Flying an F-16 fighter jet on a long reconnaissance mission is about as efficient as driving a Formula One racecar to the grocery store. Its swept wings have great maneuverability at high speeds, but to stay aloft for hours at a time, you’d be better off with a slower, straight-wing craft such as the U.S. Air Force’s unmanned reconnaissance vehicle Global Hawk. But what if you need to monitor vast tracts of land and respond at a moment’s notice to enemy activity?

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. 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.