Apr 152021
… but manufacturing them will be a challenge. Modern computerized design processes can produce wings with rather organic internal structures that would be meaningfully lighter while being just as strong, but they could not be manufactured today. But one day it will likely become possible to 3D print large sections of wings directly out of, say, titanium or carbon fiber with the fibers built-in, oriented correctly. And then the structures aeronautical engineers have used for more than a century of ribs and spars will be replaced with something that looks like the interior of a birds bones.