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Gulfstream Aerospace has Rolled Out it’s new Flagship Aircraft, the All-new Gulfstream G650

Gulfstream Aerospace, now a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics (NYSE: GD) and once upon a time a part of Grumman, today revealed its new flagship business jet, the all-new Gulfstream G650, at company headquarters in Savannah. The aircraft rolled out under its own power. First announced in March 2008, the ultra-large-cabin, ultra-long-range G650 remains on schedule for customer deliveries in 2012. Approximately 7,000 people gathered at the new G650 manufacturing building for the aircraft’s debut. The audience included state and local dignitaries, customers, certifying authorities, supplier representatives, members of the G650 development team and many other employees at the Savannah facility.
The aircraft raises the bar in every area including price and it is a great achivement that is has been developed on schedule and without developmen glitches Read more…

It was inevitable that there would be an engine incident in the A 380. Yesterday a Singapore airlines flight from France to Asia was returned to Paris after an engine warning lead to one of its four RR Trent 900 engines being shut down. The engine will be changed and the passengers put up in Hotels overnight. The Trent was the launch engine for the A380 and at present 52% of the A380 orders carry the RR engine. The other option is the GE, P&W Engine Alliance GP7000. The RR Trent 900 developed from an earlier version of the highly reliable Trent 500 has a number of advance features including light weight wide chord swept fan blades and Hamilton Sundstrand Fuel controllers.

Given there are four engines on each aircraft and the operators have been doing their best to fly the pants of them it is no surprise that there has been an in flight shut down and in fact one could even say it has been an eagerly awaited event for the voyeurs and pundits of aviation not to mention the industry in general. Read more…

For those with an interest in these things it has been entertaining to watch the various forces at work in the market as Sweden France Europe Russia and the US attempt to pedal influence rack up kudos and rake in Billions of Dollars while at the same time supporting world peace by selling shockingly capable systems of destructiveness in the form of fourth generation Jet Fighters.
Each has their own take on it. There is stealth, with the US being the masters, there is bang for the buck which is hard to evaluate given the horse trading, there is out right performance with the US proudly refusing to even consider selling the accepted top dog the F 22, there is economy with a very good case to be made for e.g. the excellent Gripen but so far very little action. South Africa have bought the Gripen, Oz the Super Hornet, numerous Asian nations the highly capable SU 30s no one but European nations (but they have bought quite a few) the Typhoon, numerous Asian nationas the highly capable Su 30s etc but the Raphale, apparently a very potent machine has been a bit short of support. It is now touted as being very likely that Brazil will buy the Raphale. If so it will be a highly significant break through for the French and a possible determining move in South America. Watch this space. Read more…

Randy Tinseth, vice president for marketing at Boeing’s commercial aircraft unit wrote in a blog post that workers at Boeing in Everett, Washington, have begun fixing a flaw on the first 787 Dreamliner test aircraft in preparation for its long-delayed first flight later this year.
Modifications to reinforce the areas where the plane’s wings join its body had recently begun, three months after the company again abruptly postponed the Dreamliner’s long-awaited test-flight program. Read more…

In the near term one stage to orbit is seeming progressively more likely as the low (relatively) cost option for space travel but for the student of speculation there are some really exciting prospects in the more distant future.
Some of the mooted projects are space towers in which orbiting stations suspend elevators to the surface and others include self suspending orbital rings, space fountains and maglev launching loops.

Current mega structures such as the Oresund bridge which connects Sweden to Denmark and is about 18 miles long, the Viaduc de Millau Bridge in the South of France 8000 ft and the Rion Antirion cable bridge in Greece is over 7000 ft long are dwarfed by the proposed structures. In the case of the orbital loop launcher, for optimal functioning the loop is to be 5000 km long and move at about 14 km/sec. It is hard to imaging that anything so immense could be planned and built but then there is also the tendency for whatever is possible to come to pass.

One of the hard to answer questions is why would any one bother? Two answers come to mind. Money and Prestige. If there is money in it the capitalists will do it. If there is prestige in it maybe as the century moves on some of the superpowers will see it as the war equivalent which will establish their premier place. Perhaps the first example of this is the plan announced by Shuichi Ono, chairman of the Japan Space Elevator Association in Sept 2008 to built an orbital tower.

More theoretically if humanity is tied to earth forever it is more or less certainly doomed by Asteroid impact or solar evolution and so if society is to survive and humanity is to persist such structures must sooner or later be built. There is also the fact that it would be such fun.

Single stage to orbit (SSTO) is the way to go for cheaper space travel but so far it has defeated the available technology. Basically the reason for needing multiple stages is that carrying all the mass of a rocket into orbit makes the process inefficient and costly. With multiple stages mass can be dropped as the fuel in it is used. The problem with multiple stages is that re-using stages is difficult because they obviously have to be retrieved in one piece and without salt water damage if they are to be reused and there is obvious waste if they are expended. Despite the existance of some wayout plans for vastly more efficient techniques such as Space Towers which will lower an elevator down from orbit and Launch Fountains which would use a stream of projectiles to suspend structures in space, the near term technique of choice seems to be the use of air breathing engines for the initial boost to something like mach 5 after which an efficient rocket provides the remaining boost into orbit.
The suggestion that the SSTO is a step closer comes with claims by Reaction Engines Limited a British company to have under development a new form of hybrid engine which does not have the drawbacks of earlier planned hybrid strategies. They predict economically viable SSTO could be with us by 2012 Read more…

Those with a long term interest in Australian aviation cannot help but bemoan the way government has constantly failed to support the Australian aircraft Industry. While Brazil for example and Israel and Sweden have all demonstrated that small nations can nonetheless build world class capability, Australia has constantly failed to support aviation. A recent publication by one of Australia’s best qualified observers spells this out with well argued and detailed information.

AFTER more than five decades sifting through the history of Australia’s aircraft manufacturing industry, Keith Meggs says the thing that always surprises him is the ineptness of government decisions. Read more…

AUSTRALIAN troops in Afghanistan have gained a major new platform to assist in the fight against Taliban insurgents with the RAAF acquiring Israeli-made Heron unmanned aerial vehicles.

The Heron Manufactured by Israel Aerospace industries is a 26 M span 1500 kg pilotless vehicle capable of remain aloft for over a day and can deliver high quality real time images in the visual infra red and microwave spectrums.
Powered by a piston engine and cruising at 100 kts it is GPS guided and can take off and land autonomously. There is the option for it to be either pre programmed or remote controlled or a combination of both. Read more…

There has been a deafening silence in the general press about the AF 447 tragedy of recent times. What with drones running round in various places bombing baddies with the occasional bit of collateral damage generally agreed to be regrettable by the responsible (what a way to use the word) parties and regular suicide bombings not to mention ferries turning over and NSW Cabinet Ministers being laid low by spurned lovers it does not take long for even such a monumental tragedy to fade into the background but those of us who fly are worried and will not rest until some sense can be made of it.
At present the official position is that we do not know the cause but suspect a perfect storm of events starting with a sensor failure led to a loss of control. The more time passes the more this seems pretty thin. If this could be the case then thousands are daily in danger. I expect that behind the scenes this is being taken very seriously and I also suspect that given the propensity for litigation currently prevailing loose lips sink financial ships is guiding the dissemination of information i.e. what you don’t know wont hurt you (or more accurately in some cases wont hurt the company).
It seems we have reached the point predicted frequently by experts where systems too complicated to be completely analyzed have been created and are in daily world wide service.
In the design philosophy of the Airbus et al a very serious effort has been made to build in protection by redundancy but as reports come in more and more evidence of startling failures emerges of the type which warrant drastic action.
I have collected reports of a total of 52 incidents in which malfunctions of automated flight systems with computers at their core have created situations where there was a serious risk of the loss of an aircraft and all aboard. As my research has not been exhaustive likely ther are many more. Two of these situations did lead to the loss of aircraft. In one case, the crash of a B2, the crew were able to eject but the bomber worth about $250 mil was lost while in the other case – AF 447, the aircraft and all on board were lost.
Why are we continuing to fly them? In the case of the Air force and B2s the failure was diagnosed and corrected but in the case of the AF447 it is clear that in actual fact the risks are regarded as acceptable in the face of the cost of the only rational action which is to stop using these aircraft till we understand what is going on. Or am I just just being alarmist?
Read more…

At every level there is doubt about the efficacy and indeed the common sense of the security regulations and responses we now have to deal with since 911 and Osama unless he is in his grave must be laughing his head off at the enormous cost he has been able to get us to inflict on ourselves as a society.
As I suspect everyone has ruminated at some time or another as they have had some innocent object confiscated by some officious goon or gooness (in my case a small shifting spanner about 2 inches long) always with the excuse “I am just following rules” it is obvious that much silliness goes on in the name of security.
The absurdly extreme measures which exist serve, as is so often correctly stated, only to inconvenience the law abiding in society without doing more than give minor pause to the destructive amongst us.
So far there has not been much of a bite back from the public because they can usually be scared into submission by saying “terrorism” but sooner or later simple economics may lead to a search for a better paradigm.
In what may perhaps be the beginnings of a movement in the direction of sanity a recent speech by an American professor of Biology has suggested that a different take might be very rewarding.
The basic concept is that organisms constantly face security threats and they respond in an adaptable and flexible local level and so are able to respond very quickly and appropriately.
The top down – it has been ruled that nail clippers are not allowed onto aircraft (whereas plastic coat hangers which when broken make much better weapons than nail clippers are) approach is so predictable that it is easily circumvented. Whereas an appropriately empowered and savvy local defence security apparatus might be much more effective Read more…