Building an Air Taxi Service Requires, Roof, Take Off and Landing Space, Hangers, and Fast Elevators, says Volocopter, Which Are All Doable

Volocopter envisions "air taxi" stations that can handle 10,000 passengers a day

If you want to be taken seriously in the "flying car" business, you need a solid infrastructure plan. It's not enough to just have a cool-looking aircraft that can take off and land vertically. You also need a citywide system of landing pads, charging stations, and passenger loading and unloading areas.

 From article, (If you want to be taken seriously in the “flying car” business, you need a solid infrastructure plan. It’s not enough to just have a cool-looking aircraft that can take off and land vertically. You also need a citywide system of landing pads, charging stations, and passenger loading and unloading areas. Uber is working on its own infrastructure plan, and now German startup Volocopter is ready to show off its own vision for a fully formed urban “air taxi” system, coming to a city near you.

Today, the company unveiled its vision for a network of rooftop “Volo-ports” where up to 1,000 passengers could board and disembark their own personal “flying taxi” every hour. That translates to 10,000 passengers per station per day, the company claims. These stations would include elaborate systems of conveyor belts, swappable battery packs, and elevators leading to vast charging ports — all designed to move the largest number of passengers possible while also ensuring its fleet of short-range aircraft are fully charged and ready to go.

Volocopter’s idea for a citywide air taxi system is clearly very ambitious. The company envisions building circular launchpads that jut out from the top floors of skyscrapers, from which Volocopter’s 18-rotor 2X electric aircraft could take off and land.

After landing, these vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft would be moved via conveyor belt to an indoor hanger, where passengers can disembark, and batteries are swapped out by robots for freshly charged ones. Then, the aircraft are transferred via elevator to a parking garage of sorts on the floor below, where maintenance work can be done before the vehicles are deployed for more passenger-transporting.

Zosel said Volocopter hopes to have a prototype station in place sometime in the next year, but acknowledged it will take up to 10 years before a full, citywide system can be put in place. The cost of these elaborate stations would likely be spread out over a number of partners, including real estate groups, charging station operators, ride-hailing companies, and Volocopter itself.

The company has demonstrated the 2X’s flight capabilities in Germany, Dubai (where the company is most likely to first launch its aerial taxi service), and more recently at CES in Las Vegas, where it announced a partnership with Intel.)

For More Info

New Website, for Ireland Citizens, to Provide information on EVs, So As to Help Educate, and Facilitate Buying.

Electric cars about to become 'the new normal' in Ireland

The use of the electric vehicle (EV) on Irish roads is about to become "the new normal for people in their everyday lives" and "no longer just a progressive, environmental fad". That was the prediction of Jim Gannon, chief executive of the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI), following the announcement of a public engagement campaign on EVs funded by the Government.

  

From article, (The use of the electric vehicle (EV) on Irish roads is about to become “the new normal for people in their everyday lives” and “no longer just a progressive, environmental fad”.

That was the prediction of Jim Gannon, chief executive of the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI), following the announcement of a public engagement campaign on EVs funded by the Government.

There were 3,800 electric vehicles (EVs) on Irish roads by the end of 2017 but registrations of new and imported EVs are currently up by 40 per cent compared to same period last year.

He was speaking in Dublin’s RDS on Wednesday when the first phase of the SEAI campaign was unveiled – a single website allowing drivers to compare almost 40 different EV models now available in Ireland.

It also outlines how to access grants available to motorists and businesses – and helps motorists arrange for a test drive at their local dealer. It can be accessed at www.DrivingElectric.ieSEAI chair Julie O’Neill said: “At present, electric vehicles make up less than 1 per cent of the vehicle fleet in Ireland. We understand people’s concerns about driving electric, so the aim of this campaign is to dispel any of the myths around EVs, such as range, cost and charging, and to demonstrate that electric vehicles are for everyone.”

She added: “In 15 to 20 years’ time, the face of driving electric in Ireland will have changed completely from what we know now and the new website was a critical building block in that transition.”)

For More Info

VW To Build Massive Electric Charging Network to Take On Tesla.

VW vows to build massive electric car charging network across US

Volkswagen wants to sell more electric cars in the US, but to do that, it needs to spend millions of dollars on building out the country's underdeveloped charging infrastructure. Toward that end, the auto giant's subsidiary, Electrify America, announced today that it plans to install EV charging stations at more than 100 Walmarts in 34 states by mid-2019.

From article, (Volkswagen wants to sell more electric cars in the US, but to do that, it needs to spend millions of dollars on building out the country’s underdeveloped charging infrastructure. Toward that end, the auto giant’s subsidiary, Electrify America, announced today that it plans to install EV charging stations at more than 100 Walmarts in 34 states by mid-2019. The announcement came a few days after Porsche, which is owned by VW Group, hinted at plans to build 500 of its own EV charging stations in the US.

The Walmart charging stations are part of a broader Electrify America project to install 2,000 chargers at nearly 500 charging stations across the country by June 2019. “EV owners need a convenient, reliable and fast turnaround in recharging their vehicles,” said Mark McNabb, president and CEO of Electrify America, in a statement. “Walmart is the perfect partner for Electrify America to bring electric charging services to EV owners who value their time.”

 Meanwhile, Klaus Zellmer, CEO of Porsche Cars North America, told Automotive Newsthat the performance brand would install at least 500 fast chargers at dealerships and highway locations across the US by the end of 2019. “If you want to buy that car, you want to know what happens if I go skiing and go further than 300 miles,” Zellmer said. “What do I do? So we need to have answers for that.”

Taken together, it represents a multimillion-dollar commitment by the German auto giant to blanket the US in charging stations, in the hopes of luring more American consumers to by its zero-emission vehicles. Another way of looking at it is that VW is taking a page from the playbook of Tesla, which has installed 1,210 of its Supercharger stations across the globe since 2012. It realizes that to persuade more American car buyers to consider going electric, it must first commit to a fully built charging network to help reduce range anxiety.)

For More Info

Changing a Gene in People Who Have Beta Thalassemia or Other Blood Disorders Works Wonders.

Gene therapy helps patients avoid blood transfusion

Even though it rarely affected her dance lessons, she also remembers being sick -- very sick. Sihanath, now 22, was diagnosed as a young child with the genetic blood disorder beta thalassemia. She was treated with occasional blood transfusions, which became monthly when she turned 14.

From article, (Beta thalassemia is an inherited blood disorder caused when the body doesn't make enough of a protein called hemoglobin, an important part of your red blood cells. It's found around the world, occurring most frequently in people from Mediterranean countries, North Africa, the Middle East, India, Central Asia and Southeast Asia. The total incidence of symptomatic cases each year is estimated to be about 1 in 100,000 people throughout the world.

In general, thalassemia can be well-managed with blood transfusions and chelation therapy which removes excess iron from the body with drugs, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most people with severe anemia from thalassemia require red blood cell transfusions every two to three weeks.

The new study suggests a way to cut the need for those transfusions. It involved two trials with 22 patients total, 12 to 35 years old, with transfusion-dependent beta thalassemia. Transfusion dependence was defined in the study as having to receive at least eight transfusions per year, or at least 100 milliliters per kilogram of body weight of red blood cells per year, in the two years prior to enrolling in the study.

The two trials were to evaluate the safety and efficacy of a gene therapy for beta thalassemiausing LentiGlobin, an investigational therapy by Bluebird Bio. It works by inserting a functional human beta hemoglobin gene into a patient's own stem cells outside the body and then transplanting those modified cells back into the patient's blood stream.

One of the trials in the study, called HGB-204, included 18 patients and was conducted at six sites around the world: four in the United States, one in Australia and one in Thailand. The other trial, HGB-205, included four patients and was conducted at Necker Children's Hospital in Paris.

In all of the patients, their own stem cells were harvested in a process involving the use of the drugs filgrastim and plerixafor, which move stem cells from the bone marrow to the bloodstream. Once the stem cells were collected, they were sent to a lab where they were transduced with LentiGlobin, which inserted that healthy beta-globin gene.

To prepare their bodies for the gene therapy, patients then underwent four days of the chemotherapy drug busulfan intravenously. Next, their modified stem cells were transplanted back into their bodies. After transplantation, they were monitored and followed up with during a period ranging from 15 to 42 months.

The researchers found that, "of those 22 patients, 15 of those patients became transfusion-independent, which meant that they were not transfused for a minimum of a one-year period," Thompson said. "For some, now it's been even much longer than a one-year period."

The researchers also found no serious adverse side effects related to the gene therapy and no significant unexpected safety issues.
"The side effects that were seen in these two clinical trials are consistent with what we expect from a transplant of any kind that uses chemotherapy," Thompson said.

There were five mild adverse effects in the HGB-204 trial and nine serious adverse events, including two episodes of veno-occlusive liver disease, attributed to the chemotherapy. In the HGB-205 trial, all four patients had adverse events related to the chemotherapy, such as mouth sores.

"There were no novel side effects identified that related either to the LentiGlobin vector or the gene therapy procedure itself," Thompson said. "We clearly want to watch for a much more extended period of time to be sure that there are no additional safety concerns."

In separate studies, some of the same researchers had tested the feasibility of transferring a healthy beta-globin gene into the cells of a beta thalassemia patient. In 2010, they first reported the successful use of the gene therapy for beta thalassemia in a patient.

Now, the findings in the new study appear to expand on that idea.

LentiGlobin is also being tested in patients with sickle cell disease, another group of inherited red blood cell disorders, which suggests that the therapy might have potential to be widely used for various diseases.

Dr. Douglas Higgs, professor of hematology and director of the MRC Haematology Unit at the University of Oxford in England, called the new study "important."

"Even though this is the best we can achieve at the moment, not all patients become free of transfusions and we still do not know the long-term effects of manipulating the genome of stem cells in this way," Higgs said in a statement.

"A major question hanging over this approach, which is hugely expensive, is whether this procedure, which involves killing off abnormal stem cells to replace them with modified stem cells, will ever become clinically possible in developing countries where the majority of these disorders of hemoglobin occur," he said.)

For More Info

TESS

NASA's TESS Satellite Launches to Seek Out New Alien Worlds

NASA has a new planet hunter in the heavens. The agency's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched today (April 18) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, rising off the pad atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 6:51 p.m. EDT (2251 GMT) and deploying into Earth orbit 49 minutes later.

From article, (NASA has a new planet hunter in the heavens.

The agency's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) launched today (April 18) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, rising off the pad atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket at 6:51 p.m. EDT (2251 GMT) and deploying into Earth orbit 49 minutes later.

TESS will hunt for alien worlds around stars in the sun's neighborhood — planets that other missions can then study in detail. And the spacecraft will be incredibly prolific, if all goes according to plan. [NASA's TESS Exoplanet-Hunting Mission in Pictures]

"TESS is going to dramatically increase the number of planets that we have to study," TESS principal investigator George Ricker, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said during a pre-launch briefing Sunday (April 15).

"It's going to more than double the number that have been seen and detected by Kepler," Ricker added, referring to NASA's Kepler space telescope, which has spotted 2,650 confirmed exoplanets to date —about 70 percent of all the worlds known beyond our solar system.

Like Kepler, TESS will find alien planets using the "transit method," noting the tiny brightness dips these worlds cause when they cross their host stars' faces. But there are some big differences between the missions.

During its prime mission from 2009 through 2013, Kepler stared continuously at a single patch of sky, monitoring about 150,000 stars simultaneously. (Kepler is now embarked on a different mission, called K2, during which it studies a variety of cosmic objects and phenomena, exoplanets among them. But the iconic telescope's days are numbered; it's almost out of fuel.) Most of these stars are far from the sun — from several hundred light-years to 1,000 light-years or more. 

But TESS will conduct a broad sky survey during its two-year prime mission, covering about 85 percent of the sky. The satellite will focus on the nearest and brightest stars, using its four cameras to look for worlds that may be close enough to be studied in depth by other instruments. 

Indeed, TESS will rely on a variety of other telescopes on the ground and in space to help determine which of its "candidates" are bona fide planets, and to characterize the newly discovered worlds. One such partner will be NASA's $8.8 billion James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2020. James Webb should be able to probe the atmospheres of at least a few TESS planets for oxygen, methane and other possible signs of life, NASA officials have said.

TESS also differs from Kepler in its orbit. Whereas Kepler loops around the sun, TESS will zoom around our planet, on a highly elliptical, 13.7-day orbit that no spacecraft has ever occupied before.

This orbit will take TESS as close to Earth as 67,000 miles (108,000 kilometers) and as far away as 232,000 miles (373,000 km). The satellite will be able to beam its onboard data down to Earth quickly and efficiently during the close approaches. 

The orbit is also incredibly stable and features relatively low radiation exposure and low thermal variation, said Robert Lockwood, TESS spacecraft program manager at Orbital ATK, the Virginia-based company that built the satellite for NASA.

"It really is a Goldilocks orbit," Lockwood told Space.com.

But TESS won't get there for a while. After a number of engine firings and one dramatic maneuver — a close flyby of the moon on May 17 — TESS will arrive in its final orbit in mid-June, if all goes according to plan. The science campaign will start shortly thereafter.

The TESS mission is capped at $200 million, not including launch costs (which added another $87 million, NASA officials said).)

For More Info

Taking Direct Pictures of Exoplanets May Not Be Out of The Realm for Ground Based Telescopes.

The world's most advanced camera aims to image habitable exoplanets

Astronomers have put significant time and effort toward identifying habitable exoplanets, and with new technology emerging, it looks like their hard work could pay off sooner rather than later. NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), a mission expected to identify thousands of exoplanet candidates, is scheduled for launch within the next few weeks, and the exoplanet-hunting James Webb Space Telescope is set to launch in 2020.

From article, (a new technology could soon be added to the planetary pursuit: the world’s largest and most advanced camera.

Developed by an international team of researchers, the DARK-speckle Near-infrared Energy-resolved Superconducting Spectrophotometer (DARKNESS) is a 10,000-pixel integral field spectrograph that’s able to differentiate between light emitted by planets and light emitted by stars.

“Taking a picture of an exoplanet is extremely challenging because the star is much brighter than the planet, and the planet is very close to the star,” said lead researcher Benjamin Mazin, a physicist at the University of California Santa Barbara, in a news release.

DARKNESS, which is designed to fit the 200-inch Hale telescope at the Palomar Observatory in California, functions as a focal-plane wave-front sensor as well as a camera. The sensor measures the light from planets and stars fast enough to adjust its light-collecting mirror 2,000 times per second, which allows it to counteract atmospheric distortions and create higher contrast ratios between the two light sources. Its accuracy at this rate is quite impressive, too. Even at the equivalent of thousands of frames per second, the camera doesn’t produce any read noise, which is generated when the charge from pixels is sent to the camera. It also does not produce any dark current, which is noise caused by thermal electrons falling on pixels in the absence of light. These noise factors are common causes of photographic errors and inaccuracies.

DARKNESS also uses Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors to establish the arrival time and wavelength of each photon detected by the camera. Determining the photons’ arrival time enables researchers to differentiate planetary light from “speckles” — scattered light from a star that could be mistaken for a planet.

“This technology will lower the contrast floor so that we can detect fainter planets,” said Mazin. “We hope to approach the photon noise limit, which will give us contrast ratios close to 10-8, allowing us to see planets 100 million times fainter than the star. At those contrast levels, we can see some planets in reflected light, which opens up a whole new domain of planets to explore. The really exciting thing is that this is a technology pathfinder for the next generation of telescopes.”

The research team is still working out some kinks with DARKNESS, but they’re continually testing its capabilities and working toward improving its contrast ratio.

“Our hope is that one day we will be able to build an instrument for the Thirty Meter Telescope planned for Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii or La Palma,” said Mazin. “With that, we’ll be able to take pictures of planets in the habitable zones of nearby low mass stars and look for life in their atmospheres. That’s the long-term goal and this is an important step toward that.”)

 For More Info