The Quiet Little Life of NASA's QSRA

NASA's Quiet Short-Haul Research Aircraft was designed to navigate inner-city airports in dense population centers.

Tuesday, April 18, 2023 at 12:01 PM ET

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Among the QSRA’s more unique testing was that conducted aboard the USS Kitty Hawk, in which the unique control systems were evaluated for use in Naval aviation. [Credit: NASA]

Key Takeaways:

NASA developed the Quiet Short-Haul Research Aircraft (QSRA) in the late 1970s to research quiet, short-takeoff-and-landing (STOL) aircraft concepts for potential inner-city airports.
The QSRA was a highly modified C-8A Buffalo, incorporating repurposed jet engines and a unique swept wing designed with advanced aerodynamic features like Boundary Layer Control and the Coanda effect for exceptional low-speed lift.
It demonstrated impressive STOL capabilities, achieving very slow approach speeds (down to 50 knots), ultra-short takeoffs (664 ft) and landings (550 ft), and crucially, proved that steep approach paths could reduce aircraft noise footprints by 80-90%.

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It would surely require a unique set of circumstances to convert a utilitarian twin-turboprop cargo airplane into a swept-wing four-engine jet. It would be especially peculiar if these modifications resulted in a maximum cruise speed of only 160 knots and a maximum range of only 256 miles. But in the late 1970s, this is precisely what occurred when NASA designed and built the Quiet Short-Haul Research Aircraft, or QSRA.

The genesis for this unique aircraft occurred when researchers around the world were investigating the concept of inner-city airports. These airports, sometimes called STOLports, were envisioned to become the next evolution of air transport. Proponents claimed that by building smaller airports in urban centers, population centers could be more easily and quickly connected with the larger air travel network.