OREANDA-NEWS. February 26, 2016. The American space agency NASA gave reporters a glimpse of the future of commercial air travel from inside 11-by-11 foot Transonic Wind Tunnel last week at the NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif.

The space agency expects that twice as many people will be hopping on airplanes by 2030.

That means more fuel consumption, more noise in urban centers, and more carbon emissions -- unless planes get a serious upgrade.