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Stories filed under: "aircraft"

DailyDirt: Personal Flying Machines

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

It wasn’t that long ago that people were highly skeptical of the entire concept of human flight. A few crazy people dressed up in bird-inspired outfits with wings and tried to jump from various heights in order to fly or glide — and they were generally met with mockery. Nowadays, we know just how hard it is to achieve human-powered flight, but it has been achieved — in several different ways. The Igor I. Sikorsky Human-Powered Helicopter Prize was awarded in 2013, and the Kremer Prize was won back in 1977. If you’re not willing to work up a sweat, check out some of these aircraft.

• Martin Aircraft is going to start selling a jetpack designed for first responders like firefighters — not for recreational use (yet). The company aims to have this jetpack classified as ultralight aircraft, so it won’t require a pilot’s license. It’ll also have a built-in parachute. [url]
• Urban Aeronautics has an autonomous flying drone called the AirMule that can lift over 1,000 pounds of stuff for about 30 miles. A civilian version of this aircraft from its Metro Skyways division is a VTOL personal flying vehicle that’s kind of a flying car. [url]
• Singaporean engineering students have built a personal flying machine called ‘Snowstorm’ — powered by batteries for short 5-minute flights. We’ve seen these kinds of personal multicopters before, and we’re still waiting for battery technology to make these things fly for more enjoyable amounts of time. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: aircraft, flying car, igor i. sikorsky human-powered helicopter prize, jetpack, kremer prize, personal mobility, transportation, vtol
Companies: martin aircraft, metro skyways, urban aeronautics

DailyDirt: Our Crazy Drone-Filled World

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

If you haven’t seen any tiny remote-controlled quadcopters circling in the air, you might need to get out a bit more. Maybe we shouldn’t get too paranoid about these things, thinking they’re black helicopters for the 21st century, but if you hear constant artificial buzzing noises, perhaps you should start gearing up to defend your home. Drones could be delivering your pizza for dinner someday, but there are all kinds of uses for this technology.

• If you combined enough tiny drone engines together, could you build a 1-man helicopter? Apparently, yes. But it’ll only fly for a few minutes and doesn’t get too far off the ground. It also vaguely looks like a contraption from the early 1900s, and this isn’t the first multi-copter ever flown that we’ve seen. [url]
• Drones can kill a lot of stuff, but how about mosquitoes? Spraying mosquito larvae from quadcopter drones to prevent mosquito growth will be tested this year in Florida — with approval from the FAA. [url]
• Some folks don’t want drones flying all over the place, and Boeing has a laser cannon just for them. Boeing’s Compact Laser Weapon System can shoot down small aircraft from a pretty good distance (as long as you can see your target with binoculars), and it only takes a couple of seconds to set a drone on fire. It’s probably a bit more expensive than a shotgun filled with birdshot, but it’s a lot more accurate and cool. [url]

After you’ve finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: aircraft, compact laser weapon system, drones, flying car, helicopter, laser cannon, mosquitoes, multi-copter, personal mobility, weapons
Companies: boeing, faa

DailyDirt: Flying With The Greatest Of Ease

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Airplanes have been commonplace for quite some time now, and we’ve grown accustomed to what an airplane should look like. Ask any kid to draw a plane, and you’ll probably get familiar results. However, this doesn’t mean we’ve reached the end of novel plane designs. Plenty of unconventional planes are being designed and tested, and here are just a few.

• NASA is testing an experimental wing design with 18 electric motors as part of its Leading Edge Asynchronous Propeller Technology (LEAPTech) project. Each motor can be optimized for better ride quality and noise reduction — and possibly improved fuel consumption. [url]
• The Russian PAK TA concept is a supersonic transport that could be ready for military service by 2024. A 200-ton capacity plane traveling at 1200 mph with a range of 4,000 miles sounds a bit futuristic because it would be amazing to see a plane actually capable of doing it (but maybe not so amazing in another 10 years or so). [url]
• DARPA wants to make a VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) aircraft that’s much much better than a helicopter or existing VTOL designs. Boeing has a Phantom Swift design that’s been built (as a 17% scale model) — one of four contenders aiming to meet DARPA’s technical specs. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: aircraft, aviation, design, helicopters, leaptech, pak ta, phantom swift, planes, prototypes, supersonic, vtol
Companies: boeing, darpa, nasa

DailyDirt: Aircraft That Stay In The Sky For Days (Or Longer)

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Most folks don’t really like flying for more than a few hours at a time, so it’s not really a problem for a lot of people that most planes aren’t even capable of flights lasting longer than day. (Zeppelins can fly for weeks at a time, but those ships haven’t been flying regularly for a while.) Autonomous drones have been making some really long flights recently, and there may be more uses for aircraft that can stay up in the air for long periods of time. Here are just a few examples.

• Google has acquired Titan Aerospace for its solar-powered drone technology that can act as “atmospheric satellites” by flying for months or even years at a time. Google presumably outbid Facebook for this company, but regardless who bought this company, it sounds like wireless internet services could become more competitive with traditional wireline telcos/cablecos. Maybe. [url]
• The world’s longest aircraft, the Airlander, is just over 300 feet long and can fly for a couple weeks. This particular Hybrid Air Vehicle (HAV) is a cross between a blimp and a zeppelin — and a bigger version is designed to carry a 50-ton payload. [url]
• The Solar impulse 2 has a maximum speed of only about 85 mph, so it’ll take more than a couple days to accomplish its flightplan to circumnavigate the globe. This solar-powered plane is expected to launch sometime in mid-2015, and it’ll take a solo pilot almost a week to travel around the world. [url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: aircraft, airlander, blimp, drone, hav, hybrid air vehicle, planes, solar impulse 2, zeppelin
Companies: facebook, google, titan aerospace

DailyDirt: Supersonic Flights

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Remember the Concorde? It was the longest operating commercial supersonic aircraft that flew its last flight in 2003 after 27 years of service. With a cruising speed of 1,350 mph (Mach 2), the Concorde could fly from New York to London in under 3 hours. For more than 20 years, the Concorde was the fastest and safest airliner in the world, but a deadly crash in 2000 that killed all 109 people on board, as well as 4 people on the ground, precipitated the demise of the Concorde, which was already suffering from a general downturn in the aviation industry. There hasn’t been a successor to the Concorde since it was retired, but perhaps the following are some possibilities.

• Apparently, a secret team of Boeing engineers is still working on the Sonic Cruiser, which was cancelled and replaced by the 787 Dreamliner. Technically, the Sonic Cruiser isn’t supersonic, since it’s designed to fly at 0.98 Mach, but its design has changed a bit since the original was proposed. The engines, which would have F-35 like variable geometry chevrons, are now located over (rather than embedded in) the wings, which now also have vertical stabilizers. [url]
• The X-51A WaveRider “Scramjet,” an unmanned hypersonic aircraft, successfully reached Mach 5.1 in its final test flight. It traveled 230 nautical miles in just over 6 minutes and was the longest air-breathing hypersonic flight ever. The X-51A is unique in that it uses a hydrocarbon (rather than hydrogen) fuel in its supersonic combustion engine.[url]
• Why isn’t there a successor to the Concorde? Perhaps it’s because we’re too cheap to fly faster. In fact, we’re actually flying slower today than we were 50 years ago. In 1958, airliners were traveling at cruising speeds of just over 600 mph, compared to today’s more fuel efficient 550 mph.[url]

If you’d like to read more awesome and interesting stuff, check out this unrelated (but not entirely random!) Techdirt post via StumbleUpon.

Filed Under: aircraft, airline, aviation, concorde, dreamliner, flying, jet, mach, plane, scramjet, sonic cruiser, supersonic
Companies: boeing

DailyDirt: Strange Planes

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Everyone knows what an airplane looks like, but maybe some types of aircraft won’t be so recognizable in a few decades. Plenty of folks are working on flying contraptions with some unique capabilities. Here are a few more competitors to the usual “2 wings and a tail” design.

• A winged helicopter powered by an electric motor demonstrated its flying prowess at the Paris Air Show, recently. Watch out, Bin Laden wannabe’s… [url]
• The D-Dalus aircraft propels itself in just about any direction using its four turbines with angle-adjusting blades. This thing doesn’t look anything like a helicopter, but it can hover and take off vertically — as well as “stick” its landings onto moving platforms. [url]
• Airbus has a transparent plane concept that it thinks could be the future of air travel. But not everyone wants to fly like Wonder Woman… [url]
• To discover more cool sites about aviation, check out what’s currently flying around StumbleUpon. [url]

By the way, StumbleUpon can recommend some good Techdirt articles, too.

Filed Under: aircraft, airplanes, helicopters, transparent
Companies: airbus