20 PROFESSIONAL PILOT / May 2016

Air travel is about to change dramatically. This article draws on my experience as an aerospace engineer on Apollo, a US Air Force officer in Europe, my ten-

ure as a university professor in Washington DC, and as a futurist and forecaster. In this text, I will outline what I con-sider will be the most likely scenario for the next generation of aviation.

Examples and data given here come from research done by my company, TechCast Global, using one of the best fore-casting systems in the world. We use collective intelligence to integrate trends, background data, and life cycle analysis with the knowledge of 150 thought leaders from around the world to provide best possible answers to tough questions.

Advanced designs and construction

Design innovations are integrating the wing, cabin and engines to improve aerodynamics and reduce fuel consump-tion. An experimental design by Lockheed Martin builds the cockpit into the wing, burning up to 70% less. However, this aircraft is not likely to be available before 2035 (Aviation Week, Aug 18, 2015).

Engine and airframe manufacturers have begun using 3D printers, opening the way for new, more efficient aircraft. For example, Pratt & Whitney Canada is using 3D printing to produce engine parts. P&WC is also designing engines with fewer parts, which need less assembly and will be cheaper to make, as reported by MIT Tech Rev (Feb 6, 2015). Also General Electric and Monash University have built simple jet engines using 3D printing (Economist, Mar 7, 2015).

Autonomous aircraft

Unmanned aircraft that have been repackaged from mili-tary technologies, are now being used for inspection, aerial photography, surveillance, agricultural work, search and res-cue, weather tracking, mapping and surveying, and the ex-perimental delivery of goods and services—all at markedly

lower cost than manned aircraft can provide (Forbes, Apr 27, 2015). In 2010, the FAA estimated that there likely would be a total of 15,000 drones in the country by 2020, but that’s the number of drones being sold each month. Some think there could be a million drones worldwide soon (Economist, Sep 26, 2015). “My belief is that every home will have a drone,” says Parimal Kopardekar, NASA principal investiga-tor for UAV guidance.

With the growth of online commerce, local air delivery of goods and services is an appealing market, and many companies are actively developing UAV systems for pack-age delivery. Amazon is developing Prime Air Service, using 50-mph drones to deliver packages weighing less than 5 lbs directly to the customer. Google has also developed its own quadcopter drone for package drop. The major challenge now is to integrate UAVs with existing global airspace con-trol to ensure safety, privacy and security.

NextGen Air Traffic Control

FAA has launched the Next Generation Air Traffic Control initiative (NextGen) to move from radar to satellite-based navigation. This will enable closer aircraft separation, more direct routes, and substantial fuel savings. The installation of basic NextGen technology in US ATC centers was complet-ed in 2015. NextGen is estimated to cost $41 billion, but benefits should reach $131 billion on full implementation by 2020. Visit faa.gov/nextgen.

Small regional aircraft abound, and with advanced satel-lite-based avionics, smaller planes are being designed to use those local airports safely, relieving congestion and provid-ing a better match between starting point and destination. Global air travel grew from 1.1 trillion revenue passenger miles in 1989 to 3.7 trillion in 2014, while the average size of jetliners actually shrank despite decades of growth (Avia-tion Week, Aug 28, 2015).

To realize the value of NextGen, the global ATC infra-structure needs a complete overhaul. Switching to satellite guidance and enabling local aircraft connectivity is expen-sive and requires a lot of regulation and cooperation among stakeholders. Aircraft need more capable avionics to use the new system. The move to ADS-B Out is an example.

TECHCAST FORECAST

Next generation aircraftWilliam Halal Professor, George Washington University President, TechCast Global

Artist concept of a low-boom supersonic demonstrator for NASA.

X47-B US Navy drone touches down as it lands aboard aircraft carrier.

PROFESSIONAL PILOT / May 2016 21

Electric propulsion

Electric power storage and propulsion is able to provide qui-et, zero-pollution aircraft with distributed fans improving lift.

This historic breakthrough was first demonstrated when the carbon-fiber Solar Impulse 2 completed a 4500-mile flight from Japan to Hawaii. This aircraft had 17,000 solar cells built into the wing to feed 4 electric motors.

There are other 2 battery electric planes: The Airbus E-Fan and the tiny Duval Cri-Cri. Both have completed crossings of the English Channel (Gizmag, Jul 12, 2015).

Commercial applications for electric aircraft already exist. China’s RX1E 2-place electric plane costs about US$156,000 (South China Post, Dec 4, 2014). NASA demonstrated Scep-tor, an electric plane with 18 props on a “distributed electric propulsion wing” that increases lift up to 5 times (Aviation Week & Space Technology, Jan 27, 2016). The developmen-tal German E-Volo is a battery-powered helicopter that fea-tures 18 rotors for stability (Daily Mail, Jun 22, 2015).

Hypersonic flight

The French-British Concorde may be old hat now, but the prospect of hypersonic flight (speeds of Mach 5 up to 12) is alive and well as globalization drives increasing high-speed travel needs across the planet. The US, Germany, Russia, Australia, Japan and other nations are developing hyperson-ic planes.

This new generation of hypersonic plane designs incorpo-rates lightweight, highly reliable scramjet engines that suck in oxygen from the atmosphere to be burned with hydro-carbon fuel. Hypersonic aircraft could travel anywhere on earth in about 2 hours, although costs are expected to be about 3 times current ticket prices. The industry could em-ploy 500,000 people.

Hypersonic planes could be adapted to a wide variety of civilian and military missions, such as making express-mail roundtrips each day and serving as platforms for satellite launches. Formidable obstacles are slowing progress, in-cluding inadequate government support and an uncertain commercial market, but there seems to be a great need awaiting development.

Here are 6 key projects now underway:

1. Quiet Supersonic Transport (QSST). Lockheed Martin has designed its QSST to replace the Concorde. It is 100 times quieter than the Concorde and is able to fly at almost Mach 2 (Volt Report, June 2, 2015).

2. SR72. This 2-seat business plane, designed by Lockheed Martin, is able to fly Mach 6—enough to fly from New York to London in 1 hour. The plane combines a regular turbine engine for takeoff and landing with a scramjet supersonic combustion engine that “breathes” compressed air at high altitudes. Lockheed Martin is also developing the 80-seater N+2 (Guardian, Oct 11, 2015).

3. Concorde 2. Airbus has plans for a successor to the original Concorde. It will be capable of vertical takeoff and cruise speeds of Mach 4.5 (Guardian, Oct 11, 2015).

4. SonicStar. The SonicStar hypersonic airliner, a Hy-perMach Aerospace design, will cruise at Mach 3.5, fly-ing from New York to Paris in 2 hours and New York to SE Asia in 5 hours. Electromagnetic drag reduction will elimi-nate sonic booms while electrically-controlled bypass fans raise the engine design to 70% efficiency. The craft embod-ies high-tech features like delta supersonic laminar-flow wings, titanium structures, and carbon-composite skin. Visit http://hypermach.com.

5. Zero Emission Hyper Sonic Transport (ZEHST). The ZE-HST is a proposed hypersonic airliner that will fly beyond Mach 4. It will use a 3-tier propulsion system: Turbo jets run-ning on biofuel for takeoff and landing, hydrogen−oxygen rocket engines for climbing to altitude, and hydrogen ramjets for cruising. It could become operational as soon as 2020 or as late as 2050 (TechCrunch, Jun 2, 2015).

6. EU SABRE. It combines a jet turbine and rocket technol-ogy to fly 5 times the speed of sound or directly into Earth orbit. It is the latest in a series of SABRE technologies, includ-ing counter-rotating turbines used on SKYLON, a new type of reusable space vehicle intended to transport satellites and cargo into space. It takes off fuel and climbs to altitude on liq-uid hydrogen, and approximately above 28,000 ft, the engine shifts to stored liquid oxygen and becomes capable of Mach 25. Reaction Engines, the developer, now has BAE Systems as a partner, and major funding is reported to be coming from the British Government (Telegraph, Nov 29, 2015).

Growth in sales with aircraft that will be really new

Our interpretation of the collected data indicates that there will be growth in the aviation industry, with big gains coming in 1 or 2 decades. The worldwide general aviation (GA) fleet in 2014 was 362,000 planes, and 55% of them based in the US. (Aeroweb, Aug 9, 2015). According to the 2015 GAMA State of the Industry report, GA supports 1.1 million jobs in the US—that’s an economic output of $219 billion. Global bizjet sales are expected to reach $33 billion by 2020. And by 2033, an estimated 22,000 new planes are predicted to join the fleet with a value of nearly US$600 billion (Bombar-dier, 2014). For the period 2015 to 2034, a Boeing estimate says that 38,050 new large commercial aircraft should be delivered globally with a total value of $5.7 trillion.

Our experts at TechCast consider all this information, and more, to provide their best estimates. Collectively, the data suggest that NextGen GA turbine-powered aircraft are likely to reach the 15% adoption level and take off commercially during the 2020−2025 time period, eventually creating new economic demand of about $500 billion per year.

Airbus Group’s high-speed transport aircraft concept ZEHST.

William E Halal, PhD, has degrees from Purdue and UC Berkeley and is a pro-fessor at George Washington University, Washington DC. Halal leads the TechCast Project, and he cofounded the Institute for Knowledge & Innovation at George Washington University and Bangkok University in Thailand.