AircraftNews.Com

The NASA Constellation program is a manned spaceflight project continuing that tradition as the Shuttle program comes to an end. The program includes two boosters, the ARES 1 and the ARES V. The ARES I will be used to get the astronauts into orbit, the ARES V is the heavy lifter to get all the equipment for assembly in orbit for the manned missions to the moon and beyond. That is space shuttle ATLANTIS in the background.

Here is a picture to give you the idea.

The ARES-IX booster is the first major asset to be flight tested, launch scheduled  for Tuesday October 27. That was the date for the Saturn V first flight in 1961. Maybe there is something symbolic in this choice, but there is more, the White House could conceivably curtail or even cancel the whole project, depending on Obama’s expert Augustine commitee report, delivered last week. See the Review of U.S. Human Spaceflight Plans Committee releases its Final Report NASA press release. This report is a serious effort 18 months in preparation by a star-studded team. Ominously, the executive summary starts with these words…

The U.S. human spaceflight program appears to be on an unsustainable trajectory. It is perpetuating the perilous practice of pursuing goals that do not match allocated resources. Space operations are among the most demanding and unforgiving pursuits ever undertaken by humans. It really is rocket science. Space operations become all the more difficult when means do not match aspirations. Such is the case today.

The committee have invited comments on the Nasa website, just follow the links to FaceBook and Twitter and the rest set out on that page. If the faux rocket scientists of Wall Street can be bailed out, why not the true scientists. Please have your say.

Recently a student asked me what an open Rotor was and I replied it was basically a turbo prop but with things being how they are a sexier name had to be invented so they came up with this. It got me to thinking; as we are progressively backed up against the wall by reality it is only a matter of time before the open rotor makes its reappearance and so it is timely to have a look at how accurate my glib explanation was. Basically the problem with propellers is that they suffer from severe efficiency losses as the speed of the propeller tips approaches the speed of sound and basically the advantage of them is that they have to accelerate the working fluid (the air they fly in) less because they accelerate a lot more of it. I.e. they have in effect a much greater by-pass ratio than Turbo fans. The big question is where is the best trade off for speed versus efficiency. Time will tell. the Russian Bear long range patrol aircraft with its huge counter rotating props has been with us for years and conferred enormous range advantages when compared with the turbo jets of the time albeit with a considerable disadvantage in reliability. The new A400 European Military lifter will set new standards of frugality and is forecast to cruise at 450 kts which is quite respectable. After the next round of geared fans it looks as it there is only one place to go and that is the Open Rotor. Look for it in the next new wave; maybe with a blended body conformation aircraft. Read more…

Today the Bow Bells will chime 350 times to mark an International Day of Concern about Global warming. Might take quite some time. And hopefully give many pause to think. Many are left more than a little bemused by the various claims made about the climate and who is doing what to whom. The press in an allegedly high minded attempt to achieve balance seems to print back to back articles by doom sayers and climate skeptic which serves to confuse rather than inform. Some actually seem more bent on inflaming the debate than informing or analyzing. An example is the local Australian Provocateur Andrew Bolte in the Sun Herald.
For what it is worth I have been running thru the literature with a view to reaching some sort of understanding. My qualifications are: an interest and a rather stale PhD from a good university in an unrelated field of Science so make of this what you will.
Once one start trolling thru the literature it emerges that there is a consensus that is truly impressive. The globe is warming and man has contributed to this. The closer the area of expertise of the sources is to climate the more there is the agreement. When the arguments of the skeptics are examined they seem to all be readily shot down. The longer it goes on the more the persistent skeptics seem to be willfully blind and self serving (IMHO). Read more…

Cessna is the worlds largest General Aviation aircraft manufacturer. As such their fully resourced move into the sport aviation space by the development of the Model 162 is of great moment in the GA world. It was always a mystery why Cessna chose not to compete with the LSA manufacturers, particularly from Europe. Now all is clear. They could not get the price into the $100K ballpark using domestic manufacturing. The LSA world will be changed forever. The sportaviation manufacturers now have competition from the master with a mainly metal entry of the highest standard.
Last month the first production prototype was flown for the first time by Shenyang Aircraft Corporation.

This project which was announced at Oskosh in 2006 is on schedule and first customer deliveries will take place in 2009. This is a serious aircraft with all the trimmings; glass cockpit, Garmin G300 split screen primary flight and multi-function displays, airframe ballistic parachute etc.

The 162 was developed from scratch. It is not a derivative product. It carries no baggage, Ah Hum!.

Cessna made it look easy, on time, thru the Global Financial Collapse, and the loss of two flying prototypes in spin testing accidents (no injuries). Oh, and the price USD 115,000 or so.

Expect to see lots of these soon at an airfield near you. Read more…

In the land of Oz we have long distances, high temperatures and a member of the old British colonial family and good mate New Zealand an inconvenient 1200nm or so to the East. One of the results of this is that the aviation oriented members of the Oz community spend a lot of time poring over performance specs, cash flows and maintenance costs not to mention single engine vs twin engine safety analyses so that we can give substance to our dreams of commuting from our place of work in Oz to our hideaway in NZ. Various products come to mind but for the average moderately successful person who is sold on flying their own aircraft to and from there is a slippery slope with no obvious sweet spot. The Cessna Mustang eg looks to be a really good little rocket with considerable charter potential in the SE of Australia as it will cover Vic and NSW Adelaide Melbourne Sydney stuff pretty well but it requires a bit of planning and usually a stop on the way to NZ and certainly one on the way back . The Piperjet looks better but is single engine (on the other hand it is a Turbine and in flight-shut downs are said to be of the order of 1 in 150,000 hrs of operation). It is however still one’s one and only life in the opinion of many and the statistics of twins (likely to lose both engines once in 22.5 trillion hours of operation) are still pursuasive. Since nothing quite fills the bill and the idea of flying a personal aircraft with DOC of more than about $700 per hour starts to look a bit extravagant, people dream on with brochures and business plans spread out before them. As the result of a recent airport purchase the business I am associated with has put the bizjet on the back burner for a few months and this has encouraged a new bout of dreaming. The latest target is the Stratos. Obviously some smart people have got together what they know is about in available technology and decided they can do better than has been done so far. Essentially if they were to achieve their goals there would be an affordable non stop commuter from Oz to NZ. Back to one engine though. Also one engine at 41,000 ft raises some thoughts about emergency descent etc. Probably pie in the sky (one wonders what is in the water they are drinking but does wish them every success). Sooner or later some such will fly and what a buzz that will be.
Read more…

Here at the AN we do not know what causes accidents, or even death for that matter. We leave that to the experts. It does appear that victims advised by their lawyers have ventured there, and now read this:
You may need a web page translator to render French to English.

AF447: The crash of Paris-Rio was avoidable

The Union of Airfrance Pilots(SPAF) say in this report, it is the failure of the Pitot probes to measure speed that caused the crash.

Suddenly AF447 is back in the limelight. This will not go away, lawyers are on the case. The Black Box will probably not be found, but if it were ever to be found many anticipate it would simply elucidate the sequence. At some point the ADIRU gave up resulting in a handover to the pilots in impossible conditions.

Nobody knows exactly what happened to AF447 but what we do know is that airspeed measurement is of critical importance when we are flying at great altitude in subsonic airframes. In pilot slang, as you ascend you enter the coffin corner, the apex of which is a point where the aircraft is stalled and exceeding the speed of sound (MACH 1)
simultaneously, hence the name.

Here is a simplified graphic of coffin corner courtesy of Wikipedia. With increasing altitude the stall speed increases and the speed of sound decreases. Our long distance RPT jets spend a large percentage of their flight times in the vicinity of this no go point. The fact that jet travel is very safe is testament to the skills of the engineers, scientists and pilots who make all this viable.

Those of us that fly are well familiar with the airspeed pitot system, in fact most of us can tell a story about what went wrong. Insects, dust, ice, covers left on, paint, masking tape, and so on. There have been major RPT catastrophies outside of the coffin corner for these simple reasons. Shit happens, we all know that. The difference with coffin corner is that we are high and fast, a long way from home with poor or no visual reference, and in addition we are stalling or breaking up, all mediated and filtered by a computer which says over to you.

In the great Echo-Chamber of the Internet you will read that we are depending upon the 18th. century technology of Henri Pitot to measure airspeed. In fact there has been a steady development from the time of Darcy in the 19th. century until now. We are committed to subsonic flight for long range RPT, but this pneumatic sensor technology may have hit it’s use by date.

In the very early days the pioneers flew without air speed instruments. The Wrights used a crude angle of attack indicator, Bleriot flew the English Channel with no airspeed instrument. The onset of WW1 encouraged the development of the Pitot-Darcy pitot method of differential air pressure devices to measure air speed in support of the fast and high powered aircraft required to fight a war. The highly developed devices in use today are direct descendents. Essentially they tap ambient air using pitot probes and static ports, measure the pressure difference, then compute and display a calibrated airspeed.

Airspeed measurement technology is in the headlines now, for everybody, not just the aviation buffs.

A major in the Australian Army was knocked to the ground by an unexpected and trivial structural failure on one of the Army’s new highly advanced Tiger combat helicopters when staging through Essendon Airport today. While conducting a routine inspection from the stub wing the Officer was knocked to the ground (where he stayed for a few minutes) when a large inspection panel parted company with the airframe and fell to the ground. The office was offered first aid by airport and flying school staff but despite sporting a ripper lump over his R eye he claimed to be well.
Gotta be careful with those Tigers. They also said it was a brilliant bit of kit and we were all very impressed (By the Tiger and the casualty’s fortitude).

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.
Read more…

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.