The Solar Impulse 2 (Si2) solar-powered round-the-world aircraft made its first flight from Payerne, Switzerland, on June 2. The 2-hr. 17-min. flight was made on stored battery power. A test of the solar power-generation system will be the next step, says Solar Impulse. The 236-ft. wingspan Si2 has 17,000 solar cells on the wing and tail, and 2,077 lb. of rechargeable lithium ion batteries.
Commercial aerospace growth will continue to offset increasingly pressured defense spending worldwide, investment advisers say, leading to an overall “stable” outlook for the global aerospace and defense industry for the next year or so, although niches will perform differently. “Record-high order backlogs for commercial jets will support higher production rates and rising deliveries,” Moody’s Investors Service says.
The third budget airline to form in China, 9 Air, will begin flying in about two months, targeting tourists and laborers with its flights operated by three leased Boeing 737s. The aircraft, eventually to be followed by 50 737s for which the carrier signed a conditional purchase agreement in May, will seat 189 passengers in all-economy layouts. With Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport as its base, the Juneyao Airlines offshoot has been promised support from the governments of Guangdong province and city and Baiyun district.
The world’s airlines in the aggregate will be profitable this year, but the challenge is how to raise operating margins to be more in line with other industries.
The long-awaited National Research Council report on NASA’s human spacefight program calls for more reality and rigor in planning for a mission to Mars. Ordered by Congress in 2010, the report quickly became all things to all people. NASA finds it “consistent with the bipartisan plan . . . that we have been implementing ever since.” Not so, says Rep. Lamar Smith (Texas), the Republican chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee that authorizes NASA spending.
Inventor of the blended winglets flying on more than 6,000 business jets and Boeing airliners, aerodynamicist Louis “Bernie” Gratzer died at home near Seattle on May 31. He was 93. He was a senior vice president at Aviation Partners, which he joined after a career at Boeing, where he was a major contributor to the aerodynamic design of the KC-135, 707 and 727.
Faced with the problem of synchronizing the timing between stations tracking objects orbiting the Earth, U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) physicist Roger Easton had the idea of putting highly accurate clocks on satellites that also could be used to determine locations precisely on the ground. His idea became part of the Defense Department’s Navstar Global Positioning System (GPS), earning Easton—who died at home in Hanover, N.H., on May 8—the title “father of GPS.” He was 93.
