The Aircraft That Will Change The Future Of Flying For thirty years, the most efficient airliner shape ever tested never got past a scale model. Engineers proved it worked, the wind tunnels agreed, and the industry kept building tubes with wings. Now a full-size version is taking shape in a hangar in the Mojave Desert. The story runs from the NASA and McDonnell Douglas study of the 1990s, through the remotely piloted X-48 that flew 122 test flights at Edwards Air Force Base between 2007 and 2013, to the engineer who worked on both and then left to build the real thing. It covers the $235 million Air Force award, the 185-foot demonstrator under construction at Scaled Composites, and why some aerodynamicists doubt the fuel numbers will hold. Every airliner flying today traces back to a shape settled in the 1950s. This is what happens when someone finally tries a different one. #jetzero #bl

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