The key to Orville and Wilbur Wright’s historic 1903 flight was wing warping. Today, NASA engineers are developing a similar technique to increase the performance and efficiency of fixed-wing aircraft.
The goal is to be able to bend and fold wings in-flight without using complex hydraulic systems or mechanical linkages.In the future, subsonic and supersonic aircraft equipped with thetechnology may weigh up to 80 percent less than aircraft that rely on traditional wing flaps.