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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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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…

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?
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Some years ago (maybe 30) I read in Flight that the time was coming when a latest generation Combat aircraft was going to take the entire GDP of a small nation. At the time I took it seriously and though it a bit of an exaggeration but as time has worn on it seems they were joking at the time using delightful British irony but that they had unwittingly hit the nail on the head. That day is here with the F22 that the US wont sell to any one because it cost them so dear and mega Airliners taking many Billions to create and 100s of millions to buy.
As the financial crisis looms and doomsayers prattle away I wonder whether now is the time for a paradigm shift. Skip the A380 and A350 and B787 etc and go for a highly standardized no frills blended body well and truly subsonic alternatively powered (fuel cells and props?) solutions that will halve the cost per kg per kilometer (Note I use metric as I am talking of the future)
Anyone with the courage to do it should (?!) clean up.

It might not happen just yet but people are working on it and it looks as as if it is only a matter of time. One of the more esoteric but nonetheless fascinating speculations around is elaborated in the posts of Phil Barns viewable on the www.esoaing.com website.
In these he details a quite rigorous analysis of what is to be gained using current technology to recover energy from the atmosphere while flying a modern high Tec aircraft which looks like a cross between a state of the art Glider and a solar powered UAV.
His conclusion- Its doable.
I hope this serves to lift the spirits of aviators somewhat flattened by an apparent recent spate of disasters