Creating levitating transportation
Cruces firm applies aerospace tech to design marketable hoverboard
LAS CRUCES — It began with a dream, uttered by a child, which fell on the right ears. What followed — the invention of what might be characterized as the world’s first true hoverboard — could revolutionize personal transportation.
“A few months ago, me and Chris (Lang) and his kids went to the Organ Mountains to take some photos because the weather was great — lots of clouds and the lighting was beautiful,” said ARCA Space Corp. CEO Dumitru Popescu. Lang is the company’s chief operating officer.
Lang’s 6-year-old son suggested that it would be great to have a hoverboard to travel over the rocky terrain.
“I said, ‘We could do that. It’s not very complicated. The technology is there, so why not?’” Popescu said.
Lang at first expressed disbelief, then bet Popescu an ice cream that it couldn’t be done. Popescu began working on the project immediately.
“We started working right away and we made very fast progress,” Popescu said. “Within two months, we tested the first ArcaBoard. We were worried about the stability of the board without the stabilization system on.”
ARCA, a company with a 17-year background in rocket and drone technology, relocated to Las Cruces from Romania in 2014.
With some minor tweaks, the world’s first true hoverboard is ready to hit the market.
The finished product, the ArcaBoard, became available for pre-order on Thursday. It’s 57 inches long, 30 inches wide and 6 inches thick, and weighs about 180 pounds. Made of aerospace-grade composite materials, it has 36 onboard high-velocity
motors, each spinning at 45,000 rotations per minute. Cost: $19,900.
“It’s a huge amount of power — more than the vast majority of automobiles,” Popescu said. “For its size, the ArcaBoard is probably the most powerful personal vehicle ever created in history. We wanted to make it as small, light and thin as possible. So we began by looking at the minimum geometry that would be required to house the batteries and motors.”
Future generations of the ArcaBoard, Popescu said, are likely to get smaller as battery technology improves and becomes more affordable. The ArcaBoard can fly for up to six minutes before it needs charging, which takes about 35 minutes. The next generation of batteries — which are available, but cost-prohibitive — could increase hover time to about 30 minutes.
“The design and production came together pretty quickly,” Popescu said. “We tried to make the price for the consumer as low as possible, but we also wanted to use the best materials and technology available. For instance, the batteries are what we have used in recent years for ARCA’s aerospace vehicles. They’re aerospace grade and so is the composite material that the body is made of.”
Popescu said the company’s experience developing, building and launching aerospace vehicles made building the ArcaBoard much easier.
“We are pretty familiar with the technology, the physics and the materials,” he said. “So when you put all of these things together — the technology, the knowledge, the materials — then you can create pretty fast.”
The hover height is maintained at one foot above ground by onboard sensors, which also limit the maximum speed to 12.5 miles per hour.
“It’s heavy, it has a lot of inertia and it’s surprisingly stable,” Popescu said. “Anyone can fly with it. It takes a little bit of practice but, once you start riding it, it’s really, really exciting. You don’t want to get off.”
The technology used in the board presents virtually limitless possibilities. Popescu said the company expects to reveal some of those at the end of January, possibly in Chicago.
“When ARCA moved to Las Cruces from Romania, we wanted to show Las Cruces that we are deeply committed to the local economy,” Lang said. “We didn’t want to bring in a lot of workers from other places when there are great schools here — with New Mexico State University’s College of Engineering and Doña Ana Community College’s vo-tech programs. Everyone we’ve hired has been either an NMSU graduate or a DACC graduate. That’s who helped design and manufacture the ArcaBoard.”
Using electrical and mechanical engineers from NMSU and fabricators from DACC, the board was designed using local talent. It will also be manufactured locally, Lang said.
“NMSU and DACC have provided us with a great workforce,” Lang said. “Our media team is also from Las Cruces — the website, the video production, the promotional materials. This is a worldwide launch and everything was done in Las Cruces.”
Aside from a few components that might have to be imported, Propescu said ArcaBoard will be manufactured in the United States.
“It is a U.S.-based product, 100 percent,” he said.
For more information, go to arcaspace.com.