TechBlog

(1950s, 1966 - 1967)

The PEPP Aeroshell was created to test parachutes for the Voyager mars landing program. To simulate the thin Martian atmosphere the parachute needed to be used at an altitude more than 160,000 feet above the earth. A balloon launched from Roswell, N.M. was used to initially lift the aeroshell. The balloon drifted west to the missile range where the vehicle was dropped and the engines beneath the vehicle boosted it to the required altitude where the parachute was deployed. The tests were conducted in the summer of 1966. NASA.
The voyager program was cancelled, and replaced by the much smaller Viking project several years later.

Later, NASA used the Voyager name for the Voyager 1 and 2 probes to the outer planets–these had nothing to do with the Mars program called Voyager.

There is one PEPP Aeroshell left over, at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico. Continue reading ‘NASA’s PEPP AEROSHELL’ »

XM-2 Skycar
In 1962, Dr. Paul Moller built a six to one scale model of the XM-2. Two years later in the garage of his residence in Davis, CA he began construction of the full size aircraft. As Moller Aircraft Corporation, Dr. Moller completed construction of this prototype using two 2-cycle McCulloch drone engines which produced enough power to allow the XM-2 to hover in ground effect in 1965. With the success of his first VTOL flight, Dr. Moller began to re-engine the XM-2 in 1966 with two Mercury outboard engines XM-2 in flight under UC Davis sponsorship. The re-engined XM-2 was then flown for the International Press at the UC Davis airport in 1966. In 1968 Dr. Moller received his first patent on this VTOL XM-2 configuration.

XM-3 Skycar
Construction of the XM-3 began in 1966 and was a small two-passenger VTOL aircraft of unique design. A single ring fan powered by 8 go-kart engines surrounded the passengers to create the lift required for vertical flight. In 1968, Dr. Moller flew the XM-3 in ground effect. This configuration was patented in 1969.

Continue reading ‘Moller’s Skycars’ »

A new type of flying machine is watching you Onera JUST below a half-opened garage door a tiny device can be seen at the feet of someone lurking in the shadows. It looks like a blue dragonfly. Then its miniature wings begin to flap as it slips under the door and darts along the street. After rising through the air it stops to hover outside the window of a building several storeys high. There is an opening on the roof, and it slips inside. As it flits from room to room its video-camera “eye” transmits pictures to a screen on a remote-control unit strapped to the wrist of its clandestine operator. This is not a scene from a James Bond film, in which 007 tests a new device from “Q”, but an animated video produced by Onera, France’s national aerospace centre, to explain REMANTA, a project to develop the technologies needed for miniature robotic aircraft. More bug-like flying devices are being developed in other research laboratories around the world. A few are already small enough to be carried in a briefcase; others are the size of a jet fighter and need a runway for take-off.

Having evolved from military use, drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), are taking to the air in increasing numbers for public-service and civilian roles. They are being operated by groups as diverse as police, surveyors and archaeologists. A UAV helped firemen track the blaze that recently ravaged southern California. The most immediate advantage of a UAV is cost: operating even a small helicopter can cost $1,000 an hour or more, but the bill for a drone is a fraction of that. However, the growing use of UAVs is causing a number of concerns.

The first is safety. Last month America’s National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) completed its first-ever investigation into an unmanned-aircraft accident. Pilot error was blamed for the crash in Arizona in April 2006 of a 4,500kg (10,000lb) Predator B, a type of UAV used by American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was being operated by Customs and Border Protection when its engine was accidentally turned off by the team piloting it from a control room at an army base. No one was hurt, but the NTSB issued 22 recommendations to address what Mark Rosenker, its chairman, described as “a wide range of safety issues involving the civilian use of unmanned aircraft.”

Continue reading ‘The fly’s a spy’ »