Drones today are inadequate. While the basics of simple unmanned flying machines are simple enough, if drones are going to revolutionize how people do anything, they'll need to do much more, within the basic confines of their design. So Local Motors, a Phoenix-based open-source manufacturing company, is partnering with Airbus to design a cargo drone for the future.
Crossing the Atlantic used to take months, but a new patent for Airbus for a hypersonic jet airliner wants to reduce that time to under five hours. Granted in the middle of last month, the patent describes the outline of a plane powered by turbojets, ramjets, and a freakin' rocket, all designed to help propel either 2 or 3 tons of cargo or 20 passengers at speeds of up to Mach 4.5, over distances of roughly 5,600 miles in three hours.
The race is on to provide the first truly reusable rocket for travel to lower Earth orbit, and now Airbus has decided to enter the growing fray. The international aerospace company—known for manufacturing many of the commercial aircraft used for everyday flight—just revealed its secret rocket concept Adeline. Standing for ADvanced Expendable Launcher with INnovative engine Economy, it is marketed as a main competitor of SpaceX's reusable Falcon 9 rocket. That is, once it becomes more than just a pretty video.
