Tag: Aerospace

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Zunum Aero has big plans for electric planes

Zunum Aero planes
Artwork shows Zunum Aero’s hybrid electric airplanes in flight. (Zunum Aero Illustration)trans

Four years after its founding, Zunum Aero is finally going public with a plan to build hybrid electric airplanes that could revolutionize service to regional airports in the 2020s.

“This is our coming out of stealth,” said Ashish Kumar, the founder and CEO of the company, which is headquartered in Kirkland, Wash.

Zunum, whose name comes from the Mayan word for hummingbird, aims to develop 10- to 50-seat aircraft that can pave the way for what Kumar calls a “golden age of regional travel.”

To follow through on that vision, the company has patented its concept and has won backing from the Boeing Co. as well as from JetBlue Technology Ventures, a subsidiary of JetBlue Airways.

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Boom picks up $33M to build supersonic jet

Boom supersonic jet
Boom Technology’s full-scale supersonic jet would carry 40 passengers. (Boom Photo)

Colorado-based Boom Technology has raised $33 million in a Series A round to build and fly its first supersonic jet, a one-third-scale prototype known as the XB-1 or “Baby Boom.” Testing the XB-1 would blaze the trail for a full-scale jet capable of taking 40 passengers from New York to London in less than three and a half hours for a $2,500 one-way ticket.

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Boeing OKs buyouts for 1,800 union workers

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Boeing has approved the first wave of voluntary layoffs for union workers. (GeekWire Photo)

Boeing has approved buyouts for more than 1,800 union workers, marking the start of a new round of job reductions that’s expected to continue through the year.

The voluntary layoffs include 1,500 machinists and 305 engineers, representatives of the workers’ unions told GeekWire today. Boeing Commercial Airplanes is reducing non-union positions as well, but the company isn’t providing numbers for those classifications.

The company said in December that it would have to continue last year’s downward trend in employment to stay competitive with Airbus, its European aerospace rival.

Last year’s job reductions amounted to about 8 percent of the workforce in Boeing’s commercial airplane division, going from roughly 82,500 to a little more than 76,000 employees by the end of 2016. The reductions were achieved through voluntary and involuntary layoffs as well as attrition.

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How robots and humans get along at Boeing

Boeing robots
The robots that are part of Boeing’s Fuselage Automated Upright Build system work inside and outside a 777 jet fuselage during assembly. (Boeing via YouTube)

Automation isn’t just a job for the robots: It takes flesh-and-blood workers to make robotic manufacturing work, as shown in a new video about the machines that set fasteners on Boeing’s 777 jets.

Boeing’s Fuselage Automated Upright Build, or FAUB, works with operators and mechanics at the company’s plant in Everett, Wash., to do some of the heavy lifting for 777 assembly. So far, more than 40 jets have gotten the FAUB treatment.

The job begins when teams of mechanics move the panels that form the forward and aft sections of the fuselage into place. Pairs of robots, inside and out, move in unison to “drill and fill” the thousands of fasteners required to secure the panels.

In Boeing’s feature about FAUB, mechanic Mike Jennings says all that drilling and filling used to be done by hand – a task that was “really tough and stressful” on his back, neck, shoulders and arms.

Now Jennings is a robot operator – monitoring views from a camera mounted on the robot arm, maintaining the system and making tweaks to optimize performance.

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Why 2017 will be challenging for Boeing

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Boeing is headquartered in Chicago, but most of its planes are built in the Seattle area. (Boeing Photo)

As Boeing begins its second century, the Seattle-born company is facing a slew of daunting challenges. But 2017 isn’t like the 1970s, when the Boeing Bust prompted a pair of real-estate salesmen to put up a billboard reading “Will the Last Person Leaving Seattle Turn Out the Lights?”

There’s still plenty of business to keep the lights on at Boeing’s plants in Everett and Renton. The challenges have more to do with how brightly they’ll burn in the years ahead, and whether Boeing’s historical role as Puget Sound’s biggest employer will be overshadowed by other companies.

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‘Shark tank’ keeps aerospace dreams afloat

MatterFab 3-D printer
Seattle-based MatterFab is working on a 3-D printer that looks like a walk-in freezer but can use laser microwelding to make metal components out of powder. (Credit: MatterFab)

Some aerospace ventures came to Starburst Accelerator’s shark tank in Seattle today to find investors. Others were looking for customers. But unlike the TV version of “Shark Tank,” none of them was sent away in defeat.

“There are no winners or losers,” Van Espahbodi, Starburst’s co-founder and chief operating officer, told GeekWire at the end of the all-day pitch session.

Instead, a dozen entrepreneurs got the chance to pitch their ideas at the Museum of Flight, in front of venture capitalists, aerospace executives and other industry types (plus a couple of journalists).

Today’s gathering marked the first Starburst event conducted in Seattle, which has been gaining more visibility as an aerospace industry hub – thanks to the likes of such stalwarts as the Boeing Co. as well as more recent entrants such as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin space venture. Both of those companies had representatives in the audience today.

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Starburst raises $200M for aerospace startups

SpaceX launch
Starburst Ventures aims to back startups that can follow in SpaceX’s footsteps. (SpaceX Photo)

On the eve of its first event in Seattle, Starburst Accelerator says it has set up a $200 million venture fund to invest in aviation and aerospace startups over the next three years.

Starburst Venture, formed in collaboration with Singapore-based Leonie Hill Capital, will focus on early and growth-stage companies, with the first investments due to be made in the first quarter of 2017, the fund’s founders said today in a news release.

The investment team will be mainly based in San Francisco, but will also leverage Starburst Accelerator’s existing operations in Los Angeles, Paris, Munich and Singapore.

Starburst Accelerator was founded in 2012 by Francois Chopard, a former Airbus engineer and aerospace strategy consultant. Since then, it has teamed up with more than 100 companies to provide a boost for business development.

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WTO rules against Boeing’s 777X tax break

Wing autoclave
A giant autoclave is ready to “cook” parts for the Boeing 777X wings. (Credit: Boeing)

In the latest chapter of a years-long legal battle, the World Trade Organization says Washington state’s tax break for production of the Boeing 777X jetliner runs counter to international trade rules.

“We expect the U.S. to respect the rules, uphold fair competition, and withdraw these subsidies without any delay,” Cecilia Malmström, the European Union’s trade commissioner, said in a statement issued after today’s ruling.

However, U.S. officials and Boeing executives signaled that the battle would continue. The fight over the tax breaks is part of a larger dispute between the Boeing Co. and its European rival, Airbus, with U.S. and EU officials in the middle.

Boeing’s general counsel, J. Michael Luttig, went so far as to claim in a statement that today’s ruling was “a complete victory for the United States, Washington state and Boeing.”

The way Luttig saw it, the WTO rejected “virtually every claim made by the EU in this case” and found that Boeing “has not received a penny of impermissible subsidies.”

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Owens Fellowships will boost women in aerospace

Brooke Owens
Brooke Owens, a pilot and space policy expert, died of cancer in June at the age of 35. She was an alumna of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University. (Credit: Brooke Owens Fellowship Program)

Space industry pioneer Brooke Owens didn’t live long enough to reach the final frontier, but her life has inspired a fellowship program that will help other women follow in her footsteps.

This week marks the kickoff of the Brooke Owens Fellowship Program, which will offer paid summer internships for undergraduate women interested in aerospace careers.

GeekWire is among the first organizations to participate, taking our place alongside such space stalwarts as Arianespace, Blue Origin, the Museum of Flight, Planetary Resources, SpaceX and Virgin Galactic.

We’re the only host institution in the pack to offer an internship on the journalistic side of the aerospace frontier – and we’re looking for someone great to work with us in Seattle.

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Qatar signs on for up to 100 Boeing jets

Qatar Boeing jets
Qatar Airways has put in orders for 40 wide-body Boeing jets and is voicing its intent to order up to 60 737 MAX jets. (Credit: Boeing)

Qatar Airways today sent a strong message to the Boeing Co. – and to Airbus, its European rival – by putting in an order for 40 wide-body Boeing jets and leaving the door open for up to 60 more 737 MAX jets.

The orders for 30 of Boeing’s 787-9 Dreamliners and 10 of the 777-300ERs would be valued at $11.7 billion at list price, Boeing said. The 60 single-aisle 737 MAX jets, covered by a letter of intent, would go for $6.9 billion at list price.

That adds up to $18.6 billion retail, but The Seattle Times’ Dominic Gates cites an estimate from Avitas, an aircraft valuation firm, that sets the value at $8.8 billion after standard industry discounts.

The order provides a huge boost for Boeing’s 777 and 787 programs, and for the company’s operations in Everett, Wash., where the planes are assembled. Qatar Airways currently flies 54 of the 777s and 30 of the 787s, with six 777F freighters and 60 of the next-generation 777X passenger jets on order.

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