Flying taxi startup Whisper Aero aims to keep noise levels down
The Peninsula
Endless encounters with swarms of bees.
This is the cacophonous scenario that we might be rushing towards as investors pour heroic amounts of money into companies developing ever better drones and their bigger cousins, vertical take-off and landing passenger vehicles. Because, while the underlying technology behind these machines has improved at impressive speed, the simple fact remains that, big or small, these aircraft produce a lot of noise and not much has been done to curb it. If a drone has ruined your peaceful day at the beach, imagine your nerves with 10,000 flying taxis overhead. A startup called Whisper Aero, which is disclosing its plans for the first time, thinks it may be well on its way to solving this noise problem. The company was founded in mid-2020 by Mark Moore, a former National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineer turned executive within Uber Technologies's once bustling flying vehicle division. While declining to reveal what he has come up with in full detail out of intellectual property protection concerns, Moore is convinced that Whisper has hit on a new "thruster" design that will result in consumer drones right on up to large passenger vehicles blending into the background noise of a city as they fly.More Related News