Category Filtering: 'vertiflite'
Imagine a time in the not-too-distant future when unmanned vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft stealthily cross urban battlefields, while piloted versions easily navigate crowded cities and quietly touchdown in confined areas inaccessible to conventional helicopters or winged VTOL aircraft.
The motors that propel and control electric vertical flight pose design, integration and certification challenges.
As a conscript, a young Rafi Yoeli served in the Israeli Air Force (IAF) as an air traffic controller, studied aeronautical engineering at Tel Aviv University and joined Israeli Aerospace Industries (IAI) in the late 1970s when it was improving the IAI 1124 Westwind business jet, designing the 1125 Astra business jet and state-of-the-art Lavi jet fighter, and developing the Scout UAV for the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).
Seventy-five years ago, on Feb. 25, 1943, 26-year old Edward Katzenberger stood up in a high school gymnasium in Stratford, Connecticut, and called a meeting to order. At that meeting, the participants resolved to establish the American Helicopter Society.
Katzenberger, having joined Sikorsky Aircraft the year before, had been talking with other employees about establishing “The Sikorsky Helicopter Club.”
Erik Lindbergh, grandson of famed aviators Charles and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, has founded VerdeGo Aero, “an innovative new aerospace company with a mission to provide the upcoming multi-billion-dollar urban transportation market with a safe, clean, and quiet hybrid-electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that can fly piloted or autonomously.”
Uber announced on Nov. 8 that it had signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA for “the development of new Unmanned Traffic Management (UTM) concepts and Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) that will enable safe and efficient operations of small UAS at low altitudes.” Uber’s participation in NASA’s UTM Project will aid the company in conducting demonstration flights of UberAIR in two US cities by 2020.
In early November, A³ by Airbus — the Silicon Valley outpost of the Airbus Group — announced that it had moved its single-seat Vahana eVTOL demonstrator from “The Nest” in Santa Clara, California (shown above), to Pendleton, Oregon.
The Kitty Hawk engineering team is led by Dr. Todd Reichert (aerodynamics) and Cameron Robertson (structures).
While graduate students at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) in Canada, Reichert and Robertson worked with Dr. James DeLaurier on the engine-powered “Big Flapper” ornithopter — an aircraft that generates thrust by flapping its wings like a bird, rather than using a propeller.
It’s a long way from the windy sand dunes of the Outer Banks of North Carolina to the San Francisco Bay, but the aviation adventure that the Wright brothers launched near Kitty Hawk in 1903 now continues with new electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft being developed by Silicon Valley startups.
Unprecedented earthquakes, fires, hurricanes, flooding and other natural disasters filled the news over the past several months. Equally prevalent were stories of vertical flight aircraft saving lives, protecting property and providing support after infrastructure was destroyed.
