Government IT: NASA`s Vision for the Future of Flight in 2025 and Beyond

NASA's Vision for the Future of Flight in 2025 and Beyond

by Nathan Eddy

Northrop Grumman Entry

Artist's concept of an aircraft that could enter service in 2025 from the team led by Northrop Grumman.

The Boeing Company Entry

The entry by The Boeing Company imagines a thin, stealth-bomber-style aircraft, shown in this artists rendering.

NASA's Vision for the Future of Flight in 2025 and Beyond - Page 4

Lockheed Martin EntryThe most conventional-looking of the 2025 entries, the aircraft resembles the jumbo jets of today.

Double Bubble D8

From MIT comes this aircraft, which is based on a modified tube and wing with a very wide fuselage to provide extra lift, while its low-sweep wing reduces drag and weight.

GE Aviation Entry

This aircraft features ultra-quiet turboprop engines, virtual-reality windows; the 20-passenger plane would also reduce fuel consumption and noise.

SELECT Aircraft

Another Northrop Grumman design, the Silent Efficient Low Emissions Commercial Transport, or SELECT, future aircraft design features advanced lightweight ceramic composite materials and nanotechnology and shape-memory alloys.

SUGAR Volt

Boeing designed the Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR) Volt future aircraft, a twin-engine concept with a hybrid propulsion system that combines gas-turbine and battery technology, a tube-shaped body and a truss-braced wing mounted to the top of the aircraft.

Hybrid Wing Body H-Series

This MIT-designed aircraft features embedded engines using variable area nozzles with thrust-vectoring, noise-shielding and advanced onboard vehicle health-monitoring systems.

Boeing Icon-II

A design that achieves fuel-burn reduction and airport noise goals, it also achieves large reductions in sonic-boom noise levels that will meet the target level required to make supersonic flight over land possible.

Lockheed Martin Supersonic Aircraft

Text: The team used simulation tools to show it was possible to achieve over-land flight by dramatically lowering the level of sonic booms through the use of an "inverted V" engine-under-wing configuration.