A good many good ideas for aircraft seem to come from good ideas for serving mankind – with many aircraft and performance-enhancing features coming from the humanitarian or missionary world. A particular need for jungle aviation, or bush flying anywhere, is the capability to make short takeoffs and landing s (STOL). Jungles and mountain passes often present limited options for setting down, and being able to clear trees and pinnacles can be a life-saving necessity. Solar Ship advertises itself as an ultimate means of penetrating the wilderness. “No roads. No fuel. No infrastructure” sounds like a pipe dream, but seems to be heading toward practical reality, with test flights continuing on at least two prototypes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awAAmwpdV70 Jay Godsall, CEO and …
You Never Have to Level a Water Runway
A mild kerfuffle rustled through the mostly male audience at the fourth annual Electric Aircraft Symposium when the title of Natalie Jeremijenko’s presentation was announced. The somewhat befuddled response to “Wetlandings are the New Black: Grounding the Environmental Performance of New Flight Infrastructure,” indicated that many Symposium attendees were not GQ subscribers, or ever thumbed through their wive’s copies of Elle or Vogue. But Ms. Jeremijenko’s theme and stylishly-layered variations met with a favorable reaction as she launched into the exposition of her idea. According to her biography on the Environmental Health Clinic web site, “Natalie Jeremijenko is an artist whose background includes studies in biochemistry, physics, neuroscience and precision engineering. Jeremijenko’s projects—which explore socio-technical change—have been exhibited by several museums and …