Pricing/Availability?

What do you plan to buy one?

I assume that the larger scale one will use more proportionally sized landing gear?

@FIEROCK
Fer shizzle. The dry lake bed at Edwards, while nice and smooth for anything aproaching real aircraft-sized wheels, would be uber bumpy and crashy to wheels scaled for this craft.

@homerjay: Never mind that. More important question: How will Chen fit this in his pants?

Gizmodo enhanced? what's that suppoed to mean?

I'd love to fly this. Drunk. Thank God it's NASA--they're totally cool with that!

@Ray Wert: Even more important than that is.. WILL IT BLEND??

Great to hear that they are still working on this... I heard that they dropped this project long time ago, because potential passengers had such negative reaction to sitting in a giant room with no windows. Also, placement of emergency exits are very problematic.

But now that Boeing has going with 787 and the whole efficent airliner pitch, a blended-wing shape work nicely into that.

I don't know if we'll ever get to ride in one of these... public draws such a comfort from the traditional airline shape... long tapered aluminium can with wings attached... and people are so resistant to change when it comes to aviation... we are still flying in planes of roughly same shape and speed as we did 50 years ago.

Most likely, if they actually build these X-48Bs, it's be as a replacement for the Stratotanker, or a Globemaster for the airforce.

This kinda reminds me of that old lifting body project, where they made the fuselage itself generate lift.

@danson: What do you mean people are resistant? Like everyone else I go online, buy the cheapest flight, then bend over and take it for the hellish duration of the flight itself. The shape of the plane makes no difference to the misery. It might be nicer to walk around a wider plane.

Boeing developed this, but didn't build. "Cranfield Aerospace, Ltd., in the United Kingdom built the two X-48B prototypes for Phantom Works."

@Danson
I think the concern for commercial transport is lack of windows rather than interior shape. Boeing would like to build this for commercial carriers, as it's supposedly a more efficient design.

saying people wouldnt get used to it is dumb... the fact is a plane like this could have rooms instead of just seats, the utimate luxury flight, and considering how much better the lift is with these planes is, it'll be that much safer cvonsidering its basically a giant flight

I love these planes and i think its about time we got "the nextgen airliner" ya the concord was fast, but people want luxury over speed.

"I think the concern for commercial transport is lack of windows rather than interior shape"

Uh, why ? As far as 10 out of every 12 people on most 747 flights (ie those people who don't have window seats) are concerned, conventional planes don't have windows either. Just make the floor out of glass (or at least clear carbon fiber)...that'll show'em. Literally.

As far as having more room to move around...I doubt it. If the plane can generate more lift on less fuel that means they can cram even more paying customers into cattle class.

Exec1: "Hmm, should we increase passenger comfort in economy class or increase our profits ?".

Exec2: "WTF do we care about passenger comfort in economy ? WE travel in 1st class every time, gratis. HIGHER! FARTHER! MORE MONEY!!!!"

But it would be nice if they could use SOME of the extra space for 1 - 2 more bathroom units and another isle to split the center column, so you sit 3-2-2-3 or 2-3-3-2 instead of 3-4-3. It would be safer, more comfortable and would accelerate food service, boarding and disembarking. Particularly 2-3-3-2. The flight attendants would never have to reach across two seats...though I suppose they might have to do a bit more walking...

I remember seeing old post WWII newsreels depicting what it would be like when 'flying wing' type aircraft became the norm for passenger flights. It looked pretty freakin' sweet. Of course, everyone knew it would never happen since cars would be flying by the 80's...

If Boeing didn't have plans to deploy a BWB aircraft before, they certainly do now. First of all, Boeing's new composite technologies have made the design even more feasable than ever. The design is superior to the wing-and-tube approach in pretty much every way, and its runway requirements are much less restrictive.

Second, it's the perfect answer to the A380. If Boeing offers the BWB, they will have the 787, to which Airbus has no answer (the A350 project went down in flames, and nearly took the A380 with it) and the BWB, which offers identical capacity to the A380, with 30% lower operating costs.

I'd say it's pretty much go for flight.

During the JSF competition between Lockheed-Martin and Boeing, there were rumors(?) that, aside from questions about the X32 vertical flight system, some of the joint chiefs thought the x35 just "looked" more like a jet fighter should. L-M got the contract with, basically, a revamped version of the F22 (Raptor) over Boeing whose fighter, while definitely looking a lot like a hummingbird, truly exhibited the spirit of the competition with innovations in the delta wing, etc. Don't under estimate the human aesthetic paradigm. Not that it won't EVER catch on, but it will take a bit of a risk for the first large carrier to make the commitment of adding them to a fleet. And with out a promise of big sales, will Boeing be willing to dedicate the overhead (assembly line) necessary to make it profitable?

It took rising fuel costs and NASA to get designers and builders to add winglets...and even THAT didn't happen until the late 80's, early 90's...now they're everywhere.

unboxing video or didnt happen.

i would argue that the Predator is a funner rc and video game.

Seriously, WTF is up with the "Gizmodo enhanced" tag?

What is this crap:

"Check the sexy gallery and jump for more details about the BWB."

So we're supposed to jump? How high?

7000 feet high

@Sketchguy:

Here's how our watermarking policy works:

- When we spend any significant time enhancing a photo to make it look clearer and better (sometimes the original photos are blurry, have bad histograms, look flat, too dark, too bright, etc.) we put a Gizmodo Enhanced watermark so other sites don't use our work without crediting us (like they often do).

Click on this Gizmodo post so you can see the before and after:

[gizmodo.com]

Compare the main photo in that post with the same photo in the gallery (2nd photo on 2nd row) and notice the dramatic differences.

- When it's an exclusive picture, we only put "Gizmodo" as the watermark. These includes pictures sent to us directly by tipsters, our own photographs of products and cartoons/photoshop work.

- When it's a picture available from the original source and we don't retouch it, we don't put any watermark on them. These are most of our pictures and it is obvious why we don't watermark them: they are not our work. However it's important to highlight this poing because other blogs put their watermark even if they are not exclusive or enhanced, making the public believe it's their direct reporting while it's not.

- When a picture from other people have its own watermark from other sites, we ALWAYS leave whatever watermark there is on the image. Again, unlike other sites that sometimes get rid of the other site watermark.

Hope this helps. And thanks for reading.

A BWB is likely to be used for cargo operations or as a refueller first. The "lack of enough windows" point is a big issue and was something I covered when I did a BWB for a university aerospace design project. Depending on the size of the aircraft, you could be sitting in a row with 20 passengers. That would never sell. And there may well be regulatory implications (evacuation rules...). Proof of this issue is the B787 vs. A350 contest.... Boeing and Airbus are pointing to bigger windows on these aircraft as part of their enhanced amenities. Given the flight time of ultra long haul flights I think windows will continue to remain a big issue.

@diamondbkr: You're right. The biggest thing that made the joint chiefs choose the F-35 over the boeing version was teh fact that Lockheed had a working prototype that could take off vertically, stop and hover while Boeing just could take off in like 200 feet or something. Anyway, the F-35 definitely won because of quality, but there was talk among the Joint Chiefs that the F-35 also looked sexier. Source: NOVA, gotta love that show.