Aerobatic Cri-Cri

During the Green Aviation Show (June 18-22 2010 in Le Bourget), EADS Innovation Works, partnered by Aero Composites Saintonge and the Green Cri-Cri Association, will present Cri-Cri, the first-ever four-engined all-electric aerobatic plane.

The aerobatic aircraft includes several innovative technologies such as:

• Lightweight composite structures, that lighten the structure and compensate for the overweight batteries,
• Four brushless electric motors with counter-rotating propellers providing propulsion without CO2 emissions and a significant noise reduction compared with the thermal propulsion,
• High energy-density Lithium battery.

The cumulative use of these technological innovations that respect the environment also provides Cri-Cri with new performances:

• 30 minutes of autonomy at 110km/h in cruise flight,
• 15 minutes remaining in aerobatics, with peaks of speed at 250km / h,
• A climb rate of about 5.3 m/sec.

Set to undergo its first flight tests in the next few days, this four-engine electric plane paves the way for a new generation of environment-friendly high-performance aircraft.

Ekranoplane vs Eyjafjöll

Few days ago the Eyjafjallajökull ash cloud completely paralyzed the European airlines companies for several days,  grounding mainly all the aircrafts in Western Europe, blocking all around the world people who wanted to get back home or traveled over Europe for winning business opportunity in the rest of the World. It will maybe happen again as we never know with volcano behavior, maybe not this volcano but its neighbor.

With this big mess in the skies created by one Iceland volcan ashes cloud, it is maybe time for engineers to:

• either rethink the design of aircraft engines for being less sensitive to any ash/cloud and being greener by mitigate their own pollution/carbon footprint at the same time,

• or think to increase the fundings for designing and developing new type of aircraft propulsion systems using different concept such as the MHD-gas (MagnetoHydroDynamic in ionized gas) and the Coandã effect or the WIG (Wing In Ground) concept or both.

Soviet Union/Russia  during the Cold War (and maybe recently China in Qingdao naval base) has developped and built  some weird birds, huge birds using the WIG concepts named Ekranoplanes. One of them was famous and was called the Monster of the Caspian Sea.

In the Tom Clancy’s novel and also the movie “The Hunt for Red October”, the most advanced Russian nuclear submarine is using MHD concept as Stealth propulsion technologies.

Design and manufacture a new sustainable Ekranoplane or Avrocar is one of the solution against Eyjafjallajökull and others or really invest in a technology such as the MHD and Coandã effect (as the French physician Jean-Pierre Petit did with his MHD Aerodynes).

more ekranoplane pictures here and there

I Digg to Believe

Are we alone in the Universe? The Truth is out there…

Well, everyone has his own answer or believe.

The ufologists have their digg-like website to share their close encounters of the First Kind (and may be the Close Encounters of the Second or Third Kind…), Alien UFO Believers.com. 

Fox Mulder thinks the opposite and tried to convince us during his adventures on TV and two movies with the famous X-Files. 
I have to say some photos and videos are quite disturbing and leave doubts…
Have a look on the following one in August 2006… UFO – China

 
source: Alien UFO Believers via AccessOWeb

Mystery of the Red Planet poles

Scientists announced the identification of a huge crater (more than 10 000 Km long ) on the planet Mars. It follows from the impact of an asteroid or a comet that is the cause of the asymmetry existing between the two hemispheres. A similar phenomenon on Earth would have given birth to the Moon, about four billion Years.

We still have for these kind of topics only 2D Drawings or Artistic view in 3D/Photo Realistic Rendering. It will be interesting to get the Realistic simulation of such phenomena using engineering tools such as CAD and FEA platform to have the 3D rendering and the physical/mechanical data at the same time. It would be great to have a 3D CAD application that can manage data from the the infinitely small to the infinitely big…

source: Nouvel Obs (FR) – Techno-Science (FR)