[ Applause ]
[ Music ]
Good evening everyone.
Imagine with me a future
where air travel is significantly cleaner, quieter,
and even faster than today.
NASA's new Aviation Horizon's initiative is laying the
foundation for a future of sustainable aviation.
Through wind tunnel testing of aircraft concepts, engines,
and a renewed emphasis on flight testing or X planes.
A future where green is king.
New Aviation Horizons is all
about supporting a green future for the planet.
Whether it be through the assessment
of advanced alternative and bio fuels in jet engines
and their emissions into the atmosphere,
or one of the many other key technologies
that NASA is developing with industry
and university partners across the nation.
We're at the right place at the right time,
with the right technologies to enable a radical transformation
of the air transportation system.
From concept to reality,
NASA's aeronautical innovators are preparing to put
in the sky an array of X-planes, or experimental vehicles.
Each of which is targeting key technologies
to enable dramatic reductions in fuel burn, noise, emissions,
and even to enable high-speed flight.
Some of these goals include a 50% reduction in fuel usage.
Greater than 50% reduction in carbon emissions.
And aircraft so quiet that you can barely hear them outside the
airport boundary.
New Aviation Horizons is accelerating to a new horizon
of aviation for the nation and for the world.
The details of how we're going to get from here
to there are laid
out in President Obama's Fiscal '17 Budget Request.
A request that lays out a bold, 10-year plan to design, build,
and fly a series of experimental aircraft, or so-called X-planes.
These are X-planes to enable a green future for the nation.
X-planes are nothing new.
They're a way to advance technologies
and accelerate industry's acceptance of these technologies
so they can be brought to market.
In fact, many of the technologies that you
and I enjoy on current aircraft that we fly on,
perhaps that some of you flew on to come here,
have been developed through NASA partnerships with industry.
Through computational fluid dynamics,
many of the engine technologies that you'll see here,
as well as winglets; composite structures.
A lot of these technologies came from NASA developments
with industry partners.
Now NASA Innovation X-planes goes way back
to our predecessor organization, the National Advisory Committee
for Aeronautics, or NACA.
Which worked with the US Air Force
to develop the very first X-plane,
the X-1 vehicle shown here.
Looking forward to future X-planes,
one of the key candidates
for these X-planes is a hybrid wing body concept.
Which gets away from the familiar tube-in-wing aircraft
that we're all familiar with today.
And the wing blends smoothly into the fuselage.
Not only does this offer dramatic fuel burn reduction
potential, but also is much quieter than current aircraft,
as demonstrated by this simulation.
[ Aircraft Sounds ]
Other key technologies that we're focusing on are long,
slender wings supported by a brace.
Non-circular fuselage concepts that allow the aircraft
to get some lift from the fuselage
as well as from the wings.
As well as the engines that are partially embedded
in the fuselage to improve performance.
The truss brace wing concept shown here, has been developed
in partnership with the Boeing Company.
The bracing of the wing from below allows for a long,
slender wing design that reduces drag,
and improves aerodynamic performance.
Wind tunnel tests indicate a 5%
to 10% fuel burn reduction from this technology.
It also has a high wing mount to allow for the incorporation
of large diameter, high bypass engines.
The D-8, or so called "Double Bubble Concept",
because it has a fuselage twice as wide as it is high,
has been developed in partnership with MIT,
Aurora Flight Sciences, and Pratt and Whitney.
In addition to the double wide fuselage,
which provides a lifting characteristic,
it also has engines mounted at the rear of the vehicle
that ingest the boundary layer that flows
over the vehicle itself.
Boundary layer ingestion is important because it allows
for improved performance of the vehicle,
as the engine ingests air that's already been slowed
down by having flown over the vehicle itself.
At NASA Glenn we're currently in the process
of testing an advanced fan with an industry partner,
to assess the benefits of BLI, and to optimize the fan design
for this configuration.
We're also very excited about the single aisle,
turbo electric aircraft concept, which is also called
"Stark ABL" for short.
Now this aircraft looks fairly typical to the casual observer,
because it's a tube-in-wing with two engines under the wings.
But note the tail cone thruster fan in the back,
which also takes advantage of this BLI phenomenon.
In addition, the power is routed from the main engines
to that rear fan turboelectrically --
another key innovation.
System studies indicate a 15% fuel burn reduction benefit
for this concept.
NASA's also learning from small-scale demonstrations
such as the latest NASA X plane, the X-57 Maxwell.
This small, electric aircraft allows us to learn
about system integration.
And we can apply those learnings to larger electric aircraft
in the future, such as the N3X concept.
Where all powers distribute electrically across the rear
of the aircraft, and BLI is leveraged fully.
Now all of these concepts are going
to require advanced engines, and in particular,
high-powered NC small compact core,
or the heart of the engine.
At NASA Glenn we're very proud of our heritage
in propulsion technology,
and as these core engines become smaller and more higher-power,
the temperatures go up to very high levels, causing challenges
for material technology.
As well as the size of the components becoming very small,
challenging the manufacturing techniques.
We're working with GE Aviation, Pratt and Whitney,
and other partners on developing these core engine technologies.
Now so far I've shown you concepts that fly subsonically
around Mach point A, or typical of today's airliners.
But what if we could fly across the country
in half the time that it takes today?
That's the idea behind our supersonic X-plane concept.
Where the aircraft is designed in such a way
that it produces a small -- it produces smaller boomlets
that are less objectionable to people on the ground.
Now flight research is a key component
in aeronautics research, but it's only a part.
There's a three-legged stool that we like to talk
about in terms of research.
The first leg being computational
analysis capability.
This is where researchers use sophisticated computer models
and high-speed super computers to predict the flow
over an aircraft, or through an engine,
or over part of an aircraft.
It's critically important
that researchers can understand how an aircraft is going
to perform through analysis, in particular
when the concepts look much different than today.
As in the D-8 aircraft, or an open roader, as shown here.
The second leg of the research tool is experimental,
or wind tunnel testing.
This is where researchers take a scale model of an aircraft,
or part of an aircraft, or an engine or part of engine,
and flow air over that in a wind tunnel,
and measure the data resulting from that.
In this way, researchers can understand the performance
of these concepts.
Look for areas of interest for further research,
and then take the data and go back
and improve the numerical methods
that were used in the first place.
You can then loop back and use those improved models
to improve the designs in a kind of iterative loop.
And the third leg of that research stool is, of course,
to fly the concept and test it in flight.
This is where all the learnings from the computational
and wind tunnel testing are brought
to bear in a flight asset.
And you can really demonstrate
that the benefits are measurable in a flight vehicle.
Not only can you demonstrate the benefits,
but you can also reduce the risk of bringing the concept
to market for the industry.
NASA Glenn Research Center, here in Cleveland, Ohio,
along with our partner centers, NASA Langley in Virginia,
and Ames and Armstrong in California, are working together
to realize the vision of new aviation horizons for NASA.
And at Glenn we're very proud of our heritage in propulsion,
material research, turbine machinery, and many other areas.
They're going to be key contributors towards
this vision.
To quote Dr. Jaiwon Shin, NASA's Associated Administrator
for Aeronautics Research.
This is an exciting time for the entire NASA Aeronautics team,
and for those who benefit from Aviation,
which is frankly everyone.
With this 10-year plan to accelerate the transformation
of aviation, the United States can maintain its status
as the world's leader in aviation for many years to come.
Thank you very much, and I'd like to thank all those
who helped with compiling this video,
as well as our many industry and university partners.
Thank you very much.
[ Applause ]