Technology
NASA Working on Road Rules – for the Sky
“Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird. It’s a plane.” If this were the 1950s, the next line (from the original TV show) would be, “It’s Superman!” But, if they were to remake the show in 2020, the opening dialogue might be slightly different: Man: Look. Up in the sky. It’s a plane. Woman:…
Ice Ice Baby
Good for Rappers, Bad for eVTOLs Back in 1990, hip-hop/rap artist Vanilla Ice (real name Robert Matthew Van Winkle) extolled the virtues of ice, or at least vanilla ice (aka himself). The song was a huge success, but speak to Jim Sherman and Mike Hirschberg, director of strategic development and executive director at the Vertical…
Airbus Embraces Flying Taxis
Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury said the company is “very serious” about developing flying taxis. Faury noted that the human population is projected to increasingly concentrate in urban areas. It will grow from the current 50 percent to 60 percent by 2030 and 70 percent by 2050. The European airplane maker sees this as a business…
Uber Adds Cesium Software to Its Flight Plans
Cesium (atomic number 55, Cs), the chemical element, is a soft, silvery-golden alkali metal. Cesium, the software application, is a tool flying car developers can use to help analyze and organize the global-sized volumes of geospatial 3D data eVTOLs will encounter and accumulate as they navigate our skies – urban, suburban, and rural. Built as…
NASA and Uber Connect to Develop Flying Car Network
As part of NASA’s Urban Air Mobility (UAM) project, the government agency has partnered with ridesharing firm, Uber, to study the development of a traffic network to facilitate flying cars. Focused on low-flying personal and public vehicles as well as package-delivery drones, the UAM seeks ways to manage the logistics of handling VTOL vehicles as…
EASA Publishes SC-VTOL
Reprinted with permission from the Vertical Flight Society, Vertiflite Magazine The Vertical Flight Society has been supporting the development of electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft since 2014. One of the defining challenges for implementing eVTOL for urban air mobility (UAM) is the lack of applicable regulations. Standards organizations like ASTM International, RTCA, SAE…