Cozy Dark emerging technology began work in 2010 as a skunkworks-style engineering firm and is registered with CCR and NSPIRES.
Our early engineering & design efforts have focused on orbital debris solutions and electrodynamic tether technology.
Zach Urbina founded Cozy Dark with the cooperation of technical, research, and academic colleagues in the Southern California AeroAstro community.
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10 posts tagged aircraft
![Virgin Galactic Ramping Up Toward Passenger Flights |
This year is key for Virgin Galactic’s bid to become the first commercial spaceliner service, as rocket-powered flights of its SpaceShipTwo are on the books for summer.
Meanwhile, assembly of a second vehicle pair — the WhiteKnightTwo carrier plane and another SpaceShipTwo suborbital space plane — is in progress at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.
“We’re now up to over 75 test flights of the WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft and 16 glide flights of the suborbital spaceship,” Whitesides said. “We will have more glide flights over the course of the spring.” [Rise of SpaceShipTwo: The Test Flights Photos]
For these glide flights, WhiteKnightTwo carries SpaceShipTwo up to mid-air, and then drops the smaller plane to make an unpowered glide back to the ground. However, the company is ramping up toward making the first powered test flights of SpaceShipTwo, which will fire the rocket motor it will eventually use to reach the edge of space. continue reading](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lzchbfCbuc1qb7n75o1_500.jpg)
Virgin Galactic Ramping Up Toward Passenger Flights |
This year is key for Virgin Galactic’s bid to become the first commercial spaceliner service, as rocket-powered flights of its SpaceShipTwo are on the books for summer.
Meanwhile, assembly of a second vehicle pair — the WhiteKnightTwo carrier plane and another SpaceShipTwo suborbital space plane — is in progress at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.
“We’re now up to over 75 test flights of the WhiteKnightTwo carrier aircraft and 16 glide flights of the suborbital spaceship,” Whitesides said. “We will have more glide flights over the course of the spring.” [Rise of SpaceShipTwo: The Test Flights Photos] For these glide flights, WhiteKnightTwo carries SpaceShipTwo up to mid-air, and then drops the smaller plane to make an unpowered glide back to the ground. However, the company is ramping up toward making the first powered test flights of SpaceShipTwo, which will fire the rocket motor it will eventually use to reach the edge of space. continue reading
Xaero from Masten Space Systems |
“After rigorous adherence to Masten’s “modify, test, modify” philosophy, Xaero has finally been unleashed from the safety tether, and performed a successful free flight hover this week. Improvements to our control algorithms were validated under tether earlier in the week, followed by careful analysis of Xaero’s flight performance. The result is a picture perfect 22 second hover flight.”
A Swarm of Nano Quadrotors |
Quadrotor-copters flying in clever formations, performing aerial maneuvers. developed by KMel Robotics, at the GRASP Lab, University of Pennsylvania.
New Ideas Sharpen Focus for Greener Aircraft |
Leaner, greener flying machines for the year 2025 are on the drawing boards of three industry teams under contract to the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate’s Environmentally Responsible Aviation Project.
Teams from The Boeing Company in Huntington Beach, Calif., Lockheed Martin in Palmdale, Calif., and Northrop Grumman in El Segundo, Calif., have spent the last year studying how to meet NASA goals to develop technology that would allow future aircraft to burn 50 percent less fuel than aircraft that entered service in 1998 (the baseline for the study), with 75 percent fewer harmful emissions; and to shrink the size of geographic areas affected by objectionable airport noise by 83 percent.
“The real challenge is we want to accomplish all these things simultaneously,” said ERA project manager Fay Collier. “It’s never been done before. We looked at some very difficult metrics and tried to push all those metrics down at the same time.” continue reading
An artist’s conception of AVIATR, an airplane mission to the second largest moon in our solar system: Titan |
“The goal of the plane concept – which according to Barnes can serve as a standalone mission or as part of a larger Titan-focused exploration program – is to study the moon’s geography (its mountains, dunes, lakes and seas), as well as its atmosphere (the wind, haze, clouds and rain. Did you know that Titan is the only other place is our solar system where it rains?)”
“Titan is the best place to fly an airplane in the whole solar system.”
— Jason Barnes, University of Idaho
Image credit: Mike Malaska 2011
(via leerobinson, universetoday.com)
(via mk1civilian)
Just Don’t Call It ‘The Spruce Goose’ |
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen is teaming with aerospace pioneer Burt Rutan to launch a space-travel operation.
The plan includes designing and building “the largest aircraft ever constructed,” which will carry a space rocket to an altitude of about 30,000 feet for an air launch into orbit.
The billionaire investor has established a new company called Stratolaunch Systems, based in Huntsville, Ala., to oversee the project. The idea is to bring airport-like operations to the space-launch business, initially carrying commercial and government payloads, and later passengers.
Plans call for a first flight within five years.
The giant carrier aircraft designed to transport the rocket into the air will use six 747 engines, have a gross weight of more than 1.2 million pounds and a wingspan of more than 380 feet. (Seattle Times)
Image: Stratolaunch
via lookhigh
ok, but seriously, it reminds me of the Spruce Goose.
Spherical flying machine developed by Defense Ministry’s Research Department (via DigInfo)
The Japanese Sci-Fi drone future is here:
This is the world’s first spherical flying machine developed by the Research Department at Japan’s Ministry of Defense.
This machine can hover like a helicopter, and take-off and land vertically. But because it works like a propeller plane standing vertically, it can fly forward at high speed using wings, which a helicopter can’t do. This machine also has three gyro sensors, so even if it hits an obstacle, it can maintain its attitude and keep flying through automatic control.
Stratospheric Observatory For Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) via invaderxan
