This technology has potential applications in commercial airliners, business jets, and regional transports. In general, equipping these aircraft with cruise-efficient high-lift devices can enhance airport options, give the user more valid runway choices at existing airports, and help alleviate the noise problem near airports by allowing steeper climb-outs and approaches. Manufacturers of these aircraft include Boeing, Gulfstream, and Cessna, among others. There are many obvious military applications of the proposed technology. Some of these include ESTOL cargo and troop transport aircraft and shipboard aircraft, including the Navy UCAV. Super-circulation can be an enabling technology for launching and recovering medium and large UAVs from short and unprepared fields, without requiring specialized launch and recovery equipment and without incurring large cruise performance penalties due to conventional high lift systems. The technology proposed herein directly supports all four of NASA's Next Generation Air Transportation System (NGATS) strategic goals, namely: 1) increased capacity, 2) improved safety and reliability, 3) increased efficiency and performance, and 4) reduced energy consumption and environmental impact. Also, Panel B (Propulsion and Power) of the NASA funded National Research Council (NRC) Decadal Survey on Civil Aeronautics recommended ESTOL capability as a way of addressing the NGATS goals. The technology developed in this project will have application to ESTOL-capable small transport aircraft with efficient transonic cruise capabilities, thereby increasing capacity and efficiency of the air transportation system by creating opportunities to develop airports in areas where they would have previously been unfeasible, and by enabling use of existing shorter runways at airports that are now underutilized. Also, these technologies have application to planetary aircraft for atmospheric science/exploration on planets where density and dynamic pressure are very low, such as Mars, Io, Titan, and Venus. The super-circulation technologies developed in this project for ESTOL applications may enable these aircraft to operate efficiently with greater payload capacity at lower dynamic pressures.
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