Airlander airship ready to emerge; White House boosts delivery by drone; agencies commit to increase UAS use; Aurora expands optionally piloted Centaur OPA uses.
Following the trajectory established when VAATE took over from IHPTET in 2005, the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory unveils plans for a new national military-propulsion technology development program, ATTAM.
Ten years after the formation of an FAA/industry alternative fuels initiative, significant technical progress has been made, but commercialization remains a challenge.
Firefly Space Systems’ 125,000-lb.-thrust engine will be the first aerospike rocket to fly and is pivotal to the company’s goal of developing a scalable family of relatively simple, lightweight launchers for the small satellite market.
Creation of an Unmanned Aircraft Safety Team to identify and prevent causes of unmanned-aircraft accidents headlines initiatives announced at the first White House drones workshop.
Autonomous robots will halve the time required to inspect the envelope of Lockheed Martin’s LMH-1 hybrid airship, and allow checks to be conducted in parallel with production, saving time and money.
With about 80,000 ft² of envelope to inspect during assembly and maintenance, Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works has developed a robot to scour the hull of its LMH-1 commercial heavy-lift hybrid airship for helium-leaking pinholes in the Vectran fiber.
Germany’s DLR prepares for a second series of wind-tunnel tests of an active rotor system using multiple swashplates to provide individual blade control and higher harmonic control to increase performance while reducing vibration and noise.
"While mom would have preferred that I read the classics, she decided that Aviation Week was an acceptable compromise. More than 40 years on, I still haven’t read Moby Dick, but I do still read Aviation Week!"
"Having heard rumors about the B-2, I was absolutely floored when I opened Aviation Week to find a super-detailed foldout of the B-2 rollout. I’ve been a voracious reader of the magazine ever since."
I was probably the only 14-year-old who had his own subscription to AW&ST. But for me, the memory that resonates most has to be: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
"I maintain my subscription to AW&ST; it’s my window into the world of aviation and space. At first, I read other people’s copies until I could purchase my own."
NASA seeks X-plane ideas; Airbus, Dedrone team on counter-UAS; Erickson’s new S-64 rotor blade; NASA tests Pipstrel’s electric propulsion; Skunk Works robot inspects airship hull.
Industry experts say turbo-electric propulsion is still years away, so NASA should focus research also on gas turbines, sustainable jet fuels and propulsion-airframe integration if it wants to reduce carbon emissions.
Facebook’s full-size UAV flies; Airbus debut’s hybrid E-Fan; Flirtey UAV delivers for 7-Eleven; Airbus Perlan glider heads to Argentina; Leonardo to fly active rotor.
Harking back to the U.S. Navy scout-carrying airships of the 1930s, SAIC and ArcZeon propose an airship carrier concept to extend the reach of small- and medium-size unmanned aircraft.
Support from the French government and China’s Avic is reinforcing Flying Whales’ confidence that its project will not be another failure in the airship segment.
Airbus A380 doors, cargo airships, communications satellites –all are early applications of ultracapacitor energy storage. Next step, more-electric aircraft and directed-energy weapons?
