Could short-range commuter flights to small communities lacking air service be the application that makes commercial hybrid-electric aircraft a reality?

Volocopter family plan could see initial urban operations by 2020, with four-seater air taxi operations starting as early as 2022.

On one side Amazon, Google, Uber; and the other FedEx, UPS, DHL—are all looking hard at the potential for autonomous and electric aircraft to bring new ways of transporting goods and people.

Business jet demand was once linked to a wide array of economic indicators, especially equities markets and corporate profits. Since 2008, these links have broken down.

Aurora Flight Sciences plans ground tests and flight demonstrations to prove the efficiency improvements promised by MIT’s unconventional “double-bubble” D8 twin-aisle short-/medium-range airliner concept.

While everything still hinges on the precooler technology of Reaction Engines’ Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE), the Air Force Research Laboratory sees huge potential for the propulsion concept

AeroVironment developed its Blackwing small unmanned aircraft system to provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for submerged submarines. Now the company has demonstrated how its UAS can act as a digital communications relay, enabling the sub to control a swarm of unmanned underwater vehicles.

Over the past 60 years, NASA has been involved in several X-plane programs that have demonstrated technologies that changed the way aircraft are designed. We take a look at NASA’s X-planes and their contributions.