Faster, larger, quieter superplanes by 2025?

LONDON - US space agency NASA has unveiled three concept designs for quieter and more energy efficient superplanes that could be ready by 2025.

Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing came up with the designs and also won a contract from NASA to research, develop and test their concepts in 2011.

NASA is planning to develop a line of faster, larger, quieter superplanes which burn fuel more efficiently than their present counterparts, reports the Daily Mail.

Criteria set by NASA meant that each design had to fly up to 85 percent of the speed of sound, cover a range of about 7,000 miles and carry between 50,000 and 100,000 of payload; either cargo or passengers, according a NASA statement.

Now, each of the three companies will spend the rest of this year exploring, testing and simulating their designs in the hope that NASA will choose it for development.

A spokesman from technology and innovation website Fast Company told the Huffington Post: “Bearing in mind how many technical hitches the revolutionary Boeing 787 Dreamliner has suffered, these are the sorts of aircraft that these three firms are probably beginning to design for real right about now.”