I’m sure we don’t have to explain to you that drones can fly around fast. But this one goes as fast as the sound. Bizarre right!
Last week, a super-fast drone flew in the skies of the United States. Venus Aerospace successfully flew a lightning-fast drone that managed to reach the speed of sound.
The company hopes to someday put the same engine on commercial aircraft so they can fly even faster. But whether that is entirely safe remains to be disputed.
Meet Venus Aerospace’s lightning-fast drone
In February, Venus Aerospace made a test flight with their drone. It is about 2.5 meters long and weighs about 136 kilograms. The gadget went up quite a bit during the test. Venus Aerospace took the drone to an altitude of 3,500 meters using an Aero L-29 Delfin aircraft.
When the drone was released, it took off like a rocket. The flying machine erased a speed of more than a million kilometers per hour. In fact, that is so tremendously fast that a speed of Mach 0.9 was observed.
By this is meant that the drone reached a speed that was 90 percent of the speed of sound. In other words, the drone was flying almost as fast as sound.
Such a successful test is epic, of course, but not entirely without dangers. After all, objects moving that fast run the risk of quickly catching fire. Therefore, three weeks before the flight test, Venus Aerospace did an extensive fire test to check if the engine would hold up during long flights. This showed that the engine was safe enough to test.
Good for the environment, too
Safe or not. The fast engine has a big advantage: it is about 15 percent more efficient than ordinary rocket engines. That means a plane or drone can fly farther on the same amount of fuel. Engineers even think the engine in the super-fast drone could be 25 percent more efficient.
So not only could the engine allow future jets to fly like a speeder, but it would also reduce pollution. So it’s more than worth continuing to develop it in the future. And we would love to keep you informed.