Can you answer something though? You say in the interview that you tilt the "engines" to eliminate other, take off and landing only engines, BUT IN THE NEXT SENTENCE YOU SAY "here are our engines just for taking off and landing" It doesn't really make sense, no?
Also, sure, you have enough battery packs to "tolerate" failures, but you guys know what happens when GIANT battery packs fail right? Have you tested the insulators ability to eat up a multi cell failure in the same area?
@@ArcherAviation I first heard about you guys when Trent Palmer toured your facility a couple years ago. You've made a lot of progress since then. Hopefully you can get a certified aircraft taking passengers soon.
@@poiu477 It’s simple: They need 12 engines for hovering and 6 engines for forward flight. If these were all either vertical or horizontal, you would need 18 engines. By tilting 6 of them, you need only 12 in total.
What a refreshing unrehearsed, non-PR style greeting - the kind that you get from someone who is there for the product, not just to sell it. Awesome stuff.
Kind of reminds me of that Mitchell and Webb look sketch where they are filming a home renovation show: the host walks up to the door and knocks and the guy is like "why did you knock on my door? I've already said hello. The cameramen came in and put a microphone on me, remember?"
As a kid who grew up watching scott manley and is now pursuing a masters degree focusing on vtol and rotor dynamics this is the perfect full circle moment
As a kid who grew up reading Janes All The World Aircraft in the 60's, I saw too many of these concept-planes/choppers/etc. eventually come to nothing. Hiller's flying platform, Custer's channel-wing, all had their look-and-feel vibe that this one has. The more _conventional_ the airframe appeared and behaved the more likely it would become successful. The exceptions were very rare.
Not doing vtol and rotor but also master in AE and Scott has been a great motivator during all this time. Great to hear others are also in a similar situation. Scott, your channel is awesome and motivates us all.
I love these factory walk-throughs. Scott would be the perfect industrial spy, he digs right into the details and the parameters any the hows and whys, really engaging to watch.
I see this kind of stuff all the time. Being an automation FSE means being in factories of all types. Everything from packaging, manufacturing, and food production/processing. It's absolutely fascinating, and one of the reasons i really like my job. Every place is just a little bit (or sometimes a LOT) different than the last. I can and have just stood and watched a machine work, because all the fiddly bits moving in concert is mesmerizing.
Thank you Scott. This is the best presentation I have seen about where EPs (Electric Planes) are in the development cycle. No marketing types blathering about ROI or tax benefits. Just solid technical information without any BS. Excellent. I've hung up my David Clarks now, but would love to be able to fly again in a personal EP.
The concept has been around for some time now, they tried them on GA aircraft and were unironically called Q-tip props. They're still around on some aircraft today, but didn't deliver near the performance or quieter operation that they promised. There was a measurable improvement, but marginal, unfortunately. The blade tip was overly simplistic and made presumably with a vague understanding winglet aerodynamics, so it fell short of its potential. We could theoretically design a much better blade tip modeling them after the slight upward winglet designs seen on modern air racers, but scimitar shaped blades are the better option when it comes to efficiency and sound. Scimitar blades are analogous to what swept wings did for early jet aircraft, allowing them to fly closer to transonic and supersonic regimes with less compressibility and retaining good lift with transonic shockwave formation. The curved leading edge when looked at in a radial perspective delays shock formation to a higher airspeed, so the prop can be longer without suffering from shockwave formation that kills lift and robs power at higher speeds (really the limiting factor in the top speed of racing aircraft). It can be seen best on expensive/big aircraft with turbine engines running more than five blades, an example being the most recent 8 bladed prop on the C-130. You can see the same design on some newer helicopter rotors as well, the AH-64 Apache being a noteworthy example. Eurocopter made a pretty radical design a while back with great results (you can read more about it by searching "Blue Edge Rotor"). The combination of a scimitar and a blade tip similar to the Blue Edge would be an absolutely fantastic prop if realized.
@@Skinflaps_Meatslapper I'd imagine the engineering on scimitar blades gets far more complex when varying the pitch. I've seen them on the ATR-72s & elsewhere, but I've never understood how they handled that. Even with small variations in pitch, the outer part of the blades would seem to capture far, far more air than the inner part, leading to a very uneven distribution of thrust force along the blade, far more than on a straight blade. I'd think that would cause quite a bit more fatigue near the prop hub due to the blades torquing forward from that effect, and torquing aft during reverse thrust. Do you know how this was addressed? A simple matter of better materials science? A more extreme taper toward the blade tips?
Thanks for the look around. They have a lot going into this project. They're a pretty creative group. Hopefully, the aircraft has continued success and finds a market. Sometimes, that's the hardest part. All the best.
No offense to anyone but I just cannot imagine Scott getting along with Elon at all - and I'm also pretty sure ELon wouldn't allow a tour of Starbase without being in charge.
Imagine learning the controls of a new aircraft with one of the aircraft's creators clinging to the outside of the cockpit while explaining how everything works
Yes, great tour, and lovely shots around the factory, but _please_ no more walking down corridor with unstabilized camera timelapses. That opening sequence was short, but painful.
I need this asap. If you want to fly out of LAX, the last 30 miles to airport take from 1-3 hours depending on how lucky you are Getting on one of these and skipping that last 30 miles and covering it in 15 minutes walking directly into the airport gate area will be amazing. NYC airports are even worse when it comes to surface traffic around airports
The vision for evtols is to be able to fly directly into an Airport vertiport. Your tsa/check-in would happen at either the originating vertiport, or at the direct airport vertiport.
I went to a test flight for Joby a couple of years ago. They're in the same area and pretty interesting set up. The aircrafts pretty remarkable to see flying as its almost silent.
Thanks for the cool video. Nice to see a firm willing to make the investment to type certify a new aircraft (there is a reason people still fly aircraft that were type certified more than 60 years ago!)
Your observation about controlling six degrees of freedom with four axes was spot on. I would have expected them to use rudder pedals and separate altitude translation control. They need to appeal to existing pilots without too much counterintuitive behaviour required.
I think it makes sense if you consider that some of those 6 axis you shouldn't be directly controlling anyways (depending on which phase of flight), that's the job of the fly by wire. For example: In hover flight, you shouldn't be controlling the pitch and roll directly, you have yaw and 3 translation axis only (total of 4), and the fly by wire does the pitch and roll. And in forward flight, you have pitch, roll, yaw and power only, like a normal fixed wing aircraft, so you shouldn't be able to touch the translation controls anyways, just like how you don't have translation controls on a fixed wing.
@@kukuc96 spot on. Only 4 DOF required in each phase with some overlap in transition. Maybe single stick with rudder control and throttle could do this. Two sidesricks which partly change function seems more difficult than necessary.
I REALLY dislike this control scheme. Different movement characteristics based on a button press for the same muscle motions just seems like it's asking for disaster in a task saturated environment. Machine control should require so little thought as to be invisible under all conditions once you're adapted to it, because in an emergency, you won't have the brainpower available to figure it out. A trim button installed upside down is almost impossible for a pilot to correct for because the muscle memory is just so strong. I've operated a bunch of different kinds of equipment IRL and the first thing I would do is throw that switching mode stuff out the window. Your brain MUST have muscle movement mean the same thing every time, or it WILL make mistakes.
Wow what a great video. I felt like I was right there with Scott on that tour. The whole battery manufacturing process is fascinating. So much quality control and redundancy. Top notch.
It’s a very interesting design. I do hope they rethink the fly-by-wire system a little, I feel like the issue with having an system compensate automatically is that if it’s in fact a sensor that fails it could be a VERY bad situation unless there is an incredibly efficient way to notify the pilot that this is taking place and how exactly the system is trying to compensate. Fly-by-wire of course is likely what enables this to work well at all but it’ll always make me worry when interfacing the pilot as a fault protection mechanism isn’t given as much time as the automation. The LAST thing you want is the system to suddenly decide the yaw is off even though it isn’t and then implement an unnoticeable or unoverridable ‘correction’ mid-flight. Mind you I have to assume they have a handle on that but…I also assumed Boing did too.
I was also thinking that changing what the controls do based on speed seems like a bad idea- I've seen enough of those crash investigation videos to know that it's disastrous when a plane behaves differently from how the pilot's muscle memory expects it to behave.
@@amoliski I posted your exact same point elsewhere. Muscle memory having different actions based on a button switch is a *terrible* idea. Whichever engineer thought it was a good idea has obviously never operated heavy machinery.
So many of these startups focus on the tech and ignore safety or practicality. I’m amazed how much thought archer has put into real life flying and safety. Making sure the batteries survive high impact is great. So many people die from the fire of a crash vs the initial impact so if the batteries don’t ignite, that’s huge. Also having multiple power busses is huge! Also having the motors setup so they can lose one part but still operate with degraded performance is also huge. I’d probably be willing to fly on one of their planes and I’d never say that about any of the other VTOL’s out there
Hello, it's Scott Manley here. Today I am in the garbage compactor on the Death Star. . . Hello, it's Scott Manley here. Today I am standing below the Saturn V at T minus 20 seconds. . . .
1. Hats off to Tom Muniz and Archer for the openness and willingness to share here. 2. Again, I am really enjoying this style of content from you Scott! The slightly "nerdy" awkward interview style really hits home with myself and I imagine much of your audience. Paired with the added voice over when you want to add some more detail. So cool. Keep up the great work @ScottManley
Scott’s like a kid in a candy store. This was super interesting! I can’t wait until this technology is fully proven out, tested and safe for people to fly in. So cool 😎 😊
As a powerchair user, one of these would make a fabulous wheelchair accessible vehicle, and while adapting a car to work using the low power inputs from my dying muscles is really difficult to do and expensive because modern cars are predicated on your being able to put large forces into steering and braking, the Midnight might have been designed around someone like me! Adapted cars are full of systems that are drastically altered and prone to failures which prevent me from driving, but a Midnight in stock configuration would be accessible to me and therefore no more failure prone than any other Midnight. Cost might be more of an issue however! Thanks Scott, I really enjoyed this.
I think we can safely say that anything involving operational process and safety systems was done in the worst possible way by OceanGate. When I saw the Coast Guard inquiry and heard that they were logging their position by hand onto paper and then transcribing into Excel spreadsheets to calculate position fixes, it blew my mind.
You'll still need a pilot's license to fly it, which is the reason all the previous flying cars failed. Those are hard to get, and very expensive to try.
@@Andy-oc3ew Look at Molt Taylor's design in the 1980s that used a Honda Civic CRX with strap-on wings. It was certainly not a crap car. The plane was never built though, for the same old reason.
@@beenaplumber8379 I can’t find anything about this car / plane. But the issues will always be the same, compromises have to be made on both sides of the vehicle. You will always be better off buying a car and a plane rather than trying to combine the two. Any clever engineering that could combine the two functions in any acceptable way would result in far higher costs than just buying a separate car and plane. Any imagined freedom of having a car that could fly would quickly go out of the window as any flight plans would need to be registered before take off and you would be very limited as to what you could use as a runway.
Really looking forward to flying this craft myself in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 next month! Saw a great preview of this in their dev stream last night so great timing!
Just started watching, bur can't help myself to notice that Scott very often asks such detailed and knowledgeable questions that the only answers are "Yep".
I’m loving all the in-depth looks at these aerospace startups you have done lately 👍 (Probably a crappy way of describing them but I hope folks get the drift!)
A sport/acrobatics mode on that could pull some pretty crazy stunts if the fly by wire wasn't so locked down. I'm sure it's not a priority, but it'll be fun when somebody decides to actually see what this sort of airfame can do for an airshow.
Full aerobatics routine would give you 5 to 10 mins of flight time before the batteries ran out. You can see it now on the ground with electric hyper cars - full throttle and the batteries last 10% of the cruise time.
@@zorbakaput8537 Still, it might be a good idea to have that mode as an option in case abrupt maneuvering is necessary to avoid traffic or other unexpected issues. I don't like the idea of limiting pilot control to what the manufacturer considers reasonable.
@@beenaplumber8379thats essentially already what any modern airliner design does. there's limits to what the software will allow the pilot to do, because it knows best. ...see "MCAS" /s
Fantastic walkthrough Scott, keep em coming! I’m amazed that the battery tech is still using individual cells wired in parallel and series. The weight for each cell can must be considerable. Surely there is a better way to do this.
Cameraman not doing the best job, but I actually like to see more in this format. Scott looks very natural interviewing in this style, he should have a cameraman more often.
I bought 100 shares of Archer Aviation about a year ago. I'm 74, so I'm mostly an income investor, but I will occasionally buy 100 shares of selected start-ups, just to follow technology that I find interesting. Recently, I have been selling short expiration date, $5 put options on competitor Joby Aviation. I want to buy 100 shares, but want to pay less than $5/share.
I could see a good market for this being air-ambulance services. Able to land vertically at both the hospital and on location, while still traveling fast and efficiently between, with a decent sized cabin.
I live two miles away from PAL-V which is a Fly-Drive system. They are doing amazing stuff. But the guys at EVTOL are soooo much further in their development. Wow.
A great video focusing solely on the tech. I have been watching advancements in the field and this looks like a winner with potential. It has the advantage of a helicopter coupled with the efficiency of fixed wing aircraft.
Scott, good report. Also: an even more likely first market than those in the U.S. “who have more money than time” are higher-density areas like Japan, where there are fewer airports and noise is even a bigger issue. - Dave Huntsman
This finally looks like an EVTOL aircraft that might have a practical use. Tom was great, knowledgeable without the salesman angle. Nice that they gave you decent access to the production & testing area. Fascinating stuff; I'll look forward to a revisit then Scott, when you get to fly the thing for real. Flaky camera-work aside, this was excellent - thank you.
I am a retired flying instructor and have more than 6,000 hrs and 30,000 instruction flights. I still teach people to fly gliders. When it is wet we fly a simulator, which has 240 degree wrap around screen. Many instructors have to stand in the middle behind the the pilot flying to avoid falling over. Some instructors have to leave the sim before they are sick.
Yes the battery automation was fascinating. I would expect in the next few years we will be transitioning away from lithium to other technologies with better safety, energy density and recharge rates so it will be interesting know if they have any plans for different battery technologies in future. I expect this company would be an earlier adopter of new batteries because all those battery parameters are especially critical for aviation.
This will never make sense economically and I agree that they're exactly like Tesla in the sense that they make exaggerated claims on which they will never be able to deliver.
@firstnamelastname4959 Thing is, everyone gives tesla shit, but they popularized the electric car, leading to more manufacturers to make as good or better electric cars. Now you can see them all over the place, and as that demand grows, so does the money and research into the area, including better battery tech, charging times, etc. Soon the downsides of electric cars will be so small that there won't be many needs to buy a gas car for the average person. And so while this might seem like a bad idea for now with very niche uses, if it's successful just enough to make other companies look into the topic of EVTOLS then the same can be said for this. Most things never start off infinitely successful, it usually takes a few looking into it, creating products, failing, until all the research and tech put into it eventually makes it a viable option. The future never happens immediately, it takes time and money.
@@SynthDark While you make a lot of sense, if we look at the bigger picture of general mobility, the future can happen only after science discovers a safe and very dense energy storage. That's it. I've never heard about any such discoveries yet. There is only speculation so far. Once we have that, the engineers can start creating really revolutionary designs in transportation. I'm not saying there will be no incremental progress until that point, but let's be realistic - the problem isn't with battery technology, it's deeper as we don't know how can a lot more energy be packed into a unit of volume. Even theoretically.
Really enjoyed this Scott. Just hope Lilium get over the funding hoop because that's another really cool design which I think has even more redundancy than this design.
I would've loved if you could ask them why they decided on a 12 engine layout. My guess is that its either from power density of the size of "engine" or something to do with redundancy.
The fundamental problem of VTOLs is that you want a giant, helicopter-sized rotor for hovering but a regular propeller-sized ones for forward flight. Splitting up the swept area of a helicopter rotor into lots of smaller props means you can switch off the rear motors in forward flight, which solves part of the problem. Also if you only have two rotors (like the V-22) they have to be so big that they can't be horizontal when you're on the ground. I suspect that lots of small motors also makes the thermal engineering much easier, as they have a higher surface area to volume ratio.
So interesting to see the approach to redundancy, eg. two separate windings in a motor. This is an exciting aircraft obviously made with care. With all the new smaller electric airframes being developed I wonder what the skies will look like in ten years.
Very standard in aviation. Remember piston engines in aircraft have dual magnetos for the same very reason. You lose a bit of power but the engine is still running. Same thing with independent control systems like hydraulics.
One of the issues not addressed here will be the development of an advanced air traffic control system that can coordinate and sequence all of these VTOLs to keep them separated in flight. During rush hour if everyone needs to fly to the airport at the same time there will be a requirement for automated systems that are able to handle these high traffic loads to make point to point travel possible and safe.
@@bernieschiff5919 I can imagine problems with this due to the lower energy capacities if the need to loiter during peak times goes up. Planes often have ample fuel to loiter for considerable time.
@@bernieschiff5919 Special class B corridors (like VFR corridors) where they slow down and maintain separation without radar service, maybe using vehicle-to-vehicle systems? That would require no changes from ATC if this becomes a thing, like an air taxi to the main airport.
Man! I love these new Scott Manley goes somewhere and talks to people videos ❤ Please 🥺🙏 keep them coming 😊. Looks like you've even hired a pro cameraman 👍
Started flying Radio Control Helicopters in the 80's, got into the Fixed Wing A/C and went back to College for my A&P. There's good reason that Full Scale (real) A/C still use NiCad's vs NiCd or Lithium's. However, the R/C industry was taken over by Electric powered A/C starting in the late 80's. R/Cers always had access to the Best Lithium manufacturers & Chargers, so performance was always pushed as far as you could. My only point here is, after all my experiences w/ R/C and Commercial A/C, I've used or worked on every Engine type made and Electrics are the most reliable by far. When Battery energy density gets to the point where they can compete w/ the Jet fuel powered A/C, that's all we're gonna see after that, Electric Airplanes.
"Scott, I've just picked up a fault in the AAE-35 unit. It's going to go 100% failure in within 72 hours." Hal, I'm feeling a wee bit peckish, would you make a sandwich for me? "I'm sorry Scott, I'm afraid I can't do that."
That looks really cool, and it's great to see the work they have put in for safety, flight control, and not just focusing on the flashy stuff. That said, they really need to work on the graphics for their simulator! I have worked on very similar systems before, so if they need a 3D software dev, let me know :)
Thanks for dropping by to check out our flight simulator and manufacturing facility. We can't wait to have you back to see a flight test soon!
Can you answer something though? You say in the interview that you tilt the "engines" to eliminate other, take off and landing only engines, BUT IN THE NEXT SENTENCE YOU SAY "here are our engines just for taking off and landing" It doesn't really make sense, no?
Also, sure, you have enough battery packs to "tolerate" failures, but you guys know what happens when GIANT battery packs fail right? Have you tested the insulators ability to eat up a multi cell failure in the same area?
@@ArcherAviation I first heard about you guys when Trent Palmer toured your facility a couple years ago. You've made a lot of progress since then. Hopefully you can get a certified aircraft taking passengers soon.
@@poiu477 It’s simple: They need 12 engines for hovering and 6 engines for forward flight. If these were all either vertical or horizontal, you would need 18 engines. By tilting 6 of them, you need only 12 in total.
@@germansnowman All that is true, based on their current "engine" design, but that doesn't really answer the question.
What a refreshing unrehearsed, non-PR style greeting - the kind that you get from someone who is there for the product, not just to sell it. Awesome stuff.
You mean poor interpersonal communication skills?
Kind of reminds me of that Mitchell and Webb look sketch where they are filming a home renovation show: the host walks up to the door and knocks and the guy is like "why did you knock on my door? I've already said hello. The cameramen came in and put a microphone on me, remember?"
As a kid who grew up watching scott manley and is now pursuing a masters degree focusing on vtol and rotor dynamics this is the perfect full circle moment
That is so cool bro happy that you are doing something you love. I'm getting my education back on track at the moment, myself! 😊
“Full circle” and “rotor” together… 🙌
As a kid who grew up reading Janes All The World Aircraft in the 60's, I saw too many of these concept-planes/choppers/etc. eventually come to nothing. Hiller's flying platform, Custer's channel-wing, all had their look-and-feel vibe that this one has.
The more _conventional_ the airframe appeared and behaved the more likely it would become successful. The exceptions were very rare.
@@Shazprime congrats to you! Keep pursing knowledge and good luck!
Not doing vtol and rotor but also master in AE and Scott has been a great motivator during all this time. Great to hear others are also in a similar situation. Scott, your channel is awesome and motivates us all.
I love these factory walk-throughs. Scott would be the perfect industrial spy, he digs right into the details and the parameters any the hows and whys, really engaging to watch.
Funny you should say that... We use him to spy for us all the time. lol jk
I guess people like to invite him because he actually understands what he is told 😅 plus now in relation to anything aviation, he's got his PPL.
I see this kind of stuff all the time. Being an automation FSE means being in factories of all types. Everything from packaging, manufacturing, and food production/processing. It's absolutely fascinating, and one of the reasons i really like my job. Every place is just a little bit (or sometimes a LOT) different than the last.
I can and have just stood and watched a machine work, because all the fiddly bits moving in concert is mesmerizing.
This is sooo detailed, really a treat for the mind! I hope more cool companies do open tours like these.
Thank you Scott. This is the best presentation I have seen about where EPs (Electric Planes) are in the development cycle. No marketing types blathering about ROI or tax benefits. Just solid technical information without any BS. Excellent. I've hung up my David Clarks now, but would love to be able to fly again in a personal EP.
When your guide was talking about keeping things in house he missed a great vertical pun opportunity.
Genius tier. 👍
Fascinating CTO. Unlike most, he seems to actually know what his company does.
It is so cool to see our guy in there being such a capable aviator.
those propeller blades have wingtip devices on them to reducte the vortices! neat.
Yes I noticed that too. Wings have winglets so maybe these should be called bladelets?
@@Gribbo9999
And little blades upon 'em.
And so on ad infinitum.
fractal propellers.
The concept has been around for some time now, they tried them on GA aircraft and were unironically called Q-tip props. They're still around on some aircraft today, but didn't deliver near the performance or quieter operation that they promised. There was a measurable improvement, but marginal, unfortunately. The blade tip was overly simplistic and made presumably with a vague understanding winglet aerodynamics, so it fell short of its potential. We could theoretically design a much better blade tip modeling them after the slight upward winglet designs seen on modern air racers, but scimitar shaped blades are the better option when it comes to efficiency and sound. Scimitar blades are analogous to what swept wings did for early jet aircraft, allowing them to fly closer to transonic and supersonic regimes with less compressibility and retaining good lift with transonic shockwave formation. The curved leading edge when looked at in a radial perspective delays shock formation to a higher airspeed, so the prop can be longer without suffering from shockwave formation that kills lift and robs power at higher speeds (really the limiting factor in the top speed of racing aircraft). It can be seen best on expensive/big aircraft with turbine engines running more than five blades, an example being the most recent 8 bladed prop on the C-130. You can see the same design on some newer helicopter rotors as well, the AH-64 Apache being a noteworthy example. Eurocopter made a pretty radical design a while back with great results (you can read more about it by searching "Blue Edge Rotor"). The combination of a scimitar and a blade tip similar to the Blue Edge would be an absolutely fantastic prop if realized.
@@-danRjust remember that it's turtles all the way down
@@Skinflaps_Meatslapper I'd imagine the engineering on scimitar blades gets far more complex when varying the pitch. I've seen them on the ATR-72s & elsewhere, but I've never understood how they handled that. Even with small variations in pitch, the outer part of the blades would seem to capture far, far more air than the inner part, leading to a very uneven distribution of thrust force along the blade, far more than on a straight blade. I'd think that would cause quite a bit more fatigue near the prop hub due to the blades torquing forward from that effect, and torquing aft during reverse thrust. Do you know how this was addressed? A simple matter of better materials science? A more extreme taper toward the blade tips?
Thanks for the look around. They have a lot going into this project. They're a pretty creative group. Hopefully, the aircraft has continued success and finds a market. Sometimes, that's the hardest part. All the best.
love seeing these interview/company tour style videos! keep it up!
maybe starbase tour at some point?^^
Oh my god that would be so epic!
No offense to anyone but I just cannot imagine Scott getting along with Elon at all - and I'm also pretty sure ELon wouldn't allow a tour of Starbase without being in charge.
@@BikoFactory that is true..
Imagine learning the controls of a new aircraft with one of the aircraft's creators clinging to the outside of the cockpit while explaining how everything works
Get in,
Sit down,
Shut up,
And hold on!
Scream, if you wanna go faster!!!
I was fascinated by the line, "the aircraft is always on autopilot; you're just giving it inputs." 😊
Scott Manley definitely deserves personal tours at SpaceX and Blue Origin as well.
Probably ask much better questions than Tim Dodd
Scott is the man! He should absolutely tour those sites!
@@Toefoo100Ol' Timmy is learning on the job lol
naaahhh, he didn't say "That's insane" a single time. Disqualifies him.
Bonus if those tours would be with engineers who work full time at those companies.
There's a CTO who knows what he's talking about! That's a fascinating aircraft and I wish them every success 👍
And immediately deferred to someone else the second he was asked a question he wasn't sure about, rather than blustering through.
Like the video. Small suggestion: some camera stabilization. I'm excited to see more of these!
Yes, great tour, and lovely shots around the factory, but _please_ no more walking down corridor with unstabilized camera timelapses. That opening sequence was short, but painful.
I need this asap. If you want to fly out of LAX, the last 30 miles to airport take from 1-3 hours depending on how lucky you are Getting on one of these and skipping that last 30 miles and covering it in 15 minutes walking directly into the airport gate area will be amazing. NYC airports are even worse when it comes to surface traffic around airports
The vision for evtols is to be able to fly directly into an Airport vertiport. Your tsa/check-in would happen at either the originating vertiport, or at the direct airport vertiport.
Well as soon as more than 50 people have the same idea you will all be waiting in your vtol craft for a pad to land on lol
What you need is a train
I went to a test flight for Joby a couple of years ago. They're in the same area and pretty interesting set up. The aircrafts pretty remarkable to see flying as its almost silent.
21st century wright brothers. It’s insane. Thanks so much for this video.
Their head of certification is Eric Wright, a descendant of the Wright brothers.
Thanks for the cool video. Nice to see a firm willing to make the investment to type certify a new aircraft (there is a reason people still fly aircraft that were type certified more than 60 years ago!)
Science nerd, gamer and pilot. Perfect person to give the interview/tour. Very nice video!
That dude was pretty transparent. Maybe I will build one having the details given. LOL. Nice job Scott...great show!
Scott, you are a gift to humanity. I wish we’d had more people like you.
Awesome production process and EVTOL tech, Archer Aviation, may you have great success! Thanks for the tour and flight sim Scott and Tom!
Excellent video. Two things I would've liked to have known: how well does it "glide" and how much drag do the rear props generate in forward flight?
Your observation about controlling six degrees of freedom with four axes was spot on. I would have expected them to use rudder pedals and separate altitude translation control. They need to appeal to existing pilots without too much counterintuitive behaviour required.
mode switching as opposed to a twist axis on the stick threw me off, seems like extra workload to me but idk i just play video games 😂
would the FAA even allow such a control scheme?
I think it makes sense if you consider that some of those 6 axis you shouldn't be directly controlling anyways (depending on which phase of flight), that's the job of the fly by wire.
For example: In hover flight, you shouldn't be controlling the pitch and roll directly, you have yaw and 3 translation axis only (total of 4), and the fly by wire does the pitch and roll.
And in forward flight, you have pitch, roll, yaw and power only, like a normal fixed wing aircraft, so you shouldn't be able to touch the translation controls anyways, just like how you don't have translation controls on a fixed wing.
@@kukuc96 spot on. Only 4 DOF required in each phase with some overlap in transition. Maybe single stick with rudder control and throttle could do this. Two sidesricks which partly change function seems more difficult than necessary.
I REALLY dislike this control scheme. Different movement characteristics based on a button press for the same muscle motions just seems like it's asking for disaster in a task saturated environment. Machine control should require so little thought as to be invisible under all conditions once you're adapted to it, because in an emergency, you won't have the brainpower available to figure it out.
A trim button installed upside down is almost impossible for a pilot to correct for because the muscle memory is just so strong.
I've operated a bunch of different kinds of equipment IRL and the first thing I would do is throw that switching mode stuff out the window. Your brain MUST have muscle movement mean the same thing every time, or it WILL make mistakes.
Wow what a great video. I felt like I was right there with Scott on that tour. The whole battery manufacturing process is fascinating. So much quality control and redundancy. Top notch.
San Jose! Thats my home town, born, raised for 25 years.
You da man Scott!
It’s a very interesting design. I do hope they rethink the fly-by-wire system a little, I feel like the issue with having an system compensate automatically is that if it’s in fact a sensor that fails it could be a VERY bad situation unless there is an incredibly efficient way to notify the pilot that this is taking place and how exactly the system is trying to compensate. Fly-by-wire of course is likely what enables this to work well at all but it’ll always make me worry when interfacing the pilot as a fault protection mechanism isn’t given as much time as the automation. The LAST thing you want is the system to suddenly decide the yaw is off even though it isn’t and then implement an unnoticeable or unoverridable ‘correction’ mid-flight. Mind you I have to assume they have a handle on that but…I also assumed Boing did too.
Not just the sensor regime but something with this level of automation makes smoke in the cabin all the more terrifying.
I was also thinking that changing what the controls do based on speed seems like a bad idea- I've seen enough of those crash investigation videos to know that it's disastrous when a plane behaves differently from how the pilot's muscle memory expects it to behave.
@@amoliski I posted your exact same point elsewhere. Muscle memory having different actions based on a button switch is a *terrible* idea. Whichever engineer thought it was a good idea has obviously never operated heavy machinery.
This is so cool to see! They were just at my uni yesterday to present for future pilots!
Thank you Scott for taking us into this facility with you! This was really a great episode!
So many of these startups focus on the tech and ignore safety or practicality. I’m amazed how much thought archer has put into real life flying and safety. Making sure the batteries survive high impact is great. So many people die from the fire of a crash vs the initial impact so if the batteries don’t ignite, that’s huge. Also having multiple power busses is huge! Also having the motors setup so they can lose one part but still operate with degraded performance is also huge. I’d probably be willing to fly on one of their planes and I’d never say that about any of the other VTOL’s out there
Hello, it's Scott Manley here. Today I am in the garbage compactor on the Death Star. . .
Hello, it's Scott Manley here. Today I am standing below the Saturn V at T minus 20 seconds. . . .
Just wanted to say the 2 recent tour/interviews have been amazing! Thoroughly enjoyed, and I hope we get to see more.
1. Hats off to Tom Muniz and Archer for the openness and willingness to share here.
2. Again, I am really enjoying this style of content from you Scott! The slightly "nerdy" awkward interview style really hits home with myself and I imagine much of your audience. Paired with the added voice over when you want to add some more detail. So cool.
Keep up the great work @ScottManley
love the video and Scott's excitement with all this :D
Scott’s like a kid in a candy store. This was super interesting! I can’t wait until this technology is fully proven out, tested and safe for people to fly in. So cool 😎 😊
As a powerchair user, one of these would make a fabulous wheelchair accessible vehicle, and while adapting a car to work using the low power inputs from my dying muscles is really difficult to do and expensive because modern cars are predicated on your being able to put large forces into steering and braking, the Midnight might have been designed around someone like me! Adapted cars are full of systems that are drastically altered and prone to failures which prevent me from driving, but a Midnight in stock configuration would be accessible to me and therefore no more failure prone than any other Midnight. Cost might be more of an issue however! Thanks Scott, I really enjoyed this.
Gives you a great perspective on the complexity of creating this aircraft.
Good on Archer for not blurring a single image 🙌
_This_ is how mission-critical and life-sustaining systems should be designed and manufactured. What a stark contrast to OceanGate.
I think we can safely say that anything involving operational process and safety systems was done in the worst possible way by OceanGate. When I saw the Coast Guard inquiry and heard that they were logging their position by hand onto paper and then transcribing into Excel spreadsheets to calculate position fixes, it blew my mind.
"damn, this nuclear reactor is so much better than Timmy's first baking soda volcano"
@@quantumblauthor7300 Except they put real humans on the latter regardless :(
@@Suppenfischeintopf "they" wasn't it one guy basically?
with tiny battery and not a lot of power i am not sure what part of this is safe. it's little better then blimp
Finally! Those are the air car's they promised us! 🥳
You'll still need a pilot's license to fly it, which is the reason all the previous flying cars failed. Those are hard to get, and very expensive to try.
@@beenaplumber8379the reason why flying cars have always failed is because they were simultaneously crap cars and crap planes.
@@Andy-oc3ew Look at Molt Taylor's design in the 1980s that used a Honda Civic CRX with strap-on wings. It was certainly not a crap car. The plane was never built though, for the same old reason.
@@beenaplumber8379 I can’t find anything about this car / plane. But the issues will always be the same, compromises have to be made on both sides of the vehicle. You will always be better off buying a car and a plane rather than trying to combine the two. Any clever engineering that could combine the two functions in any acceptable way would result in far higher costs than just buying a separate car and plane. Any imagined freedom of having a car that could fly would quickly go out of the window as any flight plans would need to be registered before take off and you would be very limited as to what you could use as a runway.
Flying cars are a pipe dream
Really looking forward to flying this craft myself in Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 next month! Saw a great preview of this in their dev stream last night so great timing!
Just started watching, bur can't help myself to notice that Scott very often asks such detailed and knowledgeable questions that the only answers are "Yep".
So fun to get to take a look at this impressive machine!
35 year Multi Commercial Instrument and RC pilot. So cool. We have certainly come a long way. Really enjoyed this.
I’m loving all the in-depth looks at these aerospace startups you have done lately 👍
(Probably a crappy way of describing them but I hope folks get the drift!)
A sport/acrobatics mode on that could pull some pretty crazy stunts if the fly by wire wasn't so locked down. I'm sure it's not a priority, but it'll be fun when somebody decides to actually see what this sort of airfame can do for an airshow.
Or when the odd evasive maneuver is required.
Full aerobatics routine would give you 5 to 10 mins of flight time before the batteries ran out. You can see it now on the ground with electric hyper cars - full throttle and the batteries last 10% of the cruise time.
@@zorbakaput8537 Still, it might be a good idea to have that mode as an option in case abrupt maneuvering is necessary to avoid traffic or other unexpected issues. I don't like the idea of limiting pilot control to what the manufacturer considers reasonable.
@@beenaplumber8379thats essentially already what any modern airliner design does. there's limits to what the software will allow the pilot to do, because it knows best.
...see "MCAS" /s
This is a great series of visits at exciting companies / institutions 👍 Godspeed to Archer 🐝
Last time I was this early Superheavy was called BFR
I'm even older then, I still remember the Interplanetary Transport System
@@leoshorkI'm even older since I still remember red dragon
@@galactic-guy You're all babies. I watched Neil Armstrong climb down the ladder on live television.
Super Heavy was never called BFR. The whole system was. Booster was BFB and the ship was BFS.
@@galactic-guy ok I'm not that old then lol
wow this seems like an awesome company
I really like these new aviation and startup focused videos Scott! Keep going
That was pretty cool, thanks Scott!
I'd love to see you talk w/ BETA Technologies - another all-electric aircraft developer/manufacturer.
It brings a whole new dimension to range anxiety.
Exactly! Now it's also 'altitude anxiety'. Plus, 'I have added an autopilot into your autopilot, so you can't do much if it all malfunctions' anxiety.
Fantastic walkthrough Scott, keep em coming! I’m amazed that the battery tech is still using individual cells wired in parallel and series. The weight for each cell can must be considerable. Surely there is a better way to do this.
I was delighted to see that in comparison the sole dev for vtol vr did a great job with the control system in his project on steam.
Pretty interesting to hear Scott PoV on the simulator as both a licensed pilot and KSP player.
Cameraman not doing the best job, but I actually like to see more in this format. Scott looks very natural interviewing in this style, he should have a cameraman more often.
I'm an early investor in Archer Aviation, hopefully they pull through and are successful.
I did not expect to see Archer here. I have a bunch invested. This is going to be HUGE!
I bought 100 shares of Archer Aviation about a year ago. I'm 74, so I'm mostly an income investor, but I will occasionally buy 100 shares of selected start-ups, just to follow technology that I find interesting. Recently, I have been selling short expiration date, $5 put options on competitor Joby Aviation. I want to buy 100 shares, but want to pay less than $5/share.
Loved detailed simulator trial (plus all the detail on the battery manufacturing)
What a great video Scott, thoroughly enjoyed it!
Scott is becoming the Huel Howser of aerospace and I love that
Great show, Scott!!!
I could see a good market for this being air-ambulance services. Able to land vertically at both the hospital and on location, while still traveling fast and efficiently between, with a decent sized cabin.
I live two miles away from PAL-V which is a Fly-Drive system. They are doing amazing stuff.
But the guys at EVTOL are soooo much further in their development.
Wow.
A great video focusing solely on the tech. I have been watching advancements in the field and this looks like a winner with potential. It has the advantage of a helicopter coupled with the efficiency of fixed wing aircraft.
Scott, good report. Also: an even more likely first market than those in the U.S. “who have more money than time” are higher-density areas like Japan, where there are fewer airports and noise is even a bigger issue. - Dave Huntsman
You're nobody till you get a Manley visitation!
Seriously though, impressive and competent looking company.
This finally looks like an EVTOL aircraft that might have a practical use. Tom was great, knowledgeable without the salesman angle. Nice that they gave you decent access to the production & testing area. Fascinating stuff; I'll look forward to a revisit then Scott, when you get to fly the thing for real. Flaky camera-work aside, this was excellent - thank you.
It's hilarious to see Scott flying while the CTO guy is holding on to the frame trying not to fall!
I am a retired flying instructor and have more than 6,000 hrs and 30,000 instruction flights. I still teach people to fly gliders. When it is wet we fly a simulator, which has 240 degree wrap around screen. Many instructors have to stand in the middle behind the the pilot flying to avoid falling over. Some instructors have to leave the sim before they are sick.
Yes the battery automation was fascinating. I would expect in the next few years we will be transitioning away from lithium to other technologies with better safety, energy density and recharge rates so it will be interesting know if they have any plans for different battery technologies in future. I expect this company would be an earlier adopter of new batteries because all those battery parameters are especially critical for aviation.
Wow. Mighty impressive engineering development. He is the Tesla of VTOLs! I hope this will make sense economically, I want to see these flying!
This will never make sense economically and I agree that they're exactly like Tesla in the sense that they make exaggerated claims on which they will never be able to deliver.
@firstnamelastname4959 Thing is, everyone gives tesla shit, but they popularized the electric car, leading to more manufacturers to make as good or better electric cars. Now you can see them all over the place, and as that demand grows, so does the money and research into the area, including better battery tech, charging times, etc. Soon the downsides of electric cars will be so small that there won't be many needs to buy a gas car for the average person.
And so while this might seem like a bad idea for now with very niche uses, if it's successful just enough to make other companies look into the topic of EVTOLS then the same can be said for this. Most things never start off infinitely successful, it usually takes a few looking into it, creating products, failing, until all the research and tech put into it eventually makes it a viable option.
The future never happens immediately, it takes time and money.
@@SynthDark While you make a lot of sense, if we look at the bigger picture of general mobility, the future can happen only after science discovers a safe and very dense energy storage. That's it. I've never heard about any such discoveries yet. There is only speculation so far. Once we have that, the engineers can start creating really revolutionary designs in transportation. I'm not saying there will be no incremental progress until that point, but let's be realistic - the problem isn't with battery technology, it's deeper as we don't know how can a lot more energy be packed into a unit of volume. Even theoretically.
Great video Scott. I fly out of Salinas. Seen it fly once and static at the Airshow. If your ever down this way, hit me up and I'll buy you lunch.
I subbed for the space talks, but videos like this are my favorites on the channel.
Really enjoyed this Scott. Just hope Lilium get over the funding hoop because that's another really cool design which I think has even more redundancy than this design.
I would've loved if you could ask them why they decided on a 12 engine layout. My guess is that its either from power density of the size of "engine" or something to do with redundancy.
More motors means each motor can spin slower, reducing noise and being more efficient.
@@PaulCHaSmaller props are not more efficient and u forgot that drag exists.
The fundamental problem of VTOLs is that you want a giant, helicopter-sized rotor for hovering but a regular propeller-sized ones for forward flight. Splitting up the swept area of a helicopter rotor into lots of smaller props means you can switch off the rear motors in forward flight, which solves part of the problem. Also if you only have two rotors (like the V-22) they have to be so big that they can't be horizontal when you're on the ground.
I suspect that lots of small motors also makes the thermal engineering much easier, as they have a higher surface area to volume ratio.
@@robertkalinic335I never mentioned props. We’re talking about the # of motors.
this looks pretty cool :D making a fully electric VTOL is certainly quite the challange, im very impressed
It looks funny , but verry interesting how it fly , a heliplane , thank you for this nice video
So interesting to see the approach to redundancy, eg. two separate windings in a motor. This is an exciting aircraft obviously made with care. With all the new smaller electric airframes being developed I wonder what the skies will look like in ten years.
Very standard in aviation. Remember piston engines in aircraft have dual magnetos for the same very reason. You lose a bit of power but the engine is still running. Same thing with independent control systems like hydraulics.
The Jetsons.
One of the issues not addressed here will be the development of an advanced air traffic control system that can coordinate and sequence all of these VTOLs to keep them separated in flight. During rush hour if everyone needs to fly to the airport at the same time there will be a requirement for automated systems that are able to handle these high traffic loads to make point to point travel possible and safe.
@@bernieschiff5919 I can imagine problems with this due to the lower energy capacities if the need to loiter during peak times goes up. Planes often have ample fuel to loiter for considerable time.
@@bernieschiff5919 Special class B corridors (like VFR corridors) where they slow down and maintain separation without radar service, maybe using vehicle-to-vehicle systems? That would require no changes from ATC if this becomes a thing, like an air taxi to the main airport.
Man! I love these new Scott Manley goes somewhere and talks to people videos ❤ Please 🥺🙏 keep them coming 😊. Looks like you've even hired a pro cameraman 👍
Just tip for next time, drop the backpack 😅🙃
This is the aircraft I've always dreamt of flying!
Great caps and edit!!!
I love how you pronounce Hwere, I feel like that's how the word is supposed to be said
They're definitely going after a niche market, but this is a crucial stepping stone in proving the viability of commercial electric flight.
I wish you asked if it can actually glide with all motors out!
Also loving these IRL videos, very cool
Started flying Radio Control Helicopters in the 80's, got into the Fixed Wing A/C and went back to College for my A&P. There's good reason that Full Scale (real) A/C still use NiCad's vs NiCd or Lithium's. However, the R/C industry was taken over by Electric powered A/C starting in the late 80's. R/Cers always had access to the Best Lithium manufacturers & Chargers, so performance was always pushed as far as you could.
My only point here is, after all my experiences w/ R/C and Commercial A/C, I've used or worked on every Engine type made and Electrics are the most reliable by far. When Battery energy density gets to the point where they can compete w/ the Jet fuel powered A/C, that's all we're gonna see after that, Electric Airplanes.
23:00 ish, all makes me realise just how fearsomely complex all this stuff is. So many systems.
That’s pretty rad
So basically it operates like a drone. No need of lengthy lanes, just straight up. Interesting!
Despite the disastrous camera work I found this a fascinating video. Thanks
I'm impressed!
Really impressive setup
"Scott, I've just picked up a fault in the AAE-35 unit. It's going to go 100% failure in within 72 hours."
Hal, I'm feeling a wee bit peckish, would you make a sandwich for me?
"I'm sorry Scott, I'm afraid I can't do that."
Nice use of unsteady cam
yeah its pretty sickening lol
Scott and Electric flight? That's an instalike.
refreshing to hear from a business without all the outlandish claims of what it will be doing “next year” just to ramp its stock price up
That looks really cool, and it's great to see the work they have put in for safety, flight control, and not just focusing on the flashy stuff. That said, they really need to work on the graphics for their simulator! I have worked on very similar systems before, so if they need a 3D software dev, let me know :)
Tried this out on Xplane. Lots of fun.