Posts Tagged ‘flight’
Boeing Dreamliner Delivered to First Customer
Boeing has orders for 821 of these Dreamliners, which fly 52 percent farther than the all-metal 767 aircraft they're replacing, while using 20 percent less fuel thanks to their carbon fiber design. Other upgrades include better cabin air, electronically dimmable windows, a more efficient turbofan engine with fewer fan blades and Android-based entertainment systems.
Even though the ultra-light composite technology has become popular among other airlines, including Airbus, three years worth of expensive delays won't be easy on Boeing. They'll need to sell a lot of the Dreamliners in order to recoup their losses.
[Reuters]
Boeing Dreamliner Delivered to First Customer
Boeing has orders for 821 of these Dreamliners, which fly 52 percent farther than the all-metal 767 aircraft they're replacing, while using 20 percent less fuel thanks to their carbon fiber design. Other upgrades include better cabin air, electronically dimmable windows, a more efficient turbofan engine with fewer fan blades and Android-based entertainment systems.
Even though the ultra-light composite technology has become popular among other airlines, including Airbus, three years worth of expensive delays won't be easy on Boeing. They'll need to sell a lot of the Dreamliners in order to recoup their losses.
[Reuters]
Sneak Preview: Military’s Maple-Seed-Inspired Drone, Plus More to Come at UAV Show Next Week
The asymmetric UAV is modeled after maple seeds, called samara, that fly off trees and twirl through the air with the . Originally, the SAMARAI was envisioned as a that could deliver a 2-gram payload and send back streaming video, but that has since changed to a much bigger, whining drone.
The current model has just two moving parts, allowing it to fly with a cyclic lift motion like that of a helicopter. It does have a camera on board, and it can be operated via remote control or a tablet computer, the AP says. Check out a video of it below.
The Samarai is just one of a suite of new unmanned vehicles that will be on display next week in Washington, D.C., at the convention of the . PopSci will be reporting from this year’s convention, so check back regularly starting Aug. 16 for updates on the latest in unmanned vehicles, from the ground to the air.
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Unveiled: Burt Rutan’s Final Creation Is A Flying Car
Aerospace innovator retired in April, but not before designing a new roadable aircraft
The Model 367 BiPod is a dual-fuselage, hybrid electric car-plane, which engineers at Scaled took from a preliminary design to first flight in just four months. It made its maiden trip March 30, just before Rutan’s official retirement. The company says it has made several short jaunts off the runway at Mojave, Calif., building up enough speed with the drive train to take off without propellers, which have not been installed yet.
The roadable aircraft, which in typical Rutan fashion looks bizarre and awesome, will have two 450cc engines, one for each twin fuselage. The driver/pilot will get in the left-hand cockpit to drive, and get in the right-hand cockpit to fly, Aviation Week explains.
On the roadways, the engines will power two driving wheels on each fuselage; in the air, the engines will drive four 15kW propellers, one on each wing and one on each tail. Lithium batteries in each nose will provide an added boost for takeoff and will recharge in flight.
In car mode, it can go 820 miles on tank of gas and 35 miles on batteries alone.
Click through to for the full specs and lots of photos, including an image of what the car-plane hybrid will look like when the wings are removed and stowed under the fuselages.
Scaled showed off the BiPod to gauge interest in further development, AvWeek says. Um, yes, please.
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A Completely New Kind of Aircraft Propulsion System, Made of Rotating Cylinders
No wings, no rotors, no jets
The D-Dalus vehicle uses four contra-rotating turbines for propulsion, each reaching 2,200 rpm. Each turbine blade has a variable angle of attack, which according to the designer allows the main thrust to be fired in any direction, around any axis. This allows the craft to launch vertically, hover, rotate in any direction and even thrust upwards, holding itself down.
The designer, Austrian Innovative Aeronautical Technology (IAT21), maintains a sparse that says the craft has several patented inventions, including “a friction-free bearing at the points of high G force, and a system that keeps propulsion in dynamic equilibrium, thereby allowing the guidance system to quickly restore stability in flight.”
IAT21 has been working on a prototype for three years and has recently completed initial testing using a 120 bhp KTM engine to drive the turbines, according to . The company completed tests transitioning from vertical to forward flight in a laboratory near Salzburg, Austria.
The current model has 5-foot-long turbines and can lift a payload of about 150 pounds. IAT21 is working with Cranfield University in the U.K. on a larger, more powerful motor, a new hull shape and advanced guidance and control systems, Gizmag says.
It’s designed to work as a drone for sea- and land-based uses, like search and rescue, disaster monitoring and surveillance, IAT21 says. Eventually, larger models could be used for passenger flight.
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Batcopter Flies Along With Bat Swarms, Helping Researchers Study Bat Behavior Up Close
The “Batcopter” was a home-built quadcopter made of carbon-fiber hunting arrows, packing foam, bamboo and bird netting, among other everyday tools. It was operated with OpenPilot Copter Control, an open-source UAV platform. The copter recorded the bats’ responses using three ground-based high-speed FLIR cameras and an airborne 3D HD GoPro camera.
In better understanding the mechanisms of bat flight, researchers hope to inform models controlling UAV flight, explains Boston University’s Kenn Sebesta, who built the batcopter.
The first batcopter was built from towel racks purchased at Home Depot, and while it worked well in Boston, the aluminum frames proved too heavy to fly at Texas’ higher altitudes. Sebesta and his crew raided local hardware stores and an ammunition store in rural Texas to find lighter materials, settling on the arrow shafts, twine, zip ties and foam to fashion Batcopter 2.0.
The rotors were covered with bird netting to ensure they didn’t hurt any bats who ventured too close. The team also had to design a support structure so the bats couldn’t push the netting into the rotors, disabling the craft.
Sebesta explains his team’s designs in great detail over at the , and in a blog posting at BU’s .
Batcopter 2.0 easily penetrated clouds of swarming bats, gathering data until the motors overheated in the Texas sun. The bats seemed to fan out to avoid the copter as it penetrated their swarm:
from on .
After a couple days of gathering data, one of the rotors caught on a carbon fiber strand and the copter crashed, causing too much damage for it to fly again.
Sebesta said it will take some time to review the data and determine what the researchers learned about bat flight. But they already learned plenty about UAVs — and the DIY ingenuity that advanced science sometimes requires.
(images and video used with permission)
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Video: Martin Jetpack Crushes Previous Record by Climbing to 5,000 Feet
The flight was piloted remotely from a chase helicopter (the “pilot” you see is a weighted dummy), which tailed the ducted fan-propelled aerial vehicle through a six-minute climb to 5,000 feet before the pilot took it down to 3,000 feet and popped the emergency chute. Martin reports that while the aircraft sustained some damage upon landing, the pilot likely would’ve walked away. A successful flight all around, and man, what a view.
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