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Category: transportation

Circa 2015

If you’ve ever scanned the comments section on an electric car or bike article, you’ll be familiar with this complaint: “that’s not green, it’s just a coal-powered vehicle.” Well, not this one. The Immortus is an electric car built to generate its own power through some 7 sq m (75 sq ft) of solar photovoltaic paneling. You can charge its battery off the mains if you have to, but if conditions are sunny, the inbuilt solar panels alone will let you drive at more than 60 km/h (37 mph) for an unlimited distance.

The Immortus is based on solar race car technology with the project originally founded by Australia’s Aurora Solar Car Team, which has competed in a bunch of solar race events across the world. Hence the light weight and the shape of the Immortus, which combines maximal sun exposure with extreme aerodynamics, including covered wheels.

Unlike the solar racers, though, it’s designed to approach practicality on the road, with a 0–100 km/h (62 mph) time that will be less than seven seconds and a top speed over 150 km/h (93 mph). It’s also a two-seater with a modest luggage capacity for daily driving. Melbourne-based EVX Ventures, creators of the Immortus, even list fun as a priority, saying it should handle like a well-balanced sports car.

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Switzerland’s Manta Aircraft is working on a flexible hybrid-electric canard aircraft design that will be capable of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) or efficient short take-off and landing (STOL) operations. A one-third scale model has been built, and the team is preparing for its first flight tests.

The ANN1 and ANN2 aircraft are single-and tandem double-seat versions of the same airframe – a carbon composite-bodied plane shape with a small V tail, a large reverse wing at the rear and a smaller canard wing at the front. Forward propulsion is provided by four ducted electric fans hanging under the front edge of the rear wing, and for VTOL operations these can tilt to face upwards.

Balancing the pitch of the aircraft in a VTOL lift or hover are four more ducted fans in the nose and tail sections, bringing the total to eight props – a decent number for redundancy. On the prototype, these are exposed; if the ANN platform makes it to production, little covers can close over these props to reduce drag in forward flight.

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The U.S. Navy is testing out a new solution to the age-old problem of prepping for painting. Instead of chipping, sandblasting or hydroblasting, it is adopting technology from the aerospace sector: laser ablation.

Teams at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard are already using a laser paint stripping system that was originally developed by Missouri-based tech company Adapt Laser for use on aircraft components. The device peels off rust, paint, oil and other contaminants without leaving any residue or damaging the substrate. Instead of a dust of chips, rust and blasting grit on the surface, it leaves clean and ready-to-paint bare steel, according to the Navy.

7th Fleet’s shipyard at Yokosuka (Ship Repair Facility and Japan Regional Maintenance Center, or SRF-JRMC) is looking at bringing laser ablation into its yard in order to improve conditions for its workforce and accelerate its workflow. When considering prep time, the stripping process and post-stripping cleanup, laser ablation may be faster than some traditional surface preparation processes, according to Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA).

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Circa 2019

The University of Illinois has announced that NASA is underwriting a project to develop a cryogenic hydrogen fuel cell system for powering all-electric aircraft. Funded by a three-year, US$6 million contract, the Center for Cryogenic High-Efficiency Electrical Technologies for Aircraft (CHEETA) will investigate the technology needed to produce a practical all-electric design to replace conventional fossil fuel propulsion systems.

The jet engine in all its variations has revolutionized air travel, but with airline profit margins running wafer thin in these ecologically conscious times, there’s a lot of interest in moving away from aircraft powered by fossil fuels and toward emission-free electric propulsion systems that aren’t dependent on petroleum and its volatile prices.

The CHEETA project is a consortium of eight institutions that include the Air Force Research Laboratory, Boeing Research and Technology, General Electric Global Research, Ohio State University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Arkansas, the University of Dayton Research Institute, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Although the project is still in its conceptual stage, the researchers have a firm vision of the technology and its potential.

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To test its experimental X-43A — an unmanned, single-use, scramjet-powered, hypersonic aircraft of which three were built — NASA piggybacked it on two other aircraft.

First was the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, which carried under its wing the other two vehicles to an altitude at which they could be ‘drop-launched’.

Then there was the booster rocket, a modified version of a Pegasus rocket, which would accelerate the X-43A after the drop launch to a speed at which its scramjet engine could operate.

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