Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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Yuli Ban
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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Korea has emerged as a battlefield among domestic and foreign companies that seek to gain supremacy in the urban air mobility (UAM) market, since the government unveiled its roadmap in 2020 to commercialize drone taxis by 2025 at the earliest to ease traffic congestion on Seoul's roads.

As the newly launched Yoon Suk-yeol administration also selected UAM as one of the key industries for the future, companies in various fields have accelerated their efforts to offer urban air travel services that can cut travel time in downtown Seoul by two-thirds.

The latest example was a consortium led by LG Uplus.

The telecommunication company said on May 11 that it joined hands with Kakao Mobility, GS Caltex, Jeju Air, Pablo Air and Vertical Aerospace to participate in the government's K-UAM Grand Challenge project.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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Yuli Ban
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
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Yuli Ban
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
weatheriscool
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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Samson Switchblade flying car is finally ready for takeoff
By Loz Blain
August 01, 2022
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/samson-sw ... 2-91968585

After 14 years of development, the Samson Switchblade – a fast, street-legal three-wheeler that converts at the touch of a button into a 200-mph (322-km/h) airplane – has been approved for airworthiness by the FAA. The team is now preparing for flight tests.

The Switchblade is named after the knife-like way its wings swing out from beneath its two-seat cabin when it's time to fly. The tail, too, swings out from where it's stowed behind the large pusher prop, then unfolds into a generous T shape. Samson says the entire push-button conversion from street-legal trike to aircraft takes less than three minutes, and while it's yet to demonstrate the entire process on a physical prototype, it looks like it'll be a pretty spectacular process.

It runs on a 3-cylinder, 1.6-liter liquid-cooled engine that takes 91-octane pump gas and makes 190 horsepower. This is effectively used as a generator, powering electric wheels in drive mode and an electric prop motor when it's time to fly. As a three-wheeler, it can be registered as a motorcycle in many areas, and Samson says it's capable of speeds over 125 mph (201 km/h).
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Yuli Ban
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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As a boy, Shuhei Komatsu loved Star Wars movies, especially the lightning-fast land speeders.

So when he grew up, he decided to make one of his own, he said.

"I wanted to make something from the movie real," Komatsu said. "It's a land speeder for the Dark Side."

On Wednesday, he and his AERWINS Technologies company put his vision for a machine that can race above the ground on display at the North American Auto Show in front of Huntington Place in downtown Detroit. It's the first time the company's XTURISMO hoverbike has appeared in the U.S., officials said.
And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future
Nanotechandmorefuture
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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Yuli Ban wrote: Mon Sep 19, 2022 5:40 pm
As a boy, Shuhei Komatsu loved Star Wars movies, especially the lightning-fast land speeders.

So when he grew up, he decided to make one of his own, he said.

"I wanted to make something from the movie real," Komatsu said. "It's a land speeder for the Dark Side."

On Wednesday, he and his AERWINS Technologies company put his vision for a machine that can race above the ground on display at the North American Auto Show in front of Huntington Place in downtown Detroit. It's the first time the company's XTURISMO hoverbike has appeared in the U.S., officials said.
Wonder how many years until those flying jetbikes used in the Star Wars Ewok world :D
weatheriscool
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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Jetoptera targets Mach 0.8 with bladeless-propulsion VTOL aircraft
By Loz Blain
January 16, 2023
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/jetoptera ... ss-hsvtol/

Like bladeless Dyson fans on steroids, Jetoptera's unique aircraft propulsion systems look like pure sci-fi. But they're beginning to demonstrate some fascinating capabilities in testing, and the next step will be a super-fast VTOL aircraft design.
How Jetoptera's Fluidic Propulsion Systems work

We've explained these fluidic propulsion systems before in detail. Indeed, Sir James Dyson did a pretty decent job of explaining the basic concept to The Telegraph back in 2010. But in a nutshell, they're not magic, they don't use ionic propulsion, and while there are no blades or moving parts visible, they require a flow of compressed air to function.

You can use whatever you like as a compressed air source, but Jetoptera doesn't see a ton of utility at this point in an electric compressor; battery density simply isn't high enough to deliver range figures the company would consider useful. Instead, the company is starting out with efficient gas turbine generators, routing the exhaust gas through the fluidic propulsion systems.

This compressed air is forced through tiny, directional slits all around the inner surface of Jetoptera's hollow propulsion units. These inner surfaces are shaped like wings, and they do the same job, creating a low-pressure vortex right in the middle of the loop as the compressed air rushes over them.
weatheriscool
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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This Personal eVTOL Is Just Under $100k and Could Fly As Soon As Next Year
For $98,000, Jetson says you’ll soon be able to commute to work via the sky.
By Adrianna Nine April 25, 2023
https://www.extremetech.com/aerospace/t ... -next-year
Between United Airlines’ $10 million investment in electric “air taxis” and Hyundai’s goal to bring rideshare apps to the skies, we hear a lot about electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, or eVTOLs. But these stories tend to have two things in common: Not only are they longer-term projects (with United’s first air taxi route opening in 2025 at the earliest), but they’re designed for the public.

Jetson might change that. The Swedish electric aviation company is working to introduce an affordable personal eVTOL that doesn’t require a pilot’s license, and it says it’ll be fulfilling pre-orders as early as 2024.

With its single seat and eight propellers, the Jetson One looks like a cross between a Formula 1 race car and a helicopter. This is by design. At just 190 pounds, the eVTOL is petite enough to meet the US Federal Aviation Administration’s requirements for ultralight vehicles, which don’t require a pilot’s license to operate. It can lift pilots to 1,500 feet above ground level using its 88 KW battery propulsion system. The propellers attached to the Jetson One’s four fold-out arms facilitate a maximum 63 MPH glide.
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weatheriscool
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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Pterodyamics scales up its remarkable dihedral Transwing eVTOL
By Loz Blain
May 08, 2023
Fresh video shows that one of the most fascinating eVTOL aircraft designs we've seen is now flying at larger scale. The Transwing platform uses a unique dihedral folding wing system to move between hover and cruise modes, unlocking huge advantages.

Transitioning electric VTOL aircraft can take off and land more or less like multicopter drones, but then cruise efficiently in forward flight supported by wing lift. There are literally hundreds of companies racing to bring different designs to market, and they all have to deal with the same set of problems.
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/pterodyam ... wing-x-p4/
weatheriscool
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Re: Flying cars and jet pack news and discussion thread

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MagLev Aero unveils "breakthrough" HyperDrive eVTOL propulsion system
By Loz Blain
June 20, 2023
https://newatlas.com/aircraft/maglev-ae ... ropulsion/

A fascinating eVTOL project is about to come out of stealth, showcasing a "breakthrough HyperDrive propulsion technology" that MagLev Aero claims is "dramatically more quiet, efficient, safe, sustainable and emotionally appealing to the mass market."

Representatives from the Boston-based company have made their way to the Paris Air Show, where they're preparing to reveal a very different approach to electric vertical lift aircraft, drawing on the magnetic levitation technology used in high-speed trains.

What we appear to have here is an annular lift fan arrangement. The aircraft's cabin appears to be surrounded by a huge ring-shaped duct, into which at least one large-diameter, many-bladed fan is mounted.

This circular rotor is kept frictionlessly separated from its enclosure using permanent magnets, so it's free to spin when driven. It's driven by a series of distributed, redundant electromagnetic propulsors around the rim.

The benefits here are clear: big fans with low disc loading are highly efficient, and can generate useful levels of lift at relatively low speeds. This will help keep the noise down, particularly since they're surrounded by ducts, and should stretch the hover time available from a battery compared to a smaller-fan design.

Without having yet seen the presentation, we may as well now wander off into the realm of wild speculation.

I'd be surprised if it's just a single annular fan; it seems more likely to me that there are two in there, set to counter-rotate. That'd give it a healthy dollop of additional thrust, some vertical lift redundancy, and the ability to control yaw using inertia.
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