5-years-future archivos - Dr.-Ing. Enrique Morales-Orcajo

The short answer is this 2019. Although this depends on what is your idea of a flying car.

In 2019, you can already buy a flying car. The Terrafugia Transition is a flying car combination of a car with wings which is fuelled with normal gasoline. The limitations of this new concept are that you still need a pilot licence and an airport to fly, so maybe is not as convenient as what you have in mind.

The futuristic idea of having our own flying car parked in front of our door that we all dreamed of is called VTOL vehicle.

Basic concepts

VTOL stands for vertical take-off and landing. There are two approaches for this technology, Rotorcraft and powered-lift vehicles.

Rotorcraft are those that generate the lift-power by spinning rotor blades, such as helicopters, quadcopters and gyrocopters.

Power-lift vehicles are those that take off vertically but converts to fixed-wing lift in the horizontal fly. Some examples are convertiplanes, tail-sitters, vectored thrust, lift jets and lift fans.

Let us take a look at the projects under development, to get an idea of what options we will have in the next years.

VTOL vehicle projects

All VTOL vehicles project are designed with the idea to be air taxis, and not to be personal vehicles.

Volocopter

The Volocopter is a dronelike rotorcraft powered by 18 electric propellers with room for two passengers. It is designed for inner-city transport covering flight distances of up to 30km at speeds of up to 100km/h. It has been already proven to fly safely, quietly and comfortably in demonstration flights in Dubai and Las Vegas. Now, the company is ready to establish the first commercial air taxi routes. Volocopter recently obtained investment from Intel and Daimler.

Lilium

The Lilium jet is an all-electric VTOL light jet controlled by twelve flaps each fitted with three electric engines, each with a ducted fan. Therefore, the vehicle is lifted vertically by 36 small turbofan engines that are tilted horizontally to fly like an airplane. The current model can transport two passengers, and the company is working in a larger model with room for five passengers that can fly ranges of 300km at speeds up to 300km/h.

The jet is planned for commuting without emissions and noise pollution. Since is all electric, during fly the Lilium jet makes less noise than a motorbike and during take-off and landing the noise is similar to a truck. Furthermore, it fits in a standard landing pad which should make easier to accommodate them in the existing city infrastructures. The company, supported by ESA, initially targeted commercial operation for 2025, but recently announced that they could conceivably begin service far sooner.

Bell Nexus

The Bell Nexus is a power-lift vehicle that looks like an oversized drone. The aircraft is controlled by six ducted-articulated-fans which are vertically oriented during taking off an landing and horizontally oriented for faster air travelling. The goal of Nexus is to transport four passengers plus the pilot up to a range of 250 km in one hour.

The company, Bell Aerospace, has already experience developing VTOL aircraft like the tilt-rotor flyer V-22 Osprey, developed in conjunction with Boeing. They expect to begin flight-testing by 2023 and commence commercial operations shortly thereafter. This is the main bet of Uber Air.

Vahana

The Airbus Vahana is another electric-powered VTOL vehicle, in this case, controlled by eight propellers. The vehicle is self-piloted an initially designed for 1 passenger, although there is second design under development for two passengers.

The first full-scale model has already been tested in rotorcraft mode and currently are testing the transitions to forward flight. Airbus targets 2020 for a production-ready version of the aircraft.

Other projects in the pipeline

Those are just some of the most advanced and better-funded VTOL projects, but there are more than 50 companies working in some sort of flying vehicle and the list keeps growing. Some examples of these projects are the Cora, Ehang, AeroMobil, SureFly, Terrafugia’s TF-X, Electrafly, Joby, Switchblade, etc

Outstanding challenges

All these new prototypes show that the idea of flying cars is no longer a science fiction dream but is close to becoming reality. However, the adoption of flying cars still faces major regulatory roadblocks.

The legal hurdles related to small flying vehicles are probably a greater challenge than the technological ones. For this reason, for now, only flying taxis is the viable option. As we become familiar with having VTOLs flying over our cities, perhaps then, we can begin to imagine how we can allow ourselves to drive our own flying vehicles.

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Now it is your turn.

Have you ever dreamt of having a flying car?
What do you think of the idea of having VTOLs flying over our cities?
Do you think it is a good solution for our urban mobility problems?

Leave us your opinion in the comments.

Key facts about CRISPR

CRISPR is a cost-effective technology to edit the organism’s DNA easier than ever before.
It was adapted from a natural bacteria defence system.
The gene drives alternative makes possible to pass edited genes to offspring.

Description

CRISPR is a technology that allows altering DNA sequences and modify gene function faster, easier, cheaper and more precise than previous genome editing methods.

DNA is a molecule which carries the instructions of how a living organism should growth, develop, function and reproduce. DNA functions as a storage device of biological information and RNA function as a reader that decode this information. The technology to modify these molecules is called genome editing.

There were several recognised genome editing methods before, but CRISPR has revolutionized the field. The reason for such a revolution is its simplicity, versatility and precision. CRISPR stands for “clusters of regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats”. The key words here are “interspaced” and “repeats”.

How works

The term CRISPR was used for the first time in 1990 to refer to unknown repeating sequences observed in different bacteria DNA. Later on, scientists found out that indeed these sequences are part of the bacteria immune system. When bacteria defeat a virus after a viral infection, they chop the virus DNA and store it in their own bacteria genome in CRISPR spaces.

The bacteria use these pieces of information to defend themselves from future viral attacks. Whenever a new viral infection occurs, the bacteria produce an enzyme (Cas9) that check if the new attack match with the pieces of RNA viruses already stored. When the enzyme finds a match neutralize the virus by destroying that part of the genetic code.

Now scientists have figured out how all these mechanisms are triggered, and we can engineer the whole process to edit any genome sequence. In short, the CRISPR technology works like a pair of molecular scissors where only two components are needed: a guide RNA and the Cas9 protein. First, a specific gene is target base on RNA-DNA base pairing. Second, the gene is cut through the enzyme activity (Cas9). Third, a new sequence of engineered DNA can be added by using the cell’s own DNA repair machinery.

In that way, pieces of genetic material can be added, altered or deleted, easier than never before. With the current levels of efficiency, the use of gene editing methods for therapeutic use is a realistic future scenario.

Potential applications

CRISPR is a very young technology. For now, it has been used only in research labs. However, it opens so many possibilities that many pharmaceutical and biotech companies are investing in this technology. There are many potential applications of this technology, but all of them fall in three main branches: agriculture, industrial biotechnology and human health.

The most direct application of CRISPR-technology is to study the genes function. Thanks to the human genome project, since 2003, we have identified all the genes in the human DNA, but we do not know yet which is the function of each of them. Since CRISPR is very precise, scientists can rapidly delete individual genes and analyse which traits are affected.

Agriculture

Another application within reach is to improve crops. With a technology like CRISPR, it is possible to make fruit more tasty and nutritious. But not only that, it is also potently possible to remove the allergens from peanuts or improve drought tolerance. Even create hornless dairy cows.

Health

Scientists are also working on correcting genetic defects and stopping genetic diseases. Although there is still a long way before seeing the first tests in humans, several research projects are seeking to erase genetic diseases like hypertrophic cardiomyopathy or HIV. In addition, CRISPR technology is a powerful tool to develop new drugs in a faster and cheaper way.

Biotechnology

Finally, this technology could be used to modify entire species by using gene drives. These are genetic systems, which increase the chances of a particular gene passing on from parent to offspring. In this way, an altered gene can be spread through entire populations very fast. This is interesting for example, to make mosquitos more resistant to the malaria parasite, preventing its transmission to humans, to eradicate invasive species or to reverse pesticide and herbicide resistance.

History and future

In 1987, a group of researchers reported the existence of repeated sequences of DNA without purpose known in a specific type of bacteria. In 1990, the same sequences were observed in very different bacteria and the sequences were named as CRISPR. Following investigations, found that these sequences were virus DNA, and they formed part of the bacteria immune system.

By 2011, scientists puzzle how all this immune system works and in the following year, the final breakthrough was reached. Scientists discovered how to engineer all this bacteria defence process to edit any genome at any place they wanted. Although the understanding of the whole mechanism was conducted by separate research groups, 2012 is considered the official year of discovery of this technology as a genome-editing tool.

Since then, research using this technology has exploded to optimize it and make it more efficient and accurate. Much research is still needed to understand the full implications of this technology in more complex organisms.

It is foreseeable to see the first applications on agricultural products although the biggest challenges will be to handle this technology to one day been able to edit the human genome.

Controversies

During the past decade, technological breakthroughs in genome editing have moved the primary research goal in biotechnology from treatment to modification and cure, bringing gene therapy and precision medicine into a new era. CRISPR is easier, faster and about four times more cost-effective than the previous best genome-editing tool, known as TALENs. That has accelerated the pace of scientific research in this field. However, there are still many challenges to deal with and new ones have arisen.

Precision

So far, scientists have performed most of the genome editing research on cells and animal models and have demonstrated that the technology can be effective in correcting genetic defects. But there are several hurdles before to start safe clinical trials on humans. CRISPR has an accuracy of about 70%. That means that there is a 30% probability of unintentional modifications of non-targeted genes. This can lead to the introduction of unintended mutations like the creation of a new disease. That is why many experts argue that experiments in humans are premature.

Gene drives and germline editing

Another uncontrolled potential risk is the use of gene drives, in the case of spreading beyond the target population passing to other organisms through crossbreeding. Furthermore, the use of this technology in mass rise problems that go beyond the biology, political and governance problems.

A variant of the gene drives is the germline editing, which consists in modify genetically human embryos and reproductive cells such as sperm and eggs. Such application will raise problems in off-target effects and unintended consequences for future generations, but also ethical and legal challenges. To address these concerns, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine have published a report with guidelines and recommendations for germline editing.

The ethical concerns go beyond the technological challenges, but in any case open interesting debates about if we should make changes that could fundamentally affect future generations without having their consent, or the opposite case, if it is ethical to not modify the genes to cure potential diseases of future generation even when it is in our hand.

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