Check Out the New Far-Out Fliers of NASA's Famed X-Plane Program

(airplane engine whirring)

[Narrator] For nearly 70 years experimental planes

have been developed and flown here in the Mojave Desert.

From the first sonic boom in the X-1

to tomorrow's ultra efficient, ultra fast aircraft,

NASA's developing the future of air travel

one X plane at a time.

Sometimes they do look a bit odd,

but the far out designs and ideas developed here

have led to some of the biggest

advances in modern aeronautics.

The X-57 is our newest X plane.

It's a flight demonstrator for electric propulsion

technologies, so we're using battery power

and electric motors to fly our new experimental airplane.

[Narrator] It's an all electric powered airplane.

Or, it will be once it's fully built.

It has to be one of the most bizarre looking planes

you will ever see in the skies,

with the propellers all the way along the wings.

But, of course it's not actually in the skies yet.

So the way the pilots are testing it now

and putting it through its paces,

and extreme scenarios is in this simulator.

The first thing you'll notice when you see our airplane

is the distributed electric propulsion technology, or DEP.

We actually have 12 small motors spread out

along the leading edge of our wing.

[Narrator] The electric motors will help keep the plane

aloft at low speeds by increasing the smaller wings lift,

as these fixed tests helped prove.

We expect to demonstrate with this aircraft

that we can use five times less energy at high speed

cruise flight than we normally do for traditional aircraft.

[Narrator] And that takes some serious gear,

and we got a peek at some of the planes hacked controls.

We basically had to come up with a system

for informing the pilot basically that the same

things that he's used to flying,

in terms of throttle, control, and thrust.

This is actually used in race cars, a digital display

that we've adapted to help inform the pilot basically

the various throttle settings that come--

I'm hoping that in this case

green lights mean good. (laughing)

[Narrator] The X-57, like many of its predecessors

may spell big changes in aeronautics.

And as this technology makes it into the private sector,

it's gonna revolutionize the way the public uses aircraft.

[Narrator] The X plane program doesn't stop here.

This experimental design which will get next designation

of it's own if its approved, might lead

to incredibly fast and quiet trips across the country.

This is a low boom flight demonstrator.

The ability to fly from New York to LA in two

and a half hours, we think will become a reality here.

[Narrator] Now that's Concord speed.

But Concord was only allowed

to go supersonic over the ocean,

because it's sonic boom was, well, a loud boom.

(booming)

This new design is meant to begin a new era

of quieter supersonic transcontinental flight.

The intention is to build a vehicle that's about a hundred

feet long, and this has some very unique features.

If you look at the way the angles come into the fuselage

and the way that the tail is configured,

and the way that the front end if configured.

I mean it's stunning, the nose just goes on forever.

It's stunning. The reason why it's designed

the way it is, is so that the pressure waves

coming off of this vehicle will be minimal,

and by the time they reach the ground

will have a really low pressure wave

which creates a low sonic boom.

[Narrator] NASA says a demonstrator based on this design

might take off as early as 2020,

and then just a few years after that its possible

that passengers could travel

at mach 1.4 across the country.

Just imagine only one in flight movie, before touchdown.