Category Filtering: 'vertiflite'
Summer 2019 brought 70 interns — from Puerto Rico, 44 continental US states, Sweden, and the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago — into the NASA Ames Aeromechanics Branch. Some were high school students learning engineering for the first time, while most were mechanical and aerospace engineering students, though two physics majors and a math major jumped into the mix to provide balance.
The Vertical Flight Society held its quadrennial Propulsion and Power Technical Meeting at the Hampton Roads Convention Center in Hampton, Virginia, on Oct. 29-30, 2019. The theme of the two-day conference was “Powering the Future of Vertical Flight,” which highlighted research and development efforts — both current and planned — related to manned and unmanned rotorcraft and other vertical flight vehicles.
In August, NEXA Advisors and VFS announced the completion of a comprehensive year-long study, “Urban Air Mobility—Economics and Global Markets.” The groundbreaking NEXA report, undertaken with support from VFS, contains forecasts for 74 metropolitan areas over the period of 2020–2040. The online databases include thousands of geocoded data features and characteristics of each city, as well as the study’s findings on their potential market for urban air mobility (UAM). Included on these web pages are custom ArcGIS maps of each city.
AeroMobil, the Bratislava, Slovakia-based company with an actual flying car, announced on Sept. 3 that it has expanded its business to offer specialist technical consulting services for VTOL and UAM aircraft. Aeromobil’s Technical Consulting Services division will provide services in three areas: technical advisory, engineering consulting and concept development on offer for existing organizations, and new entrants aiming to solve engineering challenges and create safe, certifiable VTOL aircraft.
On Aug. 26, Bell announced the first autonomous flight of its largest Autonomous Pod Transport (APT) to date. The APT 70 is part of the eVTOL family of vehicles the company is developing. It has a baseline payload capability of 70 lb (32 kg) and can reach speeds of more than 100 mph (160km/h).
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Aug. 24 that the UK government was kicking off a $385M (£300M) Future Flight initiative. The government will provide about 42% (£125M), supported by industry co-investment of the rest (up to £175M) to “support exciting new technologies including flying urban taxis, electric passenger planes and even freight-carrying drones.” This is on top of the nearly £2B the UK is investing in aviation research and technology, through the Aerospace Technology Institute (ATI) program. The first Future Flight Challenge competition, to create compelling concept studies, opened Sept. 30.
Bristol, UK-based startup Vertical Aerospace has released flight footage of its second-generation aircraft. The prototype, named Seraph, completed its maiden flight at Llanbedr Airfield in Wales on Aug. 22. It follows the successful flight of Vertical Aerospace’s first full-scale prototype in May 2018.
San Francisco-based Elroy Air conducted the first flight of its 1,215-lb (550-kg) Chaparral hybrid-electric, heavy-lift cargo drone. The one-minute, Aug. 14 flight was conducted at Camp Roberts, California.
On Sept. 10–12, the Vertical Flight Society hosted its first workshop on the defining challenges of electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft for urban air mobility (UAM) missions. Held at the US Navy Memorial Visitor Center in Washington, DC, this three-day meeting worked to identify the foundational elements needed to support this growing industry beyond the aircraft technology development, such as infrastructure, air traffic management and system safety.
As reported previously, South Korean industrial giant Hanwha is investing $25M in a spin-off from Karem Aircraft, Inc. dedicated to bringing Butterfly, its all-electric air taxi vehicle, to market. The spin-off entity is to be named “Overair, Inc.,” though was identified as K4 Aeronautics in initial press releases. The Butterfly uses Karem’s patented high efficiency VTOL technology, and is being developed for Uber’s Elevate Initiative.
