Airline Cabins in 2050 The "vitalizing" cabin

Airbus has seen the future, and it’s spacious, sunlit and full of interactive screens. Oh, and cocktails will be served in the virtual bar, assuming someone isn’t playing 18 holes in there.

After revealing its larger vision of what aviation hardware will offer us in 2050 at last year’s Paris Air Show–reduced emissions, lower fuel consumption, reductions in noise and increases in speed–the company has turned its attention toward the passenger experience, offering a sneak peak of the future via the video below.

What does the future have in store? Well, assuming populations begin growing less obese and the economics of packing as many people on a flight as possible are discarded (in the future, air travel–like society–will know no class), the future is much more comfortable.

When flights are at less than full capacity, unneeded seats at the rear of the plane will collapse and all seats will redistribute themselves to offer everyone an equitable boost in legroom. These seats will also morph to fit passengers’ bodies.

Those who need something more than a spacious, morphing seat in steerage will be free to join others in the interaction area, which can be anything from an interactive map room to a virtual golf course to a conference room or bar/lounge, depending on what passengers require. And a “revitalizing zone” in the nose of the aircraft offers panoramic views of the Earth below while re-energizing travelers with “vitamin and antioxidant enriched air, mood lighting, aromatherapy and acupressure treatments.” Right.

But perhaps the most easily digestible part of this vision is the structure of the aircraft itself, which taps a largely-hollow, lightweight bionic structure that mimics the bones in birds and could allow for the kind of transparent canopy pictured above. Airbus isn’t sure what it would be made of yet, but it could be 3-D printed–a technology that we know Airbus’s parent firm EADS is investing heavily in.

German company PC-Aero is trying to win NASA’s CAFE Green Flight Challenge, and Saturday they took a big step toward doing just that. The company’s Elektra One aircraft, designed by PC-Aero’s founder and president Calin Gologan, made its successful first flight. But this one-seater isn’t your average single-prop. Elektra One flies on electricity alone.

The Green Flight Challenge seeks a demo aircraft that can fly 200 miles in less than two hours on the energy equivalent of less than one gallon of fuel per person. Elektra One didn’t push the envelope that far just yet–the maiden flight hit a ceiling just above 1600 feet and lasted just 30 minutes, burning just half the 6 kWh stored up in its batteries. But the fact that the lightweight aircraft was able to comfortably circle the airfield for half an hour– more or less silently, we might add–is nothing short of impressive.

And the timing for such a flight couldn’t be better. A study released Tuesday claims that airplane contrails–those long, white condensation trails jets leave in the sky–may warm the planet more on the average day than all of the carbon emissions spewed from airplanes in the history of modern aviation.

The carbon lingers longer of course–the contrails and any heat-trapping cirrus clouds they cause dissipate in hours or days, while the carbon remains for decades–but still, that’s a lot heat being trapped on any given day. Electric planes, as you may have surmised, wouldn’t contribute to warming on either front. See Elektra One take flight in the video below.

The Zero S electric supermotard

K-MAX unmanned helicopter sets payload record

The Unmanned K-MAX helicopter being developed by Kaman Corporation and Lockheed Martin has further demonstrated the potential of this type of aircraft in the field by completing a list of airdrop firsts. The milestones in payload weight and altitude were reached during a recent series of tests at the Army’s Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona where the KMAX UAS made guided airdrops via sling load at an altitude of 10,000 ft above sea level including a payload of 4,400 lbs.

The K-MAX unmanned aircraft system (UAS) is based on Kaman’s single-seat vertical-lift helicopter which was certified in 1994. The design has no tail rotor, instead using twin counter-rotating, intermeshing main rotors. The advantage of this approach is that without a tail rotor drive system, all engine power is directed to the main rotors to maximize lift. The piloted K-Max can more than its own 6,000 pound weight.

The single seat has been retained for the unmanned version and Lockheed Martin says it will remain "optionally piloted" to give it the flexibility of performing the occasional manned mission. Having a pilot onboard also its advantages for testing of the autonomous control system.

The Unmanned K-MAX airdropped 16 payloads during the recent tests. In addition to the milestones in payload weight and altitude, the aircraft also achieved the first airdrop of four guided Joint Precision Aerial Delivery Systems (JPADS) from a sling load, the first helicopter sling load airdrop for the High Altitude Low Opening (HALO) parachute system and a demonstration of non-line-of-sight re-targeting using JPADS.

The Unmanned K-MAX is being developed for battlefield cargo resupply with the goal of removing the need for ground convoys which require large numbers of troops to support them.

"Ten years from now there will be fleets of fully-autonomous cargo aircraft operating probably worldwide," says Garf Cooper, Flight test director for the Unmanned K-MAX program.

The following video from Lockheed Martin provides an overview of the K-MAX UAS:

Iran’s Bavar 2

Iran’s Sacred Week of Defense (celebrating its eight-year resistance to the Iraqi invation of the 1980s) is never without a healthy dose of pomp and ceremony, but this week Iran’s defense ministry took the usual military parade to the waterfront. Yesterday Iran unveiled three squadrons of machine-gun-wielding flying boats. Yeah, you read that correctly.

The Bavar 2 is an ocean-going craft meant to pack surveillance cameras, an automatic weapon, and perhaps even missiles. Though it’s unclear exactly what it’s supposed to defend against. And it’s also supposed to be “stealth,” presumably because if flies so low – just above the water, as far as we can tell – that it rolls under the radar.

It’s fast, however, and it could be employed in the Iranian Navy’s favorite game: harassing everyone else with a vessel afloat in the Persian Gulf. For that it might be ideal, darting quickly and menacingly around other larger naval vessels it has no intention of or capability for attacking.

So why spend the money? To quote Iranian Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi’s statement to the press: “"Islamic Republic of Iran is one of the few countries which managed to design, build and use flying boats in a short time.” Which is true. Sorry DARPA, but you’ve been bested. Time to wind down your flying boat program.

You Can Flex Your Quads In Flight! This new airplane seat is designed to mimic the incredibly comfortable experience of riding a horse.

On your last flight, did you stare with envy at the people sitting in the exit row? Did you get a charley horse from trying to cross your legs under your tray table? Consider yourself lucky, pal. Your next budget flight might ask you to fly horseback style, squeezed onto a saddle in just 23 inches of space.

This new airplane seat will be officially unveiled at a trade show next week, and the early buzz is that several airlines are interested, including some in the U.S. The thought makes us cringe — which, come to think of it, we will be required to do in order to fit into these seats.

The “SkyRider” is the latest innovation designed to save airlines money and, apparently, make passengers miserable. It is supposed to mimic the experience of riding horseback: “Cowboys ride eight hours on their horses during the day and still feel comfortable in the saddle,” says Dominique Menoud, director general of Aviointeriors Group, which will make the seats. Some cowboys might say otherwise, but there’s a larger point: In the future, do we really want to return to traveling Old West style?

Odds are pretty good that budget airlines will be the first to order the SkyRider, which Menoud says can be used in its own cabin class. Ireland’s Ryanair already wants to sell standing-room-only seats, and this could be an aviation-authority-approved alternative. Tickets will probably be cheaper, but airlines will reap rewards by packing more people on board. That is, until people give up and choose telepresence over sardine-style travel.

We’re all for future aircraft technologies that improve flight efficiency and design. By all means, give us airplanes with self-cleaning, shape-changing seats made of plant fibers. Please, just don’t make us sit 23 inches apart.

Electric planes are nothing new to all of us but the designers, Oyvind Roar Berven and Tomas Brodreskift, have come up with what can simply be deemed as the future of aviation, provided flying cars don’t make their way first. Dubbed the EQP2 Excursion, the personal electric mini plane is enough to carry two passengers and their baggage. The new class of Light Sport Aircraft (LSA) that’s taking the private world of aviation by storm is aimed to provide the passengers easy and economical air travel. The ambitious design is powered by two electric props mounted on the tail. The plane has a wing span or 9m, its length at 6.2m and height at 2.65m. LAS can fly at an altitude of 13500ft with a maximum speed of 220kts to a range of 1100nm. The designers have so far built a full-scale mockup of the interior and also a 1:4 scale model of the aircraft itself for testing. The prototype is expected to touch the skies in 2013 and flying this machine with a joystick will be a sheer fun.

New York City may be on the cutting edge of cuisine and fashion, but in nerdier pursuits like cartography, NYC has unfortunately fallen behind — like, 30 years behind. But a twin-engine airplane fitted with LIDAR scanners has lately been gathering data that will close the city’s map gap, creating extremely detailed digital maps of the city that will lead to better land management, inform emergency protocols, and help identify the best places to install solar panels across the five boroughs.

The early a.m. flyovers, conducted by a specially equipped Shrike Commander aircraft, will produce the most detailed maps the city has ever known, capturing 3-D images that detail surface terrain and structural elements in unprecedented detail. Current maps — like the one FEMA uses to determine the city’s flood plains — were composed in the 1980s from aerial photography and surveys.

The new maps will help city planners rezone neighborhoods, determine shifts in population density, identify remaining wetlands, and even figure out which neighborhoods simply need more trees. It will also help the city determine what to do if/when rising sea levels brought on by global warming begin to threaten waterfront areas.

An operator aboard the aircraft operated the LIDAR — light detection and ranging — sensor as the pilot made repeated low-flying sweeps over the city at around just 3,500 feet during the second half of April. The laser surveying tech fired laser pulses from the aircraft at the topography below, measuring the time it takes the pulses to bounce back, much as sonar does with sound.

While wetland identification and population density maps will surely excite urban planning types, the solar map is hands-down the most exciting aspect of NYC’s new cartographic pursuit. The aerial survey has determined the number of pitched and flat roofs across the city and will allow NYC residents and property owners to go online and see whether their buildings are good candidates for solar panels. That, in turn, could lead to increased adoption of solar tech, making the U.S.’s most densely populated burg even greener. The data is currently being crunched and should generate detailed solar and flood maps by year’s end.