Christchurch Aerospace Meet Up #5: Envisioning The Future

Standing room only with a full house at the GreenHouse. Inspiring talks pondering on exciting happenings now and pondering where various technologies will take us in the future.

Kurt Joy from Orbica kicked things off with a talk intriguingly entitled “Exploring the Antarctic Valleys of the Dead”. From moss analysis to hyperspectral mapping to progressive satellite resolution improvements. World-wide mapping is set to continue to develop at a fast pace as high spatial / high spectral / high temporal resolutions become available.

Gary Freedman from Electric Air had a slick slide deck talking about his plans to bring the first electric plane to New Zealand. Similar to the early days of electric cars, range / charging / batteries are the main technology barriers. These areas are being overcome in the automotive industry and resultant technologies will be applied to the aircraft industry.

Michael Read from Skybase wrapped up the evening with a compelling talk that included jetpack test pilot stories, beyond line of sight work at Skybase and a potential timeframe for an array of pilotless aircraft. He also said to watch out for the 2nd Top Gun movie set to be released next year.

Thank you to Lane Neave for sponsoring the excellent food and beverage catering.