Tag Archives: aircraft

Breaking: Malaysia Says Washed-Up Wreckage Is from MH370

by SonMdn121076 Posted on August 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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The biggest aviation mystery of our time is one step closer to being solved today, after the Malaysian Prime Minister confirmed that washed-up debris discovered on the remote French island Réunion last week is from Malaysia Airlines flight 370.

The barnacle-encrusted wing-part, called a “flaperon”, was being studied by French authorities for connections to the Boeing 777, which was carrying 239 people when it veered dramatically off-course and vanished on March 8, 2014, sparking an international hunt for the plane, thought to be at the bottom of the Indian Ocean off Australia.

The Guardian quotes Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak as saying: “Today, 513 days since the plane disappeared, it is with a very heavy heart that I must tell you that an international team of experts has conclusively confirmed that the aircraft debris found on Réunion is indeed from MH370. We now have physical evidence that on 31 March last year, flight MH370 tragically ended in the south Indian ocean.”

Great mysteries remain, however, most notably how the wing part ended up drifting so many thousands of miles from the search area off Australia’s Western coastline.

Originally posted here – 

Breaking: Malaysia Says Washed-Up Wreckage Is from MH370

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NASA wants to get rid of that flying pollution factory you took to Florida

by JerrodMccallist Posted on June 23, 2015

NASA wants to get rid of that flying pollution factory you took to Florida

By on 23 Jun 2015 3:29 pmcommentsShare

NASA, the earnest, dimple-cheeked do-gooder of government agencies, wants to revolutionize the flying pollution factories that we call airplanes, confirming what Neil deGrasse Tyson has been telling us all along: NASA is the coolest.

The agency announced yesterday that it will fund research into six futuristic airplane ideas over the next two years. The goal of the so-called Convergent Aeronautics Solutions (CAS) project is to create a new type of aircraft with “maximum efficiency and minimal environmental impact” that can “demonstrate the feasibility for urgent medical transportation from the wilderness of Alaska to the Mayo Clinic without human interaction” … which raises the question: What’s NASA got going on in the wilderness of Alaska?

Here are the six ideas from the agency — along with the re-naming suggestions from yours truly that make the theoretical planes sound as cool as they are:

Multifunctional Structures with Energy Storage [The Flying Battery]
A challenge with electric propulsion is the mass (volume and weight) of the batteries that must be carried inside the aircraft. But what if the aircraft structure itself could serve as the battery? Advances in materials, chemistry and nanotechnology might make this possible.

Autonomy Operating System for UAVs [Robo-plane]
A concern about UAV’s is how their internal logic/software might respond to unforeseen situations – such as a sudden worsening of weather, or another aircraft flying too close – that would prompt the need for a sudden change in its programmed course and behavior. The question is can advances in programming and artificial intelligence result in making it possible for a UAV to respond to those situations on its own, without remote human interaction, in ways that are as sure and predictable as would be made by a certified human pilot?

Mission Adaptive Digital Composite Aerostructure Technologies [The Shape Shifter]
In recent years there have been advances in making and using composite materials in aircraft structures, as well as advances in designing future aircraft that can adapt to changing flight conditions by such techniques as changing the shape of their wings. The question is, what if those technologies could be combined such that super strong, lightweight composite structures also are able to be flexible and change their shapes as needed during a flight?

High Voltage Hybrid Electric Propulsion [Self-healing Aero Light, a.k.a. SAL]
A challenge in implementing electric propulsion on airliners (where electricity drives the engine fan to produce thrust, rather than petroleum-based fuel being burned in a traditional jet engine) is how to make the whole power distribution system as efficient and lightweight as possible.

A potential solution may be found in advances in high voltage, variable frequency drives now used on the ground, which significantly reduces the size and weight of the required equipment.

At the same time, researchers will investigate the use in the power distribution system of “self-healing” insulation. The idea is that if any deterioration in a high voltage electrical line begins, the resulting exposure of the electricity to chemicals bonded in the insulation would automatically repair the line – reducing in-flight problems and costly ground maintenance.

Learn to Fly [The Virtual Flyer] 
Historically, the process for designing, building, testing and certifying new aircraft for flight can take years and cost a lot of money. The question is, are we advanced enough in our understanding of flight and the use of computer tools where we can safely enable new airplane designs to be more rapidly flown by skipping ground-based testing.

Digital Twin [The Digital Twin — that’s pretty good, actually]
The question here is can a computer model be built that accurately simulates and predicts how an aircraft or its individual components are affected by aging and ongoing operations such that a “digital twin” of a particular airplane can be created. This could help predict when problems might arise in order to prevent them from developing.

Go ahead, pick your favorite. Just don’t get your hopes up. Even NASA admits that these ideas are pretty far-out:

Of course, it’s very possible that after the studies are completed, the researchers may find that for whatever reason – technology, cost, the laws of physics – the answer is no, it’s not feasible. At least not right now.

Right on, NASA — challenging the laws of physics since 1958.

But as crazy as these ideas sound, this is the agency that put humans on the moon in the 1960s, so they could probably make a pretty sweet airplane … as long as the powers that be give them the money to do it.

Source:
NASA Aero Teams to Study if Wild Ideas are Possible

, NASA.

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NASA wants to get rid of that flying pollution factory you took to Florida

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Here’s Some of the Dumb Stuff People Did With Drones Last Year

by Constantinee9g Posted on January 29, 2015

Mother Jones

Thanks to the federal intelligence employee who got buzzed and crashed a remote-controlled quadcopter on the White House grounds earlier this week, there’s a renewed interest on drones’ potential to cause mayhem.

Last November, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) released a list of 193 incidents of “drone misbehavior” (as the New York Times put it) reported to air traffic control officials in 2014. The list didn’t include incidents reported to law enforcement, so it’s not necessarily comprehensive. But it does offer a glimpse of the challenges of incorporating flying robot vehicles into everyday life.

Some highlights from the report (see the full list at the end of this post):

Drones and sports: There were more than a half-dozen incidents of people flying drones near crowded sporting events. Drones were spotted near games at the University of Arizona in Tucson; Neyland Stadium in Knoxville, Tennessee (twice); Camp Randall Stadium in Madison, Wisconsin; the Big House in Ann Arbor during a University of Michigan game; FedEx Field during a Washington REDACTED game; and Citi Field during a Mets game.

Drone strike: Of all the incidents listed in the FAA report, just one involved a drone striking a person. In October, a small drone flying low over the Daytona Beach Municipal Stadium struck “a citizen causing (a) minor abrasion.”

Close calls: One of the obvious concerns is that some yahoo (or even a skilled pilot) will fly drone into a aircraft with actual people on board. The FAA report lists several close calls and near misses in 2014. On September 30, the pilot of an inbound regional jet reported a flying device that almost hit the plane at 4,000 feet, just north of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. In August, a medevac helicopter in Las Vegas reported almost getting hit by a drone at 200 feet as it was trying to leave a hospital. In June, a helicopter pilot in Stockton, California, reported almost hitting two remote controlled gliders at about 750 feet. And in March, a pilot in Tallahassee, Florida, said he almost struck a “remote controlled aircraft” while flying at 2,300 feet. One pilot had to take evasive action in the skies above Oklahoma City in October when a two-foot wide drone came within 10 to 20 feet of his plane at roughly 4,800 feet.

High altitude: There are at least 18 incidents involving drones flying above 4,000 feet, with some as high as 15,000 feet. (Most of the drones available to the general public fall into the FAA’s Model Aircraft category, which means they’re supposed to stay under 400 feet.) In a report from last May, a pilot approaching LaGuardia Airport reported seeing a 10- to 15-foot-wide drone at 5,500 feet above the southern tip of Manhattan.

Grounded: In August, a pilot was arrested after getting stuck in a tree at Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC after climbing up to retrieve a crashed drone.

From – 

Here’s Some of the Dumb Stuff People Did With Drones Last Year

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The Mystery of the Disappearing Malaysian Plane Deepens Even Further

by AlysaHeiman Posted on March 11, 2014

Mother Jones

Here’s the latest strangeness surrounding the disappearance of that Malaysian airliner:

As a search continued Tuesday for a Malaysian airliner that mysteriously disappeared, Malaysian military officials said radar data showed it inexplicably turned around and headed toward the Malacca Strait, hundreds of miles off its scheduled flight path, news agencies and Malaysian media reported.

….Search teams from 10 nations had initially focused their efforts mainly east of the peninsula….A high-ranking military official involved in the investigation confirmed that the plane changed course and said it was believed to be flying low, the Associated Press reported.

It is, of course, mysterious that the plane veered off course and turned west an hour after takeoff. But that’s not the real puzzle. The plane disappeared on Saturday. If the Malaysian military tracked it turning west into the Malacca Strait in real time, how is it that it took them three days to bother telling anyone about this? That seems damn peculiar even if things were just generally fubared at the time. Here’s another account:

The Malaysian air force chief did not say what kind of signals the military had tracked. But his remarks raised questions about whether the military had noticed the plane as it flew across the country and about when it informed civilian authorities.

According to the general’s account, the last sign of the plane was recorded at 2:40 a.m., and the aircraft was then near Pulau Perak, an island more than 100 miles off the western shore of the Malaysian peninsula. That assertion stunned aviation experts as well as officials in China, who had been told again and again that the authorities lost contact with the plane more than an hour earlier, when it was on course over the Gulf of Thailand, east of the peninsula. But the new account seemed to fit with the decision on Monday, previously unexplained, to expand the search area to include waters west of the peninsula.

And yet another:

It is unclear why the west coast contact, if correct, was not made public until now. Asked on Monday why crews were searching the strait, the country’s civil aviation chief Azharuddin Abdul Rahman told reporters: “There are some things that I can tell you and some things that I can’t.”

Mysteriouser and mysteriouser.

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The Mystery of the Disappearing Malaysian Plane Deepens Even Further

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The Time I Got Stranded in Antarctica

by gerdi Posted on January 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appear in The Atlantic and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The flight should have been routine: a straight shot from Sjögren Glacier on the coast of Antarctica, over an ocean sound crusted with sea ice, back to the ship where we were based, 20 miles east. But as moments passed, a haze of fog and snow flurries closed in on the helicopter. Our pilot, Barry James, glided lower and lower over the sea ice; with no horizon on sight, the ice’s rippled, wind-pocked texture provided his only frame of reference for keeping the helicopter stable in the air. Even this lifeline began to dissolve into milky white, and James wisely chose to land the helo on the only non-white object in sight: a dark swath of stone and sand that had just come into view — the small corner of an island that was otherwise cloaked in glaciers. James spoke into his radio: “Five papa hotel”—the aircraft’s call letters—”this is Barry. I’ve landed. There’s too much snow and not enough visibility to continue.” And so began an unlikely adventure. We expected to wait 15 minutes for weather to improve. Instead, we waited for days.

The helo would become unflyable as icicles encrusted its delicate rotor. Our ship, the 6,000-ton icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer would curtail its scientific research as it attempted to reach us. Our experience illustrates the limits of what even massive resources can accomplish in the deep polar regions. It also sheds light on the drama that has unfolded off the coast of East Antarctica as crew members attempted to free the Russian ship Akademik Shokalskiy from the sea ice that trapped it for two weeks. Fifty two tourists and scientists were rescued by helicopter on January 1; but the ship remained wedged in ice with 22 crew on board for another six days before finally getting free earlier today. It represents the latest in a troubling trend: Tourist or fishing vessels getting in over their heads in Antarctica, exacting a heavy toll on already-stretched scientific research assets in the area. The Chinese research icebreaker that helped rescue the Shokalskiy’s passengers also became mired in ice for several days, and the US icebreaker, Polar Star, was dispatched from Australia on January 2 to aid both ships.

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The Time I Got Stranded in Antarctica

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