SAS 2019: Dr. Sangita Gupta and ASX

Dean Sigler SAS, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Two years ago, the Airspace X (ASX) MOBi  promised to achieve passenger costs equal to an Uber Black ride.  More importantly, the company promised that it might take back our lives, eliminating the frustration and wasted time lost in traffic gridlock. We caught up with ASX at this year’s Sustainable Aviation Symposium, held at UC Berkeley. Dr. Anita Sengupta, co-founder and Chief Product Officer for the firm explained the current outlook for ASX.  Where the MOBi-One (Mobility-One) looked like an offshoot of Airbus’s Pop-Up modular vehicle, it is now close to one of Uber’s concept craft used to guide designers. Dr. Sengupta’s background as aerospace engineer, rocket scientists and veteran of the space program has led her from deep space back to earth and to more terrestrial flight regimes.  She explains that transition in this short video. She started her career at Boeing Space and Communications, helping launch vehicles and communications satellites. She went on to 16 years with NASA, …

Volocopter’s Short Flight Over the Bay

Dean Sigler Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Volocopter air taxi flies over Singapore’s Marina Bay Volocopter flew the latest version of its two-seat sky taxi, the 2X, on a two-minute, 1.5-kilometer excursion around and over Singapore’s Marina Bay on October 22.  This short flight, surrounded by massive, futuristic skyscrapers, highlighted the controllability of the small machine and its ability to use minimal infrastructure, taking off from and landing on a simple grass plot. Florian Reuter, CEO of Volocopter, applauded the flight’s verification of his vision.  “The flight today in Singapore was the most advanced Volocopter flight yet and the piloted flight was as stable as ever. At the same time, we are showcasing a prototype of our full-scale VoloPort Infrastructure, allowing for a realistic demonstration of air taxi boarding and maintenance services. Never before have people been this close to experiencing what Urban Air Mobility in the city of tomorrow will feel like.” Perfect for commuting on the island, Volocopters would enable transit across the 50-kilometer (31-mile) …

Lilium Goes Institutional and Aspirational

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Lilium has done its marketing homework. They seem to be using a lot of marketing skills to move a potentially revolutionary product most of us have no chance of ever owning. Selling Lilium’s Benefits What makes us want things?  What floats our boats?  What makes us stop in our tracks and look in a store window?  What drags people out of their beds at midnight to stand in line for the Blu Ray of the latest Harry Potter film? Writing technical documentation first for an electronics firm and then for a major engineering design/build company, your editor helped create many proposals, inserting relevant technical data into promotional material and proposals.  Working with one particularly successful marketing manager, your editor learned an important lesson: sell the benefits – not the features of the product or service you are providing. Technically-minded types usually like to bask in the features of a product – how many horsepower, how much torque, refresh rates, etc.  …

Volocopter Hovers Over Stuttgart

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Stuttgart sees first urban flight of Volocopter in Europe     Volocopter has demonstrated an unmanned flight over Stuttgart, Germany on September 14, part of a two-day event titled, “Vision Smart City – Experience future mobility today.”   A major promotion of Mercedes-Benz’s history, products, and plans for future mobility, Partner Volocopter highlighted the drive toward “climate neutral mobility” by the auto maker. Smart City networks will rely on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Adaptive Networks according to Ciena, a provider of networking, programming and systems for ever-increasing demands by industry and municipalities. Control of traffic that will increasingly include Urban Aerial Mobility will take intense amounts of data – up to 24 billion Internet Provider (IP) devices on earth (three for every person) and Internet of Things (IoT) gizmos  flowing up to 500 zetabytes (500 followed by 21 zeros) per year.   The Mercedes-Benz Museum featured presentations, “Of technical innovations and sustainable transport concepts for future mobility at the Mercedes-Benz Museum …

Tehachapi Soars with New ideas

Dean Sigler Electric Aircraft Components, Electric Aircraft Materials, Electric Powerplants, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Every year, Labor Day weekend brings sailplane enthusiasts to Jeff Byard’s hangar on Mountain Valley Airport above Tehachapi, California.  It’s a friendly get-together that always has challenges and surprises for the participants. History on the Field This year, attendees were treated to an opening talk by Jeff Byard titled “Soaring, Something for Everybody.”  It lived up to its name, with a review of sailplanes of all types, with many examples right in the presentation hangar. For history buffs, jeff’s hangar, and Doug Fronius’ a few doors away, offer a glimpse of every type of hand-made soaring machine, including Doug’s recreation of Waldo Waterman’s 1911 hang glider, something which has been flown over the California coast. Jeff’s collection includes a Slingsby SG-38 primary glider and T-21 side-by-side trainer (seen above in its native habitat, England).  The T-21 fuselage rests on the floor to the right as one opens the hangar doors, and the wings in mid-restoration hang nearby.  Jeff hopes to …

Loganair to Pioneer Island-Hopping Electric Flight

Dean Sigler Electric Powerplants, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation 1 Comment

An Eccentric Problem It seems quaint and charming, typically British as we used to understand them from vintage films.  The idea of taking a 1.7 mile flight from Westray in the Orkney Islands to Papa Westray within visual range may seem a bit eccentric.  The landing on the beach at low tide seems even more so.  Loganair, which serves the Orkney Islands, experiences many ups and downs in a day, their longest flight taking a mere 15 minutes. Twice-a-day flights between the Westrays can be disrupted by North Sea weather, as can boat passages between the islands, which often take two turbulent hours.  Obligingly, the airline offers flex tickets good for essentially – whenever.  Fares seem reasonable, though, a one-way trip either way costing 7.25 Pounds ($8.72). Beyond the scheduling difficulties, operation of air-cooled engines for such short flights does not promote long periods between overhauls.  Electric motors are ideal for such duties. A Reasonable Solution Cranfield University in the …

Atea Looks Like a Cessna Overhead

Dean Sigler Hybrid Aircraft, Hydrogen Fuel, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

French company Ascendance Flight Technologies offers a four-seat design that combines hybrid propulsion with vertical takeoff and landing capabilities, and then scoots around on conventional wings.  Etea’s technology seems a lot like that of Pipistrel’s 801 or several other eVTOLs. Some Historical Perspective The design team at Ascendance comes from Airbus, and claims to have made the first electric aircraft flight across the English Channel with the E-Fan 2.0.  Your editor offers a few minor inclusions. First, as we reported on October 10, 2009, “Gerard Thevenot, a long-time championship-level hang-glider pilot, celebrated the centennial of Louis Bleriot’s flight across la Manche by flying his hydrogen-powered La Mouette hang glider over roughly the same route Bleriot took between Calais and Dover on August 6, 2009.  Missing the centenary by a few days (Bleriot made the hop on July 25, 1909), Thevenot took an hour and seven minutes to duplicate the trip Bleriot managed in 37 minutes.”  It was an Eck/Geiger propelled machine, …

Tecnalia Aerotaxi Levels with Reasonable Goals

Dean Sigler Batteries, Electric Powerplants, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

Tecnalia, a Spanish technology and engineering firm, presented its Aerotaxi at the Paris Air Show this year.  The company demonstrates a way to make automated flight a little less perturbing to the anxious public, keeping the platform on the straight and level during all phases of flight.  It does this with four gimbaled sets of four propellers, which do all the pivoting and changes of angle while leaving the passenger compartment in a constant plane.  This should do a great deal to calm the reluctant flyer. Tecnalia adds, “Joseba Lasa, one of the people responsible for the development, explained that “the main novelty of Tecnalia’s aircraft lies in the fact that the architecture allows the cabin to maintain its orientation regardless of speed, a clear advantage over conventional drones and current ‘air taxi’ applications. This feature enhances the flying experience, providing a sensation similar to that of travelling by car or bus from a dynamic point of view.” Aerotaxi has …

What Has One Engine, Six Motors and Seven Propellers?

Dean Sigler Diesel Powerplants, Electric Powerplants, Hybrid Aircraft, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation Leave a Comment

EcoPulse™, a collaboration by Airbus, Daher, and Safran is a fixed-wing distributed hybrid propulsion aircraft whose power system emulates many of the Urban Air Mobility vehicles that use an electric Vertical Take Off and Landing configuration.  Safran, notable for its gas turbines, will supply the propulsion system (excluding batteries).  The system consists of a turbogenerator (combined turbine and power generator), an electric power management system, and integrated electric thrusters (or e-Propellers) including electric motors and propellers faired neatly into the wings. EcoPulse partners claim the six small electric motors spread along the leading edge, while providing propulsion thrust, lead to a reduction of wing surface area – much of the wing gaining lift from the blown areas, lowered wingtip marginal vortices from the thrusters on the wing tips, and therefore lowered drag. Airbus will oversee aerodynamic optimization of the distributed propulsion system, installation of “high-energy density” batteries and their use to power the six electric motors.  Daher will oversee component …

A Huge Battery with an Airplane Painted On It

Dean Sigler Batteries, Electric Powerplants, Sky Taxis, Sustainable Aviation, Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Eviation, an Israeli company developing Alice, a high-speed, intermediate-distance commuter airplane, brought its prototype to the Paris Air Show this week.  Eviation co-founder and CEO Omer Bar-Yohay gave journalists a 27-minute overview of the aircraft, the philosophy behind it, and projections on its immediate future. “It’s basically a huge battery with some plane painted on it,” he told reporters. The 6,350 kilogram (13,970 pound) airplane carries 900 kilowatt-hours of batteries, equivalent to the cells in nine Tesla S P100D automobiles or one Tesla semi-truck.  Even that, according to rough figuring by yours truly and polished calculations by a smarter reader, seems to provide for only half the necessary energy to provide the range Eviation claims.  Will flight tests prove us misguided? Fuel Burn vs. kWh Carrying capacity and performance are similar to the Beechcraft King Air.  The King Air burns 100 gallons per hour at a fuel cost around $550.  The Alice consumes about 400 kilowatt hours at a cost …