I think this is in competition to the EV air taxis. The vertical take off and landing is for dense urban areas. Basically the Uber of the sky. Like Uber Helicopter but electric.
Not sure it’s the future or anything like that. I just noticed they’re in the news more in the last few months. There’s some in CA, Texas, Las Vegas.
This was piloted, not autonomous. But yes, the maturity is the big thing here - the CAA was happy for Vertical to fly in open airspace meaning that they were satisfied with the reliability of the craft.
It’s advertising so that if someone puts a nice comment here they can link to it from their marketing page, and maybe some HN scraper will magnify its reach, or some user will post on their social media.
Here’s the real headline:
Electric aircraft with experimental type designation makes piloted flight using wings for lift.
Fixed wing flight is more efficient and faster than rotor wing flight. As such, having VTOL capability but also being able to do good old fixed wing flight seems like a good idea.
What's unclear to me is whether they can transition from one to the other in flight, but that might well be possible.
And this solution (with dedicated propellers for forward propulsion, and dedicated rotors for VTOL lift, on a fixed wing) strikes me as much safer than the complicated pivot mechanism proposed by Lilium (a German company that went bankrupt half a year ago, laying off 1000 employees).
Does it have a failsafe or can a single gear failure take out the entire crew? Edit: looks like it has wings so it can glide to a landing instead of dropping like a rock
Judging by their website, it does take off vertically, but just didn’t in this flight. Which makes sense if this was the first flight away from the airport. They need to do things in small steps and validate each one.
Even the F-35B isn't a VTOL when it has a serious payload. The years (and many airframe losses) have emphasized that "true VTOL" is a pyrrhic victory over physics.
Regardless, any real VTOL enthusiast knows that the UK has a history with this stuff and deserves their respect.
It took almost forty years to come up with a viable replacement for the harrier in the f35, and even then despite being faster and more modern it doesn't have the range or ceiling that the harrier did
they are made for spread living because this is the sole form of living where we can really implement the Green New Deal, but most people fails not only to realize but to accept such damn simple reality, as they fails to accept that a condo consume more natural resources to be built than single-family homes and sheds one per apartment/shop in the condo and also more natural resources to evolve.
Until such reality, because that's what it is will not be understood eVTOL news will be like news from an unclear future no one think could be real.
> they fails to accept that a condo consume more natural resources to be built than single-family homes and sheds one per apartment/shop in the condo and also more natural resources to evolve.
Do you have something we can read about that? If you mean a smaller unit in a denser city, why would it consume more resources?
Flying via eVTOL to the neighbor or to the store, compared to walking down the street or down the hall, seems a lot less efficient. Then there's bicycling, public transit ... those all seem more effficient than eVTOL.
I'm slowly collecting projects of some condos, homes and shed, along with their docs about resources needed to build them. From the little I've examined just the common areas (elevators, stairs, hallways etc consume more than single family homes roofs and perimeter walls. If they are more than 7-8 stories they consume more ALSO to sustain their own structure.
AFAIK very little literature exists on that topic, you can find things like https://archive.is/jIr8J or https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/2... etc but nothing more. And that's anyway is just the "building" part alone; aqueduct in cities and wastewater treatments also demand much more resources than small spread aqueducts exploiting from little local sources. Large covered areas means soil consumption due to watertight cover who suffocate the humus of the soil making the soil evolving in sand, creating liquefaction problems like sinkholes and the mere mass subsidence.
> Flying via eVTOL to the neighbor or to the store, compared to walking down the street or down the hall, seems a lot less efficient.
The fly yes. The energy and resources to build a road, keep it up, evolve it when the climate change makes people move does consume much more. Useful life of the vehicle itself change much (beside the battery) also keep in mind that food is not produced in the store, it need to be moved there and the higher density the greater distance need to be covered moving goods. Making efficient the last mile ignoring the rest of the supply chain is not really green.
We are in a changing world, we can't keep up ground infra, a flying vehicle means just ability to move in a certain radius, a ship similarly means ability to move on water for a certain range maximum, roads and rails means being tied to their design or spending immense amount of resources to build new ones.
I think I’m not fully getting the significance of this.
It seems such a niche thing to celebrate - electric power + VTOL but flying as a traditional plane + flying in new airspace…
Please can someone explain?
I think this is in competition to the EV air taxis. The vertical take off and landing is for dense urban areas. Basically the Uber of the sky. Like Uber Helicopter but electric.
Not sure it’s the future or anything like that. I just noticed they’re in the news more in the last few months. There’s some in CA, Texas, Las Vegas.
https://simpleflying.com/evtol-air-taxis/
Off airport flight implies a lot of tech maturity, including command/control radio, rudimentary flight planning, flight termination, etc
In the US it just means an experimental type designation from the FAA.
This was piloted, not autonomous. But yes, the maturity is the big thing here - the CAA was happy for Vertical to fly in open airspace meaning that they were satisfied with the reliability of the craft.
ah missed that
It didn't even VTOL. What's the point?
Strange video, i guess we are free to assume that the vtol function is so inefficient your flight time is down 75% or something if you use it
Developer to PM: yeah so uh, we’ll add the vtol thing after launch in a hotfix, it’s sitting on Dave’s local branch and he’s working on just one bug
PM: Sounds good to me, I don’t shit about the industry I work in
Dev: perfect perfect, okay send out the press release
PM: Should we mention the VTOL thing ….
Dev: Don’t say shit, I’ll see you next week
It's the first time ever in European aviation history that an electric VTOL aircraft has taken off non-vertically.
In other news, we're also planning to boot the first smartphone in European telecommunications history that doesn't have a radio.
> It's the first time ever in European aviation history that an electric VTOL aircraft has taken off non-vertically.
For the first time in history a new revolutionary fusion power plant was demonstrated to run on coal.
Have to keep those coal mining jobs, even after the switch to fusion.
Miner's Unions are a thing to fear.
It’s advertising so that if someone puts a nice comment here they can link to it from their marketing page, and maybe some HN scraper will magnify its reach, or some user will post on their social media.
Here’s the real headline: Electric aircraft with experimental type designation makes piloted flight using wings for lift.
Kemble is always fun to drive past - rolling hills and fields, and then suddenly 747s...
Fixed wing flight is more efficient and faster than rotor wing flight. As such, having VTOL capability but also being able to do good old fixed wing flight seems like a good idea.
What's unclear to me is whether they can transition from one to the other in flight, but that might well be possible.
And this solution (with dedicated propellers for forward propulsion, and dedicated rotors for VTOL lift, on a fixed wing) strikes me as much safer than the complicated pivot mechanism proposed by Lilium (a German company that went bankrupt half a year ago, laying off 1000 employees).
The front propellers do pivot to rotors for vertical take off (in the schematics on their website at least).
Ah, that makes sense. Getting complicated again.
I like Volocopter, but nothing seems to be going into production there.
Does it have a failsafe or can a single gear failure take out the entire crew? Edit: looks like it has wings so it can glide to a landing instead of dropping like a rock
A piloted vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft that doesn't take off vertically. Congratulations on this significant first UK.
Judging by their website, it does take off vertically, but just didn’t in this flight. Which makes sense if this was the first flight away from the airport. They need to do things in small steps and validate each one.
Even the F-35B isn't a VTOL when it has a serious payload. The years (and many airframe losses) have emphasized that "true VTOL" is a pyrrhic victory over physics.
Regardless, any real VTOL enthusiast knows that the UK has a history with this stuff and deserves their respect.
The legacy of the harrier lives on.
It took almost forty years to come up with a viable replacement for the harrier in the f35, and even then despite being faster and more modern it doesn't have the range or ceiling that the harrier did
A small notes: everyone seems to imaging eVTOL for cities, but hey, they are not for them at all. Look at https://www.easa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/dfu/uam-full-... then see some advertisements like
- https://www.unmannedairspace.info/wp-content/uploads/2024/04...
- https://eu-images.contentstack.com/v3/assets/blt31d6b0704ba9...
they are made for spread living because this is the sole form of living where we can really implement the Green New Deal, but most people fails not only to realize but to accept such damn simple reality, as they fails to accept that a condo consume more natural resources to be built than single-family homes and sheds one per apartment/shop in the condo and also more natural resources to evolve.
Until such reality, because that's what it is will not be understood eVTOL news will be like news from an unclear future no one think could be real.
> they fails to accept that a condo consume more natural resources to be built than single-family homes and sheds one per apartment/shop in the condo and also more natural resources to evolve.
Do you have something we can read about that? If you mean a smaller unit in a denser city, why would it consume more resources?
Flying via eVTOL to the neighbor or to the store, compared to walking down the street or down the hall, seems a lot less efficient. Then there's bicycling, public transit ... those all seem more effficient than eVTOL.
> Do you have something we can read about that?
I'm slowly collecting projects of some condos, homes and shed, along with their docs about resources needed to build them. From the little I've examined just the common areas (elevators, stairs, hallways etc consume more than single family homes roofs and perimeter walls. If they are more than 7-8 stories they consume more ALSO to sustain their own structure.
AFAIK very little literature exists on that topic, you can find things like https://archive.is/jIr8J or https://www.helsinkitimes.fi/finland/finland-news/domestic/2... etc but nothing more. And that's anyway is just the "building" part alone; aqueduct in cities and wastewater treatments also demand much more resources than small spread aqueducts exploiting from little local sources. Large covered areas means soil consumption due to watertight cover who suffocate the humus of the soil making the soil evolving in sand, creating liquefaction problems like sinkholes and the mere mass subsidence.
> Flying via eVTOL to the neighbor or to the store, compared to walking down the street or down the hall, seems a lot less efficient.
The fly yes. The energy and resources to build a road, keep it up, evolve it when the climate change makes people move does consume much more. Useful life of the vehicle itself change much (beside the battery) also keep in mind that food is not produced in the store, it need to be moved there and the higher density the greater distance need to be covered moving goods. Making efficient the last mile ignoring the rest of the supply chain is not really green.
We are in a changing world, we can't keep up ground infra, a flying vehicle means just ability to move in a certain radius, a ship similarly means ability to move on water for a certain range maximum, roads and rails means being tied to their design or spending immense amount of resources to build new ones.