NASA ponders next-gen passenger planes

NASA this week announced the results of its Fundamental Aeronautics Program, which aims to cook up the next generation of passenger planes. These planes take green concepts, energy efficiency and other goals and wrap them into realistic designs.

Indeed, Smart Planet's Deb Gage examined how the NASA-MIT ‘greener’ airplane could use 70 percent less fuel (NASA statement).

Here's a look at a few of the more notable concepts. You can find the full gallery of NASA's next-gen plane entries on ZDNet.

Boeing's Subsonic Ultra Green Aircraft Research (SUGAR) cooked up this design, the Volt.

MIT came up with the D8.

And Lockheed Martin went for some flare.

This post was originally published on Smartplanet.com