FusionFlight: Jet-Powered VTOL Drones
Welcome to the future of flight. FusionFlight builds the world’s only Jet-Powered Vertical Take-off and Landing (VTOL) Drone - JetQuad. This drone is powered by four jet-engines each equipped with a Thrust-Vectoring System. The innovative platform allows for precision vertical take-off and landing as well as single-point hover and high-speed cruise. The platform is simple, affordable and has no external airfoils making it resilient to adverse weather conditions and capable of operation in a variety of extreme environments. When it comes to human life, speed is key, and aircraft based on this technology are set to completely revolutionize emergency medical delivery and rapid human evacuation. Read More
Ideal Drone for Emergency Medical Delivery
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, FusionFlight Jet-Powered VTOL Drones are light, compact and powerful. These drones lack external air-foils and wings and are thereby able to deliver emergency supplies to tight spaces normally inaccessible by helicopter. Additionally, the compressor of the jet-engine allows the aircraft to operate reliably at high-altitudes while the Thrust-Vectoring System (TVS) allows steady operation in inclement weather conditions. This new drone technology is made possible through the use of down-scaled jet-engines, also known as microturbines, that can spin at a maximum of 130,000rpm at full throttle.
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 through the use of the afterburner. Open-rotor propulsion which includes quadcopters, multicopters, and helicopters cannot accelerate an aircraft anywhere close to the speed of sound. In addition, the afterburner may be integrated directly into the Thrust Vectoring System (TVS) of the drone which will greatly enhance overall performance while maintaining design simplicity.
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. This type of fuel is readily available almost anywhere in the world. Liquid-fuel aircraft do not require complex battery storage systems and charging stations like their electrical counter-parts. 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. Last but not least, emergency delivery requires fast response - only liquid-fuel drones have fast refuel capability.