The space agency is currently conducting a series of studies
NASA has shared an update about air taxis and making the vision a reality. The space agency’s Advanced Air Mobility vision involves the skies above America filled with new types of aircraft.
Before moving forward with their visions, NASA has to ensure that people will actually want to ride their aircrafts, which is why they have been working to evaluate comfort, to see what passengers will enjoy and what they wouldn’t.
NASA is currently conducting a series of studies to understand how air taxi motion, vibration, and other factors affect ride comfort. The agency will provide the data it gathers to industry and others to guide the design and operational practices for future air taxis.
Curt Hanson, senior flight controls researcher for this project based at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Centre in Edwards, said: “The results of this study can guide air taxi companies to design aircraft that take off, land, and respond to winds and gusts in a way that is comfortable for the passengers.”
He continued: “Passengers who enjoy their experience in an air taxi are more likely to become repeat riders, which will help the industry grow.”
A custom virtual reality flight simulator built by NASA researchers last year will allow them to explore how passengers experience air taxi rides and collect data that will help designers create new aircraft with passenger comfort in mind.
This simulator is the centrepiece of NASA Armstrong’s virtual reality passenger ride quality laboratory. The laboratory combines virtual reality visuals, physical motion cues, and spatialised rotor sounds to create an immersive air taxi passenger experience. The lab also helps finding out how easily and precisely a pilot can control and manoeuvre aircraft.
NASA have revealed that after pilots checked out the simulator setup, the research team conducted a study in October where NASA employees volunteered to participate as passengers to experience the virtual air taxi flights and then describe their comfort level to the researchers.
The team produced an initial study that found a relationship between levels of sudden vertical motion and passenger discomfort. However, the space agency says more data collection is needed to understand the combined effect of motion, vibration, and other factors on passenger comfort.
Carlos Malpica, senior rotorcraft flight dynamics researcher stated: “In the Vertical Motion Simulator, we can investigate how technology and aircraft design choices affect the handling qualities of the aircraft, generate data as pilots manoeuvre the air taxi models under realistic conditions, and then use this to further investigate passenger comfort in the Ride Quality and Human Vibration Labs.”
NASA researchers will conduct a series of human subject research studies over the next three years. The goal is to gather information that will help the industry better understand what makes flying in an air taxi comfortable and enjoyable for customers.
While we are not able to travel to space whenever we like at the moment, there is still plenty of reason to be excited about the night sky.
NASA has shared what people should be looking out for in the night sky throughout the month of June. Spectacular sights from planets, the galaxy and the solstice all happen in the coming weeks.
Nasa has highlighted that Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Mercury and Saturn will all be visible this month. Venus will rise about two hours before the Sun in June, and shines very brightly, low in the eastern sky, in the morning all month.
Mars will be visible in the west for a couple of hours after sunset all month. The planet will lower in the sky as June continues. Jupiter, will be quite low in the west after sunset, before being lost in the Sun’s glare as the month progresses. The planet will “re-appear” next month in the morning sky.
Mercury becomes visible low in the west about 30 to 45 minutes after sunset in the last week and a half of June and Saturn rises around 3am in early June, and around 1am by the end of the month.
