This report summarizes the development of a lifting body aircraft configuration, referred to as ‘LBA’, aimed to serve the long-haul airliner market. This study was conducted in response to the aerospace industry’s goal to reduce global aviation’s emissions by 2050, as well as considered market potential. The report covers the preliminary sizing and design considerations for the LBA as well as practical testing against current conventionally configured long haul aircraft, specifically the Boeing 787-9 and Airbus A330-900 NEO. To test the effectiveness of a lifting body configuration, the wind tunnel at Arizona State University was used to compare models of the LBA, A330, and 787. The result quality from the wind tunnel was constrained due to its limitations and challenges to accurately scale Reynolds Number to that of a transonic regime. This renders the data with low fidelity, and therefore rather insufficient. However, the observed trends are promising and could rationalize expanded research into the application of a lifting body fuselage to improve aircraft efficiency.

Today, the vision of Commercial Supersonic Travel is often dreamed possible with innovation. Modern tech-business plans to reinvent commercial SuperSonic Transport (SST), while gaining reliable venture capital investment and proactive social backing. However, the concept’s global viability remains questionable, as regulation opposes its integrability. As a result, SST has become industrially forgotten. This research paper challenges the neglect of SST through routing optimizations derived from an industry’s collective research, while outlining decisive use-cases. Initially, this paper describes the difficulty in SST’s integration through its logistical tasks, demanding designs, and lacking efficiency. After that, the paper defines an optimization strategy, through software-analyzed flight paths, for overall supersonic operations. This strategy was proven to shorten established SST flights by 6%, while enabling the implementation of newfound SST paths. Here, optimization averaged 3.3% on density-derived routes and 5.4% on software-derived routes. More importantly, this paper demonstrated routing optimization enables MACH 1.6 aircraft to achieve MACH 2 flight times. Further, this paper attempts to justify SST through an analysis of its market, financials, and social perspectives. With that, the paper justifies an ideal SST customer earns 630$/hr, while such measurements vary amongst flight types. Finally, this paper conceptualizes that SST, with optimization, promises a noteworthy business, while developments in aircraft designs may revamp the aerospace industry completely.