Air travel is often hailed as the safest form of travel, and there is something to be said for getting where you need to go in a hurry. Of course, to cruise six miles or more above the Earth going hundreds of miles per hour requires high octane jet fuel. Lots and lots of it. A Boeing 747-8 can carry up to 64,000 gallons of jet fuel and, depending on how fast it flies, can burn through over three-thousand gallons of fuel per hour.
No matter what you say about efficiency-per-passenger, that is a whole lotta jet fuel. Everybody knows it, including NASA, which enlisted six research teams to design a more efficient aircraft. A team led by researchers at MIT came up with a plane they call the “double bubble” that is supposed to reduce fuel consumption by 70%.