Aero Gizmo
SJ30 breaks light jet speed record from London to Dubai
The London to Dubai route is probably going to see a lot of private business air traffic in the coming years and Emivest Aerospace has used it to showcase the high speed capabilities of its SJ30 Business Jet. The aircraft has set a speed record for its class, flying from London to Dubai in seven hours and seven minutes, including a 41-minute refueling stop in Istanbul. Read More
Compact mortar-based launcher developed for small UAVs
November 19, 2008 Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have been the major innovation of modern warfare in the last decade, offering invaluable and unprecedented information about what the enemy is doing. Though US forces currently have 30 unmanned combat air patrols operating 24 hours a day over Iraq and Afghanistan, increasingly, the need for situational awareness on a micro scale is driving technological development of manpackable UAV systems. Now BAE has announced yet another major UAV breakthrough – a compact mortar-based launcher for small Unmanned Air Vehicles (UAVs). Read More
F-35 Lightning II breaks sound barrier
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Lockheed Martin has promised that its fifth gen F-35 fighter will allow pilots to “do things that were previously considered impossible, and to think things that were previously unthinkable.” Almost two years after its maiden flight, the F-35 Lightning II has reached another development milestone – supersonic flight. Test pilot Jon Beesley accelerated the F-35 AA-1 to Mach 1.05, with a full internal load of dummy weapons. Read More
Biofuel-powered jet completes transcontinental flight
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Following on from its breakthrough flight in October last year, Green Flight International has set another green-aviation record, this time flying a jet across the U.S. using environmentally-friendly Biofuel. Piloted by President and CEO Douglas Rodante and Chief Pilot Carol Sugars, BioJet 1 completed the flight from Reno, Nevada to Leesburg, Florida in just over 11 hours at altitudes ranging from 13,000 to 17,000 feet. While 1,776 miles where flown on 100% Biofuel, a 50/50 mix of Biofuel and standard jet fuel was used for the remainder of the 2,486 journey in order to compare performance data and also demonstrate the ability to blend these fuel types. Read More
SpaceX planning DragonLab craft
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SpaceX, the company behind the Falcon series of launch vehicles and the Dragon space capsule, is developing a new free-flying, reusable, commercial craft. To be known as DragonLab, it will transport pressurized and unpressurized payloads to and from space, and will launch aboard a Falcon 9 vehicle. Read More
Air New Zealand moves closer to biofuel flight
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Air New Zealand, Boeing, Rolls-Royce and UOP aim to power one of four engines on a Boeing 747-400 on Jatropha-based fuel. The first test flight using the environmentally sustainable oil is scheduled to take place in Auckland in December after fuel testing is completed. Read More
Coaxial Rotor System: the future of helicopter design?
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Helicopters featuring coaxial rotor designs are not exactly new. The co-axial design of a pair of rotors mounted on the same mast and with the same axis of rotation, but turning in different directions, has been utilized on a number of military helicopters for around half a century, most notably those produced by the Russian Kamov helicopter design bureau. The coaxial design offers a number of advantages over the traditional helicopter designs, which makes it difficult to understand why we haven’t seen co-axial rotor designs taking to the skies for civilian uses. Now Australian based Wieland Helicopter Technologies (WHT) is hoping to change that by designing and manufacturing a range of new coaxial rotor system small format helicopters for commercial markets. Read More
India launches first lunar mission
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The Indian Space Research Organisation has successfully launched Chandrayaan-1, the country’s first scientific mission to the moon. The two-year, USD$80 million mission will see the PSLV-C11 rocket enter lunar orbit in roughly two weeks, before descending to a final 100 km-high circular orbit. The Moon Impact Probe will land on the lunar surface, while the orbiter will continue gathering data with 11 scientific instruments. Read More
NASA launches Interstellar Boundary Explorer
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NASA has launched the Interstellar Boundary Explorer, which will observe the edge of our solar system from a 200,000-mile Earth orbit and determine whether or not we’re... err, doomed. Over the next two years, the 23-inch high octagonal craft will study the area of space where solar wind hits the wider galaxy – hopefully it will also find out why the solar wind, which shields us from harmful cosmic rays, has decreased by 25% in the last ten years. Read More
Autonomous unmanned helicopters designed for disaster relief
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European researchers are developing a squadron of co-operating, unmanned helicopters for use in disaster management, civil security, and filmmaking. In addition to ferrying critical supplies, the helicopters can deploy sensor nodes to gather information and establish a communications network in places where the infrastructure is damaged or absent. Read More
Zeppelin Airship travel makes U.S. comeback
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Starting this month, Airship Ventures is offering tourists the chance to travel aboard a 246-foot long, semi-rigid Zeppelin NT – the first giant Zeppelin to grace the skies of the US since the Hindenburg tragically caught fire more than 70 years ago. Passengers can enjoy birds-eye views of the San Francisco Bay, Silicon Valley, Sonoma/Napa wine regions, and the Monterey/Big Sur coastline. Read More
Richard Garriott enters private astronaut club
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Millionaire video game designer Richard Garriott has made history by becoming the world’s first second-generation American astronaut to set off into outer space. Unlike his NASA astronaut father, Owen Garriott, Richard has made his journey courtesy of space tourism provider, Space Adventures. Read More
Sky Warrior unmanned aircraft demonstrates automatic takeoff and landing
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General Atomics' Sky Warrior unmanned aircraft system (UAS) has for the first time demonstrated automatic takeoff and landing capabilities under control of the Extended Range/Multi-Purpose (ER/MP) One System® Ground Control Station (OSGCS). Three landings and three takeoffs took place during August and September at the El Mirage Flight Operations Center in Adelanto, California and represent another milestone for the system which is due to be fielded in mid 2009. Read More
Pterodactyl-based UAV design for urban combat scenarios
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Scientists have designed a highly-maneuverable UAV modeled on a 228-million-year-old pterodactyl. The 30-inch robotic craft would alter its wing shape to “squeeze through confined spaces, dive between buildings, travel under overpasses, land on apartment balconies, and sail along the coastline.” Read More
Historic WWII Ford airplane to go under the hammer
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This rare 1929 Ford 4-AT-E Tri-Motor airplane is set to be auctioned in a No Reserve sale by the Barrett-Jackson Auction Company in January 2009. Recently restored to its original specifications, the plane has a fascinating history, having survived bullet fire during the World War II attack at Pearl Harbor. Read More
Historic Moller flying car prototype up for sale
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Moller International is selling its Jetson-like M200X 2-passenger VTOL prototype on eBay. Although it's a long way from the latest designs to rise from the Moller drawing-board like the hybrid flying car, the M200X is a significant piece of aviation history, having completed over 200 manned and unmanned flight demonstrations since 1989. Read More
SpaceX successfully launches Falcon 1 into orbit
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With the Space Shuttle scheduled to retire in 2010, alternative transport vessels will need to be developed to keep the International Space Station manned, and to keep options open for possible manned lunar missions. After three failed attempts, the SpaceX Falcon 1 has successfully achieved Earth orbit – the first privately developed liquid fuel rocket to do so. Read More
Aircraft seat-bed design offers a comfortable journey for all travelers
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Another stand-out entry in the Create the Future Design Contest is the aircraft seat-bed design entered in the transportation section by Mario Martinez Celis from Mexico City. The concept design allows for 594 seats on the Airbus A380 which normally seats 555 but the real beauty of the configuration is that ALL passengers would be given the comfort of seat-beds with more space than ever before. Read More
Presidential helicopter achieves new milestone
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The first operational pilot production aircraft in the VH-71 presidential helicopter program has successfully completed its 40-minute maiden flight. The PP-1 is the first of five VH-71 production aircraft that will be tested during phase one of the US$6.1 billion presidential helicopter replacement program. Read More
Yves Rossy prepares for Cross-Channel flight – without a plane
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Later this week FusionMan Yves Rossy will attempt the first solo jet-propelled flight across the English channel. Using a new single jet wing he unveiled in May, and which has already been tested over the distance (Rossy flew 35 kilometers in ten minutes during the test – an average 210 mph). The event will be broadcast live by National Geographic Channel in 165 countries and will also be streamed live online. Check out the image gallery – quite simply amazing. Good luck FusionMan! Read More
The autovolantor Flying Car
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September 9, 2008 Moller International has announced that it has designed a hybrid flying car. The two-seater autovolantor is fashioned in the shape of a Ferrari 599 GTB with wings and is claimed to be capable of lifting off vertically from a traffic jam and flying at up to 150 mph for a short distance (about 15 minutes). The autovolantor is designed to function on the road very much like a plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) using one of its eight Rotapower engines to generate enough electrical power to drive for up to 40 miles. Read More
Fraunhofer develops technology for the bonded aircraft
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An aircraft is held together by hundreds of thousands of rivets. Fully automatic machines install rivet holes and rivets with precision in numerous materials. A new hybrid technology combines this mechanical joining technique with adhesive bonding. The lighter an aircraft is, the less fuel it consumes. Given the need to cut carbon dioxide emissions, this is a key aspect of materials research. Aircraft manufacturers are therefore pinning their hopes on particularly lightweight construction materials. These include not only lightweight metals, but also fiber composite plastics, particularly carbon-fiber reinforced plastics (CFRPs). Whenever two CFRP components have to be joined together, this has so far been accomplished primarily by riveting. Read More
Airborne Laser starts on-board firing tests
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In another milestone for the Airborne Laser (ABL) program, and further evidence of the growing science-fiction like capabilities of the modern military machine, Boeing and the U.S. Missile Defense Agency have successfully fired a high-energy chemical laser onboard the ABL aircraft during ground testing at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The test moves the project a step closer to a full missile shoot-down demonstration expected in 2009. Read More
Sikorsky’s X2 Demonstrator First Flight
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August 28, 2008 Three years ago we wrote of Sikorsky’s intention to build a technology demonstrator for its X2 Coaxial helicopter technology, and earlier this year we expanded on the principals of the revolutionary aircraft. Today, we’re pleased to announce “it flies.” Earlier this week, Sikorsky successfully completed the first flight of its X2 Demonstrator, maneuvering the prototype aircraft through hover, forward flight, and a hover turn, in a test flight that lasted approximately 30 minutes. Read More
QinetiQ's Zephyr breaks world record for longest unmanned flight
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Qinetiq’s Zephyr solar powered high-altitude long-endurance (HALE) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) has flown a world-beating three and a half day flight at the US Army's Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona. The solar powered plane flew for 82 hours 37 minutes, exceeding the current official world record for unmanned flight which stands at 30 hours 24 minutes set by Global Hawk in 2001 and Zephyr's previous longest flight of 54 hours achieved last year. Read More
AeroVironment receives funding for perch-and-stare micro-UAV
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AeroVironment has been awarded $4.6 million in funding from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a new generation small Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) with "perch-and-stare" surveillance capabilities. The micro-air vehicle will be based on the company's smallest existing UAS platform - Wasp. Read More
The ElectraFlyer C plug-n-fly electric plane
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August 19, 2008 The ElectraFlyer C is an electric aircraft based around the now defunct 1980s Moni kit plane designed by John Monnett which features in the Smithsonian Air and Space museum no less. The original and unreliable KFM 107 two-stroke air-cooled motor has been replaced with a modified version of ElectraFlyer’s US$8500 5.6 kWh lithium battery and US$4200 propulsion parts kit, will top 90 mph, fly for 90 minutes plus and recharges from a household power outlet in six hours at a cost of, would-you-believe, sixty cents. That’s serious bang-per-buck for an aircraft and bodes well for the coming era of personal flight being based around sustainable energy and as it’s almost totally silent, sustainable hearing without the need for earplugs. Silent aircraft, like silent RVs, are the way to a sustainable future for the sport. Read More
MotoPOD RV-10 fits a motorcycle to your plane
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August 13, 2008 Now here’s an interesting concept – announced at Airventure 08, the MotoPOD RV-10 cargo pod fits underneath a light aircraft and carries a street-legal motorcycle. It takes three minutes to remove the modified Yamaha XT225 and the whole package including motorcycle is anticipated to be under US$10,000 when it goes on sale later this year. Given most small airports are not located near ground transportation services, and the comprehensive and convenient total trip transport innovation dramatically reduces point-to-point times at an affordable price. Read More
Delta fleet to get in-flight WiFi
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Delta Airlines is set to introduce broadband Wi-Fi access onboard more than 330 aircraft operating in the continental United States. The company's passengers will be able to surf the web at 35,000 feet from next year at a cost of $9.95 on flights lasting up to three hours and $12.95 on longer trips. Read More
Short-Wave Infrared capability for the ScanEagle UAV
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August 8, 2008 The ScanEagle is a low-cost, long-endurance autonomous unmanned aircraft that has been one of the most significant new battlefield technologies to emerge during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, performing more than 100,000 combat hours in both theatres and delivering invaluable intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) on a daily basis. The only trouble is that conventional electro-optical and long-wave infrared cameras are severely limited in fog or rain. Now they’ve managed to miniaturize a short-wave infrared (SWIR) camera to fit inside the diminutive ScanEagle, enabling clear vision in any circumstance. Read More
Aeros Sky Dragon enters flight testing phase
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New age dirigible designer Aeros has announced that its airship model Aeros 40D Sky Dragon MSN 21 has entered the flight testing phase. The craft will take flight at San Bernardino International Airport, and will be used as an airborne lab for the development of the new breed of variable buoyancy air vehicle – the Aeroscraft systems. Read More
SpaceShipTwo mothership revealed
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Virgin Galactic has achieved another milestone in its push to become the world’s first private commercial spaceline with the unveiling of the WhiteKnightTwo (WK2) carrier aircraft. Built at the Scaled Composites facility in Mojave, California, the twin fuselage WK2 is a formidable engineering feat. It is the world’s largest all carbon composite aircraft and the main wing, which spans 140 ft, is the longest single carbon composite aviation component ever built. Christened “EVE” in honor of Sir Richard Branson's mother, the aircraft can can fly across the US non-stop and reach altitudes of 50,000 ft - the height from which SpaceShipTwo (SS2) will be air launched. Read More
World's smallest camera carrying Micro Aerial Vehicle takes flight
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July 28, 2008 How often have you thought, “I’d like to be a fly on the wall in that room”. Well, a team at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands is hard at work trying to make that desire a reality by developing a Micro Air Vehicle (MAV), which they claim is the smallest flying, camera carrying ornithopter in the world. The DelFly Micro weighs just 3 grams and measures 10 cm from wing tip to wing tip. It has a range of 50 meters and is powered by a 30 mAh lithium polymer battery, which provides enough power for three minutes of fight time. To keep the weight of the unit down the wings are made from Mylar foil, while the body and frame is made up from carbon and balsawood. Read More
Moller International's M200G Jetson flying vehicle goes on sale in 2009
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July 20, 2008 As the rate of technological advances continues at an astonishing pace there’s probably one question that gets asked more than any other by the average person in the street – or the average person stuck in traffic anyway - why don’t we have flying cars yet? Well the simple answer is that developing a flying car is hard. But the long wait for the solution to car clogged streets could be coming to an end with Moller International announcing that it is in the process of completing its fourth M200 “Jetson” volantor airframe and it expects to complete forty of these fly-by-wire, multi-engine flying vehicles in 2009. Read More
Blast from the past - restored Avro Vulcan makes airshow debut
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July 18, 2008 A clear favorite of the local crowd, the newly restored Avro Vulcan blasted into the Farnborough Airshow this week. The only remaining airworthy example of the formidable subsonic bombers which saw active service Royal Air Force for the between 1953 and 1984 will appear again over the weekend when the airshow opens its doors to the general public. Read More
