Aeronautics

Solar plane completes first 24-hour flight

A solar-powered plane designed to fly both day and night has succeeded in its first attempt at a 24-hour voyage.

Taking off from its base in Switzerland, the Solar Impulse HB-SIA soared into the sky at 6:51 a.m. Wednesday local time (9:51 p.m. Pacific time Tuesday), intent on staying in the air nonstop for 24 hours by flying through the night powered purely by the solar energy captured during the day.

"24 hours and a successful flight through the night!" read a post on the Solar Impulse Twitter feed posted at around 9:38 p.m. PDT Wednesday. "This is a milestone in putting fossil fuels behind us."

The Solar Impulse site tracked the progress of the pilot, Andre Borschberg, and outlined the itinerary and hopes for the entire flight. The plan was that the Solar Impulse would slowly attain an altitude of nearly 28,000 feet with the sun's rays both powering the propeller plane and charging its batteries to prepare for the night flight.

As the sun started to sink too low to continue providing energy to the solar cells (about two hours before sunset), Borschberg planned to begin a slow descent, hitting an altitude of around 4,900 feet by 11 p.m. local time. The goal at that point was to continue flying throughout the night and until the next sunrise using only the captured energy stored in the plane's batteries. The question was whether Borschberg could coax the batteries to supply enough juice to keep him aloft all night before landing at dawn on Thursday.

"Goal achieved for SI. Historic moment. Jubilation here in Payerne, Switzerland!" read another tweet posted Thursday night on the Solar Impulse Twitter page. Solar Impulse is calling the flight the longest and highest flight completed by a solar plane.

The Solar Impulse team originally planned the first 24-hour flight for last week. But a technical glitch with the telemetry transmitter, which lets the ground crew monitor the flight, kept the plane grounded until the problem was resolved.

The public can follow the flight and aftermath via the site's dedicated page, its blog, and its Twitter feed.… Read more

FAA floats a break to flying car

This 4th of July weekend, you might, either at its beginning or its end, find yourself wishing your car could fly.

Thanks to a new FAA decision, this wish might seem slightly less Peter Pan and slightly more Peter Perfect.

It seems that the soaring minds behind the Terrafugia Transition have secured a remarkable weight exemption from the FAA, allowing it to carry such vital necessities as crumple zones, airbags, and a structural cage on its revolutionary flying car.

No, the airbags won't help much in the air. But road safety is just as vital for this dual-purpose flying … Read more

Boeing wins $1.7 billion contract from FAA

Boeing has won a $1.7 billion contract from the Federal Aviation Administration to create the Next-Generation Air Transportation System.

One of the goals of the system, also known as NextGen, will be to update the current air traffic control system from its traditional radar-based tracking to one that uses a GPS-based technology called ADS-B, the company said Thursday. Such a move is designed to deliver greater accuracy and safety in managing the growing traffic in the skies. To help develop the new system, Boeing said it will rely on air traffic management models and simulations.

In addition, Boeing will … Read more

X-51A races to hypersonic record

The X-51A Waverider flew today, and it flew fast.

The scramjet engine in the experimental aircraft burned for a little over three minutes at around 10 a.m. PDT Wednesday in a test range over the Pacific Ocean, pushing the X-51A to the hypersonic speed of Mach 5, or five times the speed of sound. That was the top speed reached by the aircraft in its brief flight, according to Boeing and press reports citing U.S. Air Force officials. (Editors' note: A separate Air Force News Service report had initially cited a higher speed, but was amended to give … Read more

Airplane design could use 70 percent less fuel

Researchers at MIT say they have come up with designs for a new generation of commercial aircraft that could use as much as 70 percent less fuel than today's airliners.

As part of a $2.1 million NASA grant, the MIT-led team said that its designs for a so-called "N+3" airplane--meaning three generations beyond today's airplanes--could leverage new technologies like advanced airframe configurations and propulsion systems and could deliver the 70 percent fuel savings by around 2035.

In a release, Ed Greitzer, an aeronautics and astronautics professor at MIT, said that meeting NASA's criteria for new, highly-efficient aircraft designs would require a "radical change" from the current aviation paradigm. That's mainly because airplanes largely have the same design today as they've had for the last 50 years--an "easily recognizable 'tube and wing' structure of an aircraft's wings and fuselage."

But Greitzer's team crafted two designs that could upend the traditional airplane paradigm. One is a 180-passenger D "double bubble" series, which could eventually replace the Boeing 737 that is used for so much domestic travel; and the 350-passenger H "hybrid wing body" series, which could take the place of the popular Boeing 777 used for many international flights. … Read more

Boeing's 787 meets its oldest ancestor, on high

When the new kid on the block meets the grizzled old veteran, it can be a beautiful sight to see.

On May 8, in a promotional moment worthy of its setting, Boeing's newest airplane, the 787 Dreamliner, briefly met up in the skies over Washington State's Mount Rainier with the company's first-ever commercial production aircraft, the Model 40.

As seen in the image above, the rendezvous was a serious moment of old meets new. But for Boeing, the chance to put the two planes together in the sky was all about taking a quick moment from months … Read more

Boeing's Phantom Ray to fly in December

Boeing will put its Phantom Ray flying wing into the air before the end of the year.

The aerospace giant says that the unmanned aerial vehicle, unveiled at Boeing's St. Louis facility on Monday, is on track to make its first flight in December. The Phantom Ray will be a testbed for unspecified "advanced technologies," and in a press release Monday, Boeing rattled off an array of potential missions for the aircraft, from the now standard UAV tasks of recon and surveillance to aerial refueling, electronic attack, and the menacingly vague "strike." (A separate Boeing feature … Read more

DARPA wants a flying car

The Pentagon is looking for a few good flying machines.

The U.S. Department of Defense, in the form of its DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) division, is calling on the research community to create a flying vehicle that can travel both by land and air, lift off without a runway, carry up to four personnel, and handle itself in the battlefield.

With land vehicles vulnerable to ambushes, attacks, and explosives, the objective of the program known as Transformer is to provide soldiers with a vehicle that can travel freely in the air to avoid problems on the ground. Such a vehicle would be used in combat for raids, reconnaissance, insurgency/counterinsurgency, and other types of missions. It would also be deployed to evacuate the wounded and deliver supplies, according to DARPA's solicitation.

Additionally, DARPA is looking for something with VTOL (vertical takeoff and landing), meaning it can lift off like a helicopter requiring no runaway, and reach altitudes as high as 10,000 feet. But to traverse rough road conditions when on the ground, the agency wants the vehicle to handle like an SUV with at least four wheels for stability and heavy-duty suspension. And like the rest of us, it wants a car that's fuel-efficient--able to run for 250 miles on a single tank of gas.… Read more

New solar plane takes maiden voyage

A plane designed to fly day and night using solar power has successfully taken its first maiden flight.

The Solar Impulse HB-SIA soared into the air for its first flight early Wednesday from its home in Switzerland. After a smooth takeoff, the plane climbed to an altitude of 1,200 meters (3,937 feet or three-quarters of a mile) and stayed aloft for a total of 87 minutes. Pilot Markus Scherdel used the flight to run the Impulse through different exercises and maneuvers to see how it would handle itself.

As thousands of spectators gazed skyward, Scherdel worked the controls … Read more

Air Force tests flight with greener fuel

An Air Force Thunderbolt jet took to the skies Thursday powered with help of a synthetic substitute made with animal fats and plant oil.

The A-10C Thunderbolt II lifted off for its demo flight from the Eglin Air Force Base in Florida with its tanks filled with a 50-50 blend of synthetic Hydrotreated Renewable Jet fuel, or HRJ, and JP-8, a traditional jet propellant, according to the Air Force Web site. The flight marked the first demo to determine the feasibility of using synthetic fuel in Air Force jets.

The test flight marked one of the key initiatives on the … Read more