NASA Funds Supersonic Bi-Directional Flying Wing

Looks interesting, but I dont get from the article how he wants to cancel out the bang by changing the flight direction. By rotating?
 
From AW's Things with Wings:

The star-shaped aircraft’s planform is symmetric about both the longitudinal and span axes. For supersonic flight, the aircraft will fly in a direction in which the planform has a low aspect ratio and a high sweep angle to minimize wave drag and sonic boom. For subsonic mode, the aircraft rotates through 90 deg in flight and utilizes a more conventional planform.
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The concept is powered by centrally-mounted twin turbofans which pivot around an axis point near the center of the aircraft. Details of the proposed transition phase from low to high-speed flight, and back again, are not discussed though the design team predicts low g-forces below one.
Click to expand...
NinjaSST2.JPG
 
The transition ought to be interesting - it looks as though the engines would have to be mounted on some sort of turntable, if they were to retain the same relation to each other in both supersonic and subsonic axes.


Whether the passengers (and crew!!) would like the idea of flying sideways is quite another matter. One pilot at least would have to be in each cockpit at the transition. If there's any truth in the adage "If it looks right, it will fly right", then this promises to be all sorts of wrong.
 
Isn't the pivoting 'star' shaped wing something Rockwell had a patent on? IIRC on their application one of the wings had much higher aspect ratio than the other, so that one would be used for low speed flight and the other at high speed where the low wing area and small aspect ratio had definite advantages in terms of gust resistance. I think it was meant for high-speed low-altitude flight.

At any rate, this concept does not hold water, there are worthier concepts to fund.
 
It's part of the Design For Chunks project.
 
Reaper said:
Looks interesting, but I dont get from the article how he wants to cancel out the bang by changing the flight direction. By rotating?
Click to expand...

I think this is being poorly reported--the real intent seems to be that the plane could fly efficiently at subsonic speeds over populated areas in one orientation and rotate to the other orientation for efficient supersonic flight over water. Quiet supersonic flight is probably also claimed, but it's secondary.
 
Nice video, Triton
the music is by Chris Corner for the French movie "Les Chevaliers du ciel" (English title: Sky Fighters) from 2005.
With take-off cockpit at the side during supersonic flight, it reminds me of the Millennium Falcon from Star Wars.
 

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