ORAC
25th Jun 2016, 19:54
The whole thing worth a read...
Welcome to Larry Page?s Secret Flying Car Factories - Bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-09/welcome-to-larry-page-s-secret-flying-car-factories)
"....
Its headquarters is an engineer’s fantasyland. The focal point is a large wooden building where two dozen workers sit at a few rows of desks jammed with computers. Aside from the clusters of large black monitors, the place feels more like a barn than an office. Aircraft prototypes hang from the ceiling, as does a thick climbing rope for exercise. In the open kitchen, abutting a long redwood dining table in one corner, a cook uses ingredients from the nearby gardens to prepare three meals a day. While the smell of a Malaysian curry fills the room, a banjo twangs from speakers overhead.
The manufacturing happens at a series of buildings about 100 yards downhill, past gardens and an outdoor clay pizza oven. One of the buildings is an airy warehouse with a giant oven inside—but this one isn’t for pizza. It’s used to cure the *carbon-fiber bodies of the planes and looks like a Quonset hut. Former members of Oracle’s America’s Cup sailing team, some of the world’s leading materials experts, oversee the curing process, baking the carbon fiber at about 194F. In another building, engineers build *cantaloupe-size electric motors; in a third, they test electronics; in a fourth, they put the finishing touches on wings and other parts. Out back, there’s a large truck with an extendible arm atop its trailer like a cherry picker, which hoists propellers high into the air so engineers can perform wind tests while driving down a road at high speed. Robotic prototypes buzz around...."
Welcome to Larry Page?s Secret Flying Car Factories - Bloomberg (http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-09/welcome-to-larry-page-s-secret-flying-car-factories)
"....
Its headquarters is an engineer’s fantasyland. The focal point is a large wooden building where two dozen workers sit at a few rows of desks jammed with computers. Aside from the clusters of large black monitors, the place feels more like a barn than an office. Aircraft prototypes hang from the ceiling, as does a thick climbing rope for exercise. In the open kitchen, abutting a long redwood dining table in one corner, a cook uses ingredients from the nearby gardens to prepare three meals a day. While the smell of a Malaysian curry fills the room, a banjo twangs from speakers overhead.
The manufacturing happens at a series of buildings about 100 yards downhill, past gardens and an outdoor clay pizza oven. One of the buildings is an airy warehouse with a giant oven inside—but this one isn’t for pizza. It’s used to cure the *carbon-fiber bodies of the planes and looks like a Quonset hut. Former members of Oracle’s America’s Cup sailing team, some of the world’s leading materials experts, oversee the curing process, baking the carbon fiber at about 194F. In another building, engineers build *cantaloupe-size electric motors; in a third, they test electronics; in a fourth, they put the finishing touches on wings and other parts. Out back, there’s a large truck with an extendible arm atop its trailer like a cherry picker, which hoists propellers high into the air so engineers can perform wind tests while driving down a road at high speed. Robotic prototypes buzz around...."