Latest news with #X-48
TimesLIVE
6 hours ago
- Automotive
- TimesLIVE
French firm teams up with JetZero on hydrogen-powered flight
A French technology start-up unveiled plans on Wednesday to work with clean-aircraft venture JetZero to explore a potential hydrogen-powered variant of its futuristic all-wing design. The move by SHZ Advanced Technologies is likely to rekindle a debate over the potential for zero-emission flight, six months after Europe's Airbus put the brakes on plans to develop the world's first hydrogen-powered airliner. California-based JetZero aims to challenge the traditional duopoly of Airbus and Boeing by developing a so-called blended wing-body aircraft, which it claims will be able to cut fuel consumption — and therefore carbon emissions — in half. JetZero and SHZ now plan to work together under a Nasa research programme to design systems capable of storing and distributing liquid hydrogen fuel, which could eliminate carbon emissions altogether and evolve into a variant of JetZero's Z4. Hydrogen is prized for its carbon-free emissions and high energy related to mass, which makes it lighter than normal fuel. However, it also takes up much more volume and must be cooled to -253°C, making storage a significant challenge. JetZero's blended wing-body design features a V-shaped fuselage that acts as a wing and reduces friction in the air, rather than the familiar wings and cylindrical fuselage. 'Due to the wider fuselage, the airframe is far more compatible with (liquid hydrogen) fuel tanks without sacrificing passenger seating, as a 'tube and wing' aeroplane would,' SHZ Advanced Technologies said on Wednesday. Airbus said in February it was slowing down efforts to produce a hydrogen-powered regional plane and dropped a target date of 2035, blaming a lack of supporting infrastructure. Boeing, by contrast, has been cool on the commercial viability of hydrogen flight altogether. The concept of a blended wing-body design has been around since the 1940s and led to the US B-2 bomber, as well as the X-48 research project between Boeing and Nasa about 18 years ago. JetZero is revisiting such designs as the aviation industry struggles to meet a target of net-zero emissions by 2050. Airbus has argued that combining such radical changes to the shape of a plane with an entirely new propulsion system would be too ambitious, and is focusing instead on hydrogen-based fuel cells inside a normal tubular aircraft configuration. But SHZ Advanced Technologies' co-founder Eric Schulz — a former senior executive at Rolls-Royce and Airbus — said JetZero would approach the task in two phases with the initial focus on a conventionally powered all-wing plane. Any hydrogen-based variant would come in a second step, he told Reuters. The French firm says it has developed hydrogen tanks that save space by avoiding the usual cylindrical shape needed for pressurised vessels and can fit more easily into the flowing contours of the Z4's fuselage. JetZero, whose backers include United Airlines, said in June it was on track to fly a full-scale prototype of the revolutionary 250-passenger aeroplane in 2027.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- General
- Yahoo
World War II soldier from Gravette killed during D-Day invasion to be buried next month
NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (KNWA/KFTA) — A World War II soldier from Gravette who was killed during the D-Day invasion in Normandy will be buried next month, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders announced Monday. Sanders said during her remarks at the 2025 Memorial Day Observance at Camp Robinson in North Little Rock that U.S. Army Private Rodger D. Andrews, 18, will be laid to rest at a family plot on June 9, more than 81 years after his death. Andrews had been reported as missing in action (MIA) until June 5, 2024, when the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) identified his remains. The DPAA made the announcement on Oct. 2. One year later: Decatur residents reflect on progress after tornado He was assigned in June 1944 to Company C of the 37th Engineer Combat Battalion in the European Theater. Andrews was killed in action on the night of June 6, 1944, when Allied forces that had landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy 'suffered heavy losses from enemy shelling and strafing by enemy aircraft', according to his service member profile. However, it is not known exactly what happened to Andrews during the battle, 'Unfortunately, he did not live to see his 19th birthday,' Sanders said during her remarks on Monday. Andrews' remains were buried as an unknown in the United States Military Cemetery St. Laurent (now called the Normandy American Cemetery) on June 13, 1944, as they could not be conclusively identified at the time. The U.S. Department of Defense and American Battle Monuments Commission personnel exhumed Andrews' remains from the Normandy American Cemetery for scientific analysis in March 2019. Andrews' remains were initially designated X-48 St. Laurent, and he was found to be wearing a belt with the initials 'R.D.A.' Gateway mayor and murder victim's sister reacts to Arkansas prisoner escape 'However, because items of clothing could have been traded amongst different servicemembers and due to physical similarities between X-48 and other missing servicemembers being too close for officials to make a definite association, the AGRC was unable to identify the remains,' a news release from DPAA in October said. DPAA received a request from Andrews' family in December 2014 to devote more time to locating him. Historians reviewed other Omaha Beach losses and reassessed the circumstances of his death. They noted the initials on the belt found with 'X-48' as a possible association. 'After additional historical and scientific comparisons between the personnel data of missing servicemembers from Omaha Beach and the attributes of X-48, the Department of Defense and American Battle Monuments Commission workers exhumed the Unknown in March 2019 and transferred the remains to the DPAA Laboratory for analysis,' the release said. Scientists identified Andrews' remains by using anthropological, dental and other circumstantial evidence. His name is memorialized on the Walls of the Missing at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
