Circa 2015
— — Boeing’s new patent may let the force be with you even in real life.
The aircraft and defense company has taken a cue from science fiction with its plan to develop a Star Wars-style force field that would use energy to deflect any potential damage.
A key component of NASA’s X-59 Quiet SuperSonic Technology (QueSST) aircraft is undergoing vibration tests at the space agency’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. The eXternal Vision System (XVS) is a special camera system that the pilot of the X-plane will use to see forward while the experimental supersonic craft is in flight.
When the X-59 takes to the skies in 2021, the pilot will be faced with a problem not often encountered since the Concorde fleet of supersonic passenger jetliners was retired. The X-59 is meant to test new technologies to build a new generation of supersonic commercial aircraft and, while it promises to overcome some of the drawbacks of Concorde, it will still share some of its difficulties.
One is that the ideal design of a long-range supersonic liner is essentially that of a needle-nosed dart. The annoying thing is that, though this shape may be fine from an aerodynamic point of view, it makes it extremely difficult for the pilot to see forward without a lot of complex mechanics, like Concorde’s droop nose and special sliding windscreen.
The future of our pilots is in the hands of this crazy motion simulator.
Most of the pieces of Elon Musk’s Master Plan, Part Deux are already in place. Tesla’s mass-market cars, the Model 3 and Model Y, have already been released. The Solar Roof is finally seeing a ramp. And the release of a feature-complete version of the company’s Full Self-Driving suite seems to be drawing closer.
For Tesla’s Full Self-Driving suite to be feature-complete, the electric car maker would need to master inner-city driving. FSD already works for highway driving with Navigate on Autopilot with automatic lane changes. But when it comes to inner-city streets, Full Self-Driving still has some ways to go. Fortunately, if Tesla’s v10.2 2020.12.5 release is any indication, it appears that more and more aspects of city driving are becoming recognized by the company’s neural networks.
Designer Michal Bonikowski’s concept is probably four or five generations ahead of the current mode of thinking, but Bonikowski told Robb Report that he was inspired by the recent Maveric concept by Airbus. “That aircraft’s unique design helps reduce drag while providing more cabin space,” he said. “I have been thinking a lot about this lately, and wondered what could happen if a big company would like to create an electric plane.”