Новости компании Boeing

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Еврокомиссия планирует ввести тарифы в отношении импорта компании Боинг в Европу если торговые споры с США не будут урегулированы.

ATHENS and WASHINGTON—The European Commission plans to impose tariffs on Boeing imports into the European Union (EU), should the trade dispute with the U.S. not be settled.

EU Set To Impose Tariffs On Boeing Imports | Aviation Week Network

The European Commission plans to impose tariffs on Boeing imports into the European Union, should the trade dispute with the U.S. not be settled.
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G8000 сказал(а):
Разработку Х-66 поставили на паузу. А жаль

www.nasa.gov

NASA, Boeing, Consider New Thin-Wing Aircraft Research Focus

NASA and Boeing are currently evaluating an updated approach to the agency’s Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project that would focus on demonstrating thin-wing technology with broad applications for multiple aircraft configurations.
www.nasa.gov www.nasa.gov

theaircurrent.com

Boeing shelves plans to fly NASA’s X-66 flight demonstrator

Boeing will “pause” development of its X-66 Sustainable Flight Demonstrator this summer, shelving what was once considered its most promising technology development effort for advancing aerodynamic efficiency.
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X FACTOR​

> BOEING PUTS NASA X-66 ON ICE AMID THIN-WING RETHINK > FOCUS SHIFTS TO THIN-WING GROUND-TEST RIGS > AGENCY’S X-PLANE SERIES FACES DELAYS AND UNCERTAINTY​

Guy Norris
May 5б 2025
X FACTOR
AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING
> BOEING PUTS NASA X-66 ON ICE AMID THIN-WING RETHINK > FOCUS SHIFTS TO THIN-WING GROUND-TEST RIGS > AGENCY’S X-PLANE SERIES FACES DELAYS AND UNCERTAINTY
Guy Norris
Colorado Springs
Boeing’s unilateral move to put the brakes on its X-66 Sustainable Flight Demonstrator for NASA raises more questions than answers about both the company’s future aircraft development plans and the agency’s troubled X-plane series.
Until Boeing announced on April 24 that it would put the X-66 on ice—and refocus on alternative plans to perfect the thin-wing technology at the center of the project—many assumed the aircraft could form the design basis for a sustainable single-aisle replacement for the 737 in the 2030s.
The X-66, previously expected to fly in 2028, was to become NASA’s largest X-plane, the latest in a long line of famously pioneering aerodynamic designs that have helped maintain U.S. leadership in aerospace since the 1950s.
Now it seems unlikely that the X-66, a heavily modified McDonnell Douglas MD-90 with a high-mounted truss-braced thin wing, will make it into flight. For NASA, which sees the X-66 as its flagship effort to push for net-zero aviation emissions under the Sustainable Flight National Partnership (SFNP), the program’s redirection adds extra uncertainty to its already faltering X-plane plans.
The X-66 is the newest and arguably most ambitious X-plane project in scale since NASA committed to a reinvigorated program of piloted experimental aircraft in 2016 under its New Aviation Horizons initiative. However, the unforeseen pause to the X-66 is the latest in a series of high-profile setbacks to the agency’s plans. NASA’s late-running X-57 experimental electric aircraft was terminated in 2023 on safety grounds, and its yet-to-fly X-59 low-boom supersonic demonstrator with Lockheed Martin is four years behind schedule.
Given the nearer-term commercial possibilities of the transonic trussbraced wing (TTBW) concept, NASA had hoped to safeguard the project by crafting it differently from previous X-planes. The X-66 was launched in January 2023 through a funded Space Act Agreement with Boeing stipulating that the agency provide $425 million through milestone payments while the airframer and its industry partners would contribute $725 million. Boeing is responsible for further costs on its side of the agreement.
How this arrangement may change, if at all, is unknown. “NASA and Boeing are currently evaluating an updated approach to the agency’s Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project that would focus on thin-wing technology with broad applications for multiple aircraft configurations,” the agency said in a press release, adding that “under this proposal, all aspects of the X-66 flight demonstrator’s design, as well as hardware acquired or modified for it, would be retained while the long, thin-wing technology is being investigated with more focus.”
NASA, which has worked with Boeing on preliminary concepts of the TTBW since 2008, said the two would “continue to collaborate on research into the transonic truss-braced wing concept. The proposal is based on knowledge gained through research conducted under the Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project so far.”
Beyond renegotiating a revised deal, there is growing concern that after program delays, cancellations and indefinite suspension of the X-66, NASA’s longer-term commitment to X-plane projects may be wavering, particularly under current budgetary scrutiny. Former NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin tells Aviation Week that the threat to the X-66 program could be “the beginning of the end.”
NASA's X-Plane Stumbles
X-57
CANCELED
Launched in 2016 to demonstrate distributed electric propulsion, NASA’s X-57 Maxwell was canceled in 2023 before it ever flew because of safety issues with the electric motors.
X-66
PAUSED
Boeing was awarded a $425 million contract in January 2023 to build NASA’s X-66 Sustainable Flight Demonstrator, but has paused work on the transonic truss-bracedwing testbed.
X-59
DELAYED
Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works began designing the X-59 Quesst in 2016, but NASA’s low-boom supersonic flight demonstrator has yet to fly because of assembly and testing delays.

“The whole issue about an X-plane is you can’t write a report with curves and charts—you either show you’ve got the right stuff or you don’t,” Goldin says. “The minute we stop doing that, and we look to start saving money, and we look to make some research advantages, we are going to be out of business.” Under Goldin’s tenure from 1992 to 2001, the agency launched the Hyper-X program, which led to the development of the record-breaking hypersonic X-43A.

“I’m concerned,” he says. “Are they going to cancel the supersonic X-plane? I don’t know, but from my standpoint, we are not doing enough with X-planes. If you go back into America’s great aviation history, they knocked it out of the park for decades. So I think we’re getting overly conscious about budgets. America has to screw up the courage to do more X-planes.

“They need to do it in a relatively short period of time, for a relatively small amount of money, for an achievable goal,” Goldin continues. “You can’t run into the laboratory and hope by doing independent research on a dozen things that you’re going to ultimately get to build something. It’s scary when you take an X-plane on because you’re committing from Day 1 of the program that you’re going to perform. And that’s what America is about—not hiding in the laboratory.”

Further out, turmoil over the X-66 could spill over into NASA’s long-term plans to go beyond the research goals of SFNP. Under the recently launched Advanced Aircraft Concepts for Environmental Sustainability 2050 project, teams from industry and academia are studying wide-ranging technologies for full-life-cycle sustainable aviation—some of which would ideally evolve into X-planes.

NASA’s other plans under SFNP remain unaffected by the X-66 pause. These include demonstrations of a high-power hybrid-electric propulsion system for large transport aircraft, tests of composites structures capable of being produced at 4-6 times the rate possible with current technology and small-core turbine engines with high thermal efficiency.

Continuing to invest in X-planes is just as vital to the U.S. economy as it is to the country’s lead in aerospace, stresses Clay Mowry, CEO of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics—an organization that traces its roots to Reaction Motors, the engine-maker for the first X-plane, the Bell X-l.

“Aerospace is the largest exporter in America in terms of dollar figure and certainly leads that effort,” Mowry says. “To maintain that position and that leadership, you have to invest in technology, which means building more efficient aircraft and being at the front end on the technology side. It’s important that NASA continues to get funding to focus on building more efficient, more competitive aircraft over time. So I hope this is not a trend. I think we’ve seen great results from the X-plane program over time.”

From Boeing’s perspective, the move to put the X-66 on ice is part of a pragmatic program revision—one that seeks not only to redirect valuable engineering resources to Seattle in the short term to help get the critically delayed 737 MAX and 777-9 certification over the line but also to avoid a premature commitment to a thin-wing configuration that may not work out in the long term.

Despite its rethink on the X-66, Boeing remains confident in the benefits of thin-wing technology for potential application to its next-generation single-aisle studies. The airframer also says any moves to alter its X-66 plan will not materially affect the overall timing of a new next-generation single-aisle project in the 2030s.

“We’ve done extensive additional wind tunnel testing that confirmed the aerodynamic benefits of the thin wing,” Boeing Chief Technology Officer Todd Citron says. The key benefit of the high-aspect-ratio thin wing is reduced lift-induced drag, while its lower thickness ratio decreases profile and transonic drag. Combined with advanced propulsion systems, Boeing believes a thin-wing next-generation airliner could be at least 30% more fuel-efficient than current single-aisle models.

In the buildup to developing the X-66 wing, much of it conducted by Boeing subsidiary Aurora Flight Sciences, the work on systems, structures and fabrication has “really confirmed the value of thin wings, be it with a truss or without,” Citron says. “The thin-wing technology is clearly a benefit, and there are also, of course, challenges with that. So based on that learning, we want to work together with NASA to focus the project going forward on that thin wing and thin-wing technology.

“Our intent is to build a thin-wing manufacturing demonstrator together with a flight controls rig to really mature those technologies for those future generations of commercial aircraft,” Citron says, adding that the effort will “be used for a continuing pipeline of technologies to advance the capabilities of our wings. Our learning today is pointing us to doing even more on the wing itself and focusing our activity there.”

The message is clear: Thin wings remain one of the few areas of opportunity for substantial aerodynamic improvement, and Boeing is equally interested in studying the concept for application on a more conventional cantilevered, low-mounted wing configuration as it is in truss-braced designs.

Work on the X-66 at Boeing’s facility in Palmdale, California, is set to wind down over the next few months. “Working together with NASA, we will take the flight demonstrator through milestones into the summer time frame and complete those and put that activity on pause,” Citron says. Under the original Boeing-NASA schedule, this will take the program up to the Anal stage before preliminary design review.

“We’re going to continue to assess the performance benefits of the trussbased configuration, and as we get results from that, we would decide what to do going forward from a flight demonstrator,” Citron says. “In parallel with that, we would then develop this manufacturing demonstrator and stand up the flight controls rig.”

The X-66 project was in the first few phases of a 23-step modification, rebuild and completion process but will now be mothballed, pending a future decision to restart or scrap it. “At this point, we don’t have a specific date in mind,” Citron says. “We want to make it data-driven.”

While negotiations continue between Boeing and NASA, it is unclear how the agency’s X-66 research plans will be adapted or altered in scope. NASA has made the X-66A its focus on a long to-do list of key aeronautics investigations, ranging from propulsion and wing-fuselage integration to new structures work and aeroelasticity studies. NASA sought to validate design tools, models and static loads methods on the X-plane project as well as potentially conduct internal load modeling and new structure concepts—for instance, on the joints between the truss, wing and fuselage.

Boeing’s move to reshape its thinwing research also comes as Airbus continues studies of advanced highaspect-ratio wings through its eXtra performance Wing (X-Wing) demonstration and Wing of Tomorrow programs. Besides the morphing X-Wing aircraft, which is due to fly in 2026, Airbus is evaluating a strut-braced concept under the Ultra-Performance Wing (UPWing) initiative, supported by the European Clean Aviation research program. French aerospace research agency ONERA, meanwhile, is leading the €15.3 million ($16.6 million) Advanced Wing Maturation and Integration effort, which includes studies of cantilevered and strut-supported thin wings.
 
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Катар планирует подарить Дональду Трампу самолёт Boeing 747-8 за $400 млн, который будет использоваться как президентский борт №1, пишет ABC News. После истечения срока президентства борт отдадут из госсобственности в собственность библиотеки Трампа. Это может стать самым дорогим подарком американскому президенту в истории. @banksta
 
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