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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 145 records · Page 8
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1995

Traffic model for the satellite component of UMTS

An algorithm for traffic volume estimation for satellite mobile communications systems has been developed. This algorithm makes use of worldwide databases for demographic and economic data. In order to provide for such an estimation, the effects of competing services have been considered so that likely market demand can be forecasted. Different user groups of the predicted market have been identified according to expectations in the quality of services and mobility requirement. The number of users for different user groups are calculated taking into account the gross potential market, the penetration rate of the identified services and the profitability to provide such services via satellite.

Hu, Y. F.↗
NASA NTRS2002

Laser-Camera Vision Sensing for Spacecraft Mobile Robot Navigation

The advent of spacecraft mobile robots-free-flyng sensor platforms and communications devices intended to accompany astronauts or remotely operate on space missions both inside and outside of a spacecraft-has demanded the development of a simple and effective navigation schema. One such system under exploration involves the use of a laser-camera arrangement to predict relative positioning of the mobile robot. By projecting laser beams from the robot, a 3D reference frame can be introduced. Thus, as the robot shifts in position, the position reference frame produced by the laser images is correspondingly altered. Using normalization and camera registration techniques presented in this paper, the relative translation and rotation of the robot in 3D are determined from these reference frame transformations.

Maluf, David A.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Network design consideration of a satellite-based mobile communications system

Technical considerations for the Mobile Satellite Experiment (MSAT-X), the ground segment testbed for the low-cost spectral efficient satellite-based mobile communications technologies being developed for the 1990's, are discussed. The Network Management Center contains a flexible resource sharing algorithm, the Demand Assigned Multiple Access scheme, which partitions the satellite transponder bandwidth among voice, data, and request channels. Satellite use of multiple UHF beams permits frequency reuse. The backhaul communications and the Telemetry, Tracking and Control traffic are provided through a single full-coverage SHF beam. Mobile Terminals communicate with the satellite using UHF. All communications including SHF-SHF between Base Stations and/or Gateways, are routed through the satellite. Because MSAT-X is an experimental network, higher level network protocols (which are service-specific) will be developed only to test the operation of the lowest three levels, the physical, data link, and network layers.

Yan, T.-Y.↗
NASA NTRS2021

Decentralized Control Synthesis for Air Traffic Management in Urban Air Mobility

Urban air mobility (UAM) refers to air transportation services within an urban area, often in an on-demand fashion. We study air traffic management (ATM) for vehicles in a UAM fleet, while guaranteeing system safety requirements such as traffic separation. Existing ATM methods for unmanned aerial systems, such as UAS traffic management, utilize alternative approaches which do not provide strict safety guarantees. No established infrastructure exists for providing ATM at scale for UAM. We provide a decentralized, hierarchical approach for UAM ATM that allows for scalability to high traffic densities as well as providing theoretical guarantees of correctness with respect to user-provided safety specifications. Our main contributions are two-fold. First, we propose a novel UAM ATM architecture that divides the control authority between vertihubs that are each in charge of all UAM vehicles in their local airspace. Each vertihub also contains a number of vertiports that are in charge of UAM vehicle takeoffs and landings. The resulting architecture is decentralized and hierarchical, which not only enables scalability, but also robustness in the event of any individual vertihub or vertiport no longer being operational. Second, we provide a contract-based correct-by-construction reactive synthesis approach that provably guarantees safety properties with respect to user-provided specifications in linear temporal logic. We demonstrate the approach on large-volume UAM air traffic data.

Urban Air Mobility↗
NASA NTRS1988

L-band and SHF multiple access schemes for the MSAT system

The first generation of the Canadian Mobile Satellite (MSAT) system, planned to be operational in the early 1990s, will provide voice and data services to land, aeronautical, and maritime mobile terminals within the Canadian land mass and its territorial waters. The system will be managed by a centralized Demand Assignment Multiple Access (DAMA) control system. Users will request a communication channel by communicating with the DAMA Control System (DCS) via the appropriate signalling channels. Several access techniques for both L-band and SHF signalling channels have been investigated. For the L-band, Slotted Aloha (SA) and Reservation Aloha (RA), combined with a token scheme, are discussed here. The results of Telesat studies to date indicate that SA, when combined with token scheme, provides the most efficient access and resource management tool in a mobile propagation environment. For SHF signalling channels, slim time division multiple access (TDMA) and SA have been considered as the most suitable candidate schemes. In view of the operational environment of the SHF links, provision of a very short channel access delay and a relatively high packet success rate are highly desirable. Studies carried out generally favor slim-TDMA as the most suitable approach for SHF signalling channels.

Razi, Michael↗
NASA NTRS1978

Applicability of the Remote Mobile Emplacement Package (RMEP) design as a mobility aid for proposed post-84 Mars missions, phase O

The results of study to determine the applicability of the Remote Mobile Emplacement Package (RMEP) design concept as a mobility aid for the proposed post-'84 Mars missions are presented. The RMEP wheel and mobility subsystem parameters: wheel tire size, weight, stowed volume, and environmental effects; obstacle negotiation; reliability and wear; motor and drive train; and electrical power demand were reviewed. Results indicated that: (1) the basic RMEP wheel design would be satisfactory, with additional attention to heating, side loading, tread wear and ultraviolet radiation protection; (2) motor and drive train power requirements on Mars would be less than on Earth; and (3) the mobility electrical power requirements would be small enough to offer the option of operating the Mars mini rover untethered. Payload power required for certain sampling functions would preclude the use of battery power for these missions. Hazard avoidance and reverse direction maneuvers are discussed. Limited examination of vehicle payload integration and thermal design was made, pending establishment of a baseline vehicle/payload design.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2010

Aviation Frontiers: On-Demand Aircraft

Throughout the 20th Century, NASA has defined the forefront of aeronautical technology, and the aviation industry owes much of its prosperity to this knowledge and technology. In recent decades, centralized aeronautics has become a mature discipline, which raises questions concerning the future aviation innovation frontiers. Three transformational aviation capabilities, bounded together by the development of a Free Flight airspace management system, have the potential to transform 21st Century society as profoundly as civil aviation transformed the 20th Century. These mobility breakthroughs will re-establish environmental sustainable centralized aviation, while opening up latent markets for civil distributed sensing and on-demand rural and regional transportation. Of these three transformations, on-demand aviation has the potential to have the largest market and productivity improvement to society. The information system revolution over the past 20 years shows that vehicles lead, and the interconnecting infrastructure to make them more effective follows; that is, unless on-demand aircraft are pioneered, a distributed Air Traffic Control system will likely never be established. There is no single technology long-pole that will enable on-demand vehicle solutions. However, fully digital aircraft that include electric propulsion has the potential to be a multi-disciplinary initiator of solid state technologies that can provide order of magnitude improvements in the ease of use, safety/reliability, community and environmental friendliness, and affordability.

Moore, Mark D.↗
NASA NTRS2004

High Temperature Polymers for use in Fuel Cells

NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) is currently working on polymers for fuel cell and lithium battery applications. The desire for more efficient, higher power density, and a lower environmental impact power sources has led to interest in proton exchanges membrane fuels cells (PEMFC) and lithium batteries. A PEMFC has many advantages as a power source. The fuel cell uses oxygen and hydrogen as reactants. The resulting products are electricity, heat, and water. The PEMFC consists of electrodes with a catalyst, and an electrolyte. The electrolyte is an ion-conducting polymer that transports protons from the anode to the cathode. Typically, a PEMFC is operated at a temperature of about 80 C. There is intense interest in developing a fuel cell membrane that can operate at higher temperatures in the range of 80 C- 120 C. Operating the he1 cell at higher temperatures increases the kinetics of the fuel cell reaction as well as decreasing the susceptibility of the catalyst to be poisoned by impurities. Currently, Nafion made by Dupont is the most widely used polymer membrane in PEMFC. Nafion does not function well above 80 C due to a significant decrease in the conductivity of the membrane from a loss of hydration. In addition to the loss of conductivity at high temperatures, the long term stability and relatively high cost of Nafion have stimulated many researches to find a substitute for Nafion. Lithium ion batteries are popular for use in portable electronic devices, such as laptop computers and mobile phones. The high power density of lithium batteries makes them ideal for the high power demand of today s advanced electronics. NASA is developing a solid polymer electrolyte that can be used for lithium batteries. Solid polymer electrolytes have many advantages over the current gel or liquid based systems that are used currently. Among these advantages are the potential for increased power density and design flexibility. Automobiles, computers, and cell phones require highly efficient power density for lowering emissions and meeting increasing consumer demands. Many of the solutions can be provided by proton exchange membrane fuel cells and lithium batteries. NASA Glenn Research Center has recognized this need, and is presently engaged in a solution. The goals for the summer include mastering synthesis techniques, understanding the reactions occurring during the synthesis, and characterizing the resulting polymer membranes using NMR, DSC, and TGA for the PEMFC and lithium batteries.

Peplowski, Katherine M.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Joint Communication Resource Allocation and Velocity Selection in Urban Air Mobility via Multi-agent Reinforcement Learning

With traffic congestion problems becoming more severe in urban areas, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration promotes the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) concept, which envisages a safe and efficient air transportation system. However, the increased communication demands in UAM can exacerbate the spectrum scarcity. Therefore, a new communication resource allocation solution is necessary. In this paper, we focus on uplink UAM communications, where multiple aerial vehicles (AV) perform cargo/passenger delivery tasks. With predefined flight paths, AVs make decisions on communication resource allocation and velocity selection to complete their missions under safety constraints. Accordingly, we formulate a joint optimization problem to minimize the weighted sum of the total travel time and communication outage time. We first model the optimization problem as a Markov game and propose a multi-agent reinforcement learning based solution. Simulation results corroborate the effectiveness of the proposed solution.

Ruixuan Han↗
NASA NTRS2022

National Campaign (NC)-1 Strategic Conflict Management Simulation (X4) Community Based Rules

Projected demand for transportation services in the urban environment has led to the development of several Concepts of Operation for Urban Air Mobility, or UAM. UAM is a concept for the transportation of people and goods in the metropolitan environment using small, efficient aircraft over short distances as part of an expanding multimodal transportation network. UAM will leverage emerging technologies including electric Vertical Takeoff and Landing (eVTOL) aircraft, increasing levels of automation and a new operational paradigm in dense airspace where a set of agreed-upon rules govern the procedures and interactions defining a cooperative environment in which operators are entrusted with a range of functions typically conducted by Air Traffic Control (ATC). These rules, proposed in the FAA NextGen Office’s UAM Concept of Operations [1], were originally termed Community Based Rules or Community Business Rules (CBRs), and will in the future termed Cooperative Operating Practices (COPs); this document uses the original term, CBR. CBRs are a set of rules, developed by the UAM community and (where necessary) approved by the FAA that govern the interactions between UAM entities and limit the need for ATC services including, but not limited to, separation control by ATC, addressing a fundamental challenge to scaling UAM operations. UAM community development of CBRs is anticipated to accelerate the adoption of new practices while retaining the regulatory authority of the FAA within required domains (e.g., NAS safety, security and equal access). However, there currently exists no agreed industry forum or defined procedures for CBR development. Investigation of best practices for the development of UAM CBRs was identified by NASA and the FAA NextGen Office as a research need. In collaboration with seven industry partners, NASA participated in a series of simulations that investigated elements of the envisioned UAM operations, with a primary focus on Strategic Conflict Management (SCM). The development and conduct of cooperative UAM simulations with seven industry partners provided a unique opportunity to investigate CBR development practices. Development of CBRs for the UAM SCM simulations was conducted in parallel with simulation capability development and was closely related to requirements definition for the simulations. As such, the CBR development effort presented herein had two objectives: explore CBR development practices in collaboration with the industry partners and develop an initial set of UAM CBRs to support simulation requirements definition and development. Consensus was achieved among NASA and the industry partners on 24 CBRs that were developed to support the cooperative simulation operations across five topic areas: General (related to test requirements), Operational Intent, Conformance Monitoring, Demand Capacity Balancing, and Airspace Constraint Management. Additional topic areas and CBRs were discussed but were deemed outside the scope of the simulation; these are included in the appendices. A collaborative, iterative process was employed for developing the CBRs engaging both NASA and Industry; because CBR development is envisioned to be community-driven, opportunities were sought that provided industry partners leadership roles in developing CBRs. The following key observations and recommendations may aid the UAM industry in future CBR development efforts: - The lack of a defined process proved challenging initially. Stakeholder engagement in the early stages of CBR development was intermittent and may have been due to the lack of a clear definition of roles and responsibilities of those involved in the effort. - Industry leadership of CBR topic areas proved successful. Discussions in these topic areas were engaging, with alternate viewpoints freely discussed and detailed CBRs resulting. This points to the importance of identifying the best-suited leadership in technical areas for CBR development. - Discussions within a CBR topic area were typically dominated by only a few participants. Whereas all industry partners contributed to CBR development, within each topic area, technical leadership was evident even when not formally established. This observation may indicate that smaller, focused groups may be more effective in initial CBR development than an open forum or large standards development effort (although both maybe required prior to FAA review and approval for some CBRs). - Identifying suitable forums for initial UAM CBR development and identifying the most effective industry participants and leadership will be crucial for successful CBR development. Although the operational need for UAM CBRs may not be immediate, establishing the forums and leadership to define the processes for CBR development is a prudent early step to UAM realization.

Community Based Rules↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Preliminary Assessment of Physical Demand during Simulated Lunar Surface Extravehicular Activities

Returning to the moon requires many advances in current space technology. One major aspect of this development is a new exploration spacesuit (xEMU). Taking lessons learned from Apollo era suitsand the Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) used on the International Space Station (ISS), xEMU will have increased mobility, dust mitigation, headspace, glove fit, and life support capabilities. Artemis astronauts in xEMU will complete a far more rigorous Extravehicular Activity (EVA) schedule than Apolloand ISS. Notably, metabolic rates during Apollo lunar EVA tasks were observed to be up to 50% lower than similar tasks performed in a ground analog environment under simulated partial gravity with newer suits. Therefore, understanding the physical demands of lunar surface exploration operations is criticalto ensuring best outcomes operating within the constraints of xEMU and planning for exploration EVA activities. This study utilized the Active Response Gravity Offload System (ARGOS) to simulate the lunar environment and continuously offload subjects to lunar gravity. Two male subjects completed two days of EVAs wearing the pressurized Mark III spacesuit, completing suit fit and mobility checks, as well as simulated lander operations, cable routing, crew rescue, geology, payload relocation, and traverse tasks in an end-to-end EVA (E2E) task block and standalone (SA) task blocks. We recorded continuous values of metabolic rate (MR) and heart rate (HR) to assess physical demand. During the E2E task block, subjects did not rest between tasks to simulate continuous effort from task to task, as in real EVAs. In comparison, subjects had a 5-minute break after each SA task block to allow for the metabolic rate and heart rate to return to baseline.MR values were categorized as low (≤ 700 BTU/hr), medium (700-1000 BTU/HR), and high (≥ 1000 BTU/hr), while HR values were categorized as low (≤150) and high (>150). During the 16 tasks in the E2E block, subjects averaged low MR in 6% of tasks, medium MR in 47% of tasks, and high MR in 47% of tasks. While MR was consistent between subjects, Subject 1 averaged low HR for 100% of these tasks, while Subject 2 averaged low HR in 44% of tasks. During the 23 tasks in the SA task blocks, subjects averaged low MR in 26% of tasks, medium MR in 52% of tasks, and high MR in 22% of tasks. Again, HR was different between subjects, with subject 1 averaging low HR in 100% of these tasks while subject 2 averaged low HR in 70%. Across all tasks in this study, subjects reached maximum MR and HR values during a 500m traverse at 30% grade in the E2E block (subject 1: 1747 BTU/hr, 150 BPM; subject 2: 1656 BTU/hr, 177 BPM).Understanding the physical demand to complete exploration EVA tasks will be instrumental to the future success of exploration spacesuit designs and missions. Further work in this study will be needed to characterize MR during exploration EVA tasks, including expanding the subject pool and testing new suit designs.

Taylor E Schlotman↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Analysis of Electrical Grid Capacity in Major U.S. Metropolitan Areas for Urban Air Mobility

A wide range of challenges must be overcome to conduct Urban Air Mobility (UAM) operations at scale with electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft as envisioned. This paper documents an analysis of one potential infrastructure challenge for UAM: available electrical grid power capacity. The success of UAM depends on the availability of electricity, which will be increasingly impacted by the proliferation of ground electric vehicles (EVs) over time. Under the worst-case assumption that each U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) can only access and utilize the electricity generated by power plants within its boundaries, it is estimated that the maximum number of UAM aircraft that can charge simultaneously in the 25 most populous MSAs will decrease by about 61% from about 129,000 in the year 2021 to about 51,000 in the year 2050, due to the projected increase in ground EVs. Also, it is estimated that the number of these MSAs that may lack any available electrical grid power capacity for UAM operations will increase from zero MSAs in 2021 to eleven MSAs in 2050—including three MSAs that prospective UAM operators have announced as target markets (Los Angeles, Miami, and Orlando)—unless electricity demand for other purposes is reduced.

electrical grid↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Rapid Aero Modeling for Urban Air Mobility Aircraft in Computational Experiments

Rapid Aero Modeling (RAM) applied to computational testing, RAM-C, is an approach to efficiently and automatically obtain aerodynamic models during computational investigations. RAM-C is designed to estimate models appropriate for flight dynamics studies and simulations. The approach responds to a demand for experimental efficiency and model fidelity that has increased with growing aircraft complexity and aerodynamic nonlinearities associated with hybrid and electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. In an Urban Air Mobility (UAM) transportation system, it is expected that aircraft will embrace many features from both airplanes and rotorcraft. These vehicles present many more factors than conventional aircraft which can lead to increased computational costs and missed key factor interactions when applying traditional testing and modeling methods. RAM-C provides feedback loops around computational codes to rapidly guide testing toward aerodynamic models meeting user-defined fidelity goals. It combines and extends concepts from design of experiment theory and aircraft system identification theory that allow the user the freedom to choose, in advance of the test, a specific level of fidelity in terms of prediction error. RAM-C only collects enough data required to meet the user-specified prediction error requirements thus saving computational time and resources. The overall achievable fidelity of the final model also depends on the accuracy of the test facility, or in this case, the computational modeling approach. Previous studies to support development of the RAM-T process were conducted in wind tunnel tests to assess potential metrics, algorithms, and procedures. This paper presents results from the next steps taken and tests conducted for the development of RAM-C technology and highlights some of the unique features of RAM applied eVTOL configurations in a computational study.

Aerodynamics↗
NASA NTRS2004

Transformations in Air Transportation Systems For the 21st Century

Globally, our transportation systems face increasingly discomforting realities: certain of the legacy air and ground infrastructures of the 20th century will not satisfy our 21st century mobility needs. The consequence of inaction is diminished quality of life and economic opportunity for those nations unable to transform from the 20th to 21st century systems. Clearly, new thinking is required regarding business models that cater to consumers value of time, airspace architectures that enable those new business models, and technology strategies for innovating at the system-of-networks level. This lecture proposes a structured way of thinking about transformation from the legacy systems of the 20th century toward new systems for the 21st century. The comparison and contrast between the legacy systems of the 20th century and the transformed systems of the 21st century provides insights into the structure of transformation of air transportation. Where the legacy systems tend to be analog (versus digital), centralized (versus distributed), and scheduled (versus on-demand) for example, transformed 21st century systems become capable of scalability through technological, business, and policy innovations. Where air mobility in our legacy systems of the 20th century brought economic opportunity and quality of life to large service markets, transformed air mobility of the 21st century becomes more equitable available to ever-thinner and widely distributed populations. Several technological developments in the traditional aircraft disciplines as well as in communication, navigation, surveillance and information systems create new foundations for 21st thinking about air transportation. One of the technological developments of importance arises from complexity science and modern network theory. Scale-free (i.e., scalable) networks represent a promising concept space for modeling airspace system architectures, and for assessing network performance in terms of robustness, resilience, and other metrics. The lecture offers an air transportation system topology and a scale-free network linkage graphic as framework for transportation system innovation. Successful outcomes of innovation in air transportation could lay the foundations for new paradigms for aircraft and their operating capabilities, air transportation system topologies, and airspace architectures and procedural concepts. These new paradigms could support scalable alternatives for the expansion of future air mobility to more consumers in more parts of the world.

Holmes, Bruce J.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Deposition of Nanostructured Thin Film from Size-Classified Nanoparticles

Materials comprising nanometer-sized grains (approximately 1_50 nm) exhibit properties dramatically different from those of their homogeneous and uniform counterparts. These properties vary with size, shape, and composition of nanoscale grains. Thus, nanoparticles may be used as building blocks to engineer tailor-made artificial materials with desired properties, such as non-linear optical absorption, tunable light emission, charge-storage behavior, selective catalytic activity, and countless other characteristics. This bottom-up engineering approach requires exquisite control over nanoparticle size, shape, and composition. We describe the design and characterization of an aerosol system conceived for the deposition of size classified nanoparticles whose performance is consistent with these strict demands. A nanoparticle aerosol is generated by laser ablation and sorted according to size using a differential mobility analyzer. Nanoparticles within a chosen window of sizes (e.g., (8.0 plus or minus 0.6) nm) are deposited electrostatically on a surface forming a film of the desired material. The system allows the assembly and engineering of thin films using size-classified nanoparticles as building blocks.

Camata, Renato P.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Data-Driven Reduced Order Model of an Isolated Rotor

There are numerous conceptual design stage rotorcraft analysis tasks which demand a high-fidelity and low cost method for rotor load distribution predictions. Considering Urban Air Mobility (UAM) vehicles aim to operate in close proximity to buildings and with unique rotor configurations, there is a significant challenge in quickly and accurately modeling rotors operating in complex, turbulent flow fields. One potential path for deriving a high-fidelity, low cost rotor model is with data-driven surrogate modeling. In this study, an initial investigation is taken to apply a proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) based reduced order model (ROM) for the purpose of pressure distribution prediction. In this study, a POD ROM was derived to produce distributed pressure predictions on rotor blades subjected to topology change due to variation in twist and taper ratio. Rotor twist was varied between 0◦, 10◦, 20◦, and 30◦ while taper ratio was varied between 1.0, 0.9, 0.8, and 0.7. All rotors consisted of a single blade. The POD ROM was validated for three demonstration cases; a high thrust rotor in hover, a low thrust rotor in hover, and a rotor in forward flight with a flight speed of M = 0.1. Results showed highly accurate distributed load predictions could be achieved at minimal computational cost. Computational cost for hovering blade surface pressure modeling was reduced from 12 hours on 440 cores to 10−5 seconds on a single core. For blade in forward flight cost was reduced from 20 hours on 440 cores to 0.6 seconds on a single core. For cases of high thrust and low thrust rotors, POD ROM was used to undergo a design optimization of the rotor such that figure of merit was maximized. Total optimization time for each case was 1 minute.

Data-Driven↗
NASA NTRS1983

Mobile radio alternative systems study satellite/terrestrial (hybrid) systems concepts

The use of satellites for mobile radio service in non-urban areas of the United States in the years from 1985 to 2000 was investigated. Several satellite concepts are considered: a system with single-beam coverage of the fifty United States and Puerto Rico, and multi-beam satellites with greater capacity. All of the needed functions and services identified in the market study are provided by the satellite systems, including nationwide radio access to vehicles without knowledge of vehicle location wideband data transmission from remote sites, two way exchange of short data and control messages between vehicles and dispatch or control centers, and automatic vehicle location (surveillance). The costs of providing the services are within acceptable limits, and the desired returns to the system investors are attractive. The criteria by which the Federal Communication judges the competing demands for public radio spectrum are reviewed with comments on how the criteria might apply to the consideration of land mobile satellites. Institutional arrangements for operating a mobile satellite system are based on the present institutional arrangements in which the services are offered to the end users through wireline and radio common carriers, with direct access by large private and government users.

Kiesling, J. D.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Analysis of Electrical Grid Capacity in Major U.S. Metropolitan Areas for Urban Air Mobility

A wide range of challenges must be overcome to conduct Urban Air Mobility (UAM) operations at scale with electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft as envisioned. This paper documents an analysis of one potential infrastructure challenge for UAM: available electrical grid power capacity. The success of UAM depends on the availability of electricity, which will be increasingly impacted by the proliferation of ground electric vehicles (EVs) over time. Under the worst-case assumption that each U.S. Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) can only access and utilize the electricity generated by power plants within its boundaries, it is estimated that the maximum number of UAM aircraft that can charge simultaneously in the 25 most populous MSAs will decrease by about 61% from about 129,000 in the year 2021 to about 51,000 in the year 2050, due to the projected increase in ground EVs. Also, it is estimated that the number of these MSAs that may lack any available electrical grid power capacity for UAM operations will increase from zero MSAs in 2021 to eleven MSAs in 2050—including three MSAs that prospective UAM operators have announced as target markets (Los Angeles, Miami, and Orlando)—unless electricity demand for other purposes is reduced.

electrical grid↗