aerospace america may 2015

2015·6.8 MB·English

May 2015
THE BATTLE FOR DOMINANCE ON AIRLINERS
Page 18

DARPA’s tailless cargo drone/10
Cosmonaut diary/38
A PUBLICATION OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF AERONAUTICS AND ASTRONAUTICS
Unmanned Flight Safety Guidance
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May 2015
DEPARTMENTS
EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK 2
The future of air travel
INTERNATIONAL BEAT 4
China’s new airports; French rail monitoring; pivotal year for A380
Page 6
IN BRIEF 8
‘Terraforming in a bottle’; inflatable space habitats
ENGINEERING NOTEBOOK 10
Flying tailless
CONVERSATION 12
Cosmic archaeologist
SCHOOL ZONE 16
Page 36
The case for teamwork in systems engineering
OUT OF THE PAST 46
CAREER OPPORTUNITIES 48
FEATURES
COMPOSITES VS. METALS 18 Page 38
Composite materials are revolutionizing modern airliners. Designers
like them for their reduced weight and durability. But metal makers
are feeling reinvigorated by the advent of additive manufacturing.
by Henry Canaday Page 24
AVIATION AFTER GERMANWINGS FLIGHT 9525 24
The flying public, regulators and academics are pondering safety
improvements following the deaths of 150 passengers and crew
at the hands of an apparently suicidal pilot.
by Kyung M. Song and Philip Butterworth-Hayes
CLEANING UP SPACE 32
Once upon a time, only space wonks worried about space debris.
The problem is fast becoming a boardroom issue, given all the
new proposals to populate low Earth orbit with swarms
of small commercial satellites.
by Debra Werner
COSMONAUT DIARIES 38 Page 9
Soviet cosmonaut Anatoly Berezovoy made only one space flight during
his career. His 1982 mission, the first expedition to the Salyut 7 space
station, lasted a then-record of 211 days. During much of Berezovoy’s
time in space, he chronicled his observations on paper.
by Anatoly Zak Special
supplement
BULLETIN
AIAA Meeting Schedule B2
AIAA News B5
AIAA Courses and Training B15
ON THE COVER
Graphic by John Bretschneider
Aerospace America (ISSN 0740-722X) is published monthly by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc. at 1801 Alexander Bell Drive, Reston, Va. 20191-4344 [703/264-7500].
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®
Editor’s Notebook
is a publication of the American Institute
of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Ben Iannotta
Editor-in-Chief
Kyung M. Song
The future of air travel
Associate Editor
Greg Wilson
Production Editor
When I board a plane and see a pilot and co-pilot preparing for takeoff, I wonder
Jerry Grey
what air travel will be like a century from now.
Editor-at-Large
Christine Williams My guess is that the planes of the 22nd century will fly largely autonomously,
Editor AIAA Bulletin probably with a human pilot aboard as a teammate. This won’t happen by magic. It
will require humans to make many discrete decisions that over decades will amount
Contributing Writers to momentous change.
Philip Butterworth-Hayes, Keith Button, In the wake of the Germanwings crash in March, the industry should begin to
Henry Canaday, Leonard David,
embrace this high-tech future. Manufacturers and airlines could start small, for ex-
Edward Goldstein, Henry Kenyon,
ample, by having a remote pilot on the ground, or perhaps computer algorithms,
Robert van der Linden, Samantha Walters,
maneuver a troubled airliner into the equivalent of a satellite’s safe hold mode.
Nathan Wasserman, Debra Werner,
Frank H. Winter, Anatoly Zak Aviation authorities and the crew on the plane could then assess the situation.
[See related story on page 24.]
Jane Fitzgerald
It’s true that the industry’s overall safety record remains laudable even with the
Art Direction and Design
Germanwings crash, the downing of MH17 by a missile and the disappearance of
James F. Albaugh, President MH370 last year. But statistics can’t capture the frustration of a crash that might
James “Jim” Maser, President-Elect
have been avoided. In this age of technology, passengers shouldn’t have to worry
Sandra H. Magnus, Publisher
about vanishing over the ocean or finding themselves at the mercy of an apparently
Craig Byl, Manufacturing and Distribution
mentally ill co-pilot.
STEERING COMMITTEE Airlines that modernize to address these problems will gain a market edge.
John Evans, Lockheed Martin; Steven E. Once that happens, safety technologies that seemed exotic will become the norm,
Gorrell, Brigham Young University; Frank Lu, like the auto industry’s hands-free Bluetooth systems and side-curtain airbags.
University of Texas at Arlington; David R. Riley, Customers will expect them.
Boeing; Mary L. Snitch, Lockheed Martin;
Of course, this isn’t the first time a tipping point seemed to be at hand. In the
Annalisa Weigel, Panoptes Systems
months after the 2001 terror attacks, retired engineer Seymour “Sy” Levine pushed
EDITORIAL BOARD a patented concept called Safelander in which a remote pilot at a secure site would
Ned Allen, Jean-Michel Contant, be empowered to take control of an airliner. Authorities decided to reinforce cock-
Eugene Covert, L.S. “Skip” Fletcher,
pit doors instead. Maybe that was the right answer in 2001, when the assumption
Michael Francis, Cam Martin,
was that terrorist sleeper cells were everywhere and a fast solution was needed.
Don Richardson, Douglas Yazell
But in the years since, the U.S. Air Force set up networks of terrestrial fiber and
ADVERTISING satellites to remotely pilot drones half a world away, although not with the safety
Joan Daly, 703-938-5907
performance that would be demanded by airlines and regulators. Great strides were
[email protected]
also made on autonomous control, which could liberate aircraft from vulnerable
Pat Walker, 415-387-7593 radio links to the ground.
[email protected] Turning these technologies into an operational system would require invest-
ment. This spending would be justified, because an emergency system would apply
LETTERS AND CORRESPONDENCE
to scenarios far beyond hijackings or suicidal pilots. The system could take control
Ben Iannotta, [email protected]
of a plane whose pilot has made a grave error, such as the case of Asiana Flight 214
QUESTIONS AND ADDRESS CHANGES whose pilot inadvertently deactivated the automated airspeed control, sending the
[email protected] plane into a seawall at San Francisco International Airport. Four years earlier, Cap-
ADVERTISING MATERIALS tain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger made a miraculous landing on the Hudson, but if a
Craig Byl, [email protected] powerful computer had been aboard, it might have orchestrated a less risky landing
at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey.
May 2015, Vol. 53, No. 5 None of this is to say that computers are perfect. As planes become smarter and
more connected, it’s going to be critical for pilots to stay sharp for those moments
when they do need to take charge. In the case of Air France Flight 447 in 2009, the
autopilot threw up its digital hands and turned matters over to the pilots who lost
control of the plane.
Twenty-second century air travel will require skilled pilots and powerful com-
puters. The journey should begin now.
Ben Ianno tta
Editor-in-Chief
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China’s soaring plans for new airports
Western observers expect China’s next tion goals. Not anymore. The last five- to build airports than highways and
five-year economic plan to call for over year economic plan, 2011-2015, called high-speed train links. Seventy per
a thousand new airport development for constructing 82 airports and ex- cent of all airline travel in China is
projects —a mix of expansions and en- panding 101 others by the end of this now domestic.
tirely new airports — when it is re- year, taking the total number of civil So even if China’s economy were
leased in October. These would be airports in China to 230. Many indus- to slow, analysts say, demand for new
mainly small airfields rather than ma- try observers expect China to make airports should remain robust, espe-
jor commercial hubs. But the blueprint good on that target. cially as domestic air services continue
will increase the number of Zaha Hadid Architects to liberalize and allow aircraft
airports open to civil traffic operators to develop new routes.
from around 230 today to as China’s current five-year plan
many as 1,500 within the next calls for doubling the number of
six years —a pace analysts say general and business aviation
would be the most extensive aircraft in China. According to
airport construction and devel- Hong Kong-based aviation con-
opment program in history. sultants Asian Sky Group, the
Fulfilling this vision and devel- number of business aircraft
oping current airports into based in China rose from 64 in
more commercial operations, 2007 to 371 at the end of 2013.
however, will require attracting Artist’s rendering of the planned Daxing Airport near Beijing. This growth in business and
more foreign investments. general aviation is likely to accel-
The projects are expected to be “Our 20-year passenger forecast en- erate if outlined plans to liberalize the
concentrated in smaller towns and cities visages 5.5 percent [annual] growth in airspace below 15,000 feet for civil air-
in remote areas to meet the growing de- China, leading to it becoming the craft operators are adopted in the next
mand for business and leisure air travel. world’s largest air travel market around five-year plan. Much of this airspace is
Experts with interests in China said the 2030,” Tony Tyler, director general of the currently managed by the military but
country needs airports quickly to con- International Air Transport Association, the government is looking at proposals
nect its northern and western provinces said in a speech in Shanghai in March. for opening up lower airspace levels for
with the industrial cities of its eastern More than two-thirds of all airport general aviation aircraft.
seaboard —the main area of economic construction in the world is in China, China is also now looking to re-
growth for the last two decades — and according to a 2013 article in Ascend fine its operating practices and attract
with new markets in Europe and the magazine, published by the airline con- foreign investment into its airport de-
Middle East. China is now looking to ex- sulting firm Sabre Airline Solutions. velopment programs, experts say.
pand its trade and energy links with the The Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation in In October 2012 China Invest-
West, which observers say likely will Sydney estimates China is currently ment Corporation, the state-run in-
mean building airports in Tibet, which building or expanding 56 airports at a vestment fund, bought a 10 percent
borders India, and Xinjiang province, cost of nearly $60 billion. Some of stake in Heathrow Ltd, the company
which shares a frontier with Pakistan, those are huge. When it opens in 2018, that owns and operates London’s
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Beijing’s second airport at Daxing will Heathrow airport. In contrast to Chi-
Afghanistan. have four runways and an annual ca- na’s investments abroad, Budd says,
“A lot of development will take pacity for 45 million passengers — foreign investment in Chinese air-
place around the one belt, one road de- about the number who pass through ports so far has been limited: Ger-
velopment policy,” says Peter Budd, San Francisco International Airport many’s Fraport has a major stake in
head of the U.K. engineering company each year. Long-term planning for Dax- Xi’an Xianyang International Airport,
Arup’s Global Aviation Business, refer- ing calls for capacity for 100 million and Hong Kong International Airport
ring to China’s plan to re-invigorate travelers, which would edge out Harts- also has interests in airports in the
trade along the historic Silk Road route field-Jackson Atlanta International Air- south of China.
that once linked Asia to the Middle East port, currently the world’s busiest. But given the current growth fore-
and Europe. Demand for domestic, not inter- casts, these are unlikely to be the only
Until recently, many in the West national, air services is fueling China’s investors in Chinese airports for long.
were skeptical of the speed and size growth. For many cities in China’s Philip Butterworth-Hayes
of China’s national airport construc- vast interior, it’s cheaper and quicker [email protected]
4 AEROSPACE AMERICA/MAY 2015
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Germany’s Deutsche Bahn has used MD4-1000s to deter trespassers and graffiti artists on railroad tracks.
Algorithms, new aircraft
and bridges. The February agreement
marks a shift toward a strategic re-
keys to French rail monitoring
search program.
Other countries are interested in
unmanned planes, too. In January,
the U.K.’s National Rail company
Lots of countries are starting to use a platform does not yet exist,” he says signed a three-year agreement with
unmanned aircraft to watch railways in a French-language podcast on the Cyberhawk Innovations, a company
and other infrastructure for trespassers website of ONERA, short for Office that conducts umanned aerial in-
or maintenance problems, but France’s National d’Études et de Recherches spections and surveys of utility lines
unmanned aircraft initiative appears Aérospatiales and facilities, tracks and embank-
to be unique for its scale —30,000 ki- France plans to incorporate these ments. In Australia, rail freight opera-
lometers of rail lines —and a desire to still-to-be built planes into a monitor- tor Aurizon has begun testing un-
spark innovation in aircraft design. ing network that will include sensors manned craft to monitor the high
Efforts in such countries as the and communications aids to survey voltage electrical system along its
United Kingdom, Australia and the building interiors, including stations central Queensland coal network. It
Netherlands have mainly involved and maintenance centers. is operating two German Micro-
small unmanned aircraft operated lo- ONERA and the French state drones MD4-1000s equipped with
cally by pilots on the ground. France railway company Société Nationale Sony A6000 digital cameras with a
aims to deliver a comprehensive sur- des Chemins de Fer, or SNCF, signed resolution of 24 megapixels and in-
veillance network based on autono- an agreement in February that will frared cameras. In the U.S., Union
mous unmanned planes. Researchers have the agencies invest a total of Pacific has tested the use of Aurora
will initially work on algorithms to €4 million ($4.4 million) over the Flight Sciences unmanned craft for
allow the automatic surveillance of next five years to explore the use of track inspections. In April 2014, Ger-
tracks and overhead power cables unmanned aircraft to monitor the many’s Deutsche Bahn used MD4-
but will also prioritize the develop- rail system. 1000s to deter trespassers — espe-
ment of surveillance systems to deter SNCF’s 30,000 kilometers of track cially graffiti artists — on the track.
thieves from removing valuable ca- includes 2,000 kilometers of high ProRail in the Netherlands has used
bles, which costs the state rail com- speed lines with an additional 800 ki- Altura Zenith ATX8s with infrared
panies several million euros a year. lometers under construction. The sensors to check the switch point
“The big challenge is to develop company runs safety trains along the heating systems on its tracks. Polish
drones which can monitor several track every morning before passenger freight transport company PKP Cargo
thousand kilometres of track —which services start, to ensure the line is is using unmanned planes to prevent
means long-term endurance, autono- clear —an expensive and lengthy pro- coal theft during transport . Light rail
mous modes of operation and the cess that an unmanned air system operators in Jerusalem have used
ability to operate in harsh weather could one day replace, according to Bladerworx unmanned craft to moni-
conditions including high winds and ONERA experts. tor the damage to infrastructure dur-
rain,” according to Florent Muller, a French officials have used un- ing recent riots.
systems and surveillance expert at the manned aircraft for such localized Philip Butterworth-Hayes
French Aerospace Lab, ONERA. “Such tasks as inspecting electrical stations [email protected]
AEROSPACE AMERICA/MAY 2015 5
Make-or-break time This looks like a pivotal year for the
A380, the double-decker plane that
for more than a decade Airbus has
billed as a key to airline profitability
for Airbus A380
in the 21st century.
Airbus won no airline orders in
2014 for the $428 million aircraft. In
fact, since the first order in September
2001, Airbus has received only 317 or-
In December, Etihad Airways became the 13th airline to receive an A380 double-deck jetliner, and the third operator from the Middle East to do so.
Airbus
6 AEROSPACE AMERICA/MAY 2015
ders against its original forecast of a of having to deal with wiring complex- the A380 beyond the legacy hubs of
demand for 1,250 planes of more than ities and incompatible production soft- London, Dubai and Singapore.
400 seats (the A380 has 500) through ware among the major partners. Then, Airbus will need new orders and
2023. The A380 was designed to cap- the global economic crisis of 2008 hit new customers soon if it is to forge
ture that market, but the market hasn’t many airlines in North America and ahead with development of the
taken off as expected. Of the existing Europe just when many were consider- A380neo. Emirates and Turkish Air-
orders, 40 percent came from a single ing ordering the aircraft. lines are reportedly negotiating with
airline, Emirates. On top of that, the operational Airbus for A380s but the question is
Airbus executives are waiting to benefits of carrying 500 passengers whether the numbers involved would
see whether more airlines this year will on a single plane have not played out be enough to warrant spending sev-
commit to buying the A380 before as expected. National and interna- eral more billion dollars on a re-
making tough decisions about its fu- tional regulators have ruled that sepa- engining program, when Airbus has
ture. Analysts told Aerospace America ration distances between the A380 other projects to weigh.
that the company has two choices: and following aircraft should be “Even though they still have five
Continue with the current configura- greater than those for Boeing 747s, as more years of production, Airbus is
tion and hope the market picks up or the A380 is heavier and generates a going to have to take a decision on
spend several billion dollars on a new more powerful wake vortex. This re-engining quite quickly,” said Sa-
version of the plane called the means that capacity-constrained air- quer, the consultant.
A380neo, with more fuel-efficient en- ports that had hoped the A380 would Analyst Jacob Markish of Renais-
gines, a redesigned wing and perhaps a allow them to increase passenger sance Strategic Advisors in Virginia
longer fuselage. throughput without increasing aircraft said that developing a new design of
numbers have not been able to in- the A380 with more fuel-efficient en-
crease their capacity as much as they gines “will get [Airbus] some incre-
had planned. mental volume but would also tie up
And in May 2013, Boeing began resources perhaps better spent on
selling a higher passenger version of further strengthening the A350 line,
its 777 airliner, called the 777 9X, a introducing the A320neo” — an up-
development that posed a new chal- graded version of the A380’s smaller
lenge to the A380 on long-haul routes. cousin —“into service and developing
The 777 9X will have 400 seats, a the long range version of the A321,
$388.7 million price tag and two en- all of which may have more of com-
gines compared to the A380’s four. pelling, positive business case than
What should become clear this the A380.”
year, aircraft industry officials pre- In February Airbus Chief Execu-
dicted, is whether the underlying tive Tom Enders announced to finan-
business case for the A380 is valid, cial analysts that the A380 program
despite its slow start. will break even this year, meaning
One industry watcher suggested that from 2016 the company will
that Airbus’s calculations could even- produce each A380 at a profit. In
tually prove correct. one view, money alone has never
“I don’t think they were entirely been the underlying justification for
wrong,” said Thomas Saquer, a Lon- the A380.
don-based consultant for Frost & Sul- “In many ways Airbus was al-
livan. “When they developed the most forced to build the A380 regard-
A380 they thought that [long-haul] less of how strong the business case
Airbus business aviation routes would fly hub was for it. The primary rationale was
If new orders aren’t received, pro- to hub, which has been the case but arguably to develop a product portfo-
duction would end within the next six maybe has not developed as fast as lio which could finally compete toe to
years. That prediction is based on a pro- they thought. The financial crisis has toe with Boeing across the entire
duction rate of 28 to 30 planes annually, also put airline operating margins un- breadth of product range,” said Mark-
the rate that added up to deliveres of der pressure, which has meant they ish. “The design point which Airbus
154 planes at the start of the year. have been struggling to raise capital came in at was, perhaps, slightly
The A380 rolled out slower than to buy this size of aircraft.” larger than ideal, because they had to
expected, which is not unusual for a The good news for Airbus could differentiate its product from that of
new aircraft type. The first revenue be the emergence of new hubs in the the competition.”
earning flights came in 2007, 18 months United Arab Emirates, Turkey and Philip Butterworth-Hayes
later than planned, mainly as a result China. This could create demand for [email protected]
AEROSPACE AMERICA/MAY 2015 7
In Brief
‘Terraforming in a bottle’ on Mars
Future human explorers working in periment can hitch a ride on a future 1 1/2 inches to 2 inches deep, the
the harsh climes of Mars could find NASA rover sent to Mars. hardware would use Martian ice as
easy breathing and comfy living in- Eugene Boland, chief scientist at its phase changes into liquid water,
side biodomes —that is, if research by Techshot, is working on the idea with Boland says.
a small Indiana company succeeds. grant money from the NASA Innova- Mars is not completely devoid of
Scientists at Techshot, Inc., of tive Advanced Concepts Program, un- oxygen. So the test bed equipment
Greenville, Ind., want to test the der the space agency’s Space Technol- would be outfitted with a sensor to
concept of ecopoiesis, in which spe- ogy Mission Directorate. assure that the transplanted-from-
cialized bacteria generate oxygen Techshot exposed microbes to Earth microbes are indeed churning
from soil and create a mini-ecosys- simulated Mars conditions for five out oxygen. Data gleaned by the ex-
tem. In an experiment on Mars, weeks earlier this year, Boland says. periment would be relayed to a Mars
Techshot’s sensor-laden container “We’re impressed that our mi- orbiting spacecraft for transmission
would corkscrew into the landscape crobes still survived under the atmo- to Earth.
and release ecosystem-pioneering spheric pressure of Mars, the full so- Boland says, “The two biggest
organisms inside the container. lar radiation that reaches the planet’s challenges we have right now [are]
These cyanobacteria and other mi- surface, along with the day-night building the device small enough that
croorganisms that live in extreme temperature swings,” Boland said. we can drill into sandy Martian rego-
conditions on Earth would interact Using simulated Mars soil provided lith” and using “a low-torque drill that
with a soil sample of Mars drawn by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, can be mounted on a rover’s robot
into the container to make meta- water was injected into the sample of arm, one that doesn’t take up too
bolic byproducts, especially oxygen Mars dirt to mimic subterranean ice much space or power.”
for human explorers to breathe. already shown to exist on the planet. “This idea of terraforming in a
The scientists hope such an ex- Once planted on Mars, perhaps bottle is pretty ambitious…but I think
it’s a good idea,” says Chris McKay, an
astrobiologist at NASA Ames Research
Center in California. McKay is part of
an advisory team on the project.
“If we want to know how life can
survive on Mars, we have to use life as
the probe,” McKay says. “No amount of
chemical or geological ‘context’ is a
substitute for actually growing life
forms. This seems like a good way to
start it,” Boland stated by email.
Boland says his goal is limited
and achievable: Make biodomes hous-
ing bacterial or algae-driven systems
that convert Martian regolith into use-
nc. ful oxygen.
ot, I “I think we can actually use bio-
h
hs logical oxygen factories on Mars, es-
Tec sentially to grow the supplemental
d/
an oxygen that will be needed,” Boland
ol
e B said. “That’s what my vision of this
n
e system really becomes…kickstarting
g
u
E it with microbes.”
Leonard David
In a test chamber that simulates Mars conditions, scientists at Techshot, Inc. examine how Earth-sent
microbes interact with Mars soil to create an ecosystem capable of supporting life. [email protected]
8 AEROSPACE AMERICA/MAY 2015