19 conveniently avoided, not to mention the overall car ride. This Boeing aircraft that uses vertical flight might resemble a quadcopter, a configuration currently found in unmanned aerial systems or hobby toys, and it might have electrical power distribution instead of gearboxes and drive shafts, creating all sorts of options for rotorcraft 1929 United Aircraft and Transport Corp., or UATC (William Boeing’s conglomerate), is established. Bowcutt is Boeing’s chief hypersonics scientist and a Senior Technical Fellow in Huntington Beach, Calif. He’s determined to create a hypersonic aircraft that revolutionizes travel in outer space and across the planet. Over the past decade, he helped push this concept forward with successful trials using the experimental, unmanned X-43A and X-51A hypersonic vehicles, both of which relied on scramjet engines, or air-breathing propulsion that requires no turbo-machinery. A hypersonic airplane would fit perfectly into what Bowcutt predicts will be a fully automated world someday, making time an even more valuable commodity. “You could type in ‘Paris’ on your mobile phone and an unmanned car comes to your house, your phone beeps, and you go out and hop in,” Bowcutt said. “It takes you to the airport and it takes out your luggage, and you get on an airplane or some hypertube-type thing that takes you across the ocean. It’s just wild to think about where all this stuff is going to go.” That’s providing a car hasn’t been rendered obsolete by then. Dan Newman, a Senior Technical Fellow at the Boeing Philadelphia site, envisions a future in which a rotorcraft lifts off from a residential driveway in a metropolitan area and whisks someone to work or the entire family to a relative’s house for a holiday dinner. Rushhour traffic and airport congestion are “Earth will be a highly desired vacation spot.” BRIAN TILLOTSON
Frontiers July 2016 Issue
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