Beta Technologies Partners with US Army on Alia EVTOL - A Big Deal?
this episode is brought to you by weatherguard lightning tech at weatherguard we support design engineers and make lightning protection easy you're listening to the struck podcast i'm dan blewett i'm alan hall and here on struck we talk about everything aviation aerospace engineering and lightning protection all right welcome back to the struck aerospace engineering podcast i'm your co-host Dan blewett on today's episode we're going to talk a little more about the Qatar saga really interesting development now that they placed an order with boeing a very big order after canceling their airbus order last week so we'll talk through that also some new video released on the extent of the payne paint issues which are pretty substantial um from this youtube video we've seen we'll also talk about the scramble for cargo aircraft as shipping prices increase some really new efficiency gains with boeing and others so we'll see how that plays out with different types of aircraft maybe moving into the cargo sector we'll talk about fedex asking the faa for permission to add anti-missile systems to some of their cargo planes which is a scary proposition and then our evtol segment we'll talk about joby they're uh really starting to get out there in the public eye and they're saying that they're ready for some test flights over the san francisco bay army is also partnering with beta and then we'll talk about some of the need for new pilots uh as air taxis start to become you know closer to our our our present day future um so alan obviously the qatar thing has been uh carrying on it's been our this big saga and really like boeing is kind of the winner here because last week uh airbus canceled an order kind of said hey we want to cut ties with you it seemed like and now uh very quickly qatar has put in an order for 57 37 tens and 5777s so that's a big order i mean 100 planes going to boeing now this is seemingly getting really expensive for airbus it isn't i don't know if airbus really cares because it seems like they've broken all connections with uh qatar airways and the airbus may be totally fine with it that's what seems to be happening and the the boeing announcement happened at the white house yesterday and that would not that normally wouldn't happen so it you kind of feel in this sort of national thing happen in the united states where um qatar's over here in the states and boeing is there the signing signing the agreements in the white house and that usually doesn't happen uh i don't remember that happening in any any recent times so i'm not sure i'm not sure airbus cares really you can make a big deal of it boeing can make a big deal of it but i think airbus is a-okay with how this is going down well and it's just a memorandum of understanding right now which apparently doesn't commit qatar airways i mean is that a big deal i mean is this could that just be a pr play like they could pull out i can't imagine obviously they needed new planes you know the airbus order that they cancelled wasn't uh they weren't playing around like they needed they obviously need new new jets but um i mean do you see this going through or is this just like hey we want to get something out here to further inflict pain on airbus if we can um without having to commit too deeply to it i don't i think they're going to actually go through with the orders and that's the feeling right and especially with the freighter order that that seems pretty definite there's a lot of discussion about that today obviously but i you know the white house getting in the middle of that doesn't make a lot of sense to me i understand boeing want to make a big deal of it because they're trying to regroup and show that they've have dominance in the sector which they don't right now but they will it'll it'll ebb and flow it actually does but you know the united states and france aren't having such great relations at the moment i don't think you sort of spike the football here to use an nfl analogy on france i don't think that makes any sense to anybody so that's what that's what it felt like yesterday like we're spiking the football in a game that's not over let's let's everybody calm down a little bit i think it's great for boeing to get the order obviously they needed it it shows a little positive press but airbus makes great airplanes there's just don't dispute about that right so it's going to be a very competitive race over the next 10 20 years well let's talk a little bit about the the paint stuff that's come out so the airways kind of released a video statement on the a350 uh pain issues and so they have this like a minute and a half video it's unlisted on youtube uh so i guess people are only finding that through certain articles but it shows a pretty pretty wide range of damage i mean it there's a lot some of it looks really rough um i mean what's has that changed anything as far as your take on the situation or is it kind of just this is what we already knew well i think it's more expansive than what i had seen previously what i had shown in the press particularly on reuters was small areas of where paint has come off particularly around the winglet that's one area or around the static dischargers which is not abnormal honestly for composite airplanes so that all kind of made sense and remember that any airplane today is not made in one place that there is an accumulation of parts that are all sent to be assembled at final assembly at toulouse or up in seattle boeing or in south carolina i suppose now too uh so you having pain issues and what it looked like in the video was it was limited to certain sections of the airplane so it may be limited to certain suppliers in the airbus chain and that's what it appeared like that there's there's segments supplier segments that are having issues with the expanded metal mesh sticking to the surface maybe combining with some process issues and that also relating to the way paint is adhering the the images of the a350 airplane and i've only seen this one so i'm not it's not saying it's indicative of all of them but this a350 on the top of the fuselage kind of in the midsection just looked like it was the the paint was wavy and i've never seen paint that in that larger narrative have a waviness issue like that which makes you think is to me it seems like a manufacturing a process issue would be hard-pressed to think airbus has a engineering problem here yeah that did that that i remember that part of it and it reminds me of like when you have too much moisture in your bathroom and the paint just starts to peel or like you use indoor paint for an outdoor spot and like you thought it was gonna be fine but i got a lot of water splashed on it yeah it that there seemed like a wide swath of different types of issues um because obviously some of those like they showed some really tiny like pinhole um you know paint peels and it seems like you said this isn't completely uncommon like some of that's probably going to fall with a normal wear and tear i mean it's in airplanes they're well used they're in terrible conditions up in the sky and it seems like they probably included everything under the sun that could possibly look rough but then some of it looks very out of the ordinary like you said it does and and as the story unfolds and we're learning more and more obvious what what we're hearing is uh qatar sent an airplane at a350 to ireland to get it painted and when they stripped the airplane down they saw these surface defects and then the airplane was sent to toulouse for airbus to look at it slash repaint it and there it sat so airbus must think either the they don't think the customer deserves the levels that level of service or they just saw the future of how are we having problems with qatar airways and this is never going to go well so why even get into it that that's it that's sort of here's what's happened it's a very unique situation with the customer so you mentioned uh obviously like the the order for the 777s probably going to go through and that seems to be a pretty impressive plane although it's been a little bit you know delayed uh so obviously with shipping costs going sky high and the supply chain issues everyone looking for for some sort of relief there um it looks like boeing is really making a push with some other 777 offerings and looks like they've got a really big jump in efficiency is it right that maybe 10 10 on their triple sevens yeah the ge on the engine and the ge 9x is has really squeaked out efficiency gains of they're saying upwards of 10 on on fuel burn that's a lot it's just a tremendous amount of savings on fuel and and the triple seven freighter version is going to have a carbon fiber wing and they think there's some weight savings to be had there uh people are making comparisons between a theoretical a350 type airbus freighter to this triple 7 freighter and saying the airbus may have an advantage in total weight because they make the whole airplane out of carbon fiber large sections out of carbon fiber that may or may not be true right i i'm one on the carbon fiber design aspect that there are places where carbon fiber makes sense and there's other places where it doesn't make sense in terms of weight in terms of weight it may be lighter in specifics but sometimes it's not sometimes it's heavier so uh i would say bongo has a very competitive product they've been in the freighter business for a long time that's one of their key lines of sales is the freighter and airbus hasn't done too much in the freighter business and and boeing's going to protect that like crazy and ge i think ge had like us just for the engines alone it's like 6 billion 7 billion in engines and services alone for that order that's a major major order but and the dan just kind of go slightly aside here and we hear a lot of things about uh on the environmental aspect of airplanes that they're not airplanes are not doing enough to save the environment like come really really you're making we've been flying airplanes for a hundred years it's still 120 years i guess at this point and and all of a sudden we're making like 10 gains in an energy efficiency other industries just haven't been able to do that and i you got to give the airplane company some credit and ge some credit here there's nothing more expensive than fuel and such as big driver in terms of efficiency and cost that there's a natural economic drive to reduce the amount of fuel burn and the amount of emissions out the back end so the airplane industry i think is doing a really good job of paying attention to those environmental aspects at the same time yeah it is a weird it is a weird thing and i think it it it comes mostly from the uninformed public you know which i'd consider myself a member but you know you say oh well why why is airlines why are they exempt from this you know why they're oh look you just look at the volume if you know you find a good infographic on you know mass media newspaper and just like oh air airlines account for 25 i'm that's making that number up you know of all emissions globally it's like well they need to reduce that and like you said there's already pressure to do that because it's so expensive just like if you looked at all the the regular car you know cars cars and trucks they also have a gigantic amount of emissions and if gas was 13 a gallon you bet people be selling their pickup trucks they'd be selling their suvs they'd be selling their humvees and looking for efficiency i mean they would be doing it but when gas was cheaper people like i don't care i like my truck i'll i'll get 16 miles to the gallon or nine miles to the gallon in some cases and no big deal but the airlines like you said have never been like that because it's so expensive and it's so core to their business to whether it's getting a package or a human across you know the world they want to burn less fuel to do it absolutely yeah it just seems like it's this all or nothing craze right now with with good good green energy press that it needs to be like oh we got to get rid of all these emissions or it's like people don't realize that there's a funnel like you said a fundamental difference between what an aircraft can do with the energy density requirements that it has versus a car you know if a car runs out of battery it just rolls to a stop and you're very inconvenienced and you have to scan through twitter for an hour while you wait for the tow truck but if that happens on a plane uh a lot of people die and it's much bigger problem yeah so it is an interesting difference and you wonder if there'll be any kind of push to educate the the public on that problem probably not but i don't know airlines are they they deserve a little bit of uh of leeway they do and that's the effort to use sustainable aviation fuels is a part of that push not only making big efficiency gains in terms of the engine performances and what's coming out the back end they're also switching to sustainable fuels so it's sort of inevitable that aviation has been and can will continue to be one of the cleanest forms of transportation it just is for what it does you can't just what are you going to replace it with you're going to place it with ships or you're going to replace it with trains you know yeah this is some things need to be moved by air well speaking of cargo uh fedex is asking the faa for permission to put lasers on some of their cargo planes that will throw off heat-seeking missiles uh you know they mentioned that a 2000 in 2003 a dhl plane was hit after taking off from baghdad somehow they returned to the airport which kind of blows my mind i guess maybe the damage wasn't that significant it seems like missing missiles missiles are yeah i can't imagine a plane can keep going but why now it is i mean i haven't heard it much obviously the issue with belarus you know redirecting a plane and sort of hijacking it that was of concern and there was some missile concern uh the testing of uh over at north korea recently but is it is this really a realistic thing that they need heat-seeking missile or you know detection and avoidance systems yes and i worked on a system 15 years ago ish it's about that same time after the 2003 incident happened that there was uh a minor effort i'll call it not well publicized effort to add anti-missile technology to commercial airplanes and particularly cargo planes because cargo planes go places that maybe passenger planes don't go all the time or are in their uh and they're sort of american targets there all the time it's one of those places where american either uh ups or fedex or and dhl because it's european are in and out of countries that you know united airways or airlines won't go into right so the opportunity to take a shot at a an american-based plane are limited and it may be just freighters and the freight companies were concerned about it and they're still concerned about it because there have been other incidents uh there was airplane just shot up the other day i forget where that was uh rocket hit the side of the airplane on the ground i was like oh man this is bad but the the you know the the laser systems like i said have been around 15 plus years and i think they've been using them overseas and limited scope and now they want to roll it out a little more expansively the real the issue safety wise dan is that if they go off inadvertently they send a bunch of lasers energy into uh around the airplane so if it went off on the ground he had baggage workers or people refueling the airplane and that system went off you could hurt somebody's eyes i think that's the real threat and it would not be good but from a safety standpoint it adds safety to the airplane it may add a little bit of a drag to the airplane because it tends to be this pod that goes on the bottom of the airplane on the back uh and the technology is there i guess the question is are we from a perception standpoint i don't think american airlines is going to be putting on anti-missile technology on the airplanes it just looks bad like would you get an airplane which you knew had anti-missile technology on it i think man where am i going i'm just going to cleveland is it rough in cleveland today or what it's weird to think that well you'd want to have more safety measures like do you do do you want to wear a bike helmet or do you want to ride on a path that just like wouldn't possibly need a bike helmet yeah but i think i think on the general populace would be concerned if they had it were on an airplane had anti-missile technology on it and maybe maybe the general public wouldn't even care i mean i that yet to be known the freight community does care though and it makes a lot of sense to protect their pilots and their and their aircraft uh to to add this onto aircraft uh you're gonna see more of it not less for sure who is gonna be shooting down or shooting at cargo planes i mean isn't that just a straight-up act of war i mean is there any country that wants to start a war with the united states over cargo it's not over cargo it's it's more of like iraq has had incidences uh uh libya syria there's a number of countries that they've had it's not the gov it's not the formal government's taking shots at airplanes right it's it's it's uh radicalized groups that tend to be taking shots or groups that have uh angst against the americans or british or whoever and are out there with a rocket launcher and it's at the end of the airport right your worst case scenario is what happened to dhl which is someone sitting at the end of the runway with a hand you know shoulder mounted rocket launcher taking a shot at the airplane when it's vulnerable right from the bottom right and that's that's a scary proposition so that anything you can do to try to to minimize those situations you want to do i guess that's fair so i guess it's kind of like a scaled up version of a a kid throwing a rock at a car like not really as much an act of war is really just some idiot insurgent who decides on that day to take a shot at a thing that he can that's you know in range right right well moving on to our evtol segment today uh some big news on joby which it's good to see the conspicuousness i suppose of some of these companies joby definitely being one of them because we talked sort of lamented last year about not a lot of these companies are you know putting their vehicle their aircraft where their mouth is and they're talking about flights but they're not taking flights but now joby wants to conduct some flights over san francisco bay which you know the headlines have been dramatic flights over san francisco bay i'm not sure what exactly alan is dramatic about i mean if you're in the air you're in the air right it doesn't matter if there's water beneath your buildings beneath you or you know desert beneath you but um it seems like they're getting pretty brazen about hey let's fly this thing around yeah well i think they need the pr right now if you look at stock prices all the stock prices of those spacky vtol companies are down joby being one of them and and they need a little more pr i think that would help them tremendously on on just showing their hand a little bit on what their craft can do i i still think you need to put some a pilot in the thing if they if they do autonomous flights over san francisco the knock will be well it's empty who's there's nobody in it like what's what's the downside here uh i can't envision myself flying in this if they can't put a pilot in it today why would i want to get in it which is i think it's a very valid argument to be had the the visuals are going to be great though you're flying around the golden gate bridge the images are fantastic and they know they're that they're one of the key demographics it's going to be silicon valley san francisco area in terms of having the the income level to afford these flights and to fly from san francisco to tahoe or wherever people go in that neck of the woods it's good it's great pr i think it makes great pr i wonder if what the fa is going to say though is the fa going to say hey guys you know flying around san francisco autonomously we're not so cool with put a pilot in it different story we'll we'll let you do that because i haven't seen a lot of like flights of airplanes early i would call this early on in the flight test program doing demo what i call demo flights or scenic flights uh advertising flights overpopulated areas that's not what i have seen on other aircraft programs obviously the the pr department would love to get that image for sure but the faa is going to be it should be hesitant to do what that have a lot of safeguards in place like what happens if you know the airplane starts to deviate where you got where you guys going with it and that's going to be hard in san francisco i think joey has two prototypes i mean why do you think at this point they're still wary about putting a pilot inside of it that's a great question i think everybody has done the same thing beta may be the only one that has flown with a pilot because kyle clark likes to likes to fly as a pilot so i think he has taken beta up all the other ones uh whisk i don't think oh no whisk has had a pile in it i've seen some early things in whisk with a pilot in it back in 2017 that's on youtube heavy side from kitty hawk i think is mostly autonomous i don't think i've seen pilot in it uh archer has not had a pilot in theirs either lilium i don't think i've seen a pilot in theirs yeah it seems to be all the rage right it's all that's all of us let's just do our flight test autonomous in the early stages i don't know that's a good question i think it's um it must be that they're concerned about having a human in the in the mix must be that's the only reason that they could be right uh yeah it doesn't build confidence but then again you can't imagine that they're really concerned about their prototype going down i mean well as the faa i think you would be sure i mean you just don't have enough experience with it you may have zero if i may have zero experience with it i'm sure joby is going to come to them with a ton of flight test data it says look how stable it is look how great it works look we've never had a an issue in flight yeah yeah yeah cool right the probability that the airplane crashes is you know one in a roughly billion um so sure right but that isn't necessarily the way the faa would see it when i saw this article the first time i thought well this is interesting because they're talking about joby talking to the faa about something that joey wants to do typically you do that behind doors like you go to the fa and say hey we're thinking about doing this what do you think you don't create an article about it like hey we're talking to the fa about flying over san francisco uh what what's fa going to say to you you know you kind of you kind of have them over a barrel because if they don't let you do it well then the jerks if if they if they allow you to do it and something goes wrong the faa is seen as not doing their job so there's is there any upside for the faa in this situation i would say no all the benefits on joby side and okay the santa it's interesting because we don't checkstrawn's not doing this typically boeing's not doing this typically so it's just another avenue well do you think they'll put weight in it do you think they'll put a dummy you know in there or 200 pounds of potatoes or anything nope that's all and if you look at some of the discussions about the recent flight tests of i think 205 knots or whatever it was recently it's unloaded it doesn't make any difference unloaded when is going to airplane earthquake going to fly unloaded it doesn't it's going to be loaded with hopefully lots of people on it and some luggage too that's that's the goal so let's let's see what the performance numbers look like when you got it loaded and that's what the industry i think is looking for that sounds a little bit like a laptop battery life stuff like that they're like oh you know this new laptop 13 hours of battery life as long as you don't do anything and the brightness is set to zero then you're good you know works great beta is now partnering with the us army and obviously beta is winning support from a lot of big entities ups being won amazon being another um yeah their founder kyle clark um he's seeming like a very qualified cowboy just wants to go up in the plane and um wants to move fast and seemingly not afraid to to get his craft up in the air for sure and they seem like they're going in the right direction but alan what is this uh partnership with the army all about it's logistics based and i think the the beta model is like the ups amazon aspect it's cargo they seem to find a niche in cargo and that that would interest the us army because what's most of an army getting logistics people materials to the to the proper site at the proper time and having other options besides a c-17 relying on the air force or somebody to to drive opens up doors for them and it's just sort of the helicopter thing with the uh they've always had helicopters with the army right so that it sort of fits into their wheelhouse of hey we've got this small aircraft and we want to haul in munitions or you know some sort of light armament in or medical supplies and to um you know a battle site let's check this out and and that's what's going to happen i think what what beta is going to do is is show them they can do what kind of missions it can do and let the army figure out where it could be used and then really determine if if there's a need for it on the military side from beta's perspective there's really nothing to lose here because if you can get some orders just say it's 50 orders out of the army on a military version that's really helps your bottom line and and i think the air force is doing the same thing with joby right now and uh kitty hawk i think everybody's looking at looking at the cargo aspect of it and trying to see if there's a mission there there's a lot of a lot of utility for like you said dropping provisions getting a wounded soldier out of a place bringing all sorts of things in those short like you know what's the range going to be a couple hundred miles at most but it seems like if you can have a couple of these at a lot of different strategic points and bases then um make a lot of sense especially maybe shuttling people to and from embassies not necessarily an army specific use but um yeah just another way to get people you know obviously taking the um place of a helicopter in many incidences and then the autonomous piece may come into play this i think this is where uh kitty hawk is going and some others is and whisk is hey look there there is a general marketplace with the us military and other military agencies across the world of they're allowed to fly autonomous they fly autonomous things all the time right that's what the predator is and and global hawk and you can rattle off all the autonomous aircraft that are flying on the military services today well you could have a ready market marketplace because you don't have to have a pilot the army probably doesn't want to pilot in that situation great so what the military may do in terms of the aviation development is it may give them a bridge a financial and a and a time bridge where they can develop the technology and then the passenger commercial aspects may come a little bit later that's what and that's what it feels like with beta right that they're going to do the cargo thing it gives them some flight hours you know having a good customer like a ups is a huge advantage marketing wise but also getting some aircraft into the military will also help them learn a lot and bring cash to the business those are all great things smart move well speaking of the expansion of urban air mobility there's a quick article about cae which they manufacture flight simulators and alan i guess there's a big switch for flight simulation now that it's less mechanical is that right and more i mean obviously avionics have been coming becoming more digital over time um but does this seem like this is going to be like a step change in the way pilots are trained on evt wells versus like traditional aircraft yeah there's a really there's been some really good podcasts and youtube discussion about this like joby doesn't have any water pedals so the way it flies is different than regular airplanes would it flies more like a video game and if you're creating simulators and trying to push pilots through pilot training and you will do it in a simulator at least a significant portion of it because it's cheaper less expensive to do the the flight simulator people will have to try to adapt and try to create these flight simulators and flight simulators are expensive right there's uh that's one of the issues right this is one of the issues with the 737 max why they didn't want they didn't want to have boeing didn't supposedly didn't want to have uh training of the pilots because they all had to go back into the simulator so you're talking about thousands and thousands of pilots running through simulator time which is pretty expensive you're something you're trying to avoid right but simulators are less expensive than flying the airplane so that's your alternative that's why they like doing simulators because cheaper but when they when they start creating these ev tolls you kind of wonder if if we're all going to get to some if i'm developing a simulator my dream is that all these ev tolls are similar yeah they converge yeah they converge into the none of them have rotor pedals right or they all have this basic software uh provisions to to respond in these particular ways so i don't have to go recreate the wheel every time because that's what happens now a citation jet doesn't fly like a leader jet doesn't necessarily fly like a you know 737 or an a320 so the simulators become very unique things and uh or just become expensive so hopefully what this ev tall thing you what you're trying to avoid is significant pilot training costs similars are one ways to save on that but it's also it is also still an expense we're not going to get into the how do you make a simulator which seems very complex anyway but is is this a situation where they just sort of like need the need the software from joby and they need the software from someone else and then just sort of like run it on their thing i mean i'm sure in days past they had to sort of go in the cockpit and re-manufacture or you know sort of reverse engineer what was there i assume again i don't know the ins and outs of this it seems like a very difficult and complex task but it seems like it probably gets easier at least on the surface where it's just like if we have a screen and similar control like you know you get the physical controls built um but maybe putting in the avionics might be a little simpler since it's just like the software exists here they're not gonna try to rebuild joby's software i assume like that wouldn't really make any sense would it um they're going to try to get the flight control laws from joby or the evita maker right so they're trying to get the the simulator to work just like the airplane does so they're going to need a lot of a lot of flight control laws some maybe some flight test data on responses and stuff and simulator obviously the aircraft manufacturers all have simulators on how the aircraft's supposed to perform and they'll give that to the simulator company but if you go inside some of these simulators i mean they're very they are they are very specific to the airplane model so you will see if uh joby's using garmin i'm not sure that's the case but i assume it is if they're using garmin you're gonna you're gonna see a garmin display in front of you you wanna make it as real as possible because what you're trying to do is get the pilot familiar with the setup and where things are but also put put stress into them and see how they react because it's sort of a feedback loop of how do pilots respond when this happens where do they go and is the airplane designed right to handle a pilot maybe not acting correctly right there's this nice little feedback loop in simulators that you don't necessarily get in the airplane or you don't want to have anna happen in an airplane i mean like a good baseball analogy is just like especially in youth baseball amateur baseball there's a very big difference in mounds for a pitcher so you know when you get to pro baseball or high level college baseball the pitching mound you pitch from is very stable very consistent same slope same height same clay but when you're in youth ball you'll pitch you know even if you hone your mechanics and everything is very repeatable and smooth and perfect one day you're going to pitch from a gigantic mound with a huge hole the next day from a very flat mound also with a huge hole but a very different huge hole um and just like it's so different it seems like a small change and over time the best pitchers learn that mentally you make it a small change like you can't you know you just sort of figure out how to adjust but it definitely can throw you off you're like i feel like i don't know how to pitch doing this and if like you said if there's a mo even modest differences in a flight simulator you could be like this is i feel a little uncomfortable and i feel a little nervous and my my anxiety is slightly higher because if i'm in a weird position this isn't exactly the same this isn't exactly how i've trained right and that's i think that's the simulator people have done a really good job if you actually go into a simulator the the realism is astounding it's astounding years ago not so much today it's amazing the technology that's there all right well that's going to do it for this week's episode of the struck aerospace engineering podcast thanks so much for listening be sure to subscribe wherever you are on youtube spotify itunes stitcher and leave us a review we would greatly appreciate it and share the show and we will see here next week on struck strike tape weatherguard lightning tech's proprietary lightning protection for radomes provides unmatched durability for years to come if you need help with your radon whitening protection reach out to us at weatherguardarrow.com that's weatherguardaero.com
2022-02-06 02:52
