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Kitty Hawk's 'Heaviside' is an ultra-quiet electric flying machine
As the field of players in "urban air mobility" (read: flying cars) get more crowded every day, the Larry Page-backed effort Kitty Hawk is trying a different approach with its latest vehicle: it's very quiet. Dubbed Project Heaviside, it's all-electric, flies like a plane but is capable of vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) like a helicopter, while being as much as 100 times quieter than a helicopter.
It's also tiny, as you can make out in a picture with a person crouching next to the aircraft with seating for one. TechCrunch got up close and personal with Heaviside, noting that at the moment the cockpit seats its passenger on bare carbon fiber.
Kitty Hawk CEO Sebastian Thrun told TechCrunch "The calculus here is that this has to be socially acceptable for people," while demonstrating Heaviside's capability to fly overhead without being any louder than an office air conditioner. It's also intended to support both manual and autonomous flight, although regulatory approval could be quite a way off.
From TechCrunch we get the following:
HVSD, which is named after renowned physicist and electrical engineer Oliver Heaviside, is Kitty Hawk's third act.
The first is Flyer, a single-seater, all-electric, vertical take-off and landing vehicle powered by 10 independent lift fans that operates between three to 10 feet off the water. Then there's Cora, a two-person, autonomous taxi that Kitty Hawk unveiled in 2018. Kitty Hawk, which is backed by Google co-founder Larry Page, recently formed a strategic partnership with Boeing to collaborate on urban air mobility, particularly around safety and how autonomous and piloted vehicles will co-exist. The partnership will focus on Cora.
HVSD is an electric aircraft designed to go anywhere and land anywhere fast and quietly, Vander Lind says.
"If you build an aircraft that can land anywhere and then say 'actually, oh wait it can't just land anywhere, no I need a big helipad and I need to build a bunch of structure and all that' — you miss the point," said Vander Lind.
And indeed, HVSD isn't parked on a large runway or giant helipad. The aircraft, which weighs about one-third of a Cessna, is on a section of asphalt not much bigger than its wingspan. Just beyond this man-made parking spot are acres of grassland and the occasional tree. There is no runway to be found.
(Score: 2) by Pslytely Psycho on Wednesday October 09 2019, @07:46PM (3 children)
"HVSD is an electric aircraft designed to go anywhere and land anywhere fast and quietly, Vander Lind says."
Complete and utter BULLSHIT.
****trigger warning - may contain opinion and hyperbole****
It's wider than an urban parking spot.
It's too loud for urban use. (I don't believe their hype, the numbers don't add up to being 100 times quieter than a helicopter) and in numbers, they would be crazy loud. Imagine 100 A/C units running together (at speed, they won't be able to idle until they touch down!) in close proximity, get your industrial hearing protectors now!
DEBRIS! Going to have to have mass numbers of street/sidewalk cleaners to keep the debris down! (hmm, good for employment?)
OPEN BLADES, Pokemon Go players wandering into OPEN BLADES. Good for society and mortuaries, bad for individuals and insurance carriers.
All of the above applies even more in the Suburbs, except now you're decapitating three year olds on tricycles.
You will need to store it at airports and immense rooftop landing, fueling and storage hangers, limiting their usefulness. It's not gonna fit in your two car garage. Lousy as a taxi. Worse than a helicopter. It's wider, seats fewer people, useless as a commute device for 99.9999% of the population. Impractical for the stated purpose on oh so many levels. And since it can (clears throat and giggles) "land anywhere" with downward pointed open blades, well fuck, people can't look up from their personal spy devices long enough to prevent walking in front of a car, now they gotta look UP as well.....No one will insure this and no city in their right or left mind would allow it for the stated purpose. The FAA will get a laugh before they regulate it to airports and rooftop pads only. It is less practical than a helicopter so emergency rescue isn't an option for it either. It's just another VTOL aircraft, but much more limited.
Just imagining a fleet of these taking off and landing outside the bar on Saturday night, oh the carnage!
So anywhere? Not by a long shot.
Might be useful to decapitate large crowds of Zombies attracted by the noise while you hover....
Is this an Onion story?
****end of rant****
Alex Jones lawyer inspires new TV series: CSI Moron Division.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday October 09 2019, @09:08PM (2 children)
three year olds on tricycles.
perfectly edible... climate change you know...
To lift a practical load, This is probably as quiet as a flying machine will ever be. [youtube.com] And notice the tastefully mixed in music, still allowing you to hear the machine, stable camera, overall good quality for a phone. There should be a law directing all videos be made this way.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 09 2019, @11:13PM (1 child)
You mean quiet like a sailplane?
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Thursday October 10 2019, @06:06AM
More like the tow plane...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..