Telstar Logistics

Flying Car Completes Successful Test Flight

Well, it's not quite as cute as an Taylor Aerocar, but it does seem to work as advertised. Terrafugia's Transition, a crossbreed of a car and an airplane, successfully completed its first test flight this week, taking to the air for 37 seconds. As MSNBC reports:

Transition's aerial debut followed six months of road tests and years of design. The goal is to create an airplane that can be driven to and from a runway and parked in the family garage at night.

Transition runs on regular unleaded gasoline and can travel up to 500 miles on a single tank of gas. It takes less than 30 seconds for the vehicle's wings to fold up or extend to transform from plane to car or vice-versa.

"The point of the test was to prove that this could both fly and drive," Deitrich said.

Information from the test flight will be used to tweak the Transition's design for a second prototype. The company plans to begin selling the vehicles, which cost $194,000, in 2010, said Richard Gersh, Terrafugia's vice president of business development.

Per usual, the folks from AVWeb have pulled together an excellent and informative video that shows the Transition's first flight, and highlights some of its technical features"

LINKS:
Terrafugia Transition (official website)

PREVIOUSLY:
For Sale: One Aerocar; Half Car, Half Airplane

It's an Amphicar! It's an Amphicar!

(IMAGES: Photos from Terrafugia)

The Joy of Space Travel at SFO

 

Telstar Logistics flew to Chicago this week to meet with a new client, but as we were departing from San Francisco International Airport we took note of yet another superb museum display curated by the airport's museum staff. We've written about them before, so as you may recall: SFO is not just a transportation hub — the airport is also a fully accredited museum, which helps explain why the displays there are so consistently excellent.

The show currently on display in the United Airlines concourse at Terminal 3 is called Out of this World! The Twentieth-Century Space Invasion of American Pop Culture. As the exhibit summary explains:

From elaborate toy play sets and space operas of the 1930s and 1940s, to robots and rocket ships of the space age and beyond, each generation presented its own notions about what the future would bring, both here on Earth and in the mysterious worlds beyond our atmosphere. The artifacts exhibited in Out of this World! The Twentieth-Century Space Invasion of American Pop Culture are reminders of a period when our collective infatuation with space resulted in products that ranged from fantastically silly to truly visionary, objects that may have inspired the conquest of space as much as they reflected it.

Count us among the infatuated. The show is up through through March 2009 (we think), so if you happen to find yourself flying United in or out of SFO, take a few minutes and enjoy a little bit of retro-futuristic space appreciation. It's worth the trip.

LINKS:
Out of this World! The Twentieth-Century Space Invasion of American Pop Culture (Official exhibition page)

Out of this World exhibition brochure (Downloadable pdf file)

PREVIOUSLY:
Backstage at the San Francisco Airport Museum

Will Eastern Airlines Fly Again?

Will Eastern Airlines return to the skies again?  It's hard to imagine how anyone could pull that off in the current economic environment — never mind the question of why they would want to — but plans are indeed afoot to revive Eastern, which folded in 1991 after almost 70 years in the aviation business. According to Triopso's Charlie Leocha, the Eastern resurrection effort is being led by veteran airline industry exec Ed Wegel.  Leocha writes:

In a letter circulated to former Eastern Airlines employees, an investor group announced that they have “concluded a deal with the Eastern Airlines estate to acquire the name, trademarks and affiliate names (including Eastern Express and Eastern Shuttle) for the purpose of re-starting the airline as a scheduled airline.”

Ed Wegel, a veteran of the airline world and current CEO of Eastern Airlines, Inc., told former Eastern Airlines employees, “We have developed a business plan for the re-start of Eastern which leverages off of Eastern’s core strengths while using all of the lessons we have learned from all of the start up airlines and the restructuring of all of the legacy carriers over the past 18 years.”

According to this letter, the new airline management will break new ground with contracts with the new Eastern’s crew members and a stock ownership plan that will completely align everyone’s interest in the new company.

Will it happen? Seems unlikely, but here's to hoping. Closer to home, however, it seems our recent donation of a vintage baggage-handler's coat to the permanent collection at the San Francisco Airport Museum may have been a bit premature:

The Coast Guard's New Cutter Settles in San Francisco

The US Coast Guard base in Alameda, California recently became homeport for the newest cutter to enter the fleet: the USCG Bertholf (WMSL-752). Built to support the Coast Guard's national security mission, the 418' Bertholf is the first of the USCG's Legend Class cutters, part of a long overdue (and delayed) effort to replace the Hamilton-class cutters that were built during the 1960s.

Bertolf, and the the rest of the Legend Class ships, were designed to operate in the new post-Cold War global environment. Based on a Pentagon contract issued in 2002, Bertholf is a product of the post 9/11 emphasis on maritime homeland defense -- with all the delays and cost overruns that have come to typify that effort. That said, her list of features includes:

* Automated weapons systems
* A 57 mm deck gun capable of stopping rogue merchant vessels
* Helicopter launch and recovery pad with hangar capacity for two aircraft
* A stern boat well for small boat launch and recovery
* Bow thrusters, for enhanced maneuverability
* State-of-the-art communications systems to enhance interoperability between Coast Guard and the the Department of Defense
* Detection and defense capabilities against chemical, biological, or radiological attack
* Advanced sensors for intelligence collection and sharing
* An advanced Ships Integrated Control System to improve automation and reduce manpower requirements.

After shakedown voyages and commissioning, Bertholf has settled her new home in Alameda, and this week the ship returned from an eight-week cruise to complete Combat System Ship Qualification Trials -- a series of exercises to evaluate weapons systems, test the propulsion system, and practice fueling at sea. We'll be keeping an eye out for her on San Francisco Bay in the years ahead. In the meantime, this Pentagon-produced video provides an overview of the Bertholf's features and how the ship fits into the new defense procurement landscape: