Aero Gizmo

The team at Scaled Composites pulled out all the stops to realize the final design of the company’s founder and former CTO, Burt Rutan, ahead of his retirement in April earlier this year. In just four months, the Scaled Composites team went from beginning the preliminary design to the first flight of the “BiPod”, a hybrid gasoline-electric flying car that grew out of a program to develop a rapid, low-cost electric test bed using as many off-the-shelf components as possible. Read More

Sikorsky’s X2 Technology Demonstrator that first took to the air on August 27, 2008 has flown for the last time. The 23rd and final flight was conducted in the early morning of July 14, 2011 from Sikorsky’s new Innovations Center in West Palm Beach, Florida. In flight tests carried out over the three-year period, the X2 flew a total of around 22 hours and on September 15, 2010 achieved a maximum cruise speed of 253 knots in level flight – an unofficial record for a conventional helicopter. While the X2 is now officially entering retirement, the lessons learned and technologies developed for the X2 program will pave the way for Sikorsky’s S-97 Raider helicopter. Read More

Just a couple of weeks after its maiden flight at the end of May, the e-Genius electric aircraft has now winged its way into the record books - managing to stay aloft for over two hours and maintain an average speed of 100 mph (160 kph). Its University of Stuttgart development team are now looking to improve on that performance, ahead of the 2011 Green Flight Challenge for which it was designed. Read More

Despite the possibility of delays due to weather, the space shuttle Atlantis successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida on schedule this morning at 11:26 EDT. It is the final flight both for the Atlantis, and for NASA’s 30-year shuttle program as a whole. The 12-day STS-135 mission will see four crew members traveling to the International Space Station (ISS) to deliver supplies. Read More

The goals of the Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe (ACARE) to reduce CO2 emissions by 50 percent, NOx emissions by 80 percent and noise cut by 50 percent by 2020 has seen aircraft manufacturers and airlines looking at alternative fuels such as biofuel. While not feasible for powering the flight of the aircraft itself, Airbus has also been looking at the potential for fuel cell technology to power a number of aircraft functions, such as autonomous taxiing. Read More

Proponents of flying cars like to state how much less likely collisions would be up in the air, where everyone wouldn’t be traveling on the same level, yet mid-air collisions between aircraft do already occur. Although certainly not as common as automobile collisions, approximately 10 to 12 aircraft do fly into each other every year, with many more reporting near-misses. This has led to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mandating that by 2020, all commercial aircraft (and small aircraft flying near airports) must be equipped with a GPS tracking system, which would give more accurate information on their location than is provided by ground-based radar. Scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has been tasked with creating an algorithm, that would use that GPS data to keep the planes out of each other’s way. Read More

As I look out of my office window and watch the heart-stopping acrobatics of feeding swifts, it's not difficult to see why so many aircraft designers find inspiration in nature - from birds to bats to insects. Now it's the turn of the swift. Hoping to demonstrate the endurance and performance benefits of a combined flapping and gliding approach to Micro Air Vehicle (MAV) design, researchers have developed an experimental flyer capable of combining both unsteady and steady aerodynamics. Read More

If you've ever watched your Parrot AR Drone power through the air and wondered what it would be like to be inside such a craft, the announcement of the Air Car project could be the answer you are looking for. The folks behind the development of the SoloTrek/Springtail Exoskeleton Flying Vehicle have revealed plans to create the world's first fuel-electric hybrid flying car. Read More

Quadrocopters like the AR.Drone and Datron Scout may have been hogging the UAS limelight lately but Dutch unmanned rotorcraft system manufacturer Geocopter has shown there’s still life in the traditional helicopter design yet with the official delivery of its first light unmanned helicopter called the GC-201. Designed and built just like a normal helicopter, the GC-201 features a twin gas turbine engine propulsion system, lightweight carbon fiber fuselage and full automatic takeoff, mission and landing capabilities. Read More