Have you heard Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) technology?
This is the future of planes, helicopters and fighter jets that can land and take off vertically. This is just like standing and sitting on a fixed place.
This is especially useful where runways are not very long or where airports and helipads are built in hilly areas like Hong Kong, Bhutan and few other countries. There is very little space in these areas and planes have to hover in the sky for a long time before final take off.
Few planes who successfully tested VTOL include Lockheed Martin F-35B, Elytron 2S and few flights by NASA.
Few benefits include:
- Can take off and land vertically, as a helicopter would, without any support equipment such as a catapult launch or capture nets
- High aspect ratio wings result in 24 hour endurance which is unmatched in the industry
- Longer flights than a helicopter and can land in an either horizontal or vertical flight configuration
This technology has many potential applications that include the following:
Military applications such as intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance
Commercial applications where extended mission UAV capabilities are beneficial, including law enforcement, firefighting, crop surveys, pipeline surveys, or oil field management
People with extremely deep pockets will also use this instead of cars and this may become reality somewhere around Year 2030.
Elon Musk, pioneer in technology (that includes Hyperloop) has plans of inventing VTOL electric planes that will use electricity instead of fuel.
