View Online | March 11, 2023
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Joining forces
in aviation tech news
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Hello and welcome to the AeroTime Tech newsletter, where we try to help you make sense of the massive wave of innovation sweeping through the aviation industry!
Digitalization, decarbonization, new business models…things are moving fast on all fronts!
That’s why we have joined forces with Lufthansa Innovation Hub, an organisation that has long been an active player in the aviation innovation and tech space, identifying, funding and nurturing innovative ideas and startups in this arena.
TNMT, Lufthansa Innovation Hub has proven to be a constant source of top-notch, data-driven analysis and insight for anyone interested in the latest in travel and mobility. If you are into aviation tech and innovation you can't miss TNMT's newsletters, subscribe now!
What's more, we've also collected some of the most fascinating stories in the field of aviation tech right now.
Could hypersonic travel become a reality sooner than we expect?
Which eVTOLs are going to be the first to fly to commercially?
Will there be enough sustainable fuel for the whole industry?
What are the top five airport innovations and technology for 2023?
Which airlines are adopting Starlink connectivity inflgiht?
We answer these questions and more in this month’s edition of our tech newsletter!
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TOP STORY
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Is the Hypersonic era closer than we imagine?
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Great power sabre-rattling, stoked by war in Ukraine and geopolitical tensions in the Pacific,
is driving research in hypersonics.
The military and strategic applications of this technology are all too obvious, particularly when it comes to developing missiles that are increasingly hard to intercept. But hypersonics may have some more peaceful applications as well, and some entrepreneurs are determined to prove it.
But let’s start with the basics: what is hypersonic flight?
A commonly accepted definition of hypersonics is that it includes anything flying at Mach 5 (five times the speed of sound) or faster. An aircraft achieving these types of speeds would not be unheard of and not just because of the sonic boom.
The North American X-15 achieved a speed of Mach 6.7
in 1967 (to put this in context, the fastest production aircraft, this is the double the maximum speed of Mach 3.3 of the SR-71 spy plane, the fastest serially produced aircraft). Five and a half decades later, it still holds the record for the fastest manned aircraft to have ever flown.
Wouldn’t it be great if we could hop from London to New York in little more than an hour or from Europe to Australia in less than four?
While the prospect of commercial supersonic flight making a comeback remains fraught with uncertainty, two startups, one of them in America, the other in Europe, are aiming to leapfrog this stage altogether and go hypersonic by the next decade.
Both startups are betting on a similar technological approach: the combination of a conventional jet engine, for take-off and landing, with a ramjet that would allow the aircraft to cruise at a speed of Mach 5.
Why two types
of engines?
This is due to the properties of ramjets, which are structurally very simple engines with almost no moving parts. They do just one thing: ingest air and push it through a cylindrical shaft to achieve these super-fast speeds. They are unable, however, to start on their own, therefore requiring an additional conventional engine to get moving.
Who are the hypersonic entrepreneurs?
Hermeus, based in Atlanta, Georgia, has raised more than $100 million from a number of prominent investors, including funds linked to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and billionaire investor Peter Thiel, while Switzerland-based Destinus is is the brainchild of Mikhail Kokorich, a Russia-born physicist and entrepreneur with several successful ventures under his belt...
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IN PARTNERHSIP WITH LUFTHANSA INNOVATION HUB
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The technologies that will transform aviation, by TNMT
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Today, aviation is going through a cycle of innovation not unlike that of its early, pioneering years.
After decades of mostly incremental improvements, the floodgates seem to have been opened for entrepreneurs all over the world to get a shot (in some cases, literally a moonshot) at novel and disruptive ideas in aviation and aerospace.
Some are a re-up of known concepts like the venerable airship, while some others, such as space travel or eVTOLs, sound like something straight out of a sci-fi novel. It’s easy to get carried away, though. Which of these technologies has a better chance of actually coming to fruition and in what
kind of timeframe?
Fortunately, and in order to make sense of all this, over the last few months our friends at Lufthansa Innovation Hub have been conducting a thorough research exercise, mapping eight major new-air travel technologies on the Gartner-like hype cycle...
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AVIATION TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION
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Five airport innovations that will make travel easier in 2023
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We have often wondered what airports will look like in the future.
But with the fast development of new technology, the future airports that we envisioned seem to be gradually becoming a reality.
From advanced biometric capture software and shoe scanners to immersive retail experiences, AeroTime takes a closer look at five newly implemented innovations that are coming to an airport near you...
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SUSTAINABILITY
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The aviation industry's sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) problem
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The aviation industry continues to face relentless pressure to reduce its emissions, and rightly so.
As the whole world, including the industry’s road transportation counterpart, is moving towards sustainable methods of moving people and goods, stakeholders in aviation are still looking at potential options.
Questions are being asked about whether battery-powered or hydrogen aircraft will enable aircraft to become environmentally friendly, as Airbus, Boeing, ATR, De Havilland Canada, Embraer, and zero-emission manufacturers such as Universal Hydrogen or ZeroAvia are exploring
alternatives to jet fuel.
Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF) seemed like the silver bullet that would ensure that aviation’s emissions went down in the immediate term, acting as a bridging gap between the present and the future, when electric or hydrogen power plants would not emit any pollutants....
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VIDEO OF THE MONTH
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Universal Hydrogen first flight
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On March 2, 2023, California-based Universal Hydrogen, one of the leading companies in the emerging hydrogen flight space, announced completion of the first flight of its hydrogen-electric demonstrator.
The aircraft, a modified De Havilland Canada Dash 8-300 turboprop powered by a hydrogen-fed fuel cell, took off from Moses Lake airport in Washington state for
a 15-minute flight, during which it achieved a maximum altitude of 3,500ft.
In this video, you can get a glimpse not just of this ground-breaking flight, but of the whole process that made it possible.
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IN PARTNERHSIP WITH LUFTHANSA INNOVATION HUB
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Travel’s journey into the metaverse, by TNMT
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In 2022, the “metaverse” was undoubtedly the most hyped technology buzzword.
The trend has had far-reaching implications across some of the biggest company names in the world. The most obvious example is Facebook.
The company not only rebranded to Meta as part of its metaverse strategy pivot but the firm also announced investments of $10 billion to $15 billion USD per year. This money has been funneled into its various Metaverse projects, including AR and VR tech, alongside Horizon World, the company’s own VR app. Facebook was not the only one riding the metaverse wave.
Tech giants like Microsoft and Nvidia have begun working
on enterprise-level metaverse platforms. As well, several metaverse platforms have already auctioned off virtual land.
This happened rapidly, spurring the rise of the term “metaverse land grab”...
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AVIATION TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION
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When – and where – will the first eVTOL aircraft be in service?
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For many years now the headlines have been full of stories about electric take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, also widely known as flying taxis, urban air mobility vehicles or even flying cars.
The technology appeared to be just around the corner for decades but was never accessible to the wider public. However, recent developments have shown that we may have finally reached the point where it is not only possible that these aircraft will soon be appearing in our skies, but inevitable.
Scores of companies, both startups and those that are more well-established, have produced
and tested prototypes of their vehicles and are inching closer to making the technology available to the general public.
This begs the question: when and where will passengers be able to fly on the first eVTOLs....
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AVIATION TECHNOLOGY AND INNOVATION
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The airlines switching to Elon Musk’s Starlink
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Starlink, the satellite-based broadband service provided by Elon Musk’s SpaceX, is taking the world by storm. This system has already proven its value on the frontlines in Ukraine where, political controversies aside, it has performed as expected from a technical point of view.
Starlink uses a constellation of thousands of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, which are satellites that spin around the planet relatively close to its surface, in order to provide wireless internet connectivity anywhere at speeds comparable, or even superior, to that of land-based fiber optic.
Airplanes and ships remain some of the few places in the world where fast and cheap internet cannot be taken for granted. But this may be about to change thanks to the extensive broadband access afforded by this SpaceX subsidiary...
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QUICK LINKS
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Other interesting stories in aviation tech
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Remember that you can get plenty of great aviation stories and data-based analysis on our respective websites:
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