Cosmic Log
Tech billionaire Elon Musk’s tunneling venture, the Boring Company, is getting the go-ahead sign on a project to build a transit tunnel connecting Dodger Stadium with one of Los Angeles’ Metro Red Line subway stations.
The Boring Company laid out the plan for the Dugout Loop on its website, saying that the linkup could take baseball fans and concertgoers to the stadium in less than four minutes for a roughly $1 fare.
As more and more drones fill the skies, increasingly sophisticated methods will be required to track them under increasingly challenging conditions. How will they navigate if they lose touch with the Global Positioning System? How will authorities know who to call if a drone goes wrong?
Two experiments illustrate how those questions are being addressed. One is being conducted by University of Washington researchers at the Columbia Gorge Regional Airport. The other is being done in cooperation with the Choctaw Nation in Oklahoma.
Boeing says it’ll be moving into a 100,000-square-foot research and lab space in Cambridge, Mass., that will focus on the design and development of autonomous aircraft.
Boeing’s Aerospace and Autonomy Center will house employees from Boeing and its recently acquired subsidiary, Aurora Flight Sciences, in a new 17-floor building in Cambridge. The agreement, announced today, makes Boeing the first major tenant of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Kendall Square Initiative, which includes six sites slated for housing, retail, research and development, office space and academic facilities.
“Boeing is leading the development of new autonomous vehicles and future transportation systems that will bring flight closer to home,” Greg Hyslop, Boeing’s chief technology officer, said in a news release. “By investing in this new research facility, we are creating a hub where our engineers can collaborate with other Boeing engineers and research partners around the world and leverage the Cambridge innovation ecosystem.”
MIT said Boeing is expected to occupy the new space by the end of 2020. Employees from Aurora Flight Sciences’ existing R&D center in Kendall Square will move into the new center and operate it on Boeing’s behalf.
If Boeing is projecting a doubling in the global commercial airplane fleet over the next 20 years, it only makes sense that the pilot workforce may have to double as well.
That’s the conclusion that Boeing reaches in its 2018 Pilot & Technician Outlook, released today. The upshot? There’ll be a demand for 790,000 pilots over the next 20 years, representing “the most significant demand in the outlook’s nine-year history,” Boeing says.
“Despite strong global air traffic growth, the aviation industry continues to face a pilot labor supply challenge, raising concern about the existence of a global pilot shortage in the near term,” Keith Cooper, vice president of training and professional services at Boeing Global Services, said in today’s news release. “An emphasis on developing the next generation of pilots is key to help mitigate this.”
Boeing declared victory in its multibillion-dollar sales competition with Airbus at this week’s Farnborough International Airshow — but the details are murkier than usual, in part due to international trade frictions.
Boeing chalked up 528 orders and commitments for airplanes during the show. Airbus’ corresponding tally came to 431, including up to 60 of the A220 jets formerly known as the Bombardier CSeries. Those single-aisle jets would go to a new airline called Moxy, with the first deliveries due in 2021.
To counter that Airbus-Bombardier partnership, Boeing struck a deal of its own earlier this month with Brazil’s Embraer to market small-size passenger jets.
Farnborough’s list-price sales total for Boeing added up to $98.4 billion on the commercial airplane side of its business, and $2.1 billion on the services side. Airbus’ corresponding number shaped up in the range of $50 billion to $60 billion, according to 24/7 Wall Street.
“Boeing led the way at Farnborough, demonstrating value for our customers, capturing important new business in products and services, and announcing the unique strength of our strategic partnership with Embraer,” Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg said in a news release.
Boeing says it’s aiming to create a traffic management system for drones that makes use of artificial intelligence, blockchain technology — and one of the companies in its investment portfolio.
SparkCognition will be Boeing’s partner in the traffic management project. Last year, the Texas-based AI company benefited from a $32.5 million investment round that included funding from Boeing HorizonX Ventures.
Boeing is also creating a new business group, known as Boeing NeXt, to leverage the company’s research and development activities and investments in areas such as autonomous flight, smart cities, advanced propulsion and other parts of the wider transportation ecosystem.
The next few days will bring dueling announcements from Boeing and Airbus about how many jetliners they’re selling, but one of the hottest tech frontiers at this week’s Farnborough International Airshow looks forward to something completely different: flying cars.
Aston Martin, the British car company that Agent 007 made famous in a string of James Bond movies, is getting into the act. So is the civil aerospace team at Rolls-Royce, a company that’s as British as it gets.
A Silicon Valley startup called Opener is taking the wraps off a single-seat, all-electric flying vehicle known as BlackFly, which the company says will require no formal licensing in the U.S.
“The future of aviation begins today,” Alan Eustace, a former Google executive (and record-setting free-fall skyjumper) who is now a director at Opener, said in a news release. “The dream of flight, which was so difficult and expensive to obtain, will soon be within the reach of millions. Opener is putting the fun back into flying and opening up a new world of possibilities.”
Opener says a developmental version of the tandem-wing, eight-rotor craft has gone into the air more than 1,400 times, with the total distance flown exceeding 12,000 miles.
The vertical-takeoff-and-landing aircraft is flown with a joystick, has a pushbutton “Return-to-Home” system for autonomous flight back to its base, and can be outfitted with an emergency parachute.
“Safety has been our primary driving goal in the development of this new technology,” Opener CEO Marcus Leng said. “Opener will be introducing this innovation in a controlled and responsible manner. Even though not required by FAA regulations, BlackFly operators will be required to successfully complete the FAA Private Pilot written examination and also complete company-mandated vehicle familiarization and operator training.”
In an interview with CBS, Leng said Opener is aiming to put BlackFly on the market next year for the “price of an SUV.”
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After months of negotiations, Boeing and Brazilian jetmaker Embraer today announced a tentative agreement to form a $4.75 billion joint venture that would bring Embraer’s small-size commercial aircraft operations firmly into Boeing’s fold.
The arrangement is a strategic parry to last year’s move by Boeing’s European archrival, Airbus, to partner with Canada’s Bombardier on small-size jets.
Embraer’s engineering expertise could also come into play as Boeing gears up to design and produce a new breed of midsize jet variously known as the New Mid-Market Airplane, NMA or 797.
“This important partnership clearly aligns with Boeing’s long-term strategy of investing in organic growth and returning value to shareholders, complemented by strategic arrangements that enhance and accelerate our growth plans,” Dennis Muilenburg, Boeing’s chairman, president and CEO, said today in a news release.
Grid battery storage projects like Tesla’s 100-megawatt installation in Australia may be getting lots of press, but behind the scenes, hydrogen fuel-cell systems are carving out a niche in applications ranging from non-polluting motor vehicles to power-gobbling data centers.
“It’s not either-or,” said Sunita Satyapal, director of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fuel Cell Technology Office. “We definitely need battery electric vehicles, we need advanced combustion, biofuels — really, all of the above. But what’s unique about hydrogen is its versatility.”
Satyapal and some prominent users of fuel-cell systems, including executives from Microsoft and Toyota, discussed the state of the art in Seattle today during the CleanTech Innovation Showcase, presented by CleanTech Alliance.
Fuel cells generate energy through a straightforward chemical reaction: Stored hydrogen is combined with oxygen from the air with the aid of a catalyst, producing electricity. The devices are about twice as efficient as internal combustion engineswhen it comes to converting chemical energy into power, and the only emissions they produce are air and water vapor.