Daily Archives: January 24, 2022

Is this the least deadly black hole in the universe?Lets Be Friends

Not all black holes are the destructive monsters theyre often made out to be, according to new research done with the Hubble Space Telescope.

Scientists from Montana State University published an article in Naturethis week that found a star formation in Henize 2-10, a dwarf starburst galaxy and they say the black hole at the center of that galaxy actually created them.

We conclude that this black-hole outflow triggered the star formation, the authors wrote.

The findings provided insight into a decade-old mystery about whether smaller galaxies had black holes proportional in size to larger ones, according to NASA.

Ten years ago, as a graduate student thinking I would spend my career on star formation, I looked at the data from Henize 2-10 and everything changed, Amy Reines, a researcher at the University of Virginia and one of the studys authors, told NASA. From the beginning I knew something unusual and special was happening.

Reines told NASA that she expects even more research into dwarf galaxy black holes in the future. Using them as clues to better understand how supermassive black holes came into existence would solve a persistent problem for astronomers, and NASA reports that of the three leading theories about how black holes are created, none of them stand out as more likely than the others.

It really has become the big question: where did they come from?Reines said. Dwarf galaxies may retain some memory of the black hole seeding scenario that has otherwise been lost to time and space.

Its poetic that an unusually creative black hole defying rules about how black holes are supposed to act may actually help scientists understand the most ancient of galactic mysteries.

More on unexpected holes: Authorities Attempting to Close Fiery Gates of Hell

Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.

Read the original:
Scientists Discover Black Hole That's Creating Stars Instead of Devouring Them - Futurism

Photo: Yuri Kadabnov / Contributor (Getty Images)

I thought thered be more inter-connectivity between cars and infrastructure by now. Such as traffic lights being notified of your approach and changing before you get there, assuming the intersection is empty (like its 2 in the morning with no other cars around and I still have to stop at the light to trigger it to change).

Or cars reporting traffic or road issues to cars behind it or to the authorities (like I have mixed feelings about my car automatically notifying the police when another car flies by me weaving through traffic at 95mph but just figured that would have been implemented by now).

Google might ask you if a road was busy or the train carriage was full after a journey, but theres still a long way to go here. With all the sensors and scanners packed into our cars, and phones, surely this one actually is right round the corner?

Suggested by: anotherevilmonkey

Read the rest here:
The Futuristic Car Features We Should Have By Now - Jalopnik

Months after El Salvador announced that it would accept bitcoin as legal tender, the country has found itself on the verge of economic collapse yet again.

The countrys president Nayib Bukele made waves last year when he announced that the nation would accept the token for use at stores and banks. The self-described CEO of El Salvador even announced plans to build a Bitcoin Cityto turn the country into the financial center of the world.

However, it turns out that forcing your nations banks and stores to accept a currency large swaths of the population are unfamiliar with and dont trust is a good way to tank your economy,according to a castigating report by Fortune.

El Salvador has found itself in an ever-deepening sinkhole of debt, with its cringe president lobbying the International Monetary Fund for a $1.3 billion loan, according to the magazine, and shortly after the Bitcoin City announcement in November, the countrys sovereign bond dropped from 75 cents to 63 cents overnight and is now at 36 cents.

In the past five months since it officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender, experts have estimated that El Salvadors sovereign credit got four times worse than it was before the move.Bitcoins extreme volatility has also been on full display, as its price was hovering around $60,000 at the time of Bukeles big announcements, but has now crashed to the mid-$40,000s.

El Salvador now has the most distressed sovereign debt in the world, and its because of the Bitcoin folly, Steve Hanke, professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University, told Fortune. The markets think that Bukeles gone mad, and he has.

There are many reasons for this, including the fact that El Salvador already wasnt doing so hot financially before their big bet on bitcoin. However, a look under the hood revealed that many Salvadorans simply didnt trust the token leading to limited use of the token.

A Central American University survey conducted last September found that nine out of 10 citizens in the country didnt know what bitcoin was, and eight out of 10 said they had little to no confidence in the digital cash.

Bukele also sold the legislation on the idea that bitcoin would make remittances money sent to Salvadorans from friends and family members working abroad cheaper. However, the opposite was often true.

This is because citizens would typically turn the bitcoin into cash after receiving it, Fortune reports. To do that, they needed to travel to an ATM, which takes asubstantial cut of the money withdrawn. Exchange platforms like Coinbase also take anywhere from two to four percent of the money as well.

Hanke believes that that winds up being nearly four times as expensive as traditional remittances.

So yeah, turns out voting in a cringe crypto bro as president might not be the best thing for your country. While theres certainly some promise to the idea of accepting bitcoin as legal tender, public trust needs to get there first and we wouldnt bet on that happening any time soon.

READ MORE: El Salvadors plan to create the first Bitcoin-powered nation is tanking the economyand is a mess by every measure [Fortune]

More on crypto countries: El Salvador Officially Starts Mining Bitcoin Using Power from an Actual Volcano

Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.

Visit link:
An Entire Country Switched to Bitcoin and Now Its Economy Is Floundering - Futurism

It turns out that artificialintelligence chatbots may be more like us than youd think.

A new preprint study out of the Chinese Academy of Science (CAS) claims that many big name chatbots, when asked the types of questions generally used as cursory intake queries for depression and alcoholism, appeared to be both depressed and addicted.

Done in tandem with the the Chinese chat bot company WeChat and entertainment conglomerate Tencent, the study found that all of the bots surveyed Facebooks Blenderbot, Microsofts DiabloGPT, WeChat and Tencents DialoFlow and the Plato chatbot from the Chinese corporation Baidu scored very low on the empathy scale, and half of them would be considered alcoholics if they were, you know, people.

The researchers at the CAS Institute of Computing Technology tested the bots they studied for signs of depression, anxiety, alcohol addiction, and empathy, and per their preprint, became curious about bots mental health after reports emerged in 2020 about a medical chatbot telling a test patient that they should kill themself.

After asking the bots questions about everything from their self-worth and ability to relax to how often they feel the need to drink and if they experience sympathy for others misfortune, the Chinese researchers found that all the assessed chatbots exhibited severe mental health issues.

Whats worse, the researchers said they were concerned about these chatbots being released to the public, because such mental health issues may result in negative impacts on users in conversations, especially on minors and people encountered with difficulties. Facebooks Blender and Baidus Plato appeared to score worse than the Microsoft and WeChat/Tencent chatbots, the study noted.

Needless to say, none of the bots areactuallydepressed or addicted. No existing AI, no matter how advanced, can feel anything though whether itll be able to in the future remains uncertain.

Buried four pages into the study is the potential source for the bots malaise: thatall four bots were pre-trained using Reddit comments, which frankly does not seem like a very good idea!

While theres lots of technicalese in both the study itself and expertanalysis about it, the short and sweet summary is this: these bots were trained on a wide-ranging site known for its negative commentary, and, predictably, responded negatively to mental health queries.

Of course, chatbot weirdness now seems par for the course. Take, for example, the AI that was built to offer people ethical advice that instead turned out to be both racist and homophobic. These kinds of stories keep happening, but AI bot mania appears to be going on unabated.

Put together, these bots and their terrible outcomes raise important questions: who are the architects of these chatbots, and why do they keep building them if they repeatedly turn out to be monsters?

More on scary bot behavior:Men Are Creating AI Girlfriends and Then Verbally Abusing Them

More on mental health bots:A Controversial New AI Could Identify People With Suicidal Thoughts

Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.

Follow this link:
Advanced AIs Exhibiting Depression and Addiction, Scientists Say - Futurism

The skies are so empty.Flight Cancellations

Remember The Jetsons on Cartoon Network? How the family of four would use silver bullet jet packs to cruise around town? Well, jetpacks are now decidedly real but theyre not as slim and practical as the ones on TV. In fact, Australian inventor David Mayman has flown the jetpack he built all over the world, but according to the Guardian, he cant seem to sell any.

I did a flight around Sydney harbour a few years ago, Mayman told the newspaper. I still remember flying around close enough to see the joggers and the people walking around the botanical area, and some of them did not look up. The jetpack is loud, so I promise you they heard me. But there I was, flying by on a jetpack, and they did not look up.

In a 2019 YouTube video, Mayman flies his pack around the harbour, mostly over water, which the Guardian says is because he hasnt yet figured out how to attach a parachute, and therefore wont fly over land. While yes, there is a small crowd gathered near the opera house, some of them taking photos, the rest of the people present seem to be helping with the launch and not just spectators. With large houses and condo buildings in the background youd expect a huge, awestruck crowd to gather, but that just doesnt seem to be the case.

The main problem is almost certainly how impractical jetpacks still are. The Guardian describes an experience testing a jet pack, which weights about 90 pounds. Users must wear several layers of thick protective clothing to prevent burns, including from the super-hot exhaust of the pack itself. Thats also why users keep their feet so straight in the air. If they didnt, theyd burn their feet.

Jetpacks run on kerosene, which is heavy and burns quickly. So far Mayman hasnt broken eight minutes of flight time, because thats how much he can reasonably carry.The safety record is also dismal. In 2020, prominent jetpack stunt pilot Vince Reffet died when his equipment malfunctioned during training.

The first jetpack flights were attempted back in the 1960s using a so-called rocket belt that weighed nearly 300 pounds and shot hot gas from nozzles, according to JSTOR. Mayman watched a pilot fly a pack in the 1984 Olympics, too, so the tech isnt exactly new.

Its hard to believe humans havent latched onto solo flight in the way sci-fi and television would make you think we would. After all, jetpacks have captured our imagination in stories for decades. But it seems that until price, practicality and safety are sorted out, consumers will keep looking down.

More on flight problems: Airlines Warn That New 5G Tech Could Mess Up Planes Ability to Land Safely

Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.

See the rest here:
Jetpack Builder Complains That Nobody Wants to Buy His Jetpacks - Futurism

A film studio is being built in space but thats not the only, erm, titillating aspect to this story.

While its admittedly kinda cool that the company working with Tom Cruise to produce a movie filmed in space is, perCNBC and other outlets, planning to build an orbital film studio, whats more eye-catching about this story is companys rendering of what the studio will look like.

The content creation studio, slated to be launched in 2024, is to be built by commercial space station builder Axiom Space and the British company Space Entertainment Enterprises the same pairing behind Cruises allegedly forthcoming space film.

It takes but a glance to notice that part of this X-shaped spacecraft rendering looks a hell of a lot like the Hitachi-made Magic Wand, beloved the world over for its masturbatory purposes and often half-jokingly called the Cadillac of vibrators.

For those who have been living under a rock for the past 50 years, heres what the Magic Wand often just referred to as a Hitachi or Magic Wand even though Hitachi dropped its brand name from the toy almost a decade ago looks like:

Admittedly, the massager part of this forthcoming space studio is larger and more globular than the head of a Magic Wand, but the resemblance is truly uncanny, right down to the short cylindrical attachment at the end featured on both the wired and wireless models as well as the space studio.

Much like Cruises career, the Magic Wand has a storied past. First trademarked by Hitachi in the late 1960s and marketed as a nonsexual massager, the wand became incredibly popular in the 70s and 80s after sex educator Betty Dodson used them in her masturbation workshops and after one of her acolytes, Dell Williams, became inspired to start her own feminist sex toy shop after dealing with a creepy Macys salesman when she went to go buy one of her own.

Since its explosion into pop culture in the late 20th century, the OG Magic Wand and its many imitators have become almost synonymous with the term vibrator due to its outrageous popularity.

You have to wonder whether the artist who did this rendering of the space studio knew what they were doing and especially if they would have recognized the irony of this story being attached to Cruise, a devout believer in a religion thats said to frown on masturbation. Or maybe the whole thing is just a space-brained marketing strategy.

Extrapolations aside, this rendering is either a hilarious oversight or an intentional troll and either way, were absolutely here for it.

READ MORE: Tom Cruise space movie producers sign deal with Axiom to build studio in orbit [CNBC]

More sexy space:We Need to Talk About Gay Sex in Space

Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.

See the original post:
There's Something Weirdly Sexual About the Tom Cruise Space Station - Futurism

In the 64 years since its creation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has pioneered a wide range of vehicle technologies that pushed the boundaries of engineering. While its high-flying designs would forever change both manned and unmanned flight, some of NASA vehicles were destined to live out their lives on the ground in support roles. One of the more curious of NASA's ground-bound creations was an armored personnel carrier with a giant robotic arm on the front and a ton of other novel features, some of which were quite ahead of their time. It was dubbed the XHRV-1 and it was intended to be used in response to hazardous material emergencies, although that never really happened as planned.

NASA started using the M113 during the Apollo program as personnel carriers in which firefighters and rescue teams would stand by during manned launches. According to David Seymour, Battalion Chief with NASAs Kennedy Space Center Fire Department, the space agency chose the M113 because the carrier is virtually indestructible and could provide protection for rescue teams in and out of the launch area in the event of emergencies. "We want to give the astronauts, close-out crew, and ice inspection team the comfort to know that when called we are going to be there no matter what happens," Seymour said in a 2011 NASA feature.

NASA

NASA M113 during as Shuttle launch.

NASA used two M113s during Space Shuttle launches at Kennedy Space Center. Inside one, a specialized firefighting team would be fully suited up with protective suits and air supplies, ready to deploy within seconds in the event of a launchpad emergency. A second M113 sat waiting close to an emergency bunker by the launchpad. If astronauts aboard the shuttle had to abort their mission and use emergency slidewire baskets to escape the shuttle stack as it sat on the pad, the second M113 would be waiting for them on the ground with its ramp down.

NASA owned four M113s for emergency use at Kennedy Space Center, but retired them in 2013, thankfully without ever having to use them in an actual emergency situation. The M113s were replaced by four Caiman Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, which NASA modified by adding rear ramps to replace the original boarding ladders.

NASA

A NASA MRAP, left, and an older M113, right.

In addition to the four M113s used for rescue at Kennedy Space Center, NASA acquired a fifth M113 in 1994, more specifically an M113 variant known as the M577A3 Armored Command Post Vehicle. The M577A3 featured a longer body with a sixth roadwheel, a commanders hatch, and no weapons mounts. This variant was designed primarily to serve as a mobile tactical operations center and saw use from the Vietnam War to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Starting in 2020, the U.S. Army began the process of replacing the M577A3 with the Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle, or AMPV.

NASA acquired this fifth M113 with a special use in mind: hazardous materials response, or HAZMAT. To be able to more safely respond to incidents involving toxic, radioactive, or otherwise dangerous substances, NASA engineers at the Ames Research Center in California envisioned creating a specialized vehicle that could not only safely transport personnel in and out of HAZMAT areas, but also allow them to respond to these emergencies without ever leaving their vehicle. NASA called this program the eXperimental HAZMAT Response Vehicle, or XHRV-1.

NASA

The XHRV-1 prior to the addition of its robotic arm.

The space agency handles many volatile and extremely dangerous substances, including those related to rocket fuels and propellants, but concept art from the XHRV-1 program shows that the vehicle was also envisioned as being able to assist law enforcement or public safety agencies in other scenarios such as nuclear powerplant malfunctions or terrorist attacks. There were many of these vehicles that were becoming obsolete in the military, so turning them into highly-specialized HAZMAT response vehicles with totally unique capabilities made some sense.

Tanks-Encyclopedia.com

Concept art showing the XHRV-1 in action.

The XHRV-1 replaced the M577A3s commanders hatch with a clear polycarbonate dome, providing a near 360-degree view of the vehicles surroundings. The vehicles armor would provide protection from fires, explosions, or debris, while its continuous tank-style tracks would allow it to navigate very roughly terrain such as a collapsed building. An air-conditioning overpressure system would not only keep crews comfortable inside, but could also help prevent potentially contaminated outside air from entering the XHRV-1. This hardening against nuclear, biological, and chemical hazards (NBC) is a widely realized capability among armored combat systems.

NASA

The XHRV-1 in an early demonstration.

One of the vehicles most unique features was its suitports, special rear hatches onto which safety suits could be mounted. These ports were designed to allow HAZMAT crew members to enter their suits directly from a vehicle, or exit their suits by sliding out backwards into the cabin once their remote work is done.

Tanks-encyclopedia.com

An interior view of the XHRV-1's suitports, left, and an exterior view showing empty suits mounted on the ports on the vehicle's exterior.

NASA

NASA spacesuit engineer Jerry James exiting through the XHRV-1's suitport.

A 1996 patent for a suit docking mechanism assigned to NASA contains concept art of personnel entering and exiting their suits with the help of an overhead bar on which they could hold themselves up. In theory, the concept would allow crew to enter and exit the vehicle without ever being exposed to the air outside. Its unknown how many crewmen the vehicle was designed to carry, but concept images depict up to six crewmembers for a single XHRV-1.

NASA/USPTO

The second defining capability of the XHRV-1 was its front manipulator, a massive robotic arm with a 600-lb capacity and the ability to cut through obstacles. This was controlled from inside the vehicle's cabin at an elaborate workstation. Closed-circuit video from multiple angles, including from the tip of the arm itself, would help the operator manipulate objects in their surroundings.

Concept art also showed that NASA had plans for a bulldozer blade for the XHRV-1, but that feature does not appear in the few images of the XHRV-1 prototype. There were also plans for a robot helicopter, what we today would call a drone, although it seems this feature was never added in the one XHRV-1 built. Still, this was wildly ahead of its time. Equipping individual armored vehicles with their own drones is just now becoming a very hot trend.

NASA

NASA spacesuit engineer Jerry James beside the XHRV-1.

Ultimately, the XHRV-1 would never go on to operational use, and the prototype built by Ames was stripped of its manipulator arm and bubble dome before being sent off for disposal. A military history preservation non-profit, the Eagle Field Foundation, would eventually repaint the XHRV-1 olive drab green and display it as an example of a vintage military medical vehicle.

Tanks-Encyclopedia.com

The repainted, decommissioned XHRV-1.

Fast forward to today and unmanned robots fulfill some of the same types of tasks the XHRV-1 was designed to, further keeping emergency responders out of harm's way. Yet the XHRV-1 was truly a charismatic, sci-fi-like vehicle that seemed more like something a kid would draw than something real. In some ways, it was maybe ahead of its time. As such, the obscure armored vehicle deserves a special place in the annals of NASA history.

Author's note: Special thanks to Tanks-Encyclopedia.com who had great info on this obscure armored vehicle.

Contact the author: Brett@TheDrive.com

Here is the original post:
NASA Once Built This Armored HAZMAT Response Vehicle That Was Loaded With Futuristic Features - The Drive

"It could fall apart quickly, in decades."Thwaites a Minute

A new interview with researcher David Holland, an atmospheric scientist at New York University, reveals just how quickly the Thwaites Glacier is melting. Nicknamed the Doomsday Glacier, Axios reported this morning that the West Antarctica ice shelf could melt in as quickly as a few decades, unleashing the inland ice it holds back into the ocean and raising sea levels by several catastrophic feet.

It could fall apart quickly, in decades, or it could be centuries, Holland told the pub. And the only way to really know that is through this research.

Holland is currently aboard an icebreaker ship navigating thick sea ice where he hopes to study the Thwaites grounding line, which is where the ice meets the seafloor. Temperatures and salinity levels will tell scientists how quickly the iceberg is melting, and if its melting from underneath as well.

In 2014, NASA reported that Western Antarctic sea ice loss was inevitable. In 2021, researchers found the iceberg was even more unstable than previously thought. Now Hollands team is trying to find out just how long we have.

Just as the Thwaites may unleash inland ice into the ocean much like a cork pulled from a bottle others are dumping concerning amounts of fresh water near penguin populations. According to a new study published by researchers at Cambridge and the University of Leeds, iceberg A-68a was the worlds largest before it shattered into nearly a dozen mini-bergs.

The busted-up A-68a flushed about 162 billion tons of fresh water into the ocean near the penguin habitat, which could effect temperature, environment and marine life in unexpected and deadly ways.

Icebergs impact the physical and biological properties of the ocean where they drift, depending on the degree of melting, the studys authors wrote. Our results could also help to model the disintegration of other large tabular icebergs.

With two doomed-iceberg stories in a single day, its hard not to see how urgent climate reform is. Save the penguins, and save ourselves.

More on Earths fate: A Mass Extinction Event Has Already Started, Scientists Say

Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.

See the original post here:
The "Doomsday Glacier" Is Irreversibly Melting, Researchers Say - Futurism

Archaeologists Alice Gorman from Flinders University and Justin Walsh of Chapman University in California launched the first off-world archeological digstudying human culture aboard the International Space Station this week.

We just want to know if theyll find anything useful up there.

Most folks working on long-duration human spaceflight are trying to solve technical, engineering, or medical issues, the researchers tweeted about the projects goals last year. What they usually dont realize is every one of those problems has social and cultural dimensions and if they ignore those, their solutions will be sub-optimal.

Last week, theInternational Space Station Archaeological Project(ISSAP) posted a thread on Twitter showing the areas of the ISS theyll be studying over the next 60 days. Each day, different sections of the station will be photographed so Walsh and Gorman can study the kinds of objects that move in and out of the areas over time, which they say should give them clues about culture and life in space for astronauts using the station.

The grids, or areas of study, include Express Rack 5 on the front wall of the Japanese Experiment Module, the European Drawer Rack on the front wall of the European Columbus module and the starboard workstation in the US Node 2 module.

Its interesting to know which tools astronauts are using and how they move around the space station over time. But will that really provide a ton of insight into how the various cultures, hierarchies and teams interact on board the ISS? And since the astronauts will know theyre being observed, wont that change the outcome?

Were not the only skeptics.

I am incredibly confused why this is an archeological dig rather than an anthropological study, one reader questioned the researchers via Twitter this week.

Because were examining material culture, which is the traditional domain of archaeology, the ISSAP replied.

Most definitions of archeology list it as both a branch of anthropology and a study of material remains, so we can see where the team is coming from. But archeological digs typically happen in places where residents are long gone, whereas the ISS and many of its people, consistently crewing the ISS since 2000, are very much still alive.

Given Gormans long history of studying space junk and debris for culturally significant history, we have faith the team will still come up with interesting conclusions, butthe overarching goal seems a little expansive.

How does material culture reflect gender, race, class, and hierarchy on the ISS? the projects website asks.

Wed love to be proven wrong, though, and if photos of the ISS help us better understand elements of human culture and space exploration then well be all in.

More on space junk: A Huge Black Diamond From Space Is Officially Going on Sale

Care about supporting clean energy adoption? Find out how much money (and planet!) you could save by switching to solar power at UnderstandSolar.com. By signing up through this link, Futurism.com may receive a small commission.

Original post:
Will Archeologists Learn Anything Useful In New Space Station "Dig"? - Futurism

Decades ago, air taxis were operated in many major cities around the world before ultimately failing to be profitable. Now, were seeing an influx of companies under the eVTOL banner that stands for electric vertical take-off and landing trying to reinvent the sector.

Chinas AutoFlight is one of those companies and theyve just named a new Managing Director and set a new goal to begin service with their first production craft, the Prosperity I by 2025.

If the image of a remote control drone just popped into your head, youre on the right track. The companys founder and CEO actually got his start in the industry as an R/C aircraft businessman. Today, hes an FAA fixed-wing and helicopter license owner and hes aiming to put people into full-size four-passenger flying taxis.

Just a little over a year ago, AutoFlight picked up a new investment of $100-million into the brand, and now were starting to see where that money is going. The company had little to share but aspirations at that time but this week, they named a new managing director for their European branch. That man is Mark Henning, a former manager at Airbus, and hes stoked about the chance to bring the Prosperity I to market.

Related:Volocopter Strongly Considering Singapore For Air Taxi Launch

We are bringing aircraft construction back to Augsburg, creating a high-tech location and jobs as we build drones and create a completely new market segment for airtaxis. What I really like about AutoFlight and Prosperity I is the underlying simple concept. Simplicity translates into safety and efficiency. he says. That commitment to safety seems to be a big focus for AutoFlight as they enter the next step in development which will be testing and certification across Europe.

The company says that theyve already completed more than 10,000 take-offs and landings in adverse weather conditions. Theyre hoping to have their first passenger craft, the Prosperity I in service by 2025. The vehicle will shuttle up to three passengers per trip plus a pilot and have a maximum range of 155 miles (250km). While well have to wait to see if they can actually bring the plan to birth, they do seem to have a better chance after todays announcement.

The rest is here:
AutoFlight Plans A Futuristic AirTaxi Service That Will Go Live In Europe By 2025 - CarScoops