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Drone Capable Of Carrying A Human At 100KM Per Hour Unveiled

3/15/2016

Drones are everywhere these days. The proverbial tool of the future, they are used todeliver aid to war-torn areas, fly over inaccessible lava lakes, and take elaborate selfies. The U.S. military are even developing “vampire drones” that self-destruct in sunlight. Now, a Chinese manufacturer has unveiled a drone that is able to carry humans through the air, which if demonstrated would be a world-first for drone technology, according to CNN.

Although this sounds remarkably similar to a helicopter – and in fact, it strongly resembles one – this new, 5.5-meter-long (18-foot-long) drone by Ehang Inc. has four doubled propellers that spin parallel to the ground, meaning that it is technically a drone in terms of how it flies. The Guangzhou province-based company revealed its latest creation at theConsumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, along with an accompanying demonstration video.

The Ehang 184’s battery takes two hours to be fully charged up, whereupon it is able to fly for 23 minutes at sea level and carry 100 kilograms (220 pounds). Remarkably, the company claims that this passenger drone is able to fly up to 500 meters (1,650 feet) off the ground, with a potential maximum flight altitude of 3,500 meters (11,500 feet). The drone can also soar through the air at speeds of up to 101 kilometers per hour (63 miles per hour). The cabin is suitable for one person and a small piece of hand baggage.

Along with in-built air conditioning for those hot, drone-flying days, it also features a reading light. Although it may not seem safe to fly whilst reading, fear not: The drone is fully autonomous. By programming your destination into the Microsoft Surface touchscreen interface, the voice-activated drone only requires you to order it when to “take off” and when to “land.”

Going for prices at around $300,000 (£200,000), Ehang co-founder and Chief Financial Officer Shang Hsiao admits that the drone, unlike an actual helicopter, occupies somewhat of a legal grey area. Drones are often not allowed within a certain distance of buildings, and they are barred from entering many transportation hubs, particularly airports. Flying over heavily travelled roadways and government facilities is also a no-no.

In the U.S., national parks are off limits, as are military bases and, after a recent drone crash there, the White House. In many countries, the user of a drone must always keep it within eyesight at all times: This, at least, shouldn’t be a problem for the Ehang 184, unless something goes horribly wrong.

Speaking of which, there are no manual controls available for the passenger to grab hold of during an emergency. In the event of a technical problem, the company plans to use a remote control center that would take over the vehicle’s flight and ensure it lands safely.

What makes this drone – a version of a quadcopter – arguably safer than a helicopter is that even if several of the propellers stop working, only one is required to make a landing, albeit somewhat of a bumpy, spiraling one.

According to the Chief Marketing Officer Derrick Xiong, the drone has been teasted successfully hundreds of times over forested areas – several times with a passenger inside. With over $52 million (£35 million) raised over the last two years in order to fund the project, the company are hoping that buyers are indeed convinced of its safety record to part with their cash.

Insane helicopter pilot harvesting Christmas trees

3/15/2016

This video is crazy: Watch ace helicopter pilot Dan Clark demonstrating his incredible skills while harvesting Christmas trees at mad speeds. "Oregon helicopter pilot ruthlessly owning inertia," ncidentally, did you know that "Oregon is the nation's biggest producer and exporter of Christmas trees, selling about 7.3 million trees a year, more than twice that of No. 2 North Carolina"? Me neither—and I don't care. I'm just too busy being in awe watching this guy flying those trees around in the middle of the fog like absolute madman.

Just ran across this photo which demonstrates, once again, the versatility of the P-38.

3/11/2016

NASA Knows How to Land People on Mars Inside a Month

2/23/2016

NASA knows a way to get humans to Mars in about a month, and to land unmanned probes in just three days.

In a NASA 360 video University of California Santa Barbara professor Philip Lubin describes the process of "photonic propulsion." It involves propelling objects with mass-free particles of light (photons). Basically, pushing spaceships with a great, big laser.

Lubin explains that the proposed system would require about the same amount of energy as the upcoming Space Launch System to get to "relativistic speeds." Which is to say speeds matching a significant percentage of the speed of light. In this case, 30 percent in about 10 minutes.

That speed is totally unheard of as far as human technology goes. And at a relatively reasonable energy cost, it sounds too good to be true. So what's the catch? According to Lubin there doesn't appear to be one. At least none that we couldn't overcome.

"There is no known reason why we could not do this," Lubin says in the video.

Lubin has a far more detailed roadmap on the subject, if you're interested in the specifics. Though the broad benefit is this: at that speed we could scout, and perhaps one day reach potentially habitable exoplanets light years away from Earth.

Plane crash feared in Nepal as flight carrying 21 goes missing in mountains

2/23/2016

Small Twin Otter aircraft thought to have crashed during short flight between resort town of Pokhara and trekking start point in Jomson, official says

A small plane with 21 people on board and flying in poor visibility over mountainous terrain in Nepal on Wednesday has gone missing and feared to have crashed, officials said.

Domestic airline Tara Air said rescue helicopters had been deployed to search for the Twin Otter aircraft, which lost contact with air traffic control eight minutes after it left the western town of Pokhara on Wednesday morning.

â€œA plane that took off from Pokhara for Jomsom this morning is out of contact,â€ Tara Air spokesman Bhim Raj Rai told AFP.

â€œThere are 18 passengers, including two foreigners, and three crew members on board.â€

The police chief at Jomsom, Harihari Yogi, said they had reports from local villagers of hearing a loud explosion near the small v

Airport official Yogendra Kuwar said there were no landing strips between the two airports and it is believed to have crashed.

Helicopters were searching the route more than two hours after the plane was to have landed, but poor weather conditions are making that difficult, he said.

Nepal, which is still reeling from a devastating earthquake last April, has suffered a number of air disasters in recent years, dealing a blow to its tourist industry.

Most have been attributed to inexperienced pilots, poor management and inadequate maintenance.

The countryâ€™s aviation sector has come under fire from international authorities and in 2013 the European Union banned all Nepalese airlines from flying there.

Legendary musician Jimmy Buffett had a lot to say while flying the Icon A5

2/22/2016

Legendary musician Jimmy Buffett had a lot to say while flying the A5. “This is the ultimate toy for the next ten years of my life—and beyond!” Watch the video

United Airlines tells pilots it may retire all of its Boeing 747s by 2018

2/22/2016

Want to fly on a United Airlines Boeing 747? You better hurry.

United told pilots on Friday that it may retire all of its 747s faster than expected, with the last one leaving the fleet as soon as 2018. In the past, executives suggested the 747s could stay at United into 2020, or even later.

"We are contemplating an accelerated retirement plan for the 747s, Howard Attarian, United's senior vice president for flight operations, said in a message to pilots. "If we do decide to head in this direction, we plan to accelerate widebody deliveries to replace this capacity,"

The planes aren't as old as you might think - many were delivered to United in the late 1990s - but maintenence costs are expensive, the airline says. That's in part because fewer airlines fly the 747 now, with many preferring cheaper-to-operate twin-engine aircraft.

"This is an aging fleet that many operators are beginning to exit from service and as this happens, support for the aircraft, especially in our spokes, gets more difficult," United said in separate message. A 'Spoke,' is an airport not considered a hub, like Shanghai or Beijing.

According to its fleet plan released in January, United had 22 747s at the end of 2015. Under that plan, the airline expects to retire two this year.

For now, United flies 747s from San Francisco and Chicago. But this week, United also told pilots it will remove the 747 from Chicago in February 2017, leaving only San Francisco with 747 service.

United last addressed the 747 in detail on its April 2015 earnings call. At the time, former CFO John Rainey said the carrier could hold onto the 747s for a long time, according to the SeekingAlpha.com transcript.

The 747 is something that we do intend to keep for a few more years we have a couple coming out of our fleet in the near future but some of these we’ve made some improvements to the operating reliability of the aircraft and we could expect to keep them for another few years.

They have another sort of big maintenance events in the 2020 time frame that that will be another decision point for us whether we want to extend them further at that point or go ahead and retire them.

Richard Branson Unveils New Virgin Galactic Spaceship, Stephen Hawking Helps Name It

2/22/2016

In the latest chapter of Virgin Galactic’s space tourism story, Sir Richard Branson yesterday unveiled the company’s newest version of SpaceShipTwo, called VSS “Unity.” The craft is the result of a valiant effort by staffers to replace SS2 “Enterprise,” which, after 55 test flights – four of them rocket-powered – broke apart on ascent Oct. 31, 2014, over the Mojave Desert.

After an extensive NTSB investigation, human error was determined to be the cause of the accident. Co-pilot Michael Alsbury was killed, and pilot Pete Siebold was badly injured.
Helping to choose the name for the new Unity vehicle was none other than renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, who plans someday to fly on it (Branson has given him a free ticket). Hawking, who suffers from ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, wasn’t present at the Mojave Air & Space Port for rollout, but he did offer thoughts via a pre-recorded four-minute message to the hundreds of attendees including Branson and his family, actor Harrison Ford and singer Sarah Brightman.

“We are entering a new space age, and I hope this will help to create a new unity,” said Hawking, 74. “Space exploration has already been a great unifier — we seem able to cooperate between nations in space in a way we can only envy on Earth. Taking more and more passengers out into space will enable them and us to look both outwards and back, but with a fresh perspective in both directions. It will help bring new meaning to our place on Earth and to our responsibilities as its stewards, and it will help us to recognize our place and our future in the cosmos — which is where I believe our ultimate destiny lies.”

Branson, 65, was clearly moved by Hawking’s interest in space, and responded. “We felt strongly that we should somehow make sure that Stephen remained a permanent part of Unity’s story, because so much of what he stands for resonates with what we at Virgin Galactic aspire to be,” said the billionaire. “So the Galactic Girl on the side of our proud Spaceship Unity now carries a banner using an image of Stephen’s eye.”Like the plan for predecessor Enterprise, Unity will be dropped from a mother-ship, light its rocket motor and carry six passengers and two pilots into space, considered 100 kilometers (62 miles) above sea level. The rides will be short and suborbital – ie, straight up and down – unlike ISS, which circles the Earth. Passengers will see the curvature of Earth and the blackness of space, while at the same time experiencing a few minutes of weightlessness. Current ticket price is $250,000.

VG’s commercial flights will be the culmination of work from the turn of the century when SS2’s predecessor, SpaceShipOne (built by Burt Rutan), flew pilots three separate times to space in 2004 to win the prestigious $10-million Ansari X Prize.

Other companies working on space tourism include Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which in January vertically launched its New Shepard vehicle unmanned into suborbital space and brought back the booster and capsule intact – and XCOR Aerospace, which is still in the development stages of its Lynx vehicle. Another company, World Sky View, is planning to take customers just above 100,000 feet in a balloon, technically not space but offering space-like views.

VG expects test flights of Unity to start later this year. Its 700 or so ticket-holders seem confident that they will become astronauts within the next few years, as is Hawking. “If I am able to go, and if Richard will still take me, I would be very proud to fly on this spaceship,” said the scientist.

In the meantime,many future tourist-nauts are training for their flights in centrifuges and high-altitude supersonic MiGs, and on parabolic weightlessness flights over the U.S. and Russia.

Watching the Tu95 Bear fly is simply mesmerizing

2/19/2016

I really shouldn't call the TU-95 a "relic" because it's still in service and likely will be for years to come. Like its B-52 counterpart, it's such an adaptable aircraft that it's managed to change with the times while many would-be replacements have come and gone.

Whenever you read some breathless news story about "Eek! Russian bombers fly near__ !!!" it's almost always a pair of TU-95s. Just flying a couple of them near Guam a while back was enough to send defense hawks into conniptions.

As one Russian general quipped "That's why they call it International Airspace."

I'll say one thing for the Russians, when they find something that works they stick with it.

In 1950 a request was sent to both the Tupolev and Myasishchev design bureaus for a new strategic bomber. The new aircraft was to have the ability to deliver an 11,000 kg bomb load to a target 8000 km (4,970 mi) away.

Myasishchev came up with the jet powered M-4, which was a monumental disappointment.

Andrei Tupolev knew that the jet engines he had to work with would be just too fuel thirsty to give him the range and payload required. He cleverly decided to go with turboprops. This was directly in contradiction to Stalin's orders, by the way. Stalin wanted a jet bomber dammit. Gutsy move Andrei.

There weren't just any turboprops either. He used 4 massive Kuznetsov NK-12s. To this day the most powerful turboprops ever built. These monsters produce 14,800 horsepower each and swing an 18-foot, 8-bladed contra-rotating propeller.

These engines were based on late-war German research with some help from a team of German engineers. Now before you scoff and say "Well sure, they had German scientists build it" there was plenty of Russian know-how that went into this as well, especially the metal alloys that allowed it to be built.