A modern commercial jet airplane flies around 450-500 knots. Some of the noise reduction work we are doing at NASA will hopefully reduce tiltrotor noise well below current levels for rotorcraft as a whole. Corey, welcome, and thank you for joining us. However, the United States has invested for several decades in tiltrotor technology. We are well ahead of any other country as to tiltrotor technology.
Competition is generally good, but everything needs to be weighed by a case by case basis.
I like the idea that the blades can be horizontal or vertical. Who came up with that idea and how is it done. Like a lot of good ideas a number of companies and people arrived at the same design solution about the same time in the forties and fifties. But the leader in the practical implementation of tiltrotor technology has bee Bell Helicopter Textron, in Texas. Bell, through NASA and the U.S. Army funding and collaboration, has been developing the tiltrotor flight vehicles since the sixties.