Jeff has been involved in aerospace journalism since the mid 1990s. Prior to joining Aviation Week, Jeff served as managing editor of Launchspace magazine and the International Space Industry Report. He has been the editor and chief of Aviation Week's Aerospace Daily & Defense Report since 2007 and has been a regular contributor to Aviation Week magazine. He received his B.A. from the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va.
Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation's new GoldenEye-100 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) had a successful first flight Sept. 8, rising vertically and hovering for approximately 15 minutes at Manassas Regional Airport in Virginia. A ducted-fan UAV with a wingspan of roughly nine feet, the GoldenEye uses thrust vectoring to pitch forward and fly horizontally after taking off vertically. During the autonomous flight, the UAV used its thrust vectoring system to fly sideways over an area about 200 feet wide, occasionally stopping at various waypoints.
Members of the House Science Committee repeatedly called for the Bush Administration to define the country's long-term goals for space exploration during a hearing in Washington Sept. 10, citing the Columbia board's assertion that the lack of such a vision contributed to the shuttle program's woes. Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Texas) quoted a news article blaming successive presidential administrations for not defining what the space program should accomplish following the Cold War. "This has got to start with The White House," Barton said.
Nanoelectronics will be a crucial enabler in the continuing move toward taking human beings out of military vehicles, according to James Murday, chief scientist at the Office of Naval Research. By 2020, it is estimated that computers will have the same processing capacity as the human brain, according to Murday. "How well and effectively we use [that] to accomplish our goals remain to be seen, but there's some dramatic changes [coming]," he said in a presentation at The World Nano-Economic Congress in Washington Sept. 9.
