Recently NASA wind tunnel testing has confirmed what many eccentric aircraft and aerospace engineers have been saying for decades. And that is blended wing body aircraft are as much as 30% more efficient due to lower co-efficients of drag. Some may think that the flying wing concept is something totally new and innovative yet in review we find drawings and prototypes that go back decades.

And well some really old stuff, dating way back to WWII and Jack Northrop. And if you really want to be tricky and call question to the efficiency of the flying wing and the earliest designs here is one, which will throw you for a loop; the Egyptians had pictures of what looked like flying winged aircraft on their walls.

So perhaps this idea is not so NEW really. Blended Wings have many concerns to. If you look at a boomerang, or watch a flat object fall it spins on the way down. And let us not forget buffeting issues with flying wings which can occur as well, especially flying in an atmosphere with micro bursts, thunder storms and near airports with lots of wake turbulence too.

Luckily we have learned so much from the flying wing days of the 50s and 60s and the present B-2 Bombers as well that we maybe able to really take that knowledge and do better now. For instance airliners, which are flying wings such as this mock up digitally enhanced picture of a flying wing airliner;

http://www.strangedangers.com/content/item/107063.html

A flying wing has many other neat aspects to it. That much wing sure plays well for eddy vortex lift and use. One would think that many who design these things are missing out on other cool possible aspects as well. For instance take thrust vectoring jets at just below the c.g. on top of the wings and put the aircraft into a high angle of attack 35-40 degrees and thus you have put the energy against the c.g. pushing it against the top of the wing rather than the thrust pushing it from the bottom of the wing as most designs show. You could have extremely short take off rolls and very efficient climb outs. The rates of climb would also significantly keep noise away from sensitive neighborhoods around airports.

Another issue is that people like to look out of the aircraft, so it might be wise for passenger aircraft where the passenger rode in the belly of the wing with now windows to play a Virtual or Augmented Reality on the cabin walls of the outside in giant screens, so the passengers would feel like you are sitting on the cloud and thus pleasing to the humans, as all humans seem to have a Closter phobic effect and combining that with air sickness would not be so good. Think on this.