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Every so often there is a buzz that someone has made a stunning break through in the Physical Sciences and achieve something wondrous. Antigravity, a space warp, cold fusion, action at a distance or some such. There are persistent rumors that people who know better than us are seriously researching exotic physics and indeed physics is become so bizarre that it would take a really arrogant person (such as the English scientists who declared the end of Physics after Newton had enunciated his laws of motion) to say any of these things are really truly impossible. There is a sort of suspicion that if we can’t go through the problem maybe we can go round it.
The latest example of this is the so called Emdrive developed initially by a small English company SPR (Satellite Propulsion research) Ltd The developer Roger Shawyer has good credentials and does not seem a lunatic but that has not stopped a lot of people some of them very well qualified themselves responding to a recent article in New Scientist with a mixture of scorn outrage and the scientific version of frothing at the mouth. This is because the claim if true will transform space travel and given that the Chinese have taken up the idea ahead of the rest of the space faring world it will see the Chinese with a healthy lead in a radical new development.
The Chinese team has purchased rights to part of the process and claims to have verified the theory and made progress with its practical application since June 2007. The team headed by Professor Yuan at Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU) in Xi’an is building a thruster based on Shawyer’s theories scheduled to be completed by end of this year.
The device that has sparked their interest is an engine that generates thrust purely from electromagnetic radiation – microwaves to be precise – by exploiting the strange properties of relativity. It has no moving parts, and releases no exhaust or noxious emissions. Potentially, it could pack the punch of a rocket in a box the size of a suitcase. It could one day replace the engines on almost any spacecraft. More advanced versions might allow cars to lift from the ground and hover. It could even lead to aircraft that will not need wings at all. One can’t help thinking that it sounds too good to be true.
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LCROSS Lunar Impact
7:31 a.m. EDT/4:31 a.m. PDT
Friday Oct. 9

Earth’s closest neighbor is holding a secret. In 1999, hints of that secret were revealed in the form of concentrated hydrogen signatures detected in permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles by NASA’s Lunar Prospector. These readings may be an indication of lunar water and could have far-reaching implications as humans expand exploration past low-Earth orbit. The Lunar CRater Observing and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) mission is seeking a definitive answer.

In April 2006, NASA selected the LCROSS proposal for a low-cost, fast-track companion mission to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO). The main LCROSS mission objective is to confirm the presence or absence of water ice in a permanently shadowed crater near a lunar polar region.

LCROSS launched with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on June 18, 2009 at 2:32 p.m. PDT. The LCROSS shepherding spacecraft and the Atlas V’s Centaur upper stage rocket executed a fly-by of the moon on June 23, 2009 (LCROSS lunar swingby video stream coverage) and entered into an elongated Earth orbit to position LCROSS for impact on a lunar pole. On final approach, the shepherding spacecraft and Centaur will separate. The Centaur will act as a heavy impactor to create a debris plume that will rise above the lunar surface. Projected impact at the lunar South Pole is currently: Oct 9, 2009 at 4:30 a.m. PDT. Following four minutes behind, the shepherding spacecraft will fly through the debris plume, collecting and relaying data back to Earth before impacting the lunar surface and creating a second debris plume.

The debris plumes are expected to be visible from Earth- and space-based telescopes 10-to-12 inches and larger.

The LCROSS science payload consists of two near-infrared spectrometers, a visible light spectrometer, two mid-infrared cameras, two near-infrared cameras, a visible camera and a visible radiometer. The LCROSS instruments were selected to provide mission scientists with multiple complimentary views of the debris plume created by the Centaur impact.

As the ejecta rises above the target crater’s rim and is exposed to sunlight, any water-ice, hydrocarbons or organics will vaporize and break down into their basic components. These components primarily will be monitored by the visible and infrared spectrometers. The near-infrared and mid-infrared cameras will determine the total amount and distribution of water in the debris plume. The spacecraft’s visible camera will track the impact location and the behavior of the debris plume while the visible radiometer will measure the flash created by the Centaur impact.

NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., is overseeing the development of the LCROSS mission with its spacecraft and integration partner, Northrop Grumman, Redondo Beach, Calif. LCROSS is a fast-paced, low-cost, mission that will leverage some existing NASA systems, commercial-off-the-shelf components, the spacecraft expertise of Northrop Grumman and experience gained during the Lunar Prospector Mission in 1999. Ames is managing the mission, conducting mission operations, and developing the payload instruments, while Northrop Grumman designed and is building the spacecraft for this innovative mission. Ames mission scientists will spearhead the data analysis.

YIKES!!. What a coup for photographer Stefan Sonnenberg. You can find him here…http://www.airliners.net/aviation-forums/profile.main?username=Whisperjet

Germania Boeing 737-300  registration D-ADII flight ST-8656The starlings had a bad day, as well as Germinia who have to fix the engines.

It was a lovely VFR day and the pilots did it well as a procedural engine fail on takeoff. Hopefully Stefan will get an award for his image, he certainly deserves that. In the event the aircraft returned to Dusseldorf with no problems other than those for the passengers to explain their late arrival. More here http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1217035/Bird-strike-The-moment-200-starlings-sucked-passenger-jet-engine-off.html

Getting back to aviation, think about what would have been the situation if some of the unfortunate birds had shut down the pitots as well, clearly visible in Stefans pic. Under the VFR conditions applicable the pilots would have done just as well, except that they would have been challenged a little. If however they were entering turbulent IMC they would be challenged greatly. Such is the importance of airspeed in aircraft operation.

More on this in a later post. Hope you liked the pic.

Some time ago there was a flurry of interest in the blended body concept in which the wing and body of an aircraft are blended as a way of minimising drag and as a result maximising efficiency.
The concept is not new and there have been a number of pioneers who attempted to develop and put into service an aircraft which could take advantage of the theoretical gains available.
The Horten brothers in Germany designed and flew a number of flying wings aircraft but the end of WW II brought this program to a halt before it could be developed. Another concept which has also been seen to have promise is the lifting fuselage proposed by an American pioneer Burnelli who designed built and flew a lifting body aircraft. In addition to the reduction in drag postulated they had advantages of being crash worhty and having large cabin volumes. There were not surprisingly, problems of various sorts. Flying wings for instance were difficult to fly being unstable.The problems were never adequately solved until modern capabilities made the management of them possible and as a result conventional strategies have been progressively developed and given rise to the airliner as we know it. A long fragile pencil with thin and structurally demanding wings.
Some manufactures have talked of these advantages and have proposed and done detailed planning. One of them being Boeing. The advantages never seemed to outweigh the risks. Not the least of the problems might have been how unconventional they would look to eyes used to the current form. Money talks, however and the environmnt may soon be screaming.
The tide may be turning with a number of manufactures now talking of the blended body as having significant attraction as consumption of oil and production of CO2 become increasingly a problem. Engine and airframe development and aerodynamic refinement are reaching a point of diminishing returns with curent formats and to make further gains more radical solutions will be have to be explored.
It has been claimed that the Blended body, which combines the virtues of the flying wing and the lifting fuselage, used in conjunction with advanced engines such as the open rotor, may be as much as 25% lower in fuel burn compared with the best contemporary practice. Read more…

It is perhaps time to consider this topic. One of the problems with having weapons is that the time comes when there is an opportunity to use them and there is also a time when they should be used. The two may not be the same occasion. We have seen repeated episodes of tragedy arising out of this quandary. the British police in their shocking and tragic pursuit of an illegal immigrant whom they had erroneously concluded to be a terrorist was the victim in part of a genuine concern about a threat but in part a recently introduced doctrine. This was the doctrine of “rapid neutralization” or “CNS shut down” to use two of the euphemisms for filling someone’s head with as many bullets as one can so as to ensure their dying twitch does not allow them to set of a bomb. It is disturbingly likely that this horrible technique was so fascinating that whether they knew it or not the Police were waiting for a chance to demonstrate that they could do it.
There are regrettably lunatics who somehow think it is right to kill people they don’t know, who have never and never would, do harm to them and theirs in the name of one cause or another and authorities have a duty to protect the populace against them. It is an aweful responsibility that has to be faced.

The aviation community has its own version of this dilemma but so far has avoided the tragedy that is waiting, of a well meant and indeed commanded shoot down of an innocuous aircraft deemed to be a terrorist threat.
As time goes by without much public debate it seems possible that the time will come. It is now known that Cheney the VP approved the Military to shoot down civilian aircraft under certain circumstance in the wake of 911. There has been a sort of denial arising probably out of the unreality of the situation but the latest incident in the US where a Mooney pilot became unresponsive and eventually crashed raises this important question again. let us have a bit of a think about this
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Finally the capability to use mobile telephones is being offered by an increasing number of airlines. We, the passengers have been clamouring for this for years in despair. This was a fight with too many dogs.  National aviation and communication regulatory authorities,  Industry  governing bodies,  manufacturers, air crew associations, telecommunications providers, you name it, and of course us, the customers. Eventually an acceptable model emerged for the enabling technology to go forward.

Each aircraft is equipped with a picocell. This is a low power cell phone tower operating within the cabin . This interfaces with the on board satellite communications links to interoperate with  the terrestrial  telecommunications networks and so process the call normally with full functionality.  That is actually very elegant and many enhancements are in the works for Wi-Fi internet access for example raising issues about VOIP and firewalls and the rest of it.
The main providers at the moment are OnAir (http://www.onair.aero) and AeroMobile (http://www.aeromobile.net). The rush is on….

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On Oct. 1, 1969, the Concorde 001, a joint British-French venture, traveled faster than the speed of sound for the very first time. It was the aircraft’s 45th test flight and it held Mach 1.05 for 9 minutes at 36,000 feet and 75 miles from Toulouse, France.

It wasn’t the first commercial aircraft to break the sound barrier, that was the Russian Tu 144 which had beaten the Concord by a few months but it was the Concord which went on to provide many years of commercial supersonic passenger flight.

Supersonic flight was for long only a dream but in 1974 Chuck Yeager (whom I have shaken hands with and is a real man who likes hunt’n shoot’n n Fish’n) was credited with being the first man to fly faster than sound.

For many years supersonic flight was the realm of the military only but Concord changed all that.

Although Concord has now been retired as uneconomic it looks likely that either as a luxury for the very rich or a service for corporated princes Supersonic flight will soon return to civil aviation as more and more projects move to fruition. In the mean time we will have to leave it to the military to provide us with sights such as this F 22 with its striking cloud trail.
The phenomenon is called a vapor cone or a shock collar, and, if you want to get really technical, a Prandtl–Glauert singularity. It is beautiful demonstration of how quickly things happen at the molecular level

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It had to happen and now we see the first move along the feeding chain of aviation litigation for the AF 447 tragedy.

lawyers want EUR1 billion as a starting point for AF447 – victims

The Air France crash on June 1 was the result of a preventable mix of human and technical failures, according to Stewarts Law, a UK law firm representing 50 of the victims’ families

Stewarts Law presented arguments in Paris this week after experts used a simulator to replicate the conditions experienced by the crew of the Airbus A330 in a storm off the coast of Brazil.

The firm wants Air France and Airbus to put the EUR1 billion into a pot to be divided among the families.
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