Wednesday, February 27, 2019

My newest technology crush.



There is a lot of activity in the Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) segment right now. There are tons of new proto's being tested. And I've even heard it said that they are considering Vertiports.

Everything is super early, but that is where the exciting stuff is. I think this will be a real thing. Not like those stupid flying cars.

3 comments:

  1. This video confuses me. (Disclaimer: I had the sound off, maybe it's explained in the audio)

    This is supposed to be a Vertical takeoff aircraft. Why is it cruising down the runway before taking off? The whole point of a VTOL aircraft is that it doesn't need a runway.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think they were just trying to demonstrate they could achieve forward thrust with this design. They aren't all going to be great. They are in the experimental phase. So there are going to be a lot of iffy designs. But there is starting to be an awful lot of them. Possibly they just need proof it fly's at all for the moment? In the video it said that would not be the final design.

    ReplyDelete
  3. STOLports were already a thing many years ago ...

    There's even a fairly famous one that's past its thirtieth birthday now: London City Airport (LCA) at London Docklands used to be one, but it didn't stay a STOLport past the mid-1990s.

    And even the capabilities for the planes were there long ago: behold the F-15 STOL/MTD (ACTIVE) prototype which could take off at 42 mph and land on 1650 feet of runway ... and it's an ACTUAL MODERN WAR PLANE (which they stopped making).

    What this really is about is making VSTOL cheap and coming up with new ways to get municipal airports to sprout up so they can land VSTOL aircraft ... which essentially was the pipe dream of the late 1980s through the mid to late 1990s.

    Maybe this will help out in some places where big aircraft can barely land -- SXM comes to mind again, but really SAB is much, much worse.

    So are you good with landing your aircraft within 1000 feet of runway? No?

    Then it's into the mountain or off the cliffs with you! :-)

    ReplyDelete