Unlike cars, you can’t simply bolt a battery onto a plane and make it electric. A transatlantic flight produces about a ton of CO2 per passenger, which amounts to about half the carbon footprint a person would produce by eating food for a year. Flying accounts for up to 4 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, and as more and more people fly, the United Nations expects carbon dioxide emissions from planes to triple by 2050. “With the learnings gained from design, construction, and flight-testing, we’ll have an opportunity to shape the future of flight and contribute to the decarbonization of aerospace.”Īir travel is a massive contributor to climate change, and it’s getting more popular. “We’re incredibly proud of this designation, because it means that the X-66A will be the next in a long line of experimental aircraft used to validate breakthrough designs that have transformed aviation,” said Todd Citron, Boeing chief technology officer.
The new X-66A is also the first X-plane designed specifically to achieve the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions for airplanes. If widely adopted, the truss-winged design could transform sustainable air travel as we know it. The new aircraft looks like a giant glider with long, skinny wings propped up by diagonal struts to reduce drag. The design is a product of the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, a NASA-Boeing partnership to produce a single-aisle plane that promises to slash fuel consumption for commercial aircraft. NASA and Boeing announced on Tuesday that the Air Force had designated a new transonic, truss-winged aircraft as the X-66A. This one is designed to fight climate change. Unlike most of the space agency’s experimental aircraft, however, the new X-plane isn’t built to break speed barriers, carry astronauts, or test the possibilities of unmanned air combat. There’s a new NASA X-plane in town, and like its predecessors, it’s a little bit goofy-looking.
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