NASA should cut back on the breadth of its aeronautics research to free up funds within a flat budget to return to X-plane flight research, says the National Research Council (NRC). Aeronautics funding accounts for just 3% of the space agency's budget and is spread too thin and unable to advance projects to the flight stage, which is vital to convincing industry and regulators to adapt new technologies, the NRC says in a new report.
In the uncertain funded world of human spaceflight, the habit of die-hard propulsion engineers to never throw anything away is becoming increasingly useful as NASA looks for crew transports.
One might expect the job of securing the skies over this summer's Olympics in London to force British air defenses to adopt new or unusual capabilities. But as the recent Taurus Mountain 2 preparatory exercise demonstrated, the task offers U.K. forces a chance to return to core, pre-9/11 competencies after years of using their aircraft in nontraditional roles over Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya.
Italy's latest annual flight efficiency report shows its reshaped routes helped reduce CO2 emissions and fuel burn in 2011. Enav (Ente Nazionale Assistenza Volo), Italy's air traffic control company led by Massimo Garbini, introduced a number of changes to its route network to enable more direct and higher-altitude flights between most Italian airports. The rationalization allows a more efficient use of the airspace, which becomes particularly congested during the peak tourist season.
Under pressure from Gulf Coast politicos, the Air Force is reconsidering plans to move eight C-130s to Montana from the 136th Airlift Wing in Fort Worth. The governors of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas recently wrote Obama to protest, saying the Gulf Coast needs those Air National Guard aircraft for use in natural disasters that have hit the region hard in recent years. And lawmakers have been hammering Air Force brass at every turn. Last week, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) lit into USAF Chief of Staff Gen.
The world has changed in the slightly more than three years since the Kepler planet-finding spacecraft was launched into an Earth-trailing heliocentric orbit on a Delta II rocket. For starters, the Earth has 61 new cousins scattered around the universe, and another 2,321 new candidate-planets awaiting confirmation by astronomers as the real things.
Basil Barimo (see photos) has been promoted to executive VP for all repair divisions from VP and general manager of the Tulsa (Okla.) Repair Div. at Nordam. John Clawson has been promoted to VP and general manager of the Thrust Reverser Div. from manager of design and project engineering.
Innovation and ingenuity in aerospace can take many forms. In the defense sector, it is often borne out of necessity—a need to find a target, to attack it or to reach it more quickly, for example.
Of all the aircraft on view at the India Aviation air show in Hyderabad, the Boeing 787 painted in Air India's livery may have been the most curious—and embarrassing. The 787 has been ready for delivery since December, with a second aircraft in hand for the customer as well, but neither will begin revenue service anytime soon because Air India has yet to train any pilots to fly the new transport. The interior cabin is configured for 238 economy- and 18 business-class seats.
Beijing Bureau Chief Brad Perrett's piece on Aviation Week.com about China's plans for a Moon rocket engine drew many who noted that they saw this coming. And this: Jimbo 0177 underscoring: NASA has the vision. But they lack the funds.
The past few years have made it abundantly clear that the mid-term future of airpower is not what a lot of people planned. Large-scale procurement of the stealthy F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has slipped into the 2020s. The aircraft types in service today—which made their first flights as much as 40 years ago—will be the world's frontline fleets through the rest of this decade, and will make up the majority of fighting forces well into the 2020s.
A second year of Operation IceBridge studies of polar ice are beginning with a modified Lockheed P-3 from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia, flying daily missions out of Thule and Kangerlussuaq, Greenland. The flights are to continue until mid-May. They began as a stop-gap measure to assure continuous data-collection on the conditions of land and sea ice after NASA lost its Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite in 2009. Among the areas being measured are Greenland's Jakobshavn Glacier and unstudied areas of sea ice such as found in the Beaufort Sea.
Stories about change are a dime a dozen in commercial air transport; change is a constant in an industry where sometimes the only sure bet is that the price of fuel will continue to rise. But stories about transformation are rare, and it is a transformation that led Aviation Week to award Virgin Australia CEO John Borghetti this year's Commercial Air Transport Laureate.
In 1989, when Paul Graziani and two friends dreamed up what has become Analytical Graphics Inc., they sat in his living room envisioning a work environment where people could do their best work, creating new and bold things at a speed that would keep them happy and challenged. They would create commercial off-the-shelf analysis software for the security and space sectors, driving down cost while bringing the power of current and dynamic software to a non-consumer market.
Some astronauts who have spent extended periods in microgravity on the International Space Station (ISS) have developed abnormalities in their eyes and pituitary gland/brain connectors that are similar to a type of intracranial hypertension that occurs on the ground. The finding may help Earth-bound physicians understand what causes the potentially serious condition, but it already has NASA flight surgeons pondering how they can mitigate it when astronauts travel into deep space.
The space shuttle Discovery passes its sister ship Atlantis (see photo) March 9 as Kennedy Space Center prepares the retired orbiter fleet for transport to their new museum homes. Discovery is scheduled to arrive at the National Air and Space Museum's Udvar-Hazy Center at Washington Dulles International Airport on April 19. It will replace the Enterprise atmospheric test article now on display inside the James S. McDonnell Space Hangar.
The fight over the Export-Import Bank's operating authority is set to take center stage in the Senate this week, where the chamber's Boeing supporters will take on loyalists to Delta Air Lines. Senators are likely to vote on a bipartisan proposal that would ultimately increase the bank's lending authority by 40%, to $140 billion, and extend its operating authority through 2015. Boeing has a number of pending sales that could be held up if the bank—which guarantees loans to buyers of U.S.-made products—reaches its lending cap, which it is nearing.
The severe budget austerity gripping much of Europe does not augur well for air forces looking to achieve leaps in capability for the next decade. It is somewhat a matter of luck, then, that foreign demand is effectively pushing stingy treasuries to provide funding to field upgrades. The list of European militaries likely to benefit from these export-driven enhancements is long and includes the Swedish, French, British and German air forces.
April 4-7—Third Annual Marrakech Air Show. Menara Marrakech (Morocco) Airport. See www.fr.aeroexpo-morocco.com/accueil_en.html April 8-9—Sofema Aviation Service's Dubai Training. Jet Aviation Facility, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. See www.sassofia.com April 12—Ninth Annual Aerolink Wales 2012. Chepstow (Wales) Race Course. Seewww.aerolinkwales.co.ukApril 13—Society of Experimental Test Pilots' East Coast Symposium. NAS Patuxent River, Md. See www.setp.org/table/east-coast
We live in a time of uncertainty. Economic as well as climactic. Normally that word is used to figuratively mark a major shift in an industry, region or personal life. Here, I literally mean “of the climate.” Arguing about the realities of human-caused climate change is like railroad barons arguing in 1903 about whether the rumors of heavier-than-air flight are true. It is happening. And if we don't adjust, it will hurt businesses, the economy as a whole and people across the world.
Let Aircraft Industries is aiming to receive European Aviation Safety Agency certification in the next six months for its H80-powered Let 410, a twin-turboprop, regional transport. The Czech aircraft maker, which has applied for a type modification change, is required to complete about 100 hr. of flight tests for EASA to certify the changes made to the aircraft. One test aircraft, fitted with the new engines, has completed about half the flights.
