There are many free market aircraft manufacturers working extremely hard to make small jet aircraft more affordable and efficient. This goes along with the new theory of Air-Taxi type travel as an alternative to flying large business jets, which use lots of fuel and are very expensive. NASA is assisting in this strategy and handing down its technologies into the aviation market place to insure that this comes about faster. These new aircraft will usher in a completely new class of aircraft called VLJs or Very Light Jets. There are several entrepreneurial companies working hard to bring this technology to market a record speed and there are also some very well established International Companies looking a capturing some of the pie. In fact these Very Light Jets appear to be quite in demand as one company has already taken some 500 advanced order. Many larger cities are also vying to bring aircraft manufacturing to their cities to help with higher end jobs and economic development. At the AirVenture 2005 EAA, Experimental Aircraft Association fly-in in Oshkosh had several prototypes on display. One company, which has a prototype is Honda of North Americas Research and Development and the tests are nearly complete and the performance numbers and fuel economy are looking quite good. NASA at Langley Research Center is providing assistance to engineers at all the innovative companies building these light business jets. One aircraft looking very good is the Eclipse 500, by Eclipse aviation, which is working with the NASA SATS (small aircraft transportation system) project for VLJs. For information about NASA's SATS project on the Web, visit: http://sats.nasa.gov It maybe interesting for folks to fly a HondaJet, but if it is as efficient as the original Honda Car, it is very promising indeed. The HondaJet Team has a mock up model so far and is testing a one-ninth scale version in NASA wind tunnels. Small, fast and totally efficient jet aircraft for your second family car? Could it be in your future? Think on this. |
