One Weird Hybrid Electric Airplane Gets The Green Light From DARPA
(CleanTechnica)- A hybrid electric airplane with vertical takeoff and landing capabilities is the next dream child of DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and it has just awarded another round of funding to get one such project off the ground.
DARPA is the US cutting-edge research funder that birthed the Internet, among other goodies, so let’s take a look and see what makes this thing unique.
Aurora Flight Sciences of Massachusetts unveiled a small-scale electric VTOL aircraft (that’s for vertical takeoff and landing) in 2009 under the moniker Excalibur, and by 2014 the company was receiving DARPA funding to ramp it up to scale and improve its performance.
In the latest development, Aurora announced that has just been awarded Phase 2 funding to continue development of its hybrid electric airplane, dubbed LighteningStrike, under the VTOL X-Plane program. With Aurora at the helm, the team also includes Rolls-Royce and Honeywell.
The aim is to get an increase in speed of about 50 percent over the current crop of VTOL aircraft, among other performance milestones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve5jy_xFUC0