Aeronautical innovation specialist Aurora Flight Sciences has meetings scheduled meetings next week with NASA on its D8 “ultra-efficient commercial aircraft” project. Started in 2008, the project is a joint effort of Aurora, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Pratt & Whitney, sponsored by NASA’s N+3 program.

With a tagline of “2045 performance available 2025,” the D8 concept has “rethought and reconfigured every aspect of the air vehicle to maximize efficiency, minimize operating cost and improve the passenger experience.” The team identified aircraft configuration as the key ingredient to achieving its goals.

As a result, the D8 is an odd-looking airplane, by today’s standards. The design engineers viewed the new “air vehicle” as a single integrated system, rather than “an assembly of individual parts.” Compared with a single-aisle Boeing 737-800, the D8 is projected to burn 71 percent less fuel, have a noise footprint 60 EPNdB lower; and emit 87 percent less LTO NOx pollutant.

Part of the efficiency comes from the increased lift generated by the two-tube “double-bubble” fuselage, allowing smaller wings with less drag. The wider fuselage also enables two aisles, hastening boarding and deplaning for passengers. Engines integrated in the aft fuselage lower the thrust requirements (cruise speed targets remain the same as those for current airliners—around Mach 0.80) due to added efficiency in boundary layer ingestion (BLI), according to Aurora.

To date, the benefits have been verified by computer analytics and supported by wind-tunnel test data. The next step, said Aurora, is to build a proof-of-concept demonstrator for flight testing under real-world conditions.