Engineers at NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., recently installed this 15-percent scale model based on a possible future aircraft design by the Boeing Company in its Transonic Dynamics Tunnel. The 13-foot model is 'semi-span', meaning it looks like a plane cut in half. It is being used to assess the aeroelastic qualities of the unusual truss-braced wing configuration. Aeroelasticity is the study of how an aircraft flexes during flight in response to aerodynamic forces. The 'truss' is the diagonal piece attached to the belly of the fuselage and the underside of the wing. The wind tunnel tests will help validate analysis that predicts that the truss-braced wing would improve fuel consumption by 5 to 10 percent over advanced conventional wings.