• Technology

    Green Skies at Mach 5

    By Posted on 1.23.2008 24 Comments

    Modern air travel is a marvel. It's also a source of endless delay, annoyance and planet-killing greenhouse gases. A proposed hydrogen-powered hypersonic airliner could change all that. The plane is Reaction Engines's A2 concept, a Mach-5 (3,400mph) craft for 300 passengers funded in part by the European Union's Long-Term Advanced Propulsion Concepts and Technologies project (Lapcat). Lapcat wants an airliner that can fly from Brussels to Sydney in less than four hours. If built, the A2 will do just that—without producing a trace of carbon emissions.

    3.11.2008 at 08:45pm - Comment by dylanpilot

    So cobrapub i think you situation is absolutely absurd, i think if you can go mach 5 you can have prevention for insanely rare instances such as these!

  • Technology

    Darpa's New Goal: A Plane That Flies for Five Years

    By Posted on 3.6.2008 10 Comments

    The highest-endurance aircraft currently flying is Northrop Grummans Global Hawk UAV, which can stay aloft for up to 40 hours. Now Darpa—which, to its credit, is never short on outlandish ideas—wants to beat that endurance record more than 1,000 times. The goal of Darpa's recently launched Vulture Program is to build a kind of atmospheric satellite that can stay aloft for five years at a time with little or no maintenance.

    3.10.2008 at 08:20pm - Comment by dylanpilot

    genXer, I Don't see lighting strikes as a big deal as long as proper precautions are taken by putting discharge rods on the wings, when an airplane gets struck by lightning the conversation in the cockpit goes something like this "what was that?" "Lightning maybe" "Yep"



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