The Clip-Air team though—they’re preparing to build a smaller 10-meter drone prototype soon.
Clip-Air capsules would also be able to be transported by rail. They would be for lighter containers for passengers that would be suitable for high speed rail and air travel.
Clip-Air aims to address current environmental concerns as wells as the objectives set by the ACARE (Advisory Council for Aeronautics Research in Europe) to reduce by 50% CO2 emissions by the year 2020. Clip-Air aircrafts’ conventional fuel consumption would be reduced since they can carry as many passengers as three A320 with half the engines. In other words, flying with three modules under the same wing in a 4000 km flight would be cheaper – in terms of fuel consumption – than three aircrafts of the same capacity flying independently and with equal speed and altitude.
A Clip-Air aircraft could fit in an airport as it is conceived today. With its autonomous capsule, the size of a railroad car – about 30 meters long and 30 tons heavy – its design is compatible with rail tracks. Therefore, it could eventually revolutionize airport configuration and multimodal mobility. The boarding of either cargo or passengers in the capsule could be done not only at airports but also directly in rail stations or production sites.
In technical terms, initial studies have shown that the project is feasible, even though there are still many challenges ahead. “The development of the concept requires performing more advanced aerodynamic simulations and testing a 6 meters long flying model powered by mini-reactors in order to continue to explore the concept’s flight performance and to demonstrate its overall feasibility”, added Claudio Leonardi.
The Clip-Air project’s main contribution would be to provide rail transport’s flexibility to air transport. On the one hand, the Clip-Air plane includes a support structure made up by the wing, engines, cockpit, fuel and landing gear. On the other hand, there is the load to be carried: passengers and/or freight. Hence, the capsule would be equivalent to a real airplane’s fuselage, but without its usual attributes. The flying wing can accommodate up to three capsules with a capacity of 150 passengers each.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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