Scientists are working on technology that may someday slash the price of your airline ticket. In part one of Spectrum’s three-part series on the latest from NASA Armstrong, our Barbara Sharp takes you behind the scenes with experts to find out about progress on the X-57 plane.

“It’s turning the technology on its head.  There’s no other vehicle out there that even comes close to this in terms of the integration challenges associated with it.  We are talking about 14 electric motors spanning across the entire lengths of the wings.”

Matthew Redifer is talking about the X-57.  He’s the project’s Chief Engineer at NASA Armstrong.  The X-57 is an all-electric propulsion plane he says could yield as much as 500 percent improvement in flight efficiency.

"In fact, it’ll even be capable of flying faster than the production aircraft, with a five times reduction in the amount of energy that’s being used.”

But it’s not a simple task.  The wing must be completely reconfigured.

“Fitting all the control systems and electronics in putting the motors out on the wingtips is a huge integration challenge.”

But overcoming challenges – that’s what X planes are all about.  The first X plane, X-1, was the one Chuck Yeager famously piloted to break the sound barrier.

“X airplanes in general started back in 1947.  It’s been 10 or 13 years, since NASA had a piloted X plane, and so this is the first all-electric X plane," says Thomas Rigney, X-57 Project Manager.  He formerly designed Space Station equipment.

In addition to improved efficiency and performance, he says this technology is 15 decibels quieter.  But it will be a while for these benefits "to go on to general aviation aircraft, which is maybe it will benefit in ten years, and also beyond that, it’s going to benefit the larger commercial aircraft in 20 years or so.”

For every NASA X plane, there’s a NASA test pilot who spends a great deal of their time right here, in the simulator.

X-57 Lead Test Pilot Tim Williams says, "that’s part of what we do, is ‘what if?’ – and a lot of that we can research here, investigate with the simulator.”

Tim Williams served in the U.S. Air Force and flew a variety of planes, including the U2 Spy Plane.  He says one of the challenges testing the X-57 is due to motor placement.

“We actually put the primary motors on the wingtips and so that leads into, ‘oh my gosh, what happens if one of them stops and stops suddenly and one of them is going,’ then you can see that might be the airplane going into a spin like a top motion.”

While he continues working out problems like that in the simulator, the chance to test pilot the actual plane will come soon enough.  The X-57 is currently at Scaled Composites in Mojave where systems are being fitted into the aircraft.  It’s set to be delivered to NASA Armstrong in October.  The first all-electric test flight is planned for spring of 2018.

As experts continue their behind-the-scenes work, perhaps one of the most important benefits from X-57 will be one consumers enjoy directly, "lower operating costs.  That’s a significant advantage to this type of technology.  And what that does is reduces the cost of flying the airplane from 50 percent of the operating cost is normally fuel, but this reduces that down to ten to 15 to 20 percent," says Rigney.

So does that mean there's potential for airline ticket prices to be reduced in the future?

“Absolutely.  That’s the hope,” says Rigney.

NASA is anticipating flight testing on the X-57 will be completed by the end of 2019.