NASA: more money into sustainable flight

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) plans to spend more money on development of sustainable flight. NASA plans for a budget of nearly $1 billion for aeronautics and sustainable flight research for 2024.

An increase in requests for funding to develop sustainable flight research is the reason behind a 6.5% increase in the proposed budget for fiscal year 2024. The Sustainable Flight National Partnership program is the main reason for the planned increase of the aeronautics research budget.

SimpleFlying reports that this program focuses on developing new sustainable aviation technologies. Earlier this year, NASA awarded $425 million over seven years to Boeing to collaborate on the agency’s Sustainable Flight Demonstrator (SFD) project.

One of the projects NASA and Boeing will collaborate on is a full-scale Transonic Truss-Braced Wing (TTBW) demonstrator aircraft. The Transonic Truss-Braced Wing concept involves an aircraft featuring extra-long, thin wings stabilized by diagonal struts, which would render the plane much more fuel-efficient, about 30%, compared to today's single-aisle jetliners. NASA believes that the technology used in the demonstrator will shape the next-generation narrowbody aircraft.