NASA and Boeing are ready to create a full-size prototype for a plane that will possibly shape the future of single-aisle airliners with a radical new wing design and a goal of vastly lower carbon emissions.
The design, which uses extra-long thin wings stabilized by diagonal struts, has been financed through NASA's Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project. The wing concept is called a 'transonic truss-braced wing.
The plane also carries an Air Force designation used for experimental planes, X66. Planes with an X designation are usually intended to test designs and technologies that find their way into other planes, rather than into production themselves.
The project has a look-back aspect as well. The demonstrator is being created by stripping a retired MD-10 (a variant of the DC-10) of its wings and three engines and shortening the fuselage. Boeing will then add the new wings and up-to-date engines to create the testbed.
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