Boeing – Impact Lab

Boeing, Military, new technology, Science & Technology News, Weapons

General Atomics and Boeing’s new liquid laser could win high-energy weapon race

November 10, 2020

The powerful, compact HELLADS liquid laser

The military has been striving to build a laser powerful enough to make an effective weapon literally since the first ruby laser was demonstrated back in 1960. Now General Atomics is working with Boeing BA +6.8% to finally realize the goal of a truly weapons-grade laser using new ‘liquid laser’ technology to break through the barrier holding back current devices.

The original ruby laser had an output of a fraction of watt, and could not be scaled up. Many other types of laser have been developed over the last sixty years, with generous military funding channeled into those that showed weapons potential. The gas dynamic laser, which resembled a lasing reaction taking place inside a rocket motor, was highly classified in the 1970s. One researcher joked that the best way to harm an enemy with such a massive a laser was to drop it on them.

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Boeing, Military, military drones, Science & Technology News

The U.S. Navy wants more robot submarines : Study

June 16, 2020

Orca Submarine Robot Submarine U.S. Navy

Cheaper and better?

What the United States Navy wants and what the United States Navy will be able to afford in the coming years is unlikely to match up, and as it continues to address increasingly powerful Chinese and Russian navies, this could give a lot of people many a sleepless night. China is currently testing out the Shandong, its first domestically-built aircraft carrier while Russia continues to bolster its fleets in a slow but methodical manner.

As the same time President Trump cut the Navy’s shipbuilding budget by $4 billion, according to the 2021 budget request outlined earlier this year, the Navy would acquire 44 vessels through 2025—down from a planned 55 vessels.

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Alternative Transportation, Aviation, Boeing, Transportation

Boeing shows off their futuristic autonomous flying taxi!

February 5, 2019

Uber has been a boon for us (especially on Saturday nights in Mumbai), helping us reach places quickly, conveniently and economically. But, they created a problem, sort of. More cars on the roads mean increased traffic in major cities.

Well, Boeing is kind of working on this matter, to find a solution. Flying taxis! Not really innovational, we know. But, we may be closer to this becoming a reality than one would think, as they successfully completed their first test flight.

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Alternative Transportation, Automobiles, Aviation, Boeing, Science & Technology News, Transportation, Uber

12 awesome flying cars and taxis currently in development

January 31, 2019

These flying cars want to take your commute to new heights

We were promised that the future would bring flying cars, right? We were. And the good news is that tech entrepreneurs around the world are finally getting started on creating what are commonly known as VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing, pronounced vee-toll) vehicles designed at car size.

Of course, no one is ready for flying cars quite yet. There’s no infrastructure to support them, and a whole new set of auto laws would have to be drawn up to regulate them (like personal drones, but a thousand times worse). The first commercial VTOLs we will see won’t be hanging out at the local auto dealer—they’ll be taxi services built to shuttle people from part of a city to another.

Here’s all the current projects that want to put you in the seat of a flying car.

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Aviation, Boeing, Engineering, Science & Technology News, Transportation

Boeing unveils rendering of hypersonic jet that would fly from US to Japan in 3 hours

January 13, 2019

Boeing unveiled a rendering of its first-ever design for a hypersonic passenger plane.
But questions remain about how much Boeing is willing to spend to develop the project.
Technological challenges remain and costs could be high, which raise questions about the potential profitability of the plane.

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Aviation, Boeing, Electric Vehicles, Transportation

Boeing just took a major step towards autonomous electric flights

November 28, 2018

Our skies will never be the same.

Aeronautics giant Boeing is acquiring Aurora Flight Sciences, a company focused on the development of autonomous electric aircraft. The move confirms Boeing’s commitment to bringing their first self-flying commercial passenger vehicle to reality.

Aurora won a significant amount of acclaim in 2016 when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) awarded them a contract to help build the vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) X-Plane. Uber also enlisted Aurora Flight Sciences’ help on their Uber Elevate flying taxi project.

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Aviation, Boeing, Business, cutting edge, Elon Musk, Ideas, new technology, Science & Technology News, Space, Space Flight, SpaceX

Boeing CEO: We’ll Beat Musk to Mars

October 6, 2016

Boeing Co. once helped the U.S. beat the Soviet Union in the race to the moon. Now the company intends to go toe-to-toe with newcomers such as billionaire Elon Musk in the next era of space exploration and commerce.

sketched out a Jetsons-like future at a conference Tuesday, envisioning a commercial space-travel market with dozens of destinations orbiting the Earth and hypersonic aircraft shuttling travelers between continents in two hours or less. And Boeing intends to be a key player in the initial push to send humans to Mars, maybe even beating Musk to his long-time goal.

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