apparently, NASA wants to decide for you. sometime last year, NASA awarded contracts to three...

NASA Lockheed Martin 544x311px
(image credit: NASA/Lockhead Martin)

apparently, NASA wants to decide for you. sometime last year, NASA awarded contracts to three teams over at Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing to conceptualize a plane for 2025. of course, as you would have expected, NASA has some requirements for the teams to work on includes achieving air speed of 85 percent of the speed of sound, has a range of approximately 7,000 miles and carry between 50,000 to 100,000 pounds of payload. other goals include lesser noise, cleaner emission and lower fuel consumption than the current aircraft.
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check the images of what the three teams have came up after the jump, together with some others concept that NASA has garnered since 2008’s call for the “industry and academia to imagine what the future” (in this case, year 2030) air transport would be.

images of flight in 2025

images bar 150x67 image credit: NASA and Lockheed Martin 600px image credit: NASA and The Boeing Company 600px image credit: NASA and Northrop Grumman 600px

additional images of flight in 2030 era as called by NASA in 2008

images bar 150x67 image credit: NASA and MIT and Aurora Flight Sciences - double bubble D8 series 600px image credit: NASA and GE Aviation 600px NASA and Northrop Grumman - Silent Efficient Low Emissions Commercial Transport (SELECT) 600px
images bar 150x67 NASA and The Boeing Company - Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research or SUGAR 556px image credit: NASA and Lockheed Martin 600px NASA and The Boeing Company - Icon II 600px
images bar 150x67 NASA and MIT and Aurora Flight Sciences - Hybrid Wing Body H-Series 600px

NASA via Gizmodo