In this episode of the Struck Aerospace Engineering podcast, we discuss the Metro Hop ESTOL, news on Volocopter and SpaceX's plans to "catch" their rockets after flight to re-use them and save money. We also discuss LED panel walls in private jets - could this replace windows? And, Honda's wing facility - how do they engineer some of the systems in these high-tech manufacturing plants?

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Transcript: EP44 - Metro Hop Evtol, Volocopter Plus SpaceX Catching Rockets?

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You are listening to the struc podcast. I'm Dan Blewett I'm Allen hall. And here on struck, we talk about everything. Aviation, aerospace engineering, and lightening protection.

All right. Welcome back to the struc podcast. On today's episode first in our new segment, we're gonna chat about Honda, opening up a new wing facility. Second Virgin orbit. Finally getting up into orbit. It's exciting. Uh, in our engineering segment, we're gonna talk about space X, trying to catch the rockets on the way down, which is fascinating and sounds just crazy.

But then again, what is it about space travel? Uh, and then we're also gonna talk about a wall LEDs and private jets. It's an interesting new technology report out the, the Robb report. And I'm just wondering if that changes, design, and if that's going to have any negative drawbacks last year, R E V T O L segment, we'll talk about Volvo copter, a couple of new designs, um, from manta and also from Metro hop, which is a.

Electric, uh, it's a short takeoff, um, not necessarily a verdict bill takeoff. So Alan first let's start with Honda. So they're opening up a new facility. You're a big Honda fan. Um, you like their engineering tactics there, you know, they've sort of revolutionized painting their aircraft, but this is a wing facility here.

And, uh, what sticks out to you at this, uh, 83,000 square foot facility that they're bringing to North Carolina?

Well, I think they've reached critical mass. When you open another facility to build wings, that means you're having a pretty good production run. And the part of the facility is also too, uh, handle spare parts.

And I think they have about 170 aircraft in service right now. So you're starting to get that need of servicing a lot of aircraft in a lot of different places. You need to have spare parts on hand to get them out the door relatively quickly to get the airplanes back in service. So. They needed to have that parts supply center essentially on site.

So they can manage that. Uh, cause most of the aircraft companies, when they get to a certain size will start to do that. So it's a really good sign. That Honda one thinks there. Production is going to continue at some reasonable rate. And two, it gets some, uh, more room to, to build wings because they had, they were building wings already in the existing factory, but this gives it a lot more space to do it and building a lot more wings concurrently,