Quick tip as an interviewer. Read the Question (silently), then repeat it while looking them in the face. This also helps with the tone. Another trick is to acknowledge their answer and connect it to the next question. don't hesitate to ask spontaneous clarifying questions about details or to animate them to go more in-depth. But you got the most important part right! let the expert talk. Practice makes perfect!
Too add, I think an excellent example of a technical interviewer (though different subject matter) is Andre from the youtube channel High Performance Academy. He is incredibly knowledgeable about the subject matter of his interviews so he does an excellent job of guiding the interviewee to elaborate on key aspects of their tech talk that they might otherwise gloss over. Might be worth a watch to help improve your (@ThinkFlight) interview skills.
@@thomaslax39 Excellent example, Andre is a great interviewer. I have laughed a few times when he has really had to lead the interviewee by the hand, digging the answers out.
So many interesting tidbits in this discussion. It never occurred to me that the tube and wing profile was so ideal because of its inherent ability to handle pressurization and depressurization because it's basically a large, thin wall aluminum propane tank with wings. Also the issue with roll generating ~2G's because of the distance the passenger would be from the center of roll is interesting and I'm not sure I would've ever given it a second thought.
Aleksey’s excellent rule of thumb about always trying to get your data sets in threes (or at least odd numbers) summed up at 29:09 is pure gold -great life and work hack for young researchers and engineers. Thanks!
Fuel efficiency drives aircraft design, the wing and tube has been pushed as far as possible but can no longer deliver significant increases demanded by air carriers. I agree that BWB is the direction for air cargo aircraft where none of the difficult human engineering problems of exiting, pressurization and passenger G loads need to be considerd..
Lot of resistance to BWB and flying wing designs among pilots and the people signing off the checks for development though. They don't like things that don't look like how a plane is "supposed to" in their minds.
Fuel efficiency does not drive aircraft design on its own. There are many other factors that play an equally large role. For instance, payload capacity, manufacturing cost, and safety. That is definitely wrong as a general statement because many aircraft, such as fighter aircraft or any helicopter, move fuel efficiency even lower on the list of priorities.
@@olsonspeed Not keeping that specified is playing a bit looser with language than I personally like to, but fair enough. That's just a difference of preference. Even within the topic of cargo planes, Manufacturing cost, speed, and payload capacity are at least as high on the list. Fuel efficiency doesn't explain why aluminum is the primary construction material for aircraft. Nor does it explain why we would transport cargo with a plane in the first place. If fuel efficiency is not directing us to make a plane, there must be some other factors that are. And they would be more directly responsible for the cargo planes existence.
The only thing is they got who came up with the blended wing and fuselage wrong. It was in fact Vincent Burnelli that came up with the idea and concept as well as patented it in the 50s I think. So this idea isn't new to some of us that do a bit of research on old aircraft design. Look up the Burnelli UB-14 this was from back in the mid 1930s
When designing airplanes you also have to take into account the ease of maintenance. The reason huge airliners/cargo have had the same design for decades is because the placement of the engine make it easy to maintain.
They've been suggesting this configuration for decades and no one has ever got beyond the windtunnel model. One of the reasons they've never made a passenger version is having windows in the leading edge. Another reason was the lack of windows for most of the passengers, access to a window is one of those things that passengers over the years have said they wanted and do the airlines haven't bothered to order blended wing aircraft in spite of the economic advances. If the airlines can't sell the seats they won't buy the aircraft. As for freight sending by sea will always be the cheaper option.
Although I am one those people who enjoys watching beautiful landscapes beneath, vast majority of the passengers , like over 80%, almost always pull the window shades down because either the sun is too bright or they prefer watching some boring family movie instead. Never understood it. So, those 80% of passengers couldn't care less weather or not they have a window seat.
Since a blended wing fuselage will be flatter, they could instead put windows on the floor. Digital windows are also an economic alternative using preexisting seat screens and installing external cameras for a 360 degree view.
Future utility considerations should include the possibility of combining passenger and freight transport by centralizing passengers within the longitudinal axis while relegating cargo to blended wing portions of the relatively unpressurized and more accelerated regions of the fuselage. In this way passenger proven tubular designs could be directly imported into the structure.
I've built three designs that are very similar to this throughout the years. The first one was a prototype that was stolen when my house got broken into. The second one got trashed when a roof collapsed in a shed or it had all of my RC electronics and the third one is sitting on my desk right now finally being finished in its form. Very similar to this design but there are some striking differences. This is a little bit more efficient of a design than mine but mine is being designed as an ultralight. The blended Wing design cuts the weight dramatically! Unfortunately adding the proper length to the wings puts me over weight so I may have to go experimental. Right now it's in it's RC phase for scale testing. I've been waiting to see blended wings hit the market for decades and always knew they were more efficient ever since we launched the first bomber in a Delta configuration. I hope this makes it to the air!
Also great video as always! I'm a big fan of design innovation, although as an aerospace design engineer I fear that the real reason this hasn't caught on more is down to one word: motivation. Airlines have figured out how to operate a tube with wings on it, and aren't sufficiently motivated to change that perspective and totally renovate all airport gates in the pursuit of that last % flight hour efficiency. There is also the issue of massive change within a HIGHLY regulated industry, and the risk associated with that. Aircraft manufacturers and airlines would both need to have an appetite to accept that risk... and that's a tough pill to swallow.
I think your right they dont esny change they all set yhere and clip their greedy cuepons although they would think the passengers would be stuffed like sardines in a metal can! If they did the design with a little more work they could make into a elon starship!scramjent motor it should be along with rockets motor is the w0sy indeed. As piciard said make it so it so!. Kenneth parrott
It's not because of rebuilding every airport or because of needed new technology that we don't have things like the Boeing model 754 or Burnelli lifting fuselages. Immediate cut in fuel burn by ~25%+.
The biggest reason has nothing to do with motivation, it's evacuation requirements. As an aerospace design engineer I'm sure you know that to certify a passenger aircraft you have to demonstrate that it can be evacuated from full within 90 seconds with only half your emergency exits available. That's hard enough when you have a 10 abreast widebody, now do it with something stupid like 30 or 40 abreast in a BWB.
@@HekateMGO And freight and military users don't care. The military's idea of seating is "Pack in there until you make your buddy smile". To evacuate it's "Stand up, hook up, shuffle to the door. Jump out and count to 4". In any case, everyone who's looked at it, says that it's feasible, especially for a moderate-sized plane (~>200 passengers) to evacuate it on time. Boeing and McD, Lock-Mart, TsAGI and Russavia, Airbus, etc.
Pressurizing the cabin is an issue due to shape No outside view Harder to board Slower to evacuate (less doors sideways) Deicing/anti-icing is an issue
How would the blended wing handling freight (loading & unloading pallets)? I assume from the front using a clam shell door system. How would the engine be accessed for maintenance? Hard to access engines and may require special ground equipment (special crane). Also, blended wing passenger planes would a harder time connecting to existing terminals
Really interesting blended wings are a great development that hopefully whose time has come. A little surprised that the wings are not more blended in. The change from the body to wing looks like it generates quite a strong disturbance.
The junction of the wing and the body (as you saw in the tunnel) can create some interesting flows which can end up being useful. There are other configuration issues not touched upon in the interview which leads to a BWB often have a fairly obvious wing junction.
Yet another beautiful 3D design that will never fly. The aerodynamics of aircraft are perfectly well understood. The current challenges are in material sciences and manufacturing. When Airbus designed the largest aircraft ever to see the sky they didn't look for an alternative to the basic shape of an aircraft. Not because they weren't allowed to, what they were doing was already considered crazy, but because some of the best and brightest engineers in aviation couldn't see any benefit even close to overcoming the downsides. Some simple examples: The wingspan of the A380 is limited because of the Taxiway and Gate separation on the majority of airports. The infrastructure for un-/boarding and un-/loading had to be modified for the A380 leading to many airports not being able to service it. For a design like a blended wing you can forget about using standard gates, meaning the thing needs to carry its own stairs and cargo handling equipment. There are decades worth of testing required to assess the long term viability of such a radical pressurized cabin. And none of that even touches on the training requirements for every single person involved in running and maintaining such an aircraft. The manufacturing is also completely different. You can't construct these types of blended wing craft in pieces and assemble them only close to the end. They almost require a mostly single mold composite construction, which has never been done at this scale both in dimensions and production levels. Remember the Airbus vs Qatar Airways crap? That was because they had a delamination in one of the top layers of their fuselage. That was on a simple surface bent in mostly one plain. So, the answer to the implicit question this video failed to address: Why aren't there blended wing designs out there in the wild? Because the manufacturing, maintenance and operation is prohibitively expensive, the benefits are marginal and the upfront investment would beggar most countries.
This is always true for designs out of the norm of infratructure. The japanese bullettrain was also considered madness and it needed completely new trails to operate, which was a MASSIVE investment no other country dared to pursue. But it's massive success revolutionized how people see trains. It basically connects the 3 main cities of japan by being nearly as fast as airplanes, while way easier to use for everyday life. And the japanese right now invest in a new magnetic train design again considered to be crazy. Time will tell if the project is realistic, but if succesfull, would practicaly merge the cities as how fast you can travwl between them. This aircraft will see its debut probably in the US military, which us more willing to invest in better performance than commercial endevours.
@@DundG no, the bullet train was not crazy. The engineering was challenging but within existing technological means. The A380 falls into the same region. But this thing is just a pipedream. Period. You can't just handwave the issues I mentioned in my post. They nearly stopped the A380, and they certainly will stop anything as nuts as this.
People are approaching the freight volume problem with a technology mindset (brand new aircraft configuration) when there’s a much more obvious solution that costs nothing. Amazon packing is extremely oversized. It would be a simple matter to make each package slightly smaller. If you reduced the package dimensions by 20% in all 3 directions, the volume would decrease by *50%*. If you decrease the package dimensions by 37% in all three directions, the package volume would decrease by *75%*. Based on the Amazon packages I’ve received, a reduction of 37% in all directions is pretty easy. How could the carriers force e-commerce retailers to reduce volume? Charge them by volume and tell them how to save volume and money, and watch the package sizes shrink over night and the shipping weight skyrocket.
Not the first blended body/wing, and the did not materialize for passenger transportation due to a major issue : PRESSURISATION and structural integrity that goes with it. Nobody wants to repeat the failure of the COMET. Fatigue of such a complex shape is hard to simulate. Maybe cargo transportation is the good approach.
The concept is not new. The trick is to design a structure to withstand the pressurized blended fuselage and keeping it light weight. There is a distinct advantage of the traditional round tube fuselage is the shape can withstand pressure very well. With the blended body, it is more difficult to design a light weight pressurize structure. It is a careful blend of compromises that aircraft designers are not used to in the last 80 years.
Everybody who's looked into it: NASA, TsAGI, Russavia, Airbus, Boeing & McD before them, Lock-Mart, say otherwise. Lifting fuselage bodies offer less empty weight and construction cost, more internal volume, less wetted area and drag, improved L/D. Burnelli was doing it in the 1920s and onward. Many others built lifting body fuselages with fins that the media called a "flying wing" that had no problems with stability and yaw authority.
Blended wing aircraft definitely seem like the way to go, especially when taking into consideration that future jet fuels, such as hydrogen/ hydrogen derived green fuels or even batteries, will probably have lower volumetric energy density.
For arrival and departure into freight airports, they could use the nautical pilot model, where a locally based and knowledgable pilot remotely operates the aircraft and interacts with other traffic and air traffic control. This is a reasonable way to proceed with freight aircraft going forward. So for arrival and departure it can be remotely manned for integration.
I really look forward to seeing large flying prototype. The blended wing is an obvious direction for high volume air transport. After a successful cargo plane, there are many future variants that should rally support based on that record.. I can imagine combination airframes with a full pressure human cabin forward center, and cargo aside and behind. Seems like a good platform for modular solutions.
A blended wing body airplane's main advantage is by providing more internal volume than a typical tube and wing. It may have a slightly higher L/D, but this advantage is limited since the BWB's body is basically a short stubby wing and generates lift less efficiently than the actual slender wings. You get basically 2 practical advantages with this. You can carry more fluffy low density cargo like first class passengers, bicycles, internal airplanes, etc, or you can carry enough low density fluffy fuel like liquid hydrogen or methane. The second option is particularly interesting since besides being lower or zero carbon, lower density fuels also tend to have higher specific energies, meaning you can get significantly better range for a given fuel fraction.
Many designs are fit for heavier cargo, with less fuel burn onto shorter runways. Bowing and McD before them, Lock-Mart, Airbus and TsAGI all say it improves L/D and payload & range.
The couch is the "Aviator Leather Couch" from Restoration Hardware. It was a cool collection, but only the matching chair is still available. Shame. The desk was especially sweet.
The stall characteristics of a flying wing (and by extension and blended wing body) are generally a fairly benign actual stall, with a high risk of loss of lateral and pitch control due to airframe blanking of the vertical surfaces and elevators. This is one of the reasons why the vertical stabilisers of the Natilus aircraft have a relatively large span. To ensure they remain in effective airflow (as shown in the tunnel ) and, secondly, because of the reduced moment arm of the vertical stabiliser from the aircraft CoG (a stability issue). Masking of the elevators leads to a loss of pitch control meaning the aircraft cannot be pitched down to fully reattach the airflow. A loss of lateral control leads to a spin. Generally a blended wing body has a larger CofG range due to a longer central 'fuselage' section (a true flying wing not having any 'fuselage' ). Therefore, a BWB would have a 'safer' stall than a true flying wing (all other things being equal in the designs).
Could definitely be a game changer for aviation, especially in the air cargo industry. Potential problem for passenger use is going to be air sickness. Any roll motion will be felt a LOT more by passengers in the "outside" rows which I think was one of the things that has held back the idea of a flying wing passenger plane.
It wouldn't be more noticeable than the acceleration of rear row seats when current airliners pitch. It generally works out okay because airliners maneuver very gradually.
@Michigan Engineer, he addressed this directly 16:30 minutes in as the third and final factor that killed the BWB for passenger use. It was an issue I’d not heard of before, and @@appa609 to your good point, I’ve flown back row (and front row too) enough on long bodies to initially agree that it isn’t too bad an issue. But then I thought about the difference between a few dozen people in the last few rows feeling like they might toss their cookies, vs the last two or three seats in every row on both sides of the plane. Aleksey may well have a better point, and he’s clearly thought about it a lot more than us, since this changed the direction of his company towards cargo instead. But it does make me wonder about running a pressurized tube down the middle of a BWB for passengers, with skylights instead of windows, and also putting lots of unpressurized cargo outboard in the wing roots. 😊
Apart from previous comment, it impressing what they have accomplished. Personally, I have the same idea, by the same considerations, that BWB is the future in aviation. It is: 1. Efficiency; BWB is more aerodynamically efficient, less energy in for se same work accomplished. 2. Volume; more volume with same energy and structural capacities. At 22 months after this video was published, really wish that they are on schedule, and complete their assembly and immediately start testing of the aircraft next October. Please receive my congratulations and best wishes for the success of their enterprise.
The blended-wing body airplane will primarily be a cargo carrier, not a passenger plane. Reason: on a normal passenger plane, whenever the plane banks, the effect on passengers will be minimal because they sit close to the plane's centerline; on a BWB, any attempt to bank will result in any passenger sitting away from the centerline of the plane to really feel the banking effects with serious potential for motion sickness. That is unless the airplane manufacturers can figure out a way to "turn" a BWB airplane with essentially no banking to minimize effect on passengers.
Do you guys think of the entire craft as a wing ? ; such as the entire bottom of a boat does displace water ? If so what is the ratio of air being displaced on each section ? Are only minimal tiny wings actually required ?
no change in physics, but hypothetically a startup can have a lower non-recurring (program startup) cost than a 'traditional' airplane company. Space X did it for example.
17:30 Press x to doubt. The most common aerosol is butane, which has a vapor pressure of around 2 bars at room temperature. If you put the can in a vacuum, the pressure differential increases by 1 bar, the same amount of pressure rise you get from heating it by 10°C. I am calling bs.
If cargo freight size is the key to greater efficiency (as we have with container ships) then would not any large aircraft or even an "older" aircraft not offer that return. Plenty newer Jumbos being disposed off and same for A380s and then we have some of the larger older planes. Whats missing is innovative passenger jet to Freighter conversion shops that can cut fuel consumption and as critically for cargo shippers - emissions.
I don't see anything major revolutionary about the craft, yet there is many practical evolutions, that alone can make the craft feasible. The noise reduction is interesting, body size also trendy for cargo bulk.
As a man born in 1961, my early years were spent with a black Ma Bell rotary phone attached to the wall, the space program just finding its way, and DC3s flying people overhead everyday to the county airport up the road. I find it kind of strange that a different airplane shape would even get more than 15 minutes attention. I'm still waiting for the fusion power and the flying cars they assured us kids would be common by now.
Yes, you probably wrote that comment on a laptop or smart phone, right:)? Point being, technology moves forward and one could also argue that it's hard to believe aviation got it right in the first few decades it existed whereas many other technologies didn't. Actually, the more nuanced and correct answer would be that they actually did get it right - for high altitutude passenger use that is. But that for cargo, this shape seemingly has big advantages and is not held back by the issues that makes it a hard sell as a passenger plane.
@@raymondcasso7966 Sorry, just because something has been tried before doesn't mean it can't come back and prove itself;-). But maybe you didn't mean it like this. Blended wing bodies could very well become an example of this - the technology wasn't there when it was first tried. Now, it is, especially for this specific use case (umanned cargo).
@@AntiVaganza the title is misleading and omitting lots of its history, the design actually comes from the u.s.s.r. but ehhhh. And this isn't the first company that has tried to make this commercial viable... all of them have gone bust! Oh what a wonderfull time the 50s were...
1. For fusion you have to wait next 50 years which you probably dont have. But if you can actually use fusion energy generator every day now. Its called Sun and it shows every day. 2. Flying cars already exist, but they are as dumb as mutifunctional tools. They can do different thing and they are really bad in every field. Not much usefull.
I love inovation. I think the biggest problem in the past has been designing these as passenger aircraft and most people wouldn't want to fly on these. Blended wing lifting bodies began in the 50s/60s.
This aviation technology was called a" lifting body" back in the early 1960's. NACA morphed into NASA and called them DYNSAR's or some acronym like that. They used a significantly modified version of that later for the Space Shuttle.
Going back, see Northrop's "Avion 1" X216-H. Among the best of it's class in all criteria, and markedly faster than any others. Also V.J.Burnelli making lifting fuselage body planes. During the war, the Higgins-Bellanca 39-60 cargo plane, and a similar Boeing 360-362 bomber. Several similar things from the Germans like some tailed Arado 555 versions and Arado 470. A few Horten/Messerschmitt versions with tails or tailfins like the Ho-18 B2. More recently, early 2000s patents by Dizdarevic "Tailed Flying Wings", and the 2016 Lock-Mart hybrid wing-body logistics plane, and the "Frigate Ecojet": multiples of payload and range because they generate substantial lift from the fuselage. The reason the McD blended wing body was never followed through, is because Boeing owns it, and refuses to build to any sort of lifting fuselage design. NASA had to get Cranfield to build the X-48 models because of the intransigent refusal of Boeing to carry it forward. Aerospace is cowardly and if Boeing isn't doing it, no one else will.
This sounds like a very sturdy operation, and the time for such planes is now indeed. In fact, Corona would have been their ideal launch circumstance. But given the normal process of development in the industry, I don't see any commercial deployment before 2030. By then the market will have changed, and probably be more ready to accept this new model. Remember how many sceptics there were for the Beluga design, but now nobody even thinks twice about its flying capabilities... Great insightful documentary, well done! As for the question asking style, I've seen many valid comments. My first thought was that you were reading questions from viewers or members of your Discord server. I can imagine that you came up with some of the relevant questions only during the visit that occurred before the interview, so you probably didn't have time to prepare/rehearse. In such a case, I would shoot some B-roll of yourself and the interviewee, and fix it in editing with voice-over reading the exact same questions but with all the time in the world to rehearse and repeat until it's perfect :)) As for editing, there was a significant sound volume mismatch between the interview and the thank-you message afterwards. Still this channel is turning into an amazing aviation r&d channel. I love your towed ekranoplane series, they're the best!!
Good luck to the nautilus team. Very promising. I would seriously consider partnering with an engine company if possible to combine a new hybrid power train. A big expense and complication with traditional aircraft is control surfaces and their ancillaries. With twin electric ducted fans you have the possibility of 2 degrees of freedom gimballing. With the high reliability of electric motor this could be the primary directional control system. The ducts would also act as a control surface when not powered. You would the have the flexibility of electric only for short haul or a big apu for long haul. All ground operation, take off and landing could be done with electric only for super quite operation. Maintenance of the apu could be done with it dropped out of the aircraft and another popped in. Because the apu only has to supply enough power for cruising speed it can be smaller than would other wise would be needed in conventional power trains. The hybrid system would boost the plane to cruising altitude. Another aspect of the gimballing ducted fan is very short take of ability. I think the military would be very interested.
For starters, blended wing bodies can really make air transport relevant again. Like a fresh start, with more efficient and less costly options for airfreight available to the various industries. And once it takes off, academia will automatically put more effort into more analysis and refinement of blended wing body aircraft, resulting in way more efficient and capable craft again. This should have happened in the 1940's, which would have made things much more interesting today. Fools in places of power, greed, and general silliness like lack of cooperation, have kept humanity behind so many times, across so many fields. I wonder if humans will ever get their act together.
My biggest issues come from the remote control flying. There will be situations where wireless signals are lost. What happens then? Do you just program your planes to fly out to sea and ditch themselves? What if that signal loss was malicious rather than accidental? How secure are these connections to prevent someone hijacking a fleet of remote control cargo planes? I don't think they can ever solve these issues to the satisfaction of the FAA.
Did you know the military flies unnamed drones every day? Did you know the FAA let the 737 max go out with a faulty stall response that crashed two brand new planes? The planes can fly their missions without any human intervention at all. And any airport they will fly from will have excellent network coverage. And as he stated in this interview, the FAA has already created a regulatory structure for such vehicles to operate.
A problem with not pressurizing a cargo bay is packing materials give up their air at altitude and don’t get it back when you land. Packing peanuts turn to goo when this cycle is extreme.
If air has the physical property of "grabbing" stuff as stuff passes through it, would covering a plane in Teflon help negate the air "grabbing" effect? Is there a light weight material a plane can be covered in that slides through the air and resists ice buildup?
This is inevitable but let’s face it, people are gonna be packed like sardines inside these cans….no windows just you and the other humans…a lot of them. Those of us that flew in tubes with windows are the lucky ones.
You have window to the world in your palms and in front of your seat and you are complaining about not having a window? Also, approx 30% have window seats today. 70% don’t.
Clever idea to start real BWB in the cargo section. Maybe it will get a usual sight on airfields and more accepted by the people that way. Pressure cabins and time to exit will be a challenge for passenger editions.
What an unexpected and insightful exploration into Blended Wing Bodies.The question at 26:52 and the discussion that followed on the "Rule of 3's" was most thought provoking. FYI: The SpaceShuttle had 3 flight computers with 3 independent codes of software ... so one could always serve as a tiebreaker when the other two were in disagreement. How did you both overlook the designs of "Vincent Burnelli" from the 1930's thru the 1970's which is totally missing from this video? Aircraft like the Burnelli CBY-3 Loadmaster, Burnelli General Airborne Transport XCG-16 (glider variant), and the Burnelli B1000 (1942). The McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) Burnelli Blended Wing Wide Body of 1990s built on the designs and engineering of Burnelli was briefly mentioned. Much of tube-style aircraft designs are related to manufacturing logistics, less about flight characteristics. Wings and fuselages often manufactured in different facilities, the transported to another location for final assemble. The fuselages of 737 (1:29) are assembled in Wichita, Kansas then transported by train thru tunnels, across bridges (etc) to Renton, Washington. Both Airbus and Boeing even have special oversized (volume) aircraft to fly wings and other components. example: Boeing 787 Dreamlifter just to move subassemblies. Look forward to seeing more videos dive into the topic of Blended Wing Body style aircraft. Seems a natural fit here, as the "Worlds First Autonomous Ground Effect Vehicle" was a blended wing-body design. :)
I forgot about Burnelli, I have a lot on my mind these days :). However I don't remember any Burnelli designs offhand that integrated the 'blended' part. Will look it up.
Great report ! Probably dumb question to Natilus team : Going for BWB, what made you "stop" halfway i.e. chose to make a hard junction (shape wise) between the large badoy and the actual straight/almost traditionaly shaped wing ? What were the main design/functional constraint that led you to not blend the body and wing more (like with at least a smoother/longer transition zone) ?
Designing and specing the next big thing is the easy part. Manufacturing it will be a totally different problem all together as the tooling required to make it will have to be made, if they actually went all the way with this they would have to sell allot of aircraft to start to break even, then there's the maintenance aspect in that it would be a new air frame that ground crew and mechanics would have to be retrained on and allot of time in its first decade or two of deployment looking over for any fatigue points that might develop.
look up albion "bowers" and his prandlt wing design. he's a chief nasa scientist designing a flying wing which optimizes induced drag, with his students. you'll love it. wonder if these guys would consider using those design cues in the flying wing design and in the propeller design.
The tested BWB concept appears optimized for kerosene fuel, but could also work for zero carbon emissions NH3 ammonia fuel, while LH2 hydrogen fuel will require more volume.
They are the logical progression and should be great, as long as the passenger experience is superior to current airliners. People like windows or a view and space to sit in. I imagine if a great BWB airliner is introduced by Boeing or Airbus first, they wil have a huge sales advantage. I suppose a long range version is the first BWB needed. Not one for short regional flights. The introduction of a BWB airliner can almost feel like the hydrogen car, which is only five years away and will remain so for the indefinite future...
No windows for what is a passenger jet. If it was cargo or military then I could understand. Will passengers accept just a virtual TV as a window inside or none at all. Most of the passengers in a blended wing will be far from a windows even if the current windows are small portholes (With Boeings Dreamliner changing only slightly that with composite shell strength). Has the drag testing not been done long time ago and even with Airbus. I recall a certain German plane maker of the late 40s doing a blended wing concept
Fundamental Aero Constraints: Maximize wingspan, minimize wetted area.... if BWB violates this guideline, it isn't a step forward.... Still not sure the shape pays for itself once you build a fatigue resistant pressure vessel.... (IMHO)
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Quick tip as an interviewer. Read the Question (silently), then repeat it while looking them in the face. This also helps with the tone. Another trick is to acknowledge their answer and connect it to the next question. don't hesitate to ask spontaneous clarifying questions about details or to animate them to go more in-depth. But you got the most important part right! let the expert talk. Practice makes perfect!
Too add, I think an excellent example of a technical interviewer (though different subject matter) is Andre from the youtube channel High Performance Academy. He is incredibly knowledgeable about the subject matter of his interviews so he does an excellent job of guiding the interviewee to elaborate on key aspects of their tech talk that they might otherwise gloss over. Might be worth a watch to help improve your (@ThinkFlight) interview skills.
@@thomaslax39 Excellent example, Andre is a great interviewer. I have laughed a few times when he has really had to lead the interviewee by the hand, digging the answers out.
So many interesting tidbits in this discussion. It never occurred to me that the tube and wing profile was so ideal because of its inherent ability to handle pressurization and depressurization because it's basically a large, thin wall aluminum propane tank with wings.
Also the issue with roll generating ~2G's because of the distance the passenger would be from the center of roll is interesting and I'm not sure I would've ever given it a second thought.
Cool Project and a CEO who appears to knows his stuff. All the best for getting it certified!
you can see the difference between this kind of CEO and, say, Elon Musk. Best of luck to him!
I thought his answers were very practical and forthright. It is a nice change when there is so much vaporware being pushed.
Aleksey’s excellent rule of thumb about always trying to get your data sets in threes (or at least odd numbers) summed up at 29:09 is pure gold -great life and work hack for young researchers and engineers. Thanks!
Fuel efficiency drives aircraft design, the wing and tube has been pushed as far as possible but can no longer deliver significant increases demanded by air carriers. I agree that BWB is the direction for air cargo aircraft where none of the difficult human engineering problems of exiting, pressurization and passenger G loads need to be considerd..
Lot of resistance to BWB and flying wing designs among pilots and the people signing off the checks for development though. They don't like things that don't look like how a plane is "supposed to" in their minds.
@@atomicskull6405 Yes, passengers and airlines have an aircraft design prejudice.
Fuel efficiency does not drive aircraft design on its own. There are many other factors that play an equally large role. For instance, payload capacity, manufacturing cost, and safety. That is definitely wrong as a general statement because many aircraft, such as fighter aircraft or any helicopter, move fuel efficiency even lower on the list of priorities.
@@Elrog3 The topic of discussion was commercial cargo planes.
@@olsonspeed Not keeping that specified is playing a bit looser with language than I personally like to, but fair enough. That's just a difference of preference.
Even within the topic of cargo planes, Manufacturing cost, speed, and payload capacity are at least as high on the list. Fuel efficiency doesn't explain why aluminum is the primary construction material for aircraft. Nor does it explain why we would transport cargo with a plane in the first place. If fuel efficiency is not directing us to make a plane, there must be some other factors that are. And they would be more directly responsible for the cargo planes existence.
Dude, what an informative video about blended wings, really eye opening! Makes me wanna make my own scaled down version of their craft.
The only thing is they got who came up with the blended wing and fuselage wrong. It was in fact Vincent Burnelli that came up with the idea and concept as well as patented it in the 50s I think. So this idea isn't new to some of us that do a bit of research on old aircraft design. Look up the Burnelli UB-14 this was from back in the mid 1930s
When designing airplanes you also have to take into account the ease of maintenance. The reason huge airliners/cargo have had the same design for decades is because the placement of the engine make it easy to maintain.
They've been suggesting this configuration for decades and no one has ever got beyond the windtunnel model. One of the reasons they've never made a passenger version is having windows in the leading edge. Another reason was the lack of windows for most of the passengers, access to a window is one of those things that passengers over the years have said they wanted and do the airlines haven't bothered to order blended wing aircraft in spite of the economic advances. If the airlines can't sell the seats they won't buy the aircraft.
As for freight sending by sea will always be the cheaper option.
This sounds like you haven’t watched the video
@@ArnaudMEURET yes I did. My comments are mainly about why we haven't gone down this route for passengers.
Although I am one those people who enjoys watching beautiful landscapes beneath, vast majority of the passengers , like over 80%, almost always pull the window shades down because either the sun is too bright or they prefer watching some boring family movie instead.
Never understood it.
So, those 80% of passengers couldn't care less weather or not they have a window seat.
seat-back screens - they can look outside that way!
Since a blended wing fuselage will be flatter, they could instead put windows on the floor. Digital windows are also an economic alternative using preexisting seat screens and installing external cameras for a 360 degree view.
Future utility considerations should include the possibility of combining passenger and freight transport by centralizing passengers within the longitudinal axis while relegating cargo to blended wing portions of the relatively unpressurized and more accelerated regions of the fuselage. In this way passenger proven tubular designs could be directly imported into the structure.
I was thinking almost the same thing. The pax could be a pressurized oval cross section tube. This would give the pax more space.
I've built three designs that are very similar to this throughout the years. The first one was a prototype that was stolen when my house got broken into. The second one got trashed when a roof collapsed in a shed or it had all of my RC electronics and the third one is sitting on my desk right now finally being finished in its form. Very similar to this design but there are some striking differences. This is a little bit more efficient of a design than mine but mine is being designed as an ultralight. The blended Wing design cuts the weight dramatically! Unfortunately adding the proper length to the wings puts me over weight so I may have to go experimental. Right now it's in it's RC phase for scale testing. I've been waiting to see blended wings hit the market for decades and always knew they were more efficient ever since we launched the first bomber in a Delta configuration. I hope this makes it to the air!
I've been waiting for the blended body for 25 years
The kerosene and talcum powder is such a brilliant way to cheaply visualise the flow of air.
I can't agree more!
You're a good human. Thanks for expanding my knowledge and keeping my attention. 🤗
The factor of G loading on a wide blended wing craft, makes perfect sense, yet i hadn't considered it.
Increasing how efficiently we transport current air traffic. Great! Suggesting we put cargo currently transported by sea into the air? Insane!
Great interview. Thanks to tye CEO that gave time to sit down and speak about the project.
Also great video as always! I'm a big fan of design innovation, although as an aerospace design engineer I fear that the real reason this hasn't caught on more is down to one word: motivation. Airlines have figured out how to operate a tube with wings on it, and aren't sufficiently motivated to change that perspective and totally renovate all airport gates in the pursuit of that last % flight hour efficiency. There is also the issue of massive change within a HIGHLY regulated industry, and the risk associated with that. Aircraft manufacturers and airlines would both need to have an appetite to accept that risk... and that's a tough pill to swallow.
Prove its safety whilst using freight for a few years.
I feel the manufacturing facility retooling would be where the bean counters put a stop to it.
I think your right they dont esny change they all set yhere and clip their greedy cuepons although they would think the passengers would be stuffed like sardines in a metal can! If they did the design with a little more work they could make into a elon starship!scramjent motor it should be along with rockets motor is the w0sy indeed. As piciard said make it so it so!. Kenneth parrott
It's not because of rebuilding every airport or because of needed new technology that we don't have things like the Boeing model 754 or Burnelli lifting fuselages.
Immediate cut in fuel burn by ~25%+.
The biggest reason has nothing to do with motivation, it's evacuation requirements. As an aerospace design engineer I'm sure you know that to certify a passenger aircraft you have to demonstrate that it can be evacuated from full within 90 seconds with only half your emergency exits available. That's hard enough when you have a 10 abreast widebody, now do it with something stupid like 30 or 40 abreast in a BWB.
@@HekateMGO
And freight and military users don't care.
The military's idea of seating is "Pack in there until you make your buddy smile". To evacuate it's "Stand up, hook up, shuffle to the door. Jump out and count to 4".
In any case, everyone who's looked at it, says that it's feasible, especially for a moderate-sized plane (~>200 passengers) to evacuate it on time. Boeing and McD, Lock-Mart, TsAGI and Russavia, Airbus, etc.
the first blended wings is started by Jack Northrop.
Pressurizing the cabin is an issue due to shape
No outside view
Harder to board
Slower to evacuate (less doors sideways)
Deicing/anti-icing is an issue
You forgot that the physical effects of banking will be much more severe to any passenger sitting in a BWB well away from the centerline.
@@Sacto1654 true!
C-A-R-G-O
How would the blended wing handling freight (loading & unloading pallets)? I assume from the front using a clam shell door system. How would the engine be accessed for maintenance? Hard to access engines and may require special ground equipment (special crane). Also, blended wing passenger planes would a harder time connecting to existing terminals
Really interesting blended wings are a great development that hopefully whose time has come. A little surprised that the wings are not more blended in. The change from the body to wing looks like it generates quite a strong disturbance.
The junction of the wing and the body (as you saw in the tunnel) can create some interesting flows which can end up being useful. There are other configuration issues not touched upon in the interview which leads to a BWB often have a fairly obvious wing junction.
Yet another beautiful 3D design that will never fly.
The aerodynamics of aircraft are perfectly well understood. The current challenges are in material sciences and manufacturing. When Airbus designed the largest aircraft ever to see the sky they didn't look for an alternative to the basic shape of an aircraft. Not because they weren't allowed to, what they were doing was already considered crazy, but because some of the best and brightest engineers in aviation couldn't see any benefit even close to overcoming the downsides.
Some simple examples:
The wingspan of the A380 is limited because of the Taxiway and Gate separation on the majority of airports. The infrastructure for un-/boarding and un-/loading had to be modified for the A380 leading to many airports not being able to service it.
For a design like a blended wing you can forget about using standard gates, meaning the thing needs to carry its own stairs and cargo handling equipment. There are decades worth of testing required to assess the long term viability of such a radical pressurized cabin.
And none of that even touches on the training requirements for every single person involved in running and maintaining such an aircraft. The manufacturing is also completely different. You can't construct these types of blended wing craft in pieces and assemble them only close to the end. They almost require a mostly single mold composite construction, which has never been done at this scale both in dimensions and production levels.
Remember the Airbus vs Qatar Airways crap? That was because they had a delamination in one of the top layers of their fuselage. That was on a simple surface bent in mostly one plain.
So, the answer to the implicit question this video failed to address: Why aren't there blended wing designs out there in the wild?
Because the manufacturing, maintenance and operation is prohibitively expensive, the benefits are marginal and the upfront investment would beggar most countries.
This is always true for designs out of the norm of infratructure. The japanese bullettrain was also considered madness and it needed completely new trails to operate, which was a MASSIVE investment no other country dared to pursue. But it's massive success revolutionized how people see trains. It basically connects the 3 main cities of japan by being nearly as fast as airplanes, while way easier to use for everyday life. And the japanese right now invest in a new magnetic train design again considered to be crazy. Time will tell if the project is realistic, but if succesfull, would practicaly merge the cities as how fast you can travwl between them.
This aircraft will see its debut probably in the US military, which us more willing to invest in better performance than commercial endevours.
@@DundG no, the bullet train was not crazy. The engineering was challenging but within existing technological means. The A380 falls into the same region.
But this thing is just a pipedream. Period. You can't just handwave the issues I mentioned in my post. They nearly stopped the A380, and they certainly will stop anything as nuts as this.
People are approaching the freight volume problem with a technology mindset (brand new aircraft configuration) when there’s a much more obvious solution that costs nothing.
Amazon packing is extremely oversized. It would be a simple matter to make each package slightly smaller. If you reduced the package dimensions by 20% in all 3 directions, the volume would decrease by *50%*. If you decrease the package dimensions by 37% in all three directions, the package volume would decrease by *75%*. Based on the Amazon packages I’ve received, a reduction of 37% in all directions is pretty easy.
How could the carriers force e-commerce retailers to reduce volume? Charge them by volume and tell them how to save volume and money, and watch the package sizes shrink over night and the shipping weight skyrocket.
underrated comment. I was thinking the same.
Not the first blended body/wing, and the did not materialize for passenger transportation due to a major issue : PRESSURISATION and structural integrity that goes with it. Nobody wants to repeat the failure of the COMET. Fatigue of such a complex shape is hard to simulate. Maybe cargo transportation is the good approach.
On my university did some research for airbus. And big issue is structural integrity. It has problem with oscillation on some frequencies.
May you expand please 😊
The questions felt stiff, but the interview was interesting and worth my time
The concept is not new. The trick is to design a structure to withstand the pressurized blended fuselage and keeping it light weight. There is a distinct advantage of the traditional round tube fuselage is the shape can withstand pressure very well. With the blended body, it is more difficult to design a light weight pressurize structure. It is a careful blend of compromises that aircraft designers are not used to in the last 80 years.
Everybody who's looked into it: NASA, TsAGI, Russavia, Airbus, Boeing & McD before them, Lock-Mart, say otherwise.
Lifting fuselage bodies offer less empty weight and construction cost, more internal volume, less wetted area and drag, improved L/D.
Burnelli was doing it in the 1920s and onward.
Many others built lifting body fuselages with fins that the media called a "flying wing" that had no problems with stability and yaw authority.
@@JFrazer4303 Okay. nobody said anything about stability. Blended body is not flying wing.
Blended wing aircraft definitely seem like the way to go, especially when taking into consideration that future jet fuels, such as hydrogen/ hydrogen derived green fuels or even batteries, will probably have lower volumetric energy density.
batteries LMAO.
For arrival and departure into freight airports, they could use the nautical pilot model, where a locally based and knowledgable pilot remotely operates the aircraft and interacts with other traffic and air traffic control. This is a reasonable way to proceed with freight aircraft going forward.
So for arrival and departure it can be remotely manned for integration.
I really look forward to seeing large flying prototype. The blended wing is an obvious direction for high volume air transport. After a successful cargo plane, there are many future variants that should rally support based on that record.. I can imagine combination airframes with a full pressure human cabin forward center, and cargo aside and behind. Seems like a good platform for modular solutions.
A blended wing body airplane's main advantage is by providing more internal volume than a typical tube and wing. It may have a slightly higher L/D, but this advantage is limited since the BWB's body is basically a short stubby wing and generates lift less efficiently than the actual slender wings. You get basically 2 practical advantages with this. You can carry more fluffy low density cargo like first class passengers, bicycles, internal airplanes, etc, or you can carry enough low density fluffy fuel like liquid hydrogen or methane. The second option is particularly interesting since besides being lower or zero carbon, lower density fuels also tend to have higher specific energies, meaning you can get significantly better range for a given fuel fraction.
Many designs are fit for heavier cargo, with less fuel burn onto shorter runways.
Bowing and McD before them, Lock-Mart, Airbus and TsAGI all say it improves L/D and payload & range.
I suggest to anyone to look up the Prandtl D stuff, that explains why birds don't need a vertical stabilizer
And Lippisch.
This guy hit it on all the issues with passenger BWB, best analysis yet.
The couch is the "Aviator Leather Couch" from Restoration Hardware. It was a cool collection, but only the matching chair is still available. Shame. The desk was especially sweet.
Great video. Natilus CEO seems to know his stuff. All the best for getting it certified.
It's about time, Great concept for freight.
I believe that based on all the types of technologies/devices, for optimal results, building hybrid technologies/devices is the answer.
I suspect Amazon would finance your vision as they are heavily investing in researching autonomous shipping with drones.
What are the STALL Characteristics of the Blended Wing Body compared to regular (Tube & Wing) aircraft, also straight Flying Wing Type aircraft.
The stall characteristics of a flying wing (and by extension and blended wing body) are generally a fairly benign actual stall, with a high risk of loss of lateral and pitch control due to airframe blanking of the vertical surfaces and elevators. This is one of the reasons why the vertical stabilisers of the Natilus aircraft have a relatively large span. To ensure they remain in effective airflow (as shown in the tunnel ) and, secondly, because of the reduced moment arm of the vertical stabiliser from the aircraft CoG (a stability issue). Masking of the elevators leads to a loss of pitch control meaning the aircraft cannot be pitched down to fully reattach the airflow. A loss of lateral control leads to a spin. Generally a blended wing body has a larger CofG range due to a longer central 'fuselage' section (a true flying wing not having any 'fuselage' ). Therefore, a BWB would have a 'safer' stall than a true flying wing (all other things being equal in the designs).
Could definitely be a game changer for aviation, especially in the air cargo industry. Potential problem for passenger use is going to be air sickness. Any roll motion will be felt a LOT more by passengers in the "outside" rows which I think was one of the things that has held back the idea of a flying wing passenger plane.
It wouldn't be more noticeable than the acceleration of rear row seats when current airliners pitch. It generally works out okay because airliners maneuver very gradually.
@Michigan Engineer, he addressed this directly 16:30 minutes in as the third and final factor that killed the BWB for passenger use. It was an issue I’d not heard of before, and @@appa609 to your good point, I’ve flown back row (and front row too) enough on long bodies to initially agree that it isn’t too bad an issue. But then I thought about the difference between a few dozen people in the last few rows feeling like they might toss their cookies, vs the last two or three seats in every row on both sides of the plane. Aleksey may well have a better point, and he’s clearly thought about it a lot more than us, since this changed the direction of his company towards cargo instead.
But it does make me wonder about running a pressurized tube down the middle of a BWB for passengers, with skylights instead of windows, and also putting lots of unpressurized cargo outboard in the wing roots. 😊
Apart from previous comment, it impressing what they have accomplished.
Personally, I have the same idea, by the same considerations, that BWB is the future in aviation.
It is: 1. Efficiency; BWB is more aerodynamically efficient, less energy in for se same work accomplished. 2. Volume; more volume with same energy and structural capacities.
At 22 months after this video was published, really wish that they are on schedule, and complete their assembly and immediately start testing of the aircraft next October.
Please receive my congratulations and best wishes for the success of their enterprise.
The blended-wing body airplane will primarily be a cargo carrier, not a passenger plane. Reason: on a normal passenger plane, whenever the plane banks, the effect on passengers will be minimal because they sit close to the plane's centerline; on a BWB, any attempt to bank will result in any passenger sitting away from the centerline of the plane to really feel the banking effects with serious potential for motion sickness. That is unless the airplane manufacturers can figure out a way to "turn" a BWB airplane with essentially no banking to minimize effect on passengers.
Red Bull racing has a wind tunnel.
I’m sure they would love to have someone use it as long as they have the money to do so.
I wish them well. Good interview!
There may be a future for this in all-cargo aircraft. But I don't see passengers wanting to fly in 20-seat across, windowless designs.
I totally agree with you.
This would give business class seating...for economy pricing.
Do you guys think of the entire craft as a wing ? ; such as the entire bottom of a boat does displace water ? If so what is the ratio of air being displaced on each section ? Are only minimal tiny wings actually required ?
Lifting body aircraft have been around for quite some time. But it's nice to see someone take another go at it.
Pradtl and Lippisch not mentioned?
We’ve heard about the coming of the blended body series of jet liners for decades. Does anyone know what’s changed now?
no change in physics, but hypothetically a startup can have a lower non-recurring (program startup) cost than a 'traditional' airplane company. Space X did it for example.
Are you serious?
17:30 Press x to doubt. The most common aerosol is butane, which has a vapor pressure of around 2 bars at room temperature. If you put the can in a vacuum, the pressure differential increases by 1 bar, the same amount of pressure rise you get from heating it by 10°C. I am calling bs.
If cargo freight size is the key to greater efficiency (as we have with container ships) then would not any large aircraft or even an "older" aircraft not offer that return. Plenty newer Jumbos being disposed off and same for A380s and then we have some of the larger older planes. Whats missing is innovative passenger jet to Freighter conversion shops that can cut fuel consumption and as critically for cargo shippers - emissions.
I don't see anything major revolutionary about the craft, yet there is many practical evolutions, that alone can make the craft feasible. The noise reduction is interesting, body size also trendy for cargo bulk.
This was a very interesting show and exciting for the future. Thanks.
Wow, Thank you man. Perfect!
As a man born in 1961, my early years were spent with a black Ma Bell rotary phone attached to the wall, the space program just finding its way, and DC3s flying people overhead everyday to the county airport up the road. I find it kind of strange that a different airplane shape would even get more than 15 minutes attention. I'm still waiting for the fusion power and the flying cars they assured us kids would be common by now.
Yes, you probably wrote that comment on a laptop or smart phone, right:)?
Point being, technology moves forward and one could also argue that it's hard to believe aviation got it right in the first few decades it existed whereas many other technologies didn't.
Actually, the more nuanced and correct answer would be that they actually did get it right - for high altitutude passenger use that is. But that for cargo, this shape seemingly has big advantages and is not held back by the issues that makes it a hard sell as a passenger plane.
Blended wings have been arround long before you were born sir... this in not the future this is the past of aviation.
@@raymondcasso7966 Sorry, just because something has been tried before doesn't mean it can't come back and prove itself;-). But maybe you didn't mean it like this.
Blended wing bodies could very well become an example of this - the technology wasn't there when it was first tried. Now, it is, especially for this specific use case (umanned cargo).
@@AntiVaganza the title is misleading and omitting lots of its history, the design actually comes from the u.s.s.r. but ehhhh. And this isn't the first company that has tried to make this commercial viable... all of them have gone bust! Oh what a wonderfull time the 50s were...
1. For fusion you have to wait next 50 years which you probably dont have. But if you can actually use fusion energy generator every day now. Its called Sun and it shows every day.
2. Flying cars already exist, but they are as dumb as mutifunctional tools. They can do different thing and they are really bad in every field. Not much usefull.
I love inovation. I think the biggest problem in the past has been designing these as passenger aircraft and most people wouldn't want to fly on these.
Blended wing lifting bodies began in the 50s/60s.
1918 Stout Batwing, Burnelli lifting fuselages +wing & tail since the 1920s.
Boeing model 754 of the '70s
Wildly informative! Thank you!
I'm excited to see where JetZero's blended wing goes.
This aviation technology was called a" lifting body" back in the early 1960's.
NACA morphed into NASA and called them DYNSAR's or some acronym like that.
They used a significantly modified version of that later for the Space Shuttle.
Going back, see Northrop's "Avion 1" X216-H.
Among the best of it's class in all criteria, and markedly faster than any others.
Also V.J.Burnelli making lifting fuselage body planes.
During the war, the Higgins-Bellanca 39-60 cargo plane, and a similar Boeing 360-362 bomber.
Several similar things from the Germans like some tailed Arado 555 versions and Arado 470. A few Horten/Messerschmitt versions with tails or tailfins like the Ho-18 B2.
More recently, early 2000s patents by Dizdarevic "Tailed Flying Wings", and the 2016 Lock-Mart hybrid wing-body logistics plane, and the "Frigate Ecojet": multiples of payload and range because they generate substantial lift from the fuselage.
The reason the McD blended wing body was never followed through, is because Boeing owns it, and refuses to build to any sort of lifting fuselage design. NASA had to get Cranfield to build the X-48 models because of the intransigent refusal of Boeing to carry it forward.
Aerospace is cowardly and if Boeing isn't doing it, no one else will.
I find it insanely funny how this has been a thing in hobbyspace since literally before 2015
Its been a staple for efficiency to space requirements :D
This sounds like a very sturdy operation, and the time for such planes is now indeed. In fact, Corona would have been their ideal launch circumstance. But given the normal process of development in the industry, I don't see any commercial deployment before 2030. By then the market will have changed, and probably be more ready to accept this new model. Remember how many sceptics there were for the Beluga design, but now nobody even thinks twice about its flying capabilities...
Great insightful documentary, well done! As for the question asking style, I've seen many valid comments. My first thought was that you were reading questions from viewers or members of your Discord server. I can imagine that you came up with some of the relevant questions only during the visit that occurred before the interview, so you probably didn't have time to prepare/rehearse. In such a case, I would shoot some B-roll of yourself and the interviewee, and fix it in editing with voice-over reading the exact same questions but with all the time in the world to rehearse and repeat until it's perfect :)) As for editing, there was a significant sound volume mismatch between the interview and the thank-you message afterwards.
Still this channel is turning into an amazing aviation r&d channel. I love your towed ekranoplane series, they're the best!!
Thank you for making this video!
I hope Nautilus can inform outsiders of their progress like Aptera.
Good luck to the nautilus team. Very promising.
I would seriously consider partnering with an engine company if possible to combine a new hybrid power train. A big expense and complication with traditional aircraft is control surfaces and their ancillaries. With twin electric ducted fans you have the possibility of 2 degrees of freedom gimballing. With the high reliability of electric motor this could be the primary directional control system. The ducts would also act as a control surface when not powered.
You would the have the flexibility of electric only for short haul or a big apu for long haul. All ground operation, take off and landing could be done with electric only for super quite operation. Maintenance of the apu could be done with it dropped out of the aircraft and another popped in.
Because the apu only has to supply enough power for cruising speed it can be smaller than would other wise would be needed in conventional power trains. The hybrid system would boost the plane to cruising altitude.
Another aspect of the gimballing ducted fan is very short take of ability. I think the military would be very interested.
They've recently announced partnering with P&W to use PT6 turboprops on the initial model
Excellent interview!! The guy sure knows his facts and is amazing speaker.
He is incredibly articulate and well spoken. A good omen of success.
For starters, blended wing bodies can really make air transport relevant again. Like a fresh start, with more efficient and less costly options for airfreight available to the various industries. And once it takes off, academia will automatically put more effort into more analysis and refinement of blended wing body aircraft, resulting in way more efficient and capable craft again. This should have happened in the 1940's, which would have made things much more interesting today. Fools in places of power, greed, and general silliness like lack of cooperation, have kept humanity behind so many times, across so many fields. I wonder if humans will ever get their act together.
you missed the big question - engines!
what type of engine are they going to use?
In modern times, it's engines that will make or break the program.
Blended wings has been around for decades. Look at the UK Vulcan bomber.
My biggest issues come from the remote control flying. There will be situations where wireless signals are lost. What happens then? Do you just program your planes to fly out to sea and ditch themselves? What if that signal loss was malicious rather than accidental? How secure are these connections to prevent someone hijacking a fleet of remote control cargo planes?
I don't think they can ever solve these issues to the satisfaction of the FAA.
Did you know the military flies unnamed drones every day? Did you know the FAA let the 737 max go out with a faulty stall response that crashed two brand new planes? The planes can fly their missions without any human intervention at all. And any airport they will fly from will have excellent network coverage. And as he stated in this interview, the FAA has already created a regulatory structure for such vehicles to operate.
Many comments mention previous barriers to blended wing aircraft. Would the turbofan industry have any concerns about adapting to this design?
very interesting..im an RCer ..built and flew wings for years...deffo think the main take here is using for cargo and not passengers
Fascinating, and best of luck to them! I'd have thought making them UAVs might be a bridge too far though?
The future of transport has been here for 200 years, it's called trains.
A problem with not pressurizing a cargo bay is packing materials give up their air at altitude and don’t get it back when you land. Packing peanuts turn to goo when this cycle is extreme.
I absolutely love your videos. Thank you.
Great down to earth stuff
If air has the physical property of "grabbing" stuff as stuff passes through it, would covering a plane in Teflon help negate the air "grabbing" effect?
Is there a light weight material a plane can be covered in that slides through the air and resists ice buildup?
This is inevitable but let’s face it, people are gonna be packed like sardines inside these cans….no windows just you and the other humans…a lot of them. Those of us that flew in tubes with windows are the lucky ones.
You have window to the world in your palms and in front of your seat and you are complaining about not having a window? Also, approx 30% have window seats today. 70% don’t.
Clever idea to start real BWB in the cargo section. Maybe it will get a usual sight on airfields and more accepted by the people that way. Pressure cabins and time to exit will be a challenge for passenger editions.
What an unexpected and insightful exploration into Blended Wing Bodies.The question at 26:52 and the discussion that followed on the "Rule of 3's" was most thought provoking.
FYI: The SpaceShuttle had 3 flight computers with 3 independent codes of software ... so one could always serve as a tiebreaker when the other two were in disagreement.
How did you both overlook the designs of "Vincent Burnelli" from the 1930's thru the 1970's which is totally missing from this video? Aircraft like the Burnelli CBY-3 Loadmaster, Burnelli General Airborne Transport XCG-16 (glider variant), and the Burnelli B1000 (1942). The McDonnell Douglas (now Boeing) Burnelli Blended Wing Wide Body of 1990s built on the designs and engineering of Burnelli was briefly mentioned.
Much of tube-style aircraft designs are related to manufacturing logistics, less about flight characteristics. Wings and fuselages often manufactured in different facilities, the transported to another location for final assemble. The fuselages of 737 (1:29) are assembled in Wichita, Kansas then transported by train thru tunnels, across bridges (etc) to Renton, Washington. Both Airbus and Boeing even have special oversized (volume) aircraft to fly wings and other components. example: Boeing 787 Dreamlifter just to move subassemblies.
Look forward to seeing more videos dive into the topic of Blended Wing Body style aircraft. Seems a natural fit here, as the "Worlds First Autonomous Ground Effect Vehicle" was a blended wing-body design. :)
I forgot about Burnelli, I have a lot on my mind these days :). However I don't remember any Burnelli designs offhand that integrated the 'blended' part. Will look it up.
Until they produce a flying prototype (not a scale model) I will remain hopeful but sceptical
awesome about time we stop flying in 1950 designs
cool stuff!! glad to be able to view this video!
Great report ! Probably dumb question to Natilus team : Going for BWB, what made you "stop" halfway i.e. chose to make a hard junction (shape wise) between the large badoy and the actual straight/almost traditionaly shaped wing ? What were the main design/functional constraint that led you to not blend the body and wing more (like with at least a smoother/longer transition zone) ?
Designing and specing the next big thing is the easy part. Manufacturing it will be a totally different problem all together as the tooling required to make it will have to be made, if they actually went all the way with this they would have to sell allot of aircraft to start to break even, then there's the maintenance aspect in that it would be a new air frame that ground crew and mechanics would have to be retrained on and allot of time in its first decade or two of deployment looking over for any fatigue points that might develop.
look up albion "bowers" and his prandlt wing design. he's a chief nasa scientist designing a flying wing which optimizes induced drag, with his students. you'll love it. wonder if these guys would consider using those design cues in the flying wing design and in the propeller design.
Introducing Modular wing extension for the existing plane structure should be way cheaper and faster to adapt to.. 🤔
Actually my father have seen something like this in 1944-1945 when he was a young boy he saw the Horten 9 flying wing in the air.
Excellent stuff bro
As a cargo pilot, let me tell you something. You could not pay me enough to go back to flying people.
Yeah the CEO is extremely out of touch.
The tested BWB concept appears optimized for kerosene fuel, but could also work for zero carbon emissions NH3 ammonia fuel, while LH2 hydrogen fuel will require more volume.
They are the logical progression and should be great, as long as the passenger experience is superior to current airliners. People like windows or a view and space to sit in.
I imagine if a great BWB airliner is introduced by Boeing or Airbus first, they wil have a huge sales advantage. I suppose a long range version is the first BWB needed. Not one for short regional flights.
The introduction of a BWB airliner can almost feel like the hydrogen car, which is only five years away and will remain so for the indefinite future...
No windows for what is a passenger jet. If it was cargo or military then I could understand. Will passengers accept just a virtual TV as a window inside or none at all. Most of the passengers in a blended wing will be far from a windows even if the current windows are small portholes (With Boeings Dreamliner changing only slightly that with composite shell strength). Has the drag testing not been done long time ago and even with Airbus. I recall a certain German plane maker of the late 40s doing a blended wing concept
How do you persuade custumers they don't windows? How do you get all the passangers out in 90 sceonds in a evacuation drill?
that shape has been floundering around for a long time. what they couldnt do was to figure out passenger space.
31:00 What is the current compute estimated with NVIDIA's latest hardware?
Fundamental Aero Constraints: Maximize wingspan, minimize wetted area.... if BWB violates this guideline, it isn't a step forward.... Still not sure the shape pays for itself once you build a fatigue resistant pressure vessel.... (IMHO)
23:54 Just tilt their seats back and slide them into escape-pods that seal them and fire them away from the aircraft.