Immersive Introduction Amidst stage smoke and Hollywood-style dazzling lights, Archer Aviation “flew” its Maker into public view two weeks ago. On an immersive cinema platform in a hangar in Hawthorne, California, Maker emerged amid all the pounding two drummers could produce. It seemed to hover above the varied scenery over which it appeared and the on-stage and on-screen special effects were special indeed. The cynosure of the hoopla, however, was strangely static, even though its guiding lights were highly animated. Co-founders and Co-CEOs Brett Adcock and Adam Goldstein performed flawlessly in promoting their creation, adding to the professionalism of the event. Since the event was inside, and the crowd was allowed to come on stage under the rotor blades, it was probably prudent to have the motors raised and inactive. Less static in this Computer Fluid Dynamics (CFD) rendering, the Maker displays the flow around its 12 rotors in vertical flight. Since battery tests are underway, perhaps soon we will …
Bye Aerospace Provides Stratospheric Persistence
George Bye, founder and head of Bye Aerospace, introduced the Silent Falcon unmanned aerial vehicle earlier this year at the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI) meeting. He has two other relatively low-cost but highly capable offerings which could stretch the limits of unmanned aerial system (UAS) capabilities. The first, the Starlight program, involves lifting a variable geometry, solar-powered airplane to great heights with a balloon, hovering with it for up to four months, and releasing it when needed to allow refurbishing, refitting and relaunching. This two-stage system provides the same kind of surveillance offered by a satellite, but at a much lower cost. The balloon is a static device, used only to provide the altitude necessary, and the aircraft needs to provide power sufficient to allow station keeping and run its sensor systems for the period it is at altitude. When launched, the nose and tail-mounted electric motors power the airplane on its way. It can slide its …