Just before China Southern took delivery of its first Airbus A380, an industry official quipped it would not be long before one of the aircraft would disappear and be dissected by the Chinese aerospace industry. The notion may be far-fetched, but illustrates the depth of suspicion still associated with China's industrial strategy.
Few aircraft are so inextricably linked to one market as Airbus's A380 is to the Middle East. Little wonder, then, that the region's demand for upgrades is driving the company's thinking as it improves the mega-transport through a range increase.
Ousting Pierre-Henri Gourgeon as CEO of Air France-KLM was the easy part; now the airline group's reshuffled management team will have to decide on quick steps to reset its troubled financial course.
Nearly 150 years ago, when industrialists were finding new ways to harness steam power, visionary Jules Verne wrote a novel in which he described men journeying to the Moon in a capsule after taking off from a launch site not far from Cape Canaveral. The craft was nearly identical in size to the one that transported Apollo 11 astronauts to the Earth's nearest neighbor, and following its return voyage the capsule was recovered after splashing down in the ocean.
U.S. technological leadership was not achieved by people who were afraid of failure. Corona, the first U.S. imagery reconnaissance satellite program, suffered 12 consecutive failures before finally achieving a successful mission a half century ago. It laid the groundwork for the development of space-based capabilities that helped the nation win the Cold War and are now aiding in the global fight against Al Qaeda and extremism.
It is as difficult for the human mind to comprehend the world of the very small—the mysterious, uncertain, quantum world of atoms and particles, for which common sense is of no help—as it is for us to grasp the enormous vastness of space.
While quantum computers will likely revolutionize computing, yet more powerful machines are possible with physical computing. Indeed, it may someday be possible to use our best physical theories to design machines that solve computational problems so difficult that many computer scientists believe them to be unsolvable.
There are three features of quantum mechanics that make it a likely source for future revolutionary innovations: Its predictions are strikingly accurate; they often violate our classical intuitions of what is physically possible; and the theory appears to be universally applicable.
Experimental evidence indicates low-energy nuclear-reaction (LENR) technology is potentially an extremely clean and green energy source that could revolutionize not only aerospace but the wider field of power generation for home and industry. But much work remains to turn today's inefficient and self-destructive devices into practical powerplants,
Now is the time to dream big and have bold visions of the future, even as present realities in aerospace are challenging. We must reflect upon how the dreams of Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Robert Goddard led—less than a century later—to space probes visiting every major body in the Solar System and some plunging on to the stars, and how the visions of Wernher von Braun, Arthur C. Clark and Albert Einstein presaged landings on the Moon, geosynchronous satellites, nuclear power and GPS navigation.
When the first Boeing 787 for revenue service was delivered to All Nippon Airways last month, much of the spotlight focused on the aircraft's revolutionary composite materials, fuel-efficient engines, and health monitoring and reporting systems. But buried deep within the structure is a harbinger to another revolutionary aerospace technology: the role of the photon—the elementary particle of light.
If there is one piece of information that is vital to aircraft safety and efficiency, it is knowing aircraft position with both high accuracy and high integrity. Aircraft navigation has come a long way from the 1970s, when a third crewmember was required in the cockpit. This crewmember's name said it all: “navigator.” The advent of flight management systems (FMS) in the 1980s obviated the need for a navigator, since the FMS was able to automatically calculate aircraft position.
An installment of the 1938 serial “Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars” opened with the narrator announcing the eponymous hero was in his spaceship flying at the “incredible speed of at least 1,200 miles per hour!” At a time when the fastest aircraft had not yet reached 450 mph, the notion of flying at such speeds was almost inconceivable to contemporary audiences.
Charting the course of research and discovery in an astrophysics field as young and dynamic as extrasolar planets is filled with danger, and any speculation will almost certainly turn out to be just that. Nevertheless, the furious pace of current discoveries and the monumental opportunity to search for signs of life on a distant planet are already shaping the course of research and development profoundly within astrophysics, and will continue to do so over the coming decades.
Removing the human from air vehicles already has significantly changed the types of missions that can be undertaken by aircraft. In the future, it is likely that removing the human will have even more dramatic and far-reaching impacts on the design, operation and missions of airborne systems.
Safer, lower-weight and more fuel-efficient aircraft will be realized in the future thanks to advanced materials, sensors and electronics. While composites already are bringing new structural capabilities to aerospace, new nanocomposite materials promise extraordinary optical, electronic and acoustic properties.
How do we get there from here? “There” is a future where aerospace system designs are light, smart, energy-efficient and affordable. “Here” is the present in which deficit-driven budget cutbacks endanger funding for technology development.
How does a small flag carrier based in a remote European capital chart a path toward profitability? For Finnair, the answer is to aim for markets that turn its liabilities into assets, carefully cultivate a “boutique” image among core customers and leave the things it does not do well to partners. For example, it set an expansion course in regional service this year with the acquisition of Finnish Commuter Airlines, but that is being rebranded Flybe Nordic with the U.K.-based regional experts firmly in the control.
Ultimate Air Shuttle's service, connecting Cincinnati with its leading business markets via Dornier 328JET aircraft, resembles a flight on a corporate jet. The upscale one-class service offers free parking, complimentary food, beer and wine, and fares at near-market standard.
Growing numbers of airline industry stakeholders are recognizing that key updates are needed in pilot training to keep basic flying skills from eroding further. And with loss-of-control accidents becoming an ever greater concern, those changes are not happening quickly enough.
With federal deficit-reduction efforts in full swing, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan drawing to a close, and a history as the U.S. military's back bench, the National Guard could easily return to postwar oblivion. But in this post-9/11, austerity era, the hybrid military group's supporters have a different, much stronger future in mind, and now they seem on the cusp of achieving it.
That the frequency of Indian combat aircraft crashes is galling would be a bit like calling the Taj Mahal a nice hut. The Indian air force (IAF) is now rebuilding its training regime to finally cure the long-running problems that have attrited men and machines.
Predictions from Capitol Hill of an eventual massive electronic attack on the U.S., its allies and even its foes are dire. They now include claims that Iran's military and Revolutionary Guard forces are practicing for detonation of a nuclear weapon just at the edge of the atmosphere.
Airline cabins are effective indicators of the health of the commercial air transport industry. The fact that carriers such as Qantas, Delta Air Lines and Iberia are sending their fleets for retrofits could be a sign that a recovery is under way, as many modifications are meant to match older aircraft to new models such as the Airbus A380 and Boeing 787.
The fear of a rising China coupled with the potential for lost jobs in Fort Worth and across the country has Texas lawmakers proposing a law that would turn on its head the way the U.S. sells weapons globally. Texas Republicans Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Kay Granger are trying to force the Obama administration to sell 66 Lockheed Martin F-16C and D aircraft to Taiwan, a move that defense experts call unprecedented.
