With the Paris Air Show scheduled to lift off in earnest on Monday, Airbus is hoping to steal a bit of the limelight. After being conceived in 2004, the A350 finally took the public skies today in France, showcasing a highly-efficient Rolls-Royce XWB engine all the while. The jet is arguably being launched to compete with Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, and as you’d expect, it’s the magic inside of the shell that’s most impressive. The Trent XWB engine was built specifically for the A350, replete with titanium blades and a mixture of technologies that have led to it being deemed the “world’s most efficient” airplane engine… as said by Rolls-Royce, anyway. To date, over 600 orders for the A350 have been placed, but the outfit is hoping to land even more contracts in the days ahead. Ideally, each will ship with a power port in every seat, satellite internet connections and an allergy for mechanical failures. (A boy can dream, right?)
It may not be the biggest plane to ever fly the skies, but the Airbus A350 is the newest plane by the aircraft manufacturer and it comes touting some unique features. The A350 completed a four-hour flight earlier this morning, which marked the first time that the plane has taken to the skies. It will
Larry Page just picked up another bird for his flying craft collection, and this plane doesn’t even carry passengers. In fact, it’s not used for transportation at all — the aircraft is tethered to the ground. Google X, the tech giant’s experimental arm, recently acquired the device’s designer, Makani Power. That company is currently in the process of creating a flying wind turbine system.
In essence, the Airborne Wind Turbine (AWT) flies at an altitude of 800 to 1,950 feet in order to take advantage of stronger winds. On-board generators create up to 600 kilowatts of electricity collected through dedicated turbines, which is then sent on to a tethered ground station. It’s an interesting idea indeed, and judging by Google’s non-disclosed financial interest, Mountain View sees some serious potential as well. The acquisition, first reported by Bloomberg Businessweek, was but one component of the publication’s in-depth look into Google X. You can read that article in full at the source link below.
This week CEO of Solar Impulse André Borschberg is piloting a solar-powered airplane from Phoenix Arizona to Dallas Texas in a record-breaking 18 hour flight. SlashGear got the rare opportunity to participate in this flight earlier today in an interview with Borschberg while he flew over Highway 85. This was an in-flight interview done from a Samsung Galaxy Note II to Solar Impulse’s base station and up with a satellite connection to the plane.
The flight took off Wednesday May 22nd at 04:47AM MST (UTC-7) from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport and is scheduled to land at 01:00AM CDT (UTC-5) at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport. The total distance covered will be 868 miles (1396.8 km) – and as you might be aware, the speed at which this plane travels this distance isn’t exactly speedy – you can drive between these spots much quicker.
But that’s not the point – instead it’s traveling this distance without fuel – without non-sustainable energy, rather. Have a peek at our in-flight interview here and read all about it below – and stick with SlashGear for more information on this flight as it continues across the USA.
A Sustainable Energy Movement
AB: It’s an unbelievable feeling to see how this technology works. You have to imagine that I am sitting in an airplane, I will be flying in it all day – I will be climbing to 27,000 feet, and at the same time I will be filling up the batteries.
So the more I will be flying, the more energy I will be able to collect. This is for us a good demonstration of what this technology can do.
To be able to fly this airplane, and to be able to fly this airplane day and night – we worked hard to reduce the energy consumption of this airplane, and developed technology that can be used on the ground. It can be used with solar sets in homes, batteries in cars, the insulation materials in refrigerators.
Solar Impulse Products Used Today
AB: We believe that these technologies have a great future – to develop new products, to develop new jobs, to develop new industries.
The largest buyers of our parts – by far – do not come from the aviation world. These companies, like Solvay, like Bayer, like Schindler, like Omega – are in completely different industries. Their interest is to develop new products for their own applications, for their own customers.
We have insulation materials that we developed here which insulate better than what we had up to now, that are lighter. These insulation materials are going into cars, some of them are going into refrigerators, so I think there are opportunities for the direct use of many of these products.
The flight today is a step toward making flight around the world possible. It was important to test this airplane in different kinds of weather, different weather systems in the United States – I mean, you saw what happened in Texas [in the tornado on the 15th] and Oklahoma [in the tornado on the 20th] as it’s not easy to steer such an airplane in difficult conditions. So that is for us a first important goal.
On Media Connections and the In-flight Interview
AB: It’s a good opportunity to discuss with media, and also with partners – and with schools. I had many discussions with schools where children could ask questions and we could discuss what we are doing and why we are doing it.
Of course it all depends on the flying conditions. Currently the weather is extremely good, so it’s not extremely difficult to talk to news.
The arrival in Dallas will be challenging, because it’s windy. It’s windy on the ground and it’s windy around the airport, so getting to this approach phase, we will not be able to give interviews.
What’s Next?
AB: This airplane is fully sustainable, but the big challenge is to make the pilot sustainable. That’s why we are constructing a second airplane – which is being constructed in Switzerland – and this second airplane will be designed for travel over long distances, over the ocean, and we plan to do the next trip 5 days and 5 nights, non-stop, with one pilot onboard only – with this second plane.
With this one, we limit ourselves to 24 hours because the airplane has to be manually steered all the time.
You can continue to watch Borschberg make this flight live at Solar Impulse Live – tell him we say hello!
After a four-month-long grounding due to a battery issue, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner is back in action in the US, with United Airlines announcing that the first flight since the grounding occurred today and took passengers from Houston, Texas to Chicago, Illinois. Boeing has fixed the battery issue, and is sticking with lithium ion, but they have changed the design to prevent overheating.
Interestingly enough, the 787 Dreamliner’s first flight in the US was also from Houston to Chicago, so it seems that United is essentially starting all over again from the beginning with its flight schedule. United Airlines tweeted the news today, along with a photo saying, “I’m back by popular demand,” referring to the 787 coming back from its four-month hiatus. However, we’re not sure a lot of passengers are going to be too crazy about boarding a plane that was once grounded for malfunctions.
The Dreamliner’s lithium ion battery had overheating issues in multiple planes, leading to emergency landings and then eventually to a fleet-wide grounding by the FAA in order to further investigate the issue and fix the problem. The FAA grounded all 787 aircrafts back in January, and the planes were then clear to fly again in late April.
As for what the future holds for the 787, let’s hope the battery fixes hold up, or else Boeing will face even more scrutiny. It’s not unheard of for the same aircraft fleet to experience multiple issues, but we’re sure that Boeing and airlines flying 787s don’t want to have to deal with such a problem again, especially with such a new plane that comes with new technology.
The fix for the 787s was estimated at $23.5 million for the entire fleet, which the airlines themselves didn’t necessarily have to pay for, but we’re guessing United Airlines and others lost a bit of money due to canceled flights and the need to reschedule future flights that were planned to take the Dreamliner to their destination.
As drones become more controversial, the government is digging deeper into the technology to make it more useful. Case in point: the US Navy make history by developing a specialized drone that can takeoff and land from and aircraft carrier. The X-47B, as it’s called, is in its prototype stages, and it marked the first time that an unmanned aerial vehicle has taken off from an aircraft carrier.
The X-47B is fully autonomous, meaning that it’s controlled automatically with computer software so that there doesn’t need to be a pilot to fly it, although someone could take control if need be. The new prototype drone is also designed specifically for aircraft carriers, and it’s made to take off and land just like a normal fighter jet would on an aircraft carrier.
The drone has a maximum altitude of over 40,000 feet with a range of more than 2,100 nautical miles. As for the speed of the drone, the Navy doesn’t disclose exact figures, but simply refers to its top speed as “high subsonic.” However, the drone is the size of a full-size fighter jet, and looks quite similar to a Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk.
There has been increasing controversy over drones, though, and some countries say that the drone strikes are causing widespread civilian deaths since they operate with little human interaction, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping the US military for advancing the program and sending out more drones overseas. Plus, people here in the US are even concerned themselves over the privacy issues that drones create.
In any case, the next step for the X-47B drone is to land on the aircraft carrier, which is a much more difficult task than taking off, but there’s already video proof of the new prototype drone making a test landing on the ground to see if it could land on such a short runway on an aircraft carrier, and from the looks of it, a landing looks very much possible at this point.
Airbus isn’t putting all its eggs in one basket — or rather, one bag. While it already has a suite of iPad cockpit apps to assist pilots, the aircraft maker is hedging its bet with a deal to use Dell Latitude laptops as electronic flight bags on the A320 family. Crews will get the Latitude E6330 installed as a Class-2 device that can link up with the A320’s avionics; as you’d expect, the PCs will also ship with software for maps, manuals and weather. We’ve reached out to learn just which carriers are going this route, although possible expansion to other Airbus vehicles could make Dell a common sight at 36,000 feet.
Anyone who watched The Jetsons as a kid has been eagerly awaiting the day we can take our personal vehicles to the sky, zooming away towards the clouds to pick up a pizza or the dry cleaning. Such a reality isn’t here yet, but Terrafugia’s new TF-X concept gives us yet another glimpse into what that future could look like, showing off a car that looks similar to an older Ford Taurus that sprouted half a pair of X-Fighter wings.
Of course, this isn’t the first time Terrafugia has waved around a flying car, having first done so way back in late 2006 with the Transition, a work-in-progress that was said to function as both a car and a personal air vehicle. Not surprisingly, the Transition isn’t zipping around our skies, but that hasn’t stopped the company from unveiling its latest ambitions, the TF-X.
The TF-X is said to be a VTOL (Vertical Takeoff and Landing) vehicle with four-seats and a plug-in hybrid system under the hood. According to the announcement, Terrafugia has already discussed the vehicle with the FAA, which it says is agreeable to the technology. It also goes on to say that the Transition is “nearing” production, with the TF-X concept eventually going a step farther.
Said Terrafugia’s CEO Car Dietrich: “This is the right time for us to begin thinking about the future of the company beyond Transition® development. We are passionate about continuing to lead the creation of a flying car industry and are dedicating resources to lay the foundations for our vision of personal transportation.”
With the third X-51A WaveRider failing to reach hypersonic speed due to a fin failure last August, it seemed the United States Air Force would possibly forgo the fourth (and final) run. On the morning of May 1st, however, that last X-51A got its chance to soar, successfully reaching Mach 5.1 during a record 370-second flight. According to the Wright Patterson Air Force base, the aircraft’s rocket booster helped it hit Mach 4.8 about 26 seconds after being released from a B-2H at 50K feet, at which point its air-fed scramjet brought it to 60,000 feet while achieving hypersonic flight. The USAF notes that “it was the longest of the four X-51A test flights [230 nautical miles] and the longest air-breathing hypersonic flight” — surely taking some of the sting out of the $300 million program’s previous shortcomings. Past flights aimed to hit Mach six, with the first and second tests only sustaining Mach five.
The aircraft made destructive splashdown landing into the Pacific as planned, but data from the whole flight was recorded. The USAF isn’t planning a follow-up to the X-51A anytime soon, though the program will likely serve as a reference for future designs. You can dig into the official rundown at the link below.
Early this morning at Moffet Air Field in Mountain View, California, Solar Impulse finally took off on the first leg of its barnstorming tour across the US. Of course, this isn’t the first time the sun-powered plane and its pilots, Bertrand Piccard and Andre Borschberg, have flown long distance, but it is the first time it’s taken wing through American airspace. Why has it come across the pond? To raise pubilc and political awareness about the benefits of going green and increasing energy efficiency — and perhaps pick up an additional sponsor or two for its second-gen aircraft (currently in development) meant to fly around the world in 2015. “With the technologies we have onboard, we can divide by two the energy consumption of our world, and produce half of the rest [energy we need] with renewable sources” according to Piccard.
This first portion of the journey will end in Phoenix, and it’ll take around twenty hours to get there, as the plane’s meager output limits its average speed to around 40MPH. Should any of you want to join along with Piccard and Borschberg as they fly across the country, you can hit the Solar Impulse Across America website to see a livestream from the cockpit, along with real-time altitude, air speed and battery status of the aircraft. And, you can watch a video of Solar Impulse taking off on its North American journey and hear Borschberg talk about learning to fly it after the break.
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