Airplanes

Imagine a future with nearly silent air taxis flying above traffic jams and navigating between skyscrapers and suburban droneports. Transportation arrives at the touch of your smartphone and with minimal environmental impact. This isn’t just science fiction. United Airlines has plans for these futuristic electric air taxis in Chicago and New York. The U.S. military is already experimenting with them. And one company has a contract to launch an air taxi service in Dubai as early as 2025. Another company hopes to defy expectations and fly participants at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Backed by billions of dollars in venture capital and established aerospace giants that include Boeing and Airbus, startups across the world such as Joby, Archer, Wisk and Lilium are spearheading this technological revolution, developing electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft that could transform the way we travel. Electric aviation promises to alleviate urban congestion, open up rur...

Not only people need to stay cool, especially in a summer of record-breaking heat waves. Many machines, including cellphones, data centers, cars and airplanes, become less efficient and degrade more quickly in extreme heat. Machines generate their own heat, too, which can make hot temperatures around them even hotter. We are engineering researchers who study how machines manage heat and ways to effectively recover and reuse heat that is otherwise wasted. There are several ways extreme heat affects machines. No machine is perfectly efficient – all machines face some internal friction during operation. This friction causes machines to dissipate some heat, so the hotter it is outside, the hotter the machine will be. Cellphones and similar devices with lithium ion batteries stop working as well when operating in climates above 95 degrees Farenheit (35 degrees Celsius) – this is to avoid overheating and increased stress on the electronics. Cooling designs that use inn...

Electric planes might seem futuristic, but they aren’t that far off, at least for short hops. Two-seater Velis Electros are already quietly buzzing around Europe, electric sea planes are being tested in British Columbia, and larger planes are coming. Air Canada announced on Sept. 15, 2022, that it would buy 30 electric-hybrid regional aircraft from Sweden’s Heart Aerospace, which expects to have its 30-seat plane in service by 2028. Analysts at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Lab note that the first hybrid electric 50- to 70-seat commuter plane could be ready not long after that. In the 2030s, they say, electric aviation could really take off. That matters for managing climate change. About 3% of global emissions come from aviation today, and with more passengers and flights expected as the population expands, aviation could be producing three to five times more carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 than it did before the COVID-19 pandemic. Aerospace engineer and assi...