is

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<v Speaker 1>the most radical design, it's a giant blended wing approach.

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<v Speaker 1>Instead of using a tube with wings approach that's so

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<v Speaker 1>universal today, a blended wing aircraft blends the wings and

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<v Speaker 1>the fuselage together. The B two Bomber is the best

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<v Speaker 1>example of a blended wing approach that's in use today.

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<v Speaker 1>Since the fuselage is no longer a tube, it can

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<v Speaker 1>be much much wider. There could be a dozen or

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<v Speaker 1>more rows of seats inside of one of these airplanes,

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<v Speaker 1>and that could increase passenger capacity quite a bit. In

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<v Speaker 1>Boeing's designed the engines are also up on top and

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<v Speaker 1>in the back of the fuselage to get the boundary

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<v Speaker 1>layer ingestion effect and also to reduce noise. Boeing already

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<v Speaker 1>has a scale model of this approach flying. It's called

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<v Speaker 1>the X forty eight, and the results have been pretty

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<v Speaker 1>good so far. The big question here is can the

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<v Speaker 1>manufacturing of this type of airplane be perfected. Boeing has

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<v Speaker 1>had so much trouble building the seven eight seven, also

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<v Speaker 1>known as the Dream Lighter, out of carbon fiber, that

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<v Speaker 1>is just not clear that a really radical design like

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<v Speaker 1>a blended wing can be manufactured inexpensively and at high volume.

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<v Speaker 1>So that's NASA's lineup for It'll be interesting to see

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<v Speaker 1>if any of these things actually start flying fifth ten

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<v Speaker 1>years from now, and if we board airplanes like this

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<v Speaker 1>when we go to the airport. For more on this

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<v Speaker 1>and thousands of other topics, doesn't how stuff works dot

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