Unpowered cargo gliders on tow ropes promise 65% cheaper air freight
A West Texas company says it's found a remarkably simple way to slash air cargo costs as much as 65% – by having planes tow autonomous, cargo-carrying gliders behind them, big enough to double, or potentially triple their payload capacity.
Like a train
Whoops, reinvented trains again.
More like a trailer, good luck to those pilots in turbulence have you ever tried driving a car with a trailer that catches a strong wind?
I think the real shipping breakthrough most people are looking for is low power neutral buoyancy without having to travel at hundreds of miles per hour.
I was completely on-board until the word "autonomous". The gliders need at least a supervising crew if they are to fly anywhere near populated areas.
Don't worry. The good folks at Boeing have assured us that it is all perfectly safe.
Tragically, all engineers who dissented have taken their lives.
I'd imagine it will be forced into having a pilot and a co-pilot on board. Between not trusting autonomous to be foolproof and imagining that the ALPA union probably demanding it, I can't imagine they have a choice.
Besides, you think the glider with 10 tons of cargo is going to do well I'm something bad happens to the lead plane? If need be, you'd want a human in that glider to emergency disconnect the tow rope and go land it off in a field or something. It should be able to glide for a very long time. Long enough to talk with ground and set up a good LZ and get emergency services prepped.
I imagine a ground based crew would be available to intervene and fly it remotely. With an option for the powered aircraft crew to fly it remotely through a data link in the cable.
Proper sensory redundancy, appropriate control systems and designing for inherent stability should make this very safe.
The problem with the recent Boeing aircraft is modifying the airframe to take larger quieter engineers caused it to be inherently unstable. This type of aircraft should be designed to be inherently stable. However, redesign is expensive so they avoided that. Instead they added a control system to stabilise the aircraft (perfectly acceptable). The problem is they didn't add redundancy to the sensors the control system relied on, faulty data caused the aircraft to crash. They also skipped training the pilots on how to override this new control system.
All completely avoidable if everything was done right. They got away with not doing everything right because they successfully corrupted the FDA. Other equivalent bodies assumed the FDA wasn't corrupt and accepted their qualification of the aircraft.
Remove the corruption and penny punching this concept is completely safe. With corruption all aircrafts are liable to be dangerous.
They got away with not doing everything right because they successfully corrupted the FDA. Other equivalent bodies assumed the FDA wasn’t corrupt and accepted their qualification of the aircraft.
I know you meant the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration but it's hilarious to imagine it was all down to a corruption of the onboard food service that caused these 737 MAX crashes, since the food preparation and storage would be regulated by the Food & Drug Administration
FDA
I don't think the Food and Drug Administration has much influence over commercial aviation.
Intended or not, software bugs are unavoidable. So are mechanical errors, human errors, administrative errors, and regulatory errors. That is why there should always be a human at the end of this stack of Swiss cheese to notice and plug the holes. Aviation didn't become the safest-by-numbers method of transportation because it was made to be perfect -- accidents happened, and the engineers learned from them to make the next iteration safer. Hopefully Boeing's current bollocking is another such event.
Before the 737 MAX was grounded, there was at least one incident where the MCAS caused the airplane to trim nose-down, and it was a pilot who noticed that the trim wheel was spinning and physically intervened. I've consumed most of the Mayday series and several podcasts on the topic -- there were many incidents where loss of life was averted by true human ingenuity. That's why I always want a human operator, even if only to supervise the machine.
take note urban planners: even in the sky, trains work better
"Aerolane believes it shouldn't be treated much differently by the FAA than regular ol' recreational gliders. It remains to be seen how the FAA will feel about this."
This is an absurd statement as it completely omits the automated part of the towed airplane. Witch is the major point of this project.
And the weight. A recreational glider weighs about 600kg. They want to build one that carries 3 and later 10 tons.
If a recreational glider crashes into a house, it usually does not cause a lot of damage except to the pilot, see here:
https://www.tz.de/welt/niedersachsen-segelflugzeug-stuerzt-wohnhaus-zr-2446316.html
Now make that thing 20times heavier. There is a reason drones are regulated by weight class.
If Boeing passes the bill, why not these guys
The problem is the first part of your question.
I wouldn't be surprised if they end up with less regulation than current consumer drones/rc planes.
Interesting idea, but surely the cost savings are largely pushed forward onto the plane towing all the extra weight?
It's certainly going to use more fuel but presumably less fuel than two separate planes. I really have lots of doubts about towed landings, though.
Obviously their efficiency claims are 'exaggerated' as well...
Uh oh, here comes the plane train
i bet landing will find more challenges
It's not a new idea at least, other than the self-landing part. I sincerely hope they will have to employ and pay a proper aircrew to be in charge of a gigantic flying vehicle though.
Wouldn't it require the same amount of energy to get airborn / propaget as any other powered aircraft? Because, like, physics...
More recently, the US Air Mobility Command tried flying one C-17 Globemaster III some 3-6,000 ft (900-1800m) back from another, "surfing" the vortices left in the lead plane's wake – much like ducks flying in formation – and found there were double-digit fuel savings to be gained.
But Texas startup Aerolane says the savings will be much more substantial with purpose-built autonomous cargo gliders connected to the lead plane with a simple tow rope. With no propulsion systems, you save all the weight of engines, motors, fuel or batteries. There'll be no cabin for a pilot, just space for cargo and the autonomous flight control systems that'll run them.
That's while they're in the air. How much extra power will it take to get the whole shebang airborne?
It said "cheaper" not "energy efficient".
Wings are easy, jet engines are hard.
Besides, if you can do it with an electrical locomotive on the ground, the energy conversion to electricity of a power plant should be better than the energy conversion of a jet engine from fuel to movement.
So imo, cheaper seems plausible, energy efficient is a maybe.
Now do boats.
How do they take off? 🤔 Are they towed from the ground too?
These "Aerocarts" will be pulled down the runway by the lead plane just like a recreational glider. They'll lift off more or less together with the lead plane, then stay on the rope throughout the cruise phase of flight, autonomously surfing the lead plane's wake for minimal drag and optimal lift
Thanks. Missed that part!
This seems cool as hell. I just hope the FAA agrees. Also, landing one of these things seems like it couldn't be tough, especially in bad conditions. But who knows
Good luck landing with this
Edit: unless the glider detaches itself and lands separately