Your WIng is in My Body... No Your Body is in My Wing

NASA has recently been testing the new Blended Wing Body (BWB) concept. The new concept takes the conventional build for an aircraft and modifies the fuselage into a lifting surface. The new design could prove to be more efficient and will definitely allow for more passenger space/ cargo space on-board.

The current flight tests being preformed by NASA will for one, validate the airworthiness of the design. Secondly, and most importantly, the tests will give valuable feedback on flight performance. As this is a completely new design and a fairly significant departure from current aircraft design, the aircraft must be tested. The feedback from the test flights will help determine how the BWB design will react in situations and how flight controls will work.

The information gathered from the test flights will allow the refinement of flight control software and basic flight controls for maximum in-flight performance. This new design could be the future of large scale passenger travel.

This design could prove to be very valuable to military forces. The BWB would be able to efficiently carry huge amounts of cargo on-board and may replace the conventional heavy lift cargo planes used in the Air Force today.

This would be a cool sight in full scale, coming to an airport near you!