With unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) expected to take to the skies alongside piloted crafts in the next year or so, NASA has completed its first test of the Next-Gen air traffic control system in a commercial-sized, unmanned aircraft.
The agency’s Dryden Flight Research Center flew its Kihana MQ -- an aircraft with a 66-foot wingspan, a takeoff weight of more than 10,000 pounds, and a cruising altitude of 40,000 feet -- with an Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast, or ADS-B device, onboard, in March, according to NASA.
ADS-B is air tracking technology that planes in the US airspace will use once the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) implements its Next-Gen air traffic control system, a multibillion-dollar technology refresh of the system. All planes operating in certain US airspace must adopt the ADS-B devices by January 2020.
NASA's Ikhana glides in for landing at Edwards Air Force Base after the first test flight of the new ADS-B aircraft tracking technology on an unmanned aircraft system. (Source: NASA)
The Kihana MQ’s flight also marked the first time NASA tested the system on its Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration in the National Airspace System, (or UAS in the NAS research project). The project is aimed at dealing with technical-related safety and operational challenges that come with unmanned and commercial aircraft sharing the same airspace. While UAVs have mainly been used by the US military for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance work, the space agency envisions new uses for them, including emergency and lifesaving activities.
The ADS-B is far more sophisticated than the current air traffic control system and should help alleviate some of those challenges, according to NASA. Currently, planes use transponders to communicate with ground radar once every four to 12 seconds to determine an aircraft’s position, velocity, and altitude.
ADS-B will be a very welcomed upgrade to our current air-traffic control system. The multi-core supercomputers we carry in our pockets are several generations ahead of our current transponder-based system. It is similar to comparing the capabilities of the original IBM PC to the specs of the Apollo 11 mission which was powered by a 1.024 MHz computer having 2K of memory. It looks like autonomous flying vehicles will lift into the skies about the same time as autonomous driving vehicles hit the road. In addition to all of the efficiency we should be able to realize in both traffic systems, road casualties could be markedly reduced and we may even be able to see some innovative ways to reduce the recent uptick in bird strikes in aviation.
This technology is great. My main concern is what will happen when a technology controlled airplane or automobile results in people being killed or crippled for life. The lawyers are going to get very rich since there's a lot of money available from these technology providers, and they won't care if they kill the industry by collecting huge settlements.
the vast array of atmospheric conditions species variables must have created a significant problem for atmospheres beyond geophysical resoloution of air born objects, to construct a matrix of airborn control of aircraft in order to eliminate physical contact between airbound objects
"... dealing with technical-related safety and operational challenges that come with unmanned and commercial aircraft sharing the same airspace" is going to be an challenging issue only until a critical aircraft density will be reached from where on air traffic will consist mainly of personal aircraft as needed for the inevitable transfer of individual intercity mobility from the road into the airspace -- with fully automated flight control then becoming mandatory for all aircraft, whether manned or unmanned... or there would soon be no more worthwile individual mobility at all.
Hence, fully automatically piloted ultra-light electric tiltrotor personal aircraft will gradually replace the motorcar over the next decades -- whereby these flying vehicles will serve as well as public transport modules.
While the NASA and other US govt entities are conducting intense research on variable/reversible twist rotor blades in order to grant autorotation capacity to the V22 Osprey, there is a complete black-out on the implicit potential benefits of this research for the currently grounded civil tiltrotor version, the BA-609, which has been transferred to Italy and recently sold by Bell to its civil partner Agusta Westland under a contract in which Bell withholds the exclusive right to conduct any further development and supply any new components -- thus witnessing the fierce determination of the US partners to keep the BA-609 deprived of autorotation technology and therefore ineligible for civil certification.
watching scientific projects being abandoned, underfunded, or dismantled by an administration, ruling by executive order, illustrate a virtual dictator trying to install a communist system on america, the most significant premise, is that our largest trading partner are communist, and we have given them our manufacturing infrastructure,(in 72 we made in america what america consumed, 96 %---today we import 96 % of the durable goods previously made here, and in so doing lose the accrued taxation required to maintain our nations infrastructure) allowed slave goods super stores to shutter our small family businesses, which previously provided our nation with more jobs than people. Eliminating import taxation was the most serious mistake our ruling classes have imposed on common america in the last 200 years, globalization/free trade, is better worded as slavery, because thats what it is, when we buy slave made goods, our only supply, mostly, we destroy our independence, as we watch our quality of life take a nose dive, while the upper classes profit as never before, because they have become slavers, while the chinese communist government enslave their peoples using free trade as a weapon to take our manufacturing companies, and shut down our small businesses, while the lawyers, judges, politicians work for lobbie bribes we lose our independence, 56 % of our youth between 18 and 29 don't have a job. the internet held back for near 30 years, for fear of what it is doing--- with one book, our youth educate themselves, consequentially because education comes from interest, they have become literally magnitudes more literate than the criminality who make our predatory laws, the part about the worlds largest gang emerging in the last 10 years, with most members teenagers is anarchy, which will destroy the nobility who make the laws and give themselves all the entitlements, like the years before our civil war. however then there were enough resources allowing the lower classes to grow and hunt what we needed to live, and so-called things of value, like money etc, is more or less absent in our society, while the slavers, producing most of commodities bought by middle and upper classes, like what our nation has become over the last 30 years or so---the future unable to predict, if following along the lines of history will see a reorganization of governance, while the elite few are impaled on the spear of anarchy, one way or another. Whatever happens happens, the new age anarchy gangs don't go around claiming their terrorist acts, they simply do it. It begins first peacefully, then if not heeded, it becomes randomly small in random acts of terror, on and on, untill virtually all the predatory laws, currently invading virtually every venue of human activity, and enforced by hundreds of thousands of judaicial districts, city, county, state federal, and all the agencies related to all levels of government, cease to be recognized, and civil authority evolves into martial law, where " Common Respect " is the foundation of natural law, academics credentials granted political science, law, in all it massive venues, will become worthless, replaced by a society ruled by the scientific method. Truth is the only element of oiur cultures left standing, as we merge into a world recognizing letters, words, phrases, etc etc, are nothing more than code, and we recognize our magnitudes of literacy have moved beyond cultural values, forced on earth by preliterate scribes, writing up tales to empower the kings clan. " In the spirit of truth "
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Using almost 200 light-emitting diodes in the front and back of the new 2014 CTS, Cadillac designers are showing how LEDs can change the character of a vehicle.
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