FusionFlight: Jet-Engine Powered VTOL Aircraft
Welcome to the future of flight. FusionFlight builds and operates fully autonomous Jet-Engine Powered VTOL Aircraft. These vehicles rely specifically on jet-engines for attitude control, vertical flight and horizontal cruise. Such aircraft are used for VTOL (Vertical Take-off and Landing) applications that require small form factor, high payload capacity and high cruise velocity. Our first of such vehicles is called JetQuad - a compact, heavy-fuel, VTOL Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) that is powered by four microturbine jet-engines. Read More
Advantages of Jet-Engine Propulsion
The jet-engine has one of the highest power-to-mass and power-to-volume ratios of all air-breathing aircraft engines. As a result, Jet-Engine Powered VTOL Aircraft can be made light, compact and powerful. Additionally, the compressor of the jet-engine allows the aircraft to operate reliably at high-altitudes. Lack of external air-foils allow jet-engines to operate reliably during inclement weather conditions. New developments in down-scaled jet-engines, also known as microturbines, have allowed for the development of innovative propulsion configurations.
The top-speed of an aircraft is greatly limited by how fast the gas leaves its engines. The hotter the gas, the faster the jet will be. Because of this, jet-engines are capable of pushing the aircraft to very high speeds. Jet-engines are the only type of air-breathing propulsion capable of accelerating an aircraft from stand-still to supersonic speeds, given the proper upgrades. Open-rotor propulsion which includes quadcopters, multicopters, and helicopters cannot sustain anything remotely close to such speed. Thrust Vectoring System (TVS) may be used to greatly increase maneuverability.
In the age of electrification, the benefits of liquid fuel are often forgotten. Jet-powered aircraft are capable of supporting a variety of heavy fuels like kerosene, Jet-A, and Diesel. Liquid-fuel takes minutes to reload allowing for superior mission turn-around times. Liquid-fuel aircraft do not require complex battery storage systems, and most notably, kerosene-based liquid fuel has 40-times the energy-density of Lithium-based batteries. This means that VTOL jet-aircraft have an order of magnitude greater payload and speed capability when compared to similar-mass electrical aircraft.