Hyper-X - Flight into the Millennium

Winged aircraft as we know them will be a thing of the past. Aviation technology is undergoing some of the most impressive and revolutionary changes that we’ve seen since the Wright Brother's first flight in 1903. Across the world designers are racing to create fantastic new aircraft that can fly humans higher, faster and further than ever before. Airliners will take us to the edge of space and around the planet in minutes, utilising new propulsion systems that will make the jet engine obsolete.

The quest for new designs is relentless. In the 1960s NASA investigated the idea of flying an aeroplane without wings. Their ‘lifting bodies’ were a series of experimental wingless gliders built during the development of the Space Shuttle. The cross section of the aircraft body is similar to a wing, producing all the lift it needs to fly. Aircraft designers were determined to do away with conventional wings. At a once secret airbase outside Moscow, ingenious Russian engineers created what looked more like a ‘flying saucer’ than a plane. Called ‘Tarielka’, it was conceived during the height of the Cold War under the old Soviet Union.

The Russian methods were low-tech, but the results were remarkable. It looked impossible, but the Tarielka flew. Initial tests on scale models were so successful that construction quickly began on a full sized Tarielka. Looking like a spaceship from a Science Fiction movie the Tarielka was designed to carry up to a dozen passengers and was poised to become the new executive jet of the future. Its engines are housed inside the main body. The small wings, which provide no lift at all, help to stabilise and steer the machine. The aerodynamic lift comes from the wing-like cross sectional shape of aircraft itself. However, the investment required to transform the Tarielka from a promising prototype into a truly reliable and airworthy aircraft was immense. The cash poor Russian government was forced to withdraw it's funding. Developing radical new technologies is never cheap.

UFO? This Russian wingless craft really does fly!

The most tried and tested way to carry hundreds of passengers around the world is the 747. It has carried 1.6 billion people 20 billion miles, the equivalent of flying the entire population of Los Angeles and New York City to the Moon and back! With passenger numbers expected to double by the year 2010, new airliners twice the size of the 747 are desperately needed to meet the demand.

Superliners

An aerodynamics team from NASA, Boeing and Stanford University is developing a new super-airliner, able to hold 1,000 passengers, more than double the capacity of today’s jumbo jets. To create the extra room and lift needed for the passengers and their luggage this design has abandoned the traditional shape of fuselage and wings. It has fused the body and the wing together into a design called the BWB the Blended Wing Body. Even successful new designs of airliners will have to use existing terminal facilities. It would cost too much and take too long to redesign the world’s major airports. To ensure the BWB is economically viable its overall wingspan must be no greater than the 747.