The New Air Fares

摘要

Aviation experts are brewing an aggressive plan to create a new generation of small planes that would be guided by a computerized flight control network and provide inexpensive air taxi service among the nation's more than 5,000 rural and suburban airports (see "Taxi! Taxi!" page 72). These planes would have to be cheaper, possess simpler avionics, and fly faster than comparable aircraft available today. Eager to jump-start these revolutionary designs, NASA's Langley Research Center held a student competition. Shown here are the first- and second-place winners in the Technology Innovation category. Each design was accompanied by detailed aerodynamic, propulsion, stress factor, and structural studies, and a cost-benefit analysis.