Now that I have your attention, the concept of fuel efficient formation flight for airliners is one of four areas covered in the United Kingdom’s Institution of Mechanical Engineers recently released report on aviation that asks an interesting question—Aero 2075: Flying Into a Bright Future?
Focusing on its aerospace industry, the report leads with a warning that applies to us as well: “Research and development investment is at an historic low, and core capabilities, key facilities, and infrastructure are slowly eroding.”
During the next two decades, the report continues, the global airline industry is predicted to order more than 25,000 new aircraft “with a market value in excess of $3 trillion.” Who made this prediction is unknown, and orders and deliveries are two different things. Still, “with limited grown in Europe and North America predicted, it will be the rapid expansion of domestic routes in Asia and south America which will drive demand.”
Given the state of the global economy and human nature, I’m not so sanguine. Given the colliding realities of a population passing the 7 billion mark, the ever increasing disparity between the haves and have-nots, and their rates at which they are consuming natural and manmade resources, some will certainly be living in interesting times, others will be surviving.
But that’s not the really cool part of the report. For commercial aviation to survive and prosper through 2075, “Aerospace engineers must navigate a turbulent zone where technology and economics combine to compete with physics…[and ] produce ever more ingenious ideas for aircraft design and technology.”
In its crystal ball the institution looks at four areas: subsonic, supersonic, hypersonic, and the aforementioned formation flying.
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