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]

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

DailyDirt: Weird Airplane Designs

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Airplane designs have evolved quite a bit over the years. Some new planes might as well be alien spacecraft compared to the designs most people recognize. Outside of the super secret stealth aircraft, though, there are some interesting planes that are more fuel efficient and have strikingly different silhouettes. Here are just a few examples.

• Honda has a luxury jet, Hondajet, going into commercial production. Hondajet's engines are mounted in an unconventional way -- sitting on pedestals above each wing. [url]
• More fuel efficient plane engines could incorporate open rotor designs. Open rotor engines can have pretty large diameters and not require heavy shielding... and they look cool. [url]
• This fuel efficient concept combines a fuselage that provides some lift along with rear-mounted engines. Placing two engines right next to each other in the rear might be a problem if one of them fails and takes out the only other engine on this plane. [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: airplane, aviation, engine design, fuel efficient, hondajet, jets
Companies: honda

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]

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

DailyDirt: Weapons In The Sky

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Completely autonomous drones that can decide who or what to strike are still many years away from becoming a reality, but the military has already developed various unmanned aircraft that it's been using primarily for gathering intelligence (rather than for attacking targets). Here are a few more examples of some of the high-tech flying weapons that exist today.

• The $1.8 billion prototype Unmanned Combat Air System demonstrator was recently launched into the air from a catapult. This marked the first-ever catapult launch of a drone from the flight deck of an aircraft carrier. [url]
• The Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, the most advanced stealth fighter jet in history, seems to have a problem with suffocating its pilots during normal flight. Since 2008, pilots would frequently and inexplicably suffer from what appeared to hypoxia -- in one case, a pilot hit a tree while landing and didn't even realize it. The cause of the problem was only recently identified as being due to a faulty valve on the pilots' life-support vest. You'd think that after spending almost $80 billion on these planes, it wouldn't have taken them almost five years to figure this out. [url]
• After 16 years and billions of dollars, the "Airborne Laser" project -- a 747 jumbo-jet equipped with a powerful laser that can shoot missiles out of the sky -- has finally been scrapped. Cost prohibitive and impractical, the Airborne Laser would likely have cost $92,000/hour to fly if it had worked. [url]

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Filed Under: autonomous, aviation, drones, f-22, lasers, pilots, planes, prototype aircraft, weapons

DailyDirt: Cool New Planes

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Futuristic-looking jet planes used to inspire all kinds of technology geeks, back when commercial flying was a relatively new venture. Over the years, though, the airline industry has matured quite a bit, and commercial plane designs don't really look that unique anymore. But that doesn't mean engineers aren't coming up with novel plane designs. Here are a few cool new planes that could take to the skies in the not too distant future.

• Supersonic planes have a problem of creating a "sonic boom" when they travel faster than the speed of sound, causing all kinds of headaches for commercial and military operations. A new biplane design with twin wings would have a much reduced sonic boom, as each wing could cancel out the effects of the other (at least in theory & simulations). [url]
• NASA is interested in liquified natural gas (LNG) propulsion for creating super fuel efficient airplanes. Planes fueled by LNG won't be ready for at least three generations of airplane technologies (aka N+3 airliners), so don't expect to see any before 2030. [url]
• The first production aircraft to completely satisfy FAA spin resistance standards will likely improve the safety of non-commercial general aviation. Icon Aircraft's A5 amphibious light sport aircraft is a two-seater plane design that greatly reduces the plane's potential to stall out or go into an uncontrollable spin. [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: aviation, flight, fuel sources, planes

And What Would Happen If Commercial Aviation Was Simply Impossible To Do Profitably?

from the the-impact-could-be-far-reaching dept

I tend to be something of an innovation optimist, believing that most resource constraint problems are eventually solved through ingenuity and innovation, but there can be some hiccups in the process along the way. Here's an article looking at the airline industry, and trying to spin some scenarios of what would happen if it simply turns out that the commercial airline business is completely unsupportable. Obviously, with fuel costs so high, it's become more and more difficult to keep airlines running (and it was never all that easy back when fuel costs were cheap). However, people seem to take for granted what cheap and readily available air travel allows. It touches on so many different businesses that it's hard to fathom how deep the eventual impact would be if air travel needs to be significantly curtailed in the future.

It's not just the obvious industries: airlines, tourism, etc. It would impact things like e-commerce companies that rely on cheap shipping. It would impact conferences. It could impact all sorts of industries when sales people can't as easily go visit customers. The more you think about it, the more industries you can find hurt by a decline in the availability of cheap air travel. Of course, there are other industries that would benefit as well, such as telecom companies and video conferencing firms.

Still, the optimist in me just sees the scenario as an opportunity for innovation. In fact, all of those other industries that would be hurt by a reduction in air travel would have it in their own best interests to help fund research and development into alternatives and improvements, so the funding for such innovation could come from many, many different places. But if it takes a while to figure out the problem -- and the airlines keep screwing things up themselves, there may be a rather unpleasant interim while everything shakes out.

Filed Under: aviation, commercial airlines, scenarios

Don't Hold Your Breath Waiting For The FAA To Solve Nation's Air Transport Woes

from the the-sky-is-still-falling dept

The expanded use of private and smaller regional jets has been hard on the nation's air travel system, because these planes use up infrastructure at a level that's disproportionate to the number of passengers they carry. Of course, the problems we've seen all summer only heighten the appeal of private air travel, further exacerbating the problem. Making matters worse is the fact that the FAA has shown no inclination to find innovative solutions. As Lynne Kiesling points out, there are a number of creative solutions out there that could mitigate the problem, none of which are really being pursued. Airlines could be forced to bid on landing rights, for example, which would force companies to prioritize their routes in a positive manner. As it is, landing fees are based on weight, which doesn't account for the longer time small planes spend on the runways. It's also been argued that the GPS system could do a better job of monitoring traffic than the existing radar systems, but plans to go down this route have stalled due to politics. Ultimately, there's no reason to expect the FAA to be innovative. It doesn't face any market pressure and there's no risk of it going under if it doesn't adapt. Instead, the only solution pushed is to encourage airlines to stop using small planes, which isn't very creative at all. All that would do is reduce options for customers, particularly those on less-traveled routes.

Filed Under: aviation, faa

Yet Another Computer Glitch Cripples Air Travel

from the too-long-without-one-of-those dept

It was an all too familiar scene at Los Angeles International Airport this weekend, as a computer glitch temporarily left 20,000 passengers stranded. This summer has seen a bevy of glitches and delays, as the civil aviation infrastructure gets stretched to the breaking point. This time, the failure was not on the part of the airlines, but on the US Customs service, which prevented passengers from properly getting screened. Obviously, glitches are going to happen now and then, and so it's not a realistic solution to simply eliminate them. But seeing as every minor ripple ends up creating such a calamity, costing millions in lost time and profits, a greater emphasis needs to be placed on developing systems that fail gracefully.

Filed Under: aviation, glitch