RoyM4
- Technology
All Aboard the AeroTrain
In this age of eternal flight delays, traveling from New York to Miami in the scheduled three hours sounds like a fantasy. Yet within a decade, aircraft designer Abe Karem plans to fix that by bypassing congested runways in his tilt-rotor, vertical-takeoff commercial plane, the AeroTrain. Sitting on a helipad with its twin rotors tilted straight up, the craft can take off vertically and fly like a helicopter. Once the plane has reached a safe altitude of 50 feet, the pilot will tilt the rotors forward and fly the craft like an airplane.
9.29.2008 at 05:04pm - Comment by RoyM4Some things keep coming up. When I was at NASA HQ in the late 1980s we had a major tilt rotor initiative with the FAA and made the commercial tilt rotor pitch to Congress, including a tilt rotor forum on capital hill. The ideas were good then and still are. Maybe with two plus decades of tilt rotor experience it'll stand a better chance.
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December 2009: Best of What's New
In our December issue, Popular Science names the 100 best innovations of the year: bombproof wallpaper, self-parking cars, the fastest helicopter, and 97 more. Plus inventor profiles and videos.
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