Anyone who’s seen Blade Runner or The Jetsons knows that flying cars are essential to the “future,” but despite many people’s expectations, these flying cars Personal vehicles have always seemed a step ahead of what they are now. Now, one company says it holds the key to making these amazing flying machines a reality, and it’s based on a NASA-proven propulsion system that won’t be abandoned easily.
Applied eVTOL Concepts this week announced plans for a vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) vehicle, the Epiphany Transporter. The company says it has a top speed of 160 mph (258 km/h), but generates less than 55 km/h. h./h. decibels of noise at 50 feet (15 meters). This is somewhere between the volume of pouring rain (50 dB) and the volume of normal human speech (60 dB).
The secret seems to be the ducted motors on the sides and rear of the Epiphany Transporter. This motor, discovered in 2002 by researchers at NASA Ames Research Center, produces great thrust, the physical force that powers jet engines and helicopters.
This duct design also has the added benefit of protecting the rotating blades within the duct that generate the thrust. Rob Bulaga, his Epiphany Transporter project engineer at Applied eVTOL Concepts, is a co-author of the original paper. The design has been refined over the 20 years since it was first tested in Ames, and Michael Moshir, founder of Applied eVTOL Concepts, said the technology has improved since the concept was flying cars first tested in a NASA wind tunnel. I believe we have made significant progress.
We have complete confidence in the ability of our patented and field-proven air ducts and advanced aircraft designs to perform as expected in flight,” said Mosher, who is also the company’s CEO and principal designer. Stated. statement.
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The ship is designed to accommodate her two passengers and their luggage. The company says the Epiphany is roughly the size of a Tesla Model S and fits in a typical one-car garage.
Of course, just because a company’s ducted engine works fine in a wind tunnel doesn’t mean we’ll have flying cars anytime soon. Over the years, many vertical take-off and landing companies have come and gone, certainly including his NASA engineers.
However, it’s always sound engineering practice to use a proven design as a basis, so perhaps this will end up being the real deal.
Experts say building the giant bioreactors needed to mass-produce raw materials to make medicines, vaccines, cultured meat and more will require significant infrastructure and funding.
Matt Anderson-Baron, co-founder and CEO of Canadian company Future Fields, told TechCrunch that 10 billion liters of biodigesters will be needed by 2030, compared to the amount that exists today. said only 61 million liters.
Furthermore, recombinant proteins, which are the products of bioreactors, account for a large portion of the costs associated with cultured meat production, which may be part of the reason why the cultured meat sector has not been able to achieve price parity with traditional meat. It has become.
Future Fields believes it has discovered a more cost-effective and sustainable way to do this using EntoEngine. This is an approach that uses fruit flies rather than giant steel tanks to produce recombinant proteins.
“Traditionally, growth factors and recombinant proteins are produced in microbial systems grown in large stainless steel tanks, so they compete for the same infrastructure,” Anderson-Barron said. “We are replacing bioreactors with insects. We are genetically engineering insects that can be raised in simple plastic containers. This is highly scalable, cost-effective, and important. Best of all, it avoids infrastructure-related issues and frees up the supply chain for people who don’t have to create more demand, whether they actually need it or not.”
Anderson Barron, his wife Jarin Anderson Barron, and co-founder Reiji Ghafoor have been working on the issue for some time (the last time they covered Future Fields was in 2020. ), the company today announced that the facility will be used to launch its first products beyond cultivated meat (research, cell therapy, biopharmaceuticals) and to expand its team.
Bee Partners is joined by Toyota Ventures, Builders VC, AgFunder, Amplify Capital, BoxOne Ventures’ Milad Alukozai, Green Circle Foodtech, Siddhi Capital and Climate Capital in the round.
Anderson Barron declined to disclose growth rates, but said the team has doubled in size in the past year and has supplied more than 60 companies with animal protein products in the past 18 months.
Future Fields is building its first manufacturing facility near its headquarters in Edmonton, Canada, which will produce kilograms of recombinant protein in just 10,000 square feet of manufacturing space.
Meanwhile, the company’s EntoEngine technology will expand its portfolio of human recombinant protein products for medical research and biopharmaceuticals, including five of his proteins useful in wound healing, reproductive biology, muscle and breast milk development, and stem cell research. Offers.
Anderson-Baron said using flies offers both speed and scalability. EntoEngine’s Drosophila technology allows him to produce biomass 16-30 times faster than conventional bioreactors, producing protein every day in the same space and infrastructure.
“This is not possible with other systems that have bioreactors that run frequently for weeks and run one production cycle,” he added. “This gives us a lot more flexibility and, importantly, it allows us to scale much faster and at a lower cost, as it replaces stainless steel tanks that require insects to be plugged into the wall.”
