Hasta La Gadget!

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.

Filed under: Transportation, Alt

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We reported on a story where a hacker claimed to have created an Android application that would be able to completely take over an aircraft. Hugo Teso, who is a security consultant and ex-commercial pilot, says his application would be able to make an aircraft “dance to his tune,” but the FAA has dismissed Teso’s claims today.

The FAA responded to Teso’s claims by saying the systems that are certified to be used on the flight decks are immune to the exploits that exist in a PC-based ACARS training software, which is what Teso tested his Android application on and not against systems inside of an actual aircraft. The FAA released a statement saying, The FAA has determined that the hacking technique described during a recent computer security conference does not pose a flight safety concern because it does not work on certified flight hardware.” (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Hacker Claims To Have Developed Android App That Can Hack Into Aircrafts, Mississippi Man Caught Double-Texting With 3-Year-Old, Drugs In His Vehicle,

Look up in the sky! It’s a bird… It’s a plane… It’s the geekiest R/C plane ever! You will believe a man can fly. This awesome Superman R/C plane makes if feel like Metropolis and makes observers do a double-take, wherever it flies.

Are they filming the new Superman movie with super cheap effects? Nah. Apparently a couple of guys were biking down the Pacific Coast Highway when all the sudden they see Superman fly by. WTF? Well, after some investigation, they caught up with the owner and shot some footage so that we all can see the awesomeness of this R/C plane.

Presumably, it’s one of these, just painted and caped up to look like the Man of Steel. I wish I had one, but I would just crash it on the first flight.

[via Obvious Winner]

NASA and its partners keep making progress in their quest to design a new passenger airliner that can fly supersonic without making a lot of noise, one of the main problems with the Concorde. And that progress looks space-age awesome. More »

Quantum cryptography is held to be one of the most secure methods of encrypting data. This is because if a quantum-encrypted data is intercepted to be read or altered, it changes and the interception is immediately detectable. Scientists have long been trying to apply quantum-encryption in the real world.

And now, a German team of engineers has been able to create the first-ever air-to-ground quantum network over which data has been sent. The network comprised of a plane flying at a height of 20 kilometers and a base station. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Climate-Controlled Airline Seats On Their Way, Man arrested for refusing to turn off phone in plane,