“A New Taxonomy for Vertical Lift Aircraft: Reinventing the VSTOL Wheel” with Dan Newman, Boeing

VFS Philly hosted a virtual Lunch N’ Learn presentation featuring a talk by Boeing Senior Technical Fellow and VFS Philadelphia Board Member Dan Newman!

Description:
Since the successful fielding of Vertical Takeoff and Landing (VTOL) aircraft, there has been a strong desire for such runway independent aircraft that are also capable of very high speed cruising flight.  There has been a lot of time and treasure invested in developing and demonstrating these VSTOL aircraft, and several attempts to characterize them culminating in the VSTOL Wheel, but each exhibits specific drawbacks in practice. The current approach is inadvertently limiting the capability for regulatory agencies to review and approve new concepts. A new, simple taxonomy has been developed by the presenter and is proposed that is suitably broad to characterize every VSTOL concept suggested, and sufficiently robust to include any in the future. And the approach offers a means to leverage each new aircraft certification, to reduce the subsequent workload and uncertainty.