Today Porsche and Boeing entered into a partnership for the future of urban air mobility and "the extension of urban traffic into airspace." Sort of like Back to the Future 2, or The Fifth Element, or Blade Runner - or any number of other sci-fi stories - this partnership is about the "Premium Urban Air Mobility Market."
Technologist Mahmooda Sultana created the design for a nanomaterial-based detector platform. Because of her work, combined with a next-gen 3D printing program, a new generation in computing may be about to emerge. It all centers on the 2-inch by 3-inch device able to detect minute concentrations of gases, vapor, atmospheric pressure, and temperature.
Generally speaking, air travel is a pretty dull affair that is nonetheless a reality of life for a lot of people. Alaska Airlines announced today that is has a new way for some flyers to pass the time while they're in the air, as it has outfitted some of cross-country routes with VR headsets. More specifically, Allosky headsets from SkyLights will allow Alaska Airlines passengers to watch some immersive VR movies and short films as they fly.
The FAA has refused to force airlines to offer more legroom, rejecting calls for legal minimums and dismissing concerns that cramped seating in cabins could present an evacuation risk. The Federal Aviation Administration had been forced to reconsider regulatory requirements for airplane seating, after a judge ruled in favor of a consumer group in a lawsuit last year.
British Airways is having a bad start to this holiday weekend. The airline has announced that its computer systems are having problems around the globe due to a "major IT system failure," and as a result it's had to cancel a number of flights departing from the UK, as well as hundreds more being delayed.
Of all the "fictional" technologies that enable personal flight, Iron Man's suit is the hardest, and most dangerous, to pull off. Flying with a jetpack is no longer science fiction, and even a hoverboard has made substantial progress. But a jet-powered suit? Hardly. That never discouraged British inventor Richard Browning from trying. And his dedication, and perhaps insanity, has finally paid off. He has become the real-world equivalent of Iron Man by donning a suit that, in practice, puts mini airplane engines on his arms and legs.
Scientists at Stanford University have trained a Parrotlet called Obi to wear some pretty rad goggles and fly through laser sheets in an effort to test models that predict the lift generated by flying animals. The purpose of this experiment is to help develop better flying robots in the future. Obi wears those cool goggles to protect his bird eyes from the laser beams he is flying through.
The Airlander 10 is a massive flying airship said to be the world's largest aircraft. The giant airship took to the skies for the first time this week with a short flight over an airfield in the UK. Airlander 10 is massive at 302-feet long and its maiden flight happened at Cardington airfield about 45 miles north of London.
Solar Impulse 2, which we've written about several times before, is a small, single pilot, solar-powered aircraft making a slow-but-steady flight around the world in order to prove the potential of renewable energy. The plane arrived in New York City in the early hours of Saturday morning, seeing the project complete the US leg of its journey, and celebrating with an iconic flyby of the Statue of Liberty.
Franky Zapata has grabbed a new Guinness World Record title for the farthest hoverboard flight ever recorded. Zapata went 7,388-feet absolutely destroying the previous record held by Catalin Alexandru Duru of 905-feet, 2-inches set last year. These records are for actual hoverboards that fly, not for the small two-wheeled contraptions that burst into flames frequently.
Following a long 9-month delay in Hawaii, the Solar Impulse 2, a small solar-powered aircraft, finally departed on Thursday to continue its trip across the Pacific Ocean, just a single leg in its flight around the world. The project's team has revealed that the plane successfully completed its flight to California, landing south of San Francisco in Mountain View at around 11:45 PM on April 23rd.
The last news you may remember hearing about the Solar Impulse 2 project, which aims to fly a small solar-powered aircraft around the world, was last summer when the plane arrived in Hawaii with "irreversible damage" to the batteries. The aircraft and its pilot had just spent over 4 days and 21 hours flying across the Pacific from Japan to Hawaii, setting a world record for the longest solo flight in the process, only to be grounded due to severe overheating damage.