NASA’s ‘Greased Lightning’ drone merges helicopter and plane technology

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• in NASA, Unmanned
• on May 9, 2015
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08 May 2015

Is it a helicopter? Is it a plane? NASA has developed a 10-engine electric vehicle that can take off like a helicopter but fly a plane.

The prototype, dubbed ‘Greased Lightning,’ or ‘GL-10’ is initially being developed as a drone, according to NASA but could eventually become a manned vehicle.

“We have a couple of options that this concept could be good for,” said Bill Fredericks, NASA aerospace engineer, in a statement. “It could be used for small package delivery or vertical take off and landing, long endurance surveillance for agriculture, mapping and other applications. A scaled up version — much larger than what we are testing now — would make also a great one to four person size personal air vehicle.”

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