Stemme AG, manufacturer of highly sophisticated motorgliders, has made their aerial platforms mounts for a huge array of surveillance and sensor systems. Their latest announcement, though, shows the company is thinking next generation thoughts about flying in automated skies. According to the Technical University of Berlin, a co-partner with the University of Stuttgart on the project, “the STEMME s15 landed precisely and safely at 5: 44 P.m. local time.” The flight took place March 22, 2012. Using a flight controller and laser altimeter, the system allows “optional piloting” in its operation. It also provides a high degree of flexibility, letting the airplane land at any airport, even those without instrument landing systems. LAPAZ, their automated flight control system, uses electric actuators and on-board computers to make automated flight a reality. It even opens up a new category of aircraft, the Optional Piloted Vehicle, for missions into hostile environments or situations. The team’s announcement gave some details of the project. “At …
The Sixth Annual Electric Aircraft Symposium
The CAFE Foundation will hold its sixth Electric Aircraft Symposium on April 27 and 28, 2012 at the Flamingo Resort in Santa Rosa, California and at the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport, site of the Green Flight Challenge. Not only will there be a stellar lineup of speakers, but flying demonstrations of electric and hybrid aircraft, a first at any EAS. Jack Langelaan, team leader for the GFC-winning Electro Taurus G4 team, and Tine Tomazic from Pipistrel will share insights on the design and flight of the 403.5 epmpg aircraft. David Calley, Chief Technical Officer for Motor Excellence, will describe ideal low-RPM motors for electric aircraft, and Mark Moore from NASA’s Langley Research Center will share breakthroughs in distributed propulsion. And that’s all before the first coffee break! Typical of the packed schedules for all EAS’s, the rest of the presentations will fill your brain and lighten your spirit. Gene Sheehan will discuss his Quickie-like Feuling Green Flight Challenger …
NASA Adds Some Numbers to Green Flight Challenge
NASA’s Mark Moore sends this link to NASA’s press release on the recent NASA Centennial Challenge Green Flight Challenge sponsored by Google. The CAFE Foundation organized and managed the event. “Today we’ve shown that electric aircraft have moved beyond science fiction and are now in the realm of practice.” – Chief technologist at NASA Joe Parrish. The lead quote is informative, as are some figures from the release. “The competition resulted in the world’s most efficient aircraft, beating the state of the art of approximately 100 pmpg (passenger miles per gallon) which is achieved by the newly released Boeing 787 airliner. Essentially this contest showed the ability of small aircraft to achieve twice the efficiency of the most efficient production automobiles today, while traveling at over twice the speed.” Part of this efficiency came about because of inspired design. NASA explains, “The Taurus G4 used a multi-body concept (reminiscent of the twin Mustang, or an inverse P-38); this accomplished a 61% useful …
Drs. Seeley and Moore Hit One Out of the Airpark
The January 2011 issue of Popular Mechanics resurrects the perennial hope for a flying automobile. The cover taunts, “(Go Ahead, Laugh) But NASA, DARPA & the FAA Are Serious.” Sharon Weinberger taunts some makers a bit in her article, “Driving on Air,” as she looks at a variety of Transformer-style vehicles that can travel by land or air with the fewest inconveniences. She notes the differences between propelling cars and planes, and looks at extremely different modes of giving people personal aerial transport, including the Moeller Skycar (“Inventor Paul Moeller has been developing the concept for nearly 50 years. To date, the M400X has only hovered on a tether.”), the Martin Jetpack, The Cartercopter, and the Terrafugia Transition that’s been getting an enormous press following (and a featured spot in the Hammacher Schlemmer Christmas catalog) lately. She ends with an overview of Dr. Mark Moore’s Puffin, detailed in this blog in January. After explaining that a commuter using the Puffin would rise …
CAFE News: NASA’s Colloquia Feature Dr. Seeley
col·lo·qui·um (n.) 1. An informal meeting for the exchange of views. 2. An academic seminar on a broad field of study, usually led by a different lecturer at each meeting. The Free Dictionary CAFE Foundation President Dr. Brien Seeley spoke by invitation at the Sigma Series Colloquium at NASA Langley in Hampton, Virginia on May 4th. His talk had an illustrious heritage as part of the longest-running science colloquia in America, beginning 50 years ago with a presentation by Werner von Braun, and since then including talks by Carl Sagan, Alex Haley, Neil Armstrong and other notables. Dr. Seeley was interviewed by NASA public relations TV and a local news station. Although not used to being treated like a celebrity, he found that, “People seem to think CAFE is latched on to an exciting future.” His talk focused on themes he has been developing for years – time wasted in traffic, the burden of maintaining the freeway/highway/urban sprawl infrastructure, the oil consumed …
Synergy and Passion at EAS
John Palmerlee, Editor of The Flying Wire, Experimental Aircraft Association Chapter 124’s newsletter, wote this in the May 5, 2010 edition. The CAFE Team hosted what was in my opinion a very successful event at the Doubletree Hotel in Rohnert Park, April 23 and 24, 2010. Nearly thirty contributors from around the world spoke at the Electric Aircraft Symposium, and their message was clear: Change is coming… let’s get on board together. Electric airplanes and motorcycles, model airplanes, algae biofuel synthesis, wetlands initiatives, hybrid air carriers, battery breakthroughs, VTOL PAVs, tethered wind generators, flight systems analysis, nanostructures… and a mystery Green Flight Challenge aircraft promising to tap into new design paradigms. This was just a taste of the concepts spinning around at the EAS 2010. This meeting of minds was diverse yet connected, calculated yet passionate. Every presentation filled a preset time-slot, so each presenter’s WPM (words per minute) metered their content. It was a dizzying earful! As the …
The Poop on the Puffin
Under normal circumstances, this editor would never resort to scatological titles, but Mark Moore, the NASA aerospace engineer behind this fantastic flying creation calls his electric craft, “Puffin” because, according to Moore, the bird after which it is named, “Hides its poop, and we’re environmentally friendly because we essentially have no emissions.” Like the Puffin, this craft looks a bit chubby and incapable of flight on the ground, but folds its legs on liftoff, and becomes a streamlined bullet. Moore, who spoke at last year’s Third Annual Electric Aircraft Symposium, and will return for this year’s CAFE Foundation gathering at NASA Ames Research Center in April, unveiled this concept at this year’s American Helicopter Society meeting in San Francisco. Moore and his colleagues, who include personnel at NASA, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Georgia Institutute of Technology, the National Institute of Aerospace, and M-DOT Aerospace, plan on flying a third-scale model of the VTOL craft in March, and thus Moore may …
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