Beauty of Future Airplanes is More than Skin Deep Future passenger aircraft will look to the past for their design – outwards at least. An 18-month NASA research effort to visualize the passenger airplanes of the future, has produced some ideas that at first glance may appear to be old fashioned. Instead of exotic new designs seemingly borrowed from science fiction, familiar shapes dominate the pages of advanced concept studies which four industry teams completed for NASA's Fundamental Aeronautics Program in April 2010.