College Students Design Future Aircraft in NASA Competition

PRESS RELEASE Date Released: Tuesday, July 8, 2008 Source: Langley Research Center HAMPTON, Va. -- Sixty-one students from 14 colleges and universities around the globe have imagined what the next generation of airliners and cargo planes may look like. Fourteen teams and two individual students submitted their designs in the annual competition sponsored by NASA's Fundamental Aeronautics Program, part of the agency's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. The highest scoring graduate team was from Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Undergraduate team honors went to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va. The contest asked students to create a future subsonic transport aircraft that could carry up to 50,000 pounds, operate on runways between 1,500 and 3,000 feet long, and cruise at speeds between 595 and 625 mph - about the average speed of... [read full story]