Gallery: NASA's X-48B Hybrid-Wing Drone Soars on First Flight Tests

Good, now make a new shuttle.

Quite right!
And design the new shuttle like Burt Rutan's Spaceship One... carried by a (huge) mother-ship and reentering with a feathered wing.
(What a brilliant design)

Yeah all on Tax Payers money!

ok - and these new blended wings are more fuel efficient (generate more lift and less drag), and create less noise (because of the less drag). Another benefit of the blended/hybrid wing design is you can fit more passengers in a single plane - so fewer planes in the sky for the immediate future and a slower growth rate for the number of planes in the sky.
So, I don't mind the government spending my tax dollars on a project that will lead to not only cheaper, but greener and quieter air travel.

I think you ment... GOOD NOW MAKE A FEW NEW COMMERCIAL SHUTTLES FOR THE PEOPLE BY THE PEOPLE!!!!!!!!!!!
THE PRIVATE SECTOR CHARGING THE PEOPLE BUY THE PEOPLE WAY TOO MUCH!!!!

I WONDER... NOW THAT PEOPLE KNOW WHAT 1 OF THE NEW SHUTTLES LOOK LIKE, HOW MANY PASSENGERS WILL THEY FIT IN THAT QUAD SIZED JUMBO BOING ( 300, 500, 1000, 2K... POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS....)?! lET'S WEIGHT AND SEE!!!!

ALIEN NATION

HMMM... WAS THAT AN AIR CRAFT OR A space ship BY BOING?!!!!!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

ALIEN NATION

How about American Airline/US airways/ Continental get on their SPACE FRONTEIR....

ALIEN NATION

Excellent design indeed! Efficient and quiet. But something must be devised for passenger evacuation: imagine several lines of seats with multiple aisles full of people trying to reach the exit doors at the sides of such wide wide aircraft... it's something truly impossible. Tubular aircraft are more effective in this case. Probably for this reason Boeing discarded the idea of producing BWB aircrafts for civil use.

Hmmm, you folks do understand that this is a drone??? See pics # 2 and # 3 of slide show. I don't think it was built for carrying much other than some missiles and surveillance gear...

There are a lot of platforms being tested here. 1/3 scale is totally different from its full-scale purpose. Full-scale: a super-efficient, long-haul passenger transit system. Smaller?: A great high-altitude missile platform.

External aerodynamics has never really been a problem for the blended wing-body configuration; plans to build commercial aircraft this way date back at least to the British "Aerobus" concept of the late 1950s. The problem has always been to build an efficient pressure vessel in that shape - after all, these things have to be pressurized to carry passengers. That problem is now being worked on and may have a solution. This RPV should be regarded, then, as a proof-of-concept demonstrator rather than an experiment.

Marc de Piolenc
www.archivale.com

The seeker of knowledge who seeks to reach beyond the stars to go where no mans gone before to see things no man has seen and bring these experiences back for the whole world to hear and see.

This is sad not to dog this or those who worked so hard in it's conception but this is a pure waste of nasa's money and they should try spending that money on the designe of the shuttle to be not this.we know these are possible our black bird is built in some respects the same way but i do hop they stop wasting all this money and aim more for the stars not this .

Hi folks,
I dont know where they are flying this bat wing flying machine but I bet there will be a lot of UFO reports.
I prefer the slower side of aviation, with good old airships that burn less fuel per hour. See www.airshipblimp.com and comedy site; www.airship.me
Regards JB