aerospace america - august 2014

Hypersonics after WaveRider p.1040 tons on a dime at Mars p. 36

The technologies that could prevent more mysteries like that of missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 Page 20

A P U B L I C A T I O N O F T H E A M E R I C A N I N S T I T U T E O F A E R O N A U T I C S A N D A S T R O N A U T I C S

July-August 2014

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Tactical and Strategic Missile Guidance, Sixth EditionPaul Zarchan1026 pages

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July-August 2014

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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 [703/264-7577]. Subscription rate is 50% of dues for AIAA members (and is not deductible therefrom). Nonmember subscription price: U.S. and Canada, $163, foreign, $200. Single copies $20 each.Postmaster: Send address changes and subscription orders to address above, attention AIAA Customer Service, 703/264-7500. Periodical postage paid at Herndon, Va., and at additionalmailing offices. Copyright 2014 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., all rights reserved. The name Aerospace America is registered by the AIAA in the U.S. Patent andTrademark Office. 40,000 copies of this issue printed. This is Volume 52, No. 7

DEPARTMENTS

EDITORS NOTEBOOK 2The value of being specific

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 3C-17s for firefighting

INTERNATIONAL BEAT 4Mideast states nurture their aerospace

WASHINGTON WATCH 8NASA hones its crowdsourcing

ENGINEERING NOTEBOOK 10Going hypersonic

CASE STUDY 14Shaping the things to come

OUT OF THE PAST 42

CAREER OPPORTUNITIES 46

FEATURES

LEARNING FAST FROM MH370 20The international aviation community wants to accelerate efforts to put an airliner tracking system in place to prevent more mysteries like that of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.by Natalia Mironova and Philip Butterworth-Hayes

RD180: LEARNING TO LET GO 28There is mounting pressure for the U.S. to end its dependence on the Russian-built RD-180 for launching Atlas 5 rockets.by Marc Selinger

ATMOSPHERIC SATELLITES 32Atmospheric satellites aerostats and planes that would fly for monthsat a time are getting a new lease on life as Google and Facebook eyetheir use for making broadband accessible throughout the world.by Debra Werner

WANTED: MARS BRAKING TECH 36NASA has entered the test phase of an ambitious program to develop inflatabledrag devices and mammoth parachutes for landing heavier things on Mars.by Leonard David

BULLETINAIAA Meeting Schedule B2AIAA News B5SciTech 2015 Event Preview B11 AIAA Call for Papers B13AIAA Courses and Training B14Program Committee Nominations B15

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In this edition of Aerospace America, were inaugurating a new section we callCase Study. This is where aerospace engineers are invited to describe theirwork in their own words with advice and help from our editors.

My sense is there will be lots of demand to be featured as a Case Study, so Iwanted to share some thoughts about the purpose and vision for these articles.

Our goal is to let readers hear directly from subject matter experts about thetechnologies and problem-solving techniques underlying specific projects. These ar-ticles will be valuable not just for the details they provide, but because they will bewindows into entirely new or fast-changing markets and trends.

Our inaugural Case Study, Shaping the things to come, [page 14] describes onecompanys additive manufacturing technique for parts on the U.S. Navys X-47B un-manned planes. The article says a lot about the companys work, to be sure, butreaders also get a sense of the cultural and technical challenges that advocates ofadditive manufacturing are facing. The aerospace industry is understandably cau-tious about new components and techniques, because innovation cant come at theexpense of reliability or safety.

We also see another value in this Case Study section, and its one that should notbe underestimated. We make sure that the articles are written in a style that makesthem understandable across aerospace domains and even outside the industry. Thisway, they can help inspire more innovation and contribute in some way to wise in-vestment decisions by companies and agencies. Theyll also help students andyoung professionals refine their career choices by giving them visibility into workoutside their immediate areas of focus.

This is just one of many more improvements to come for Aerospace Americaand its readership.

Ben IannottaEditor-in-Chief

is a publication of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

Ben IannottaEditor-in-ChiefPatricia JeffersonAssociate EditorGreg WilsonProduction EditorJerry GreyEditor-at-LargeChristine WilliamsEditor AIAA Bulletin

Contributing WritersPhilip Butterworth-Hayes, LeonardDavid, Edward Goldstein, NataliaMironova, Erik Schechter, Marc Selinger, Robert van der Linden, Debra Werner, Frank Winter

Jane FitzgeraldArt Direction and Design

James F. Albaugh, PresidentSandra H. Magnus, PublisherCraig Byl, Manufacturing and Distribution

STEERING COMMITTEESteven E. Gorrell, Brigham Young University;David R. Riley, Boeing; Mary L. Snitch,Lockheed Martin; Vigor Yang, Georgia Institute of Technology; Annalisa Weigel,Fairmont Consulting Group; Susan X. Ying

EDITORIAL BOARDNed Allen, Jean-Michel Contant, Eugene Covert, L.S. Skip Fletcher,Michael Francis, Cam Martin, Don Richardson, Douglas Yazell

ADVERTISINGJoan Daly, [email protected]

Pat Walker, [email protected]

LETTERS AND CORRESPONDENCEBen Iannotta, [email protected]

QUESTIONS AND ADDRESS [email protected]

ADVERTISING MATERIALSCraig Byl, [email protected]

July-August 2014, Vol. 52, No. 7

Editors Notebook

The value of being specic

AEROSPACE AMERICA/MAY 2014 3

C-17s for reghtingThe article Putting Out the Fires [June,page 28] rekindled memories of designdiscussions from 2000. When C-17s areavailable as surplus, they can handletwo [Modular Airborne Fire FightingSystem 2] units side-by-side. That wouldbe 6,000-8,000 gallons on target withtrue low-level maneuverability andshort runway capability. That should bean operational match for any lumberingDC-10 and the venerable C-130. At thevery least, it should be worth an up-dated design study and discussion.

Ed ZadoroznyGarden Grove, CA

Letter to the Editor

Events CalendarJuly 13-17International Conference on Environmental Systems, Tucson, Ariz.Contact: Andrew Jackson, 806/742-2801 x 230;[email protected]; http://www.depts.ttu.edu/ceweb/ices/

July 15-18ICNPAA 2014 Mathematical Problems in Engineering, Aerospace and Sciences, Narvik, Norway. Contact: Seenith Sivasundaram, 386/761-9829; [email protected];www.icnpaa.com

July 28-30AIAA Propulsion and Energy 2014, featuring: 50th AIAA/ASME/SAE/ASEEJoint Propulsion Conference and 12th International Energy ConversionEngineering Conference. Cleveland, Ohio. Contact: 703/264-7500

July 31-Aug. 1 Second AIAA Propulsion Aerodynamics Workshop; Hybrid RocketPropulsion; Missile Propulsion Design, Technologies, and System Engineering, Application of Green Propulsion for Future Space. Cleveland, Ohio. Contact: 703/264-7500

Aug. 3-4Decision Analysis, San Diego, Calif. Contact: 703/264-7500

Aug. 4-7AIAA SPACE 2014, featuring: AIAA/AAS Astrodynamics Specialist Conference; AIAA Complex Aerospace Systems Exchange; 32nd AIAA International Communications Satellite Systems Conference;AIAA SPACE Conference. San Diego, Calif. Contact: 703/264-7500

All letters addressed to the editor are considered to be submitted for possible publication, unlessit is expressly stated otherwise. All letters are subject to editing for length and to author response.Letters should be sent to: Correspondence, Aerospace America, 1801 Alexander Bell Drive, Suite500, Reston, VA 20191-4344, or by email to: [email protected].

Ready or not: In the interview in theJune 2014 Aerospace America, Gen-eral Mark A. Welsh III says were notready for unmanned aircraft carryingnuclear weapons.

The term for an unmanned aircraftcarrying a nuclear weapon is cruisemissile. Weve had them since 194,when the (unmanned) B-61 Matadormissiles were first deployed at BitburgAir Base (Germany).

Georey LandisBerea, OH

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Mideast states nurturetheir aerospace

4 AEROSPACE AMERICA/JULY-AUGUST 2014

with Austrias Future Advanced Com-posite Components to build a jointmanufacturing facility in Al Ain. At thestart of January 2014, Abu Dhabis Eti-had Airways, the Takreer oil refiningcompany and the Masdar Institute ofScience and Technology announced astrategic agreement with Boeing to de-velop an aviation biofuel industry inthe region. In the same month theconsortium carried out a 45-minutedemonstration flight in a Boeing 777powered in part by locally producedsustainable aviation biofuel.

The Arabian Peninsula region isleading the way, but not all of the de-velopment work in the Middle East isentirely homegrown or centered there.By the end of this year, Canadas Bom-bardier Aerospace plans to complete a$200-million manufacturing plant inNouaceur, Morocco, making aircraftstructural parts, as part of a long-termpartnership with the Moroccan gov-ernment. Bombardier figures to have aworkforce of 850 recruited by the endof 2018.

It is still too early to forecast ex-actly how many new aerospace man-ufacturing companies based in theMiddle East will emerge over the nextfew years and whether they will be-come serious competitors or partnersto legacy suppliers in the West. Butthe recent growth of Gulf-based air-lines, airports and aircraft maintenancecompanies have had a huge impact onthe aviation industry worldwide, and itis likely that the regions manufactur-ing businesses, through either acquisi-tion or growth, will seek a muchlarger share of the global aerospacemarketplace.

turing contracts worth over $11.8 bil-lion with U.S. and European suppliersincluding Airbus, Boeing, GeneralElectric and Rolls-Royce. Also at theshow, AMMROC the Advanced Mili-tary Maintenance, Repair and Over-hauling Centre, a joint venture amongLockheed Martin, Sikorsky Corporationand Mubadala Aerospace secured a$5.8-billion logistics support contractfor the United Arab Emirates ArmedForces. AMMROC plans to open itsnew logistics center at Nibras Al AinAerospace Park in January 2016.

Huge maintenance, repair andoverhaul centers are emerging fromthe desert sands. Saudia AerospaceEngineering Industries is building amaintenance center covering morethan 100 square kilometers at Jed-dah/King Abdulaziz International Air-port including 12 aircraft hangarsand employing more than 7,500 staff planned for completion by the endof 2015. Dubai World Central/Al Mak-toum International Airport is develop-ing a 6.7-square-kilometer mainte-nance facility at Aviation City, a clusterof aviation maintenance, academicand helicopter support organizations.It is the operational base for DubaiAerospace Enterprise, a Dubai-ownedmaintenance company set up in 2006,which has since acquired Zurich-based SR Technics and Standard Aero-space, the Tempe, Ariz., civil and mil-itary support supplier.

These aviation support organiza-tions are now being joined by manu-facturers with niche capabilities.Mubadala has developed a specialistcapability in carbon fiber structures as-sembly, following its 2009 agreement

The next two years will see the con-struction of major aerospace manufac-turing and support centers in AbuDhabi, Dubai and Saudi Arabia, movesthat appear to reflect strategic govern-ment plans to rival the aerospace hubsof Seattle and Toulouse.

In the emirate of Abu Dhabi, thefirst phase of the 25-square-kilometerNibras Al Ain Aerospace Park isscheduled to be completed in 2015.The cluster of aerospace manufactur-ing plants, maintenance centers andpilot training schools is under devel-opment by Abu Dhabis MubadalaAerospace company and the AbuDhabi Airport.

The work reflects a subtle shift ofemphasis. The Arabian Peninsulasaerospace engineering interests havetraditionally centered on supportingthe vast numbers of civil and militaryaircraft ordered by the regions gov-ernments, rather than designing andproducing aerospace structures. But atransition to include manufacturing isunderway, driven in part by a demandfor new commercial aircraft.

The region represents a strongmarket for future aerospace and avia-tion growth, with passenger numbersat Middle Eastern airports increasingby nearly 8 percent last year alone.Significant investment in new airportinfrastructure continues across the re-gion, and it is expected that around1,800 aircraft will be required withinthe next 20 years, says Paul Everitt,chief executive of U.K. aerospacetrade organization ADS, short for aero-space, defense and security.

At the November 2013 Dubai AirShow, Mubadala announced manufac-

Work in progress: The Abu Dhabi airport complex will include manufacturing plants, maintenance facilities, and a pilot training school.Similar expansion projects are underway at severalairports in the Middle East.

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AEROSPACE AMERICA/JULY-AUGUST 2014 5

The designers of Solar Impulse 2 arebeginning to publicize details aboutthe innovations they hope will propelthe craft around the globe withoutstopping next year.

The planes improved performanceover its predecessor Solar Impulse 1,which flew across the U.S. in severalhops in 2010, results from combiningmany efficiency-increasing technolo-gies, says Andr Borschberg, a founderof the company. He will be one of thetwo pilots who will be aboard theplane when it takes off in March 2015.

One of these is the aircrafts car-bon fiber skin, which at 25 grams persquare meter weighs only a third asmuch as printer paper. The plane hasbrushless motors another improve-ment, because brushes add weight,wear out, cause sparking and are hardto cool. Solar Impulse 2s motors alsoare sensorless, making them simpler,more reliable, and less vulnerable todirt and humidity.

Built into the wings are 17,248 so-lar cells that supply the planes fourelectric motors with energy. Each cellis monocrystalline silicon made froma single silicon crystal rather than

many. The material costs more thanpolycrystalline silicon but is more effi-cient. According to information on theSolar Impulse website, the planespropulsion system is 94% efficient based on the percentage of electricenergy converted into thrust.

During the day, the solar cellsrecharge lithium polymer batteries sothat Solar Impulse 2s propellers cancontinue to turn at night. The batteriesaccount for a quarter of the aircraftsweight.

The plane has a wingspan largerthan a 747s but weighs just 2,300kilograms. By comparison, the RutanVoyager, which flew around theworld in 1986 powered by two pistonengines, had a gross weight of 4,397kilograms, with the fuel weighing3,000 kilograms.

Many of the planes systems havebeen flown on unmanned high-alti-tude long-endurance aircraft. Solar Im-pulse 2s designers wanted to seewhether some of these concepts couldbe transferred to a plane with a piloton board. Demonstrating clean tech-nologies is one of the projects primarygoals, says the companys website.

Borschberg says the project willhelp advance several technology re-search programs that the industrypartners will develop, in aerospaceand other areas. Advances could in-clude lighter materials, energy sav-ings, better reliability and perform-ance for electric motors, moreefficient solar cells, and batteries thatstore more energy, he says. Some ofthe technologies on the aircraft couldhave promising applications in mar-kets such as solar panel protectionmaterials, computer and cellphonebatteries, and materials for baggagecompartments and other aircraftstructures.

The Federation Aeronautique In-ternationale ratified eight worldrecords set by the Solar Impulse 1team, which includes recognition forthe highest and longest flight by a so-lar-powered aircraft. But the biggesttest of the teams ambition to flyaround the world will be the five-day,five-night crossing of the PacificOcean. If that can be achieved, thenSolar Impulse 2 could well be the trail-blazer of a new era of solar-powerglobal aviation.

Flying round the world on solar power

Sola

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Solar Impulse 2 on its June 2 inaugural flight from Switzerland.The aircraft's carbon fiber skinweighs less than printer paper.


scheduled for 2015, Dautriat said.Clean Sky 1 involved a host of re-

search projects by 600 industrial andacademic European bodies. An ATR-72 turboprop was equipped with acomposite fuselage panel; new envi-ronmental control and icing protectionsystems were devised and flown onan A320 test plane; a new rotorcraftpropeller design was developed forhigh-speed cruise.

Philip Butterworth-Hayes [email protected]

Organizers hopethe additional fundswill propel the in-dustry to meet a setof ambitious goalslaid out in 2001 bythe Advisory Councilfor Aviation Re-search in Europe. By2020, the councilwants a 50 percentreduction in aircraftfuel consumptionand carbon emis-sions; an 80 percentreduction in nitrogenoxide emissions; a 50 percent reduc-tion in perceived aircraft noise; andsubstantial progress toward reducingthe environmental impact of the man-ufacture, maintenance and disposal ofaircraft and related products.

In Clean Sky 2, the near-term starof the show, as Clean Sky ExecutiveDirector Eric Dautriat told an audi-ence, will be Snecmas testing of anopen-rotor jet engine, a design thatengineers expect will be more fuelefficient. The first ground test is

At the start of July, the EuropeanUnion plans to make its first call forcompanies and research agencies tocompete for funding under the CleanSky 2 Joint Technology Initiative, thenext phase of Europes multibillion-euro effort to reduce aviation pollu-tion and noise.

Clean Sky 2s total budget of 3.95billion ($5.3 billion) was approved inMay by the European Union Counciland is more than twice the budget ofthe first Clean Sky program. Some ofthe new funds are already pegged forspecific companies and agencies, butcompanies and agencies will be ap-plying for about 1 billion ($1.35 bil-lion) in research funds.

www.astos.de

ENGINEERING SERVICEAND TRAINING

PRODUCTS

Europe prepares forClean Sky 2 research

Division of laborThere are six main technology research areas within the Clean Sky research program.In Clean Sky 2, just as in Clean Sky 1, each sector will be managed by a European aerospace company.

Fast rotorcraft Agusta Westland andEurocopter

Large passenger aircraft Airbus Regional aircraft Alenia Aermacchi Airframes Dassault, Airbus Defence

and Space, Saab Engines Safran, Rolls-Royce and MTU Systems Thales and Liebherr

These sectors are clustered into two main areas or core building blocks

Innovative Aircraft Demonstrator Platforms. Technologies to improve largepassenger planes, regional

planes and helicopters will be flown ontest aircraft Integrated TechnologyDemonstrators. Entirely new airframesand engines will be flight tested.

Analysis work on how different newtechnologies can be combined together.

Parallel research is being undertaken to examine:

ECO-Design. This term refers to assessing environmental impacts by taking into account the entire aircraftlife cycle, from design to operations and maintenance to withdrawal from the fleet.

Small air transports. The goal is to reducethe environmental impacts of small general aviation and commuter aircraft.

Snecma, part of the Safran group, has designed a new open-rotor jet enginefor greater fuel efficiency. The first ground test is planned for 2015.

Cle

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NASA hones its crowdsourcing


ferent ways of approaching a problemthat can really result in a breakthrough.

In another example of crowdsourc-ing, citizen-scientists have volunteeredto help astronomers discover embry-onic planetary systems hidden in in-frared data from NASAs Wide-field In-frared Survey Explorer, a 40-centimeterspace telescope launched in 2009. Par-ticipants in the Disk Detective projectview images from WISE and other skysurveys and classify objects based onwhether they are round or includemultiple objects. Astronomers can thenuse human photo interpretation tozero in on sources that may containplanetary environments. One hundredthousand volunteers have identified600,000 possible signs of planetary for-mation, Gustetic says.

Managers of the Fred LawrenceWhipple Observatory in Amado, Ariz.,were so impressed by the results theywere getting that they awarded fournights of viewing time on their Tilling-hast Telescope to do follow-up obser-vations on some of the high-interestplanetary discs identified by the citi-zen-volunteers.

My sense is that the role of the in-dividual in helping solve tough prob-lems and co-delivering servicesandproducts, and a whole host ofco-creation activities is only going toincrease in the future, says Gustetic.NASA has really embraced the ideathat its important to engage individu-als in their space program, and alsorecognizes that there are unique skills,expertise and time that those individ-uals can potentially contribute. Shesays its NASAs responsibility to fig-ure out how to best leverage that. Welike to talk about the government andindustry and academia being impor-tant partners of the innovative ecosys-tem in the U.S. We should also includeindividual members of the public inthat equation. Edward Goldstein

[email protected]

By going online, people with goodideas dont actually have to bring aphysical prototype or a technology to ademonstration event, says JennGustetic, challenges and prizes pro-gram executive in the Office of theChief Technologist at NASA headquar-ters. They can submit their code ortheir idea or their testing methodthrough the web using on-line plat-forms like InnoCentive and TopCoder.

NASA is not new to crowdsourc-ing. It formed a partnership with Plan-etary Resources Inc. of Bellevue,Wash., to apply crowdsourcing to thedevelopment of algorithms for detect-ing near-Earth objects. The agencyalso crowdsourced solutions for opti-mizing the placement of the Interna-tional Space Stations solar arrays.

Gustetic says bringing a diversegroup of perspectives to a problemopens the door to considering out-of-discipline perspectives or you get dif-

NASA is on a mission to make it eveneasier for John and Jane Q. Public tosuggest solutions to some of theagencys most vexing technical prob-lems, from figuring out how to fly un-manned aircraft safely in the nationalairspace to keeping astronauts healthyin space.

The agency is turning to privatesector web experts to ensure its beinguser friendly to those who want toparticipate in the series of technologychallenges it has established to awardcash prizes to problem solvers. Thecompany InnoCentive, Inc., which de-scribes itself as an online platform forcrowd sourcing your innovation prob-lems, has run pilot projects withNASA to test the use of web portals inthe challenge initiative. The agencyhas also tested a service called Top-Coder, which runs challenges specifi-cally geared toward solving computercoding problems.

Citizen scientists: Volunteers in the Disk Detective project view space telescope images to help NASAclassify celestial objects.

NA

SA


In the future, many of the tasks cur-rently performed by pilots, unmannedaircraft operators and air traffic con-trollers could be turned over to so-phisticated systems designed to oper-ate for extended periods of timewithout human supervision. Beforethat occurs, however, U.S. governmentagencies with the support of industryand academic groups will need toconduct a targeted, coordinated re-search campaign to address a series oftechnical, regulatory, social and legalissues related to the use of increas-ingly autonomous systems, accordingto a National Research Council reportissued in June, Autonomy Researchfor Civil Aviation: Toward a New Eraof Flight.

The report describes barriers, in-cluding a lack of available bandwidthfor wireless communications and theFAAs lengthy certification process forunmanned aircraft. It highlights priori-ties for research designed to pave theway for the gradual transition to a timewhen U.S. civil aviation is character-ized by the seamless operation of di-verse categories of aircraft and sys-tems, some crewed, some not crewed,and a little bit of everything in be-tween, says John Lauber, a formerAirbus chief product safety officer andco-chair of the Committee on Auton-omy Research for Civil Aviation, theNRC panel that drafted the report. Thead-hoc committee was formed atNASAs request.

One of the primary challenges forthe research community will be to finda way to characterize the behavior ofsystems that adapt and learn as theyrespond to environmental changes.There will have to be some creative

research done to characterize howthese systems make judgment callsand how they make decisions, saysJohn-Paul B. Clarke, NRC committeeco-chair and associate professor ofaerospace engineering at the GeorgiaInstitute of Technology. We will notbe able to test every possible thingthat the system could see, becausethats too time consuming.

Researchers also will need to studyhow people interact with autonomoussystems. How do I make sure thatwhen a human comes back into theloop after a long period, he or she isable to understand very quickly whatis happening and decide whether tofollow the recommendations of theautonomous system or override it?Clarke asks. Thats one of the bigquestions.

Instead of simply focusing on

those challenges, however, the reportemphasizes the promise of increas-ingly autonomous systems to makecivil aviation more economical and ef-ficient without compromising safety.In general aviation, for example, au-tonomous systems could support pi-lots who are alone in the cockpit.Thats a case where we believe youcould definitely increase safety,Clarke says. In commercial aviation,you could reduce costs while main-taining or even improving safety.

Lauber agrees that safety is para-mount. It is quite clear that anythingthat comes along in terms of newtechnology must at the very leastmaintain the high levels of safety thatwe experience now, particularly incivil transport operations, Laubersays. Debra Werner

[email protected]

NRCexamines autonomy

Bo

eing

The ScanEagle is one of only two unmanned planes to have received FAA certification to fly commerciallywithout going through a long approval process.

Going hypersonic


Somewhere at the bottom of the PacificOcean lies the last in a series of X-51AWaveRider hypersonic test vehicles thatthe Air Force launched between 2010and 2013. The vehicles were carriedaloft on B-52s, dropped from their leftwings, boosted to hypersonic speeds byconventional rockets, and then, afterseparation, accelerated to speeds up toMach 5.1. They were propelled by ex-perimental airbreathing engines thatburned fuel with oxygen gleaned fromthe atmosphere.

With the conclusion of the Wave-Rider program, companies and coun-tries are vying to continue progress to-ward the long-promised benefits of

airbreathing hypersonic propulsion.Without the need to lug and shed dis-posable oxidizer tanks, such a craftwould be completely reusable andcould launch payloads again and again.

The 60-person company ReactionEngines Ltd. of Abingdon, in the U.K.,is among those looking to take up the hypersonic mantle. With fundsfrom the U.K. Space Agency, thecompany has ambitious plans toleapfrog beyond WaveRiders goal ofproving the feasibility of acceleratinga hypersonic vehicle. The companyhas designed a proposed spaceplanecalled Skylon that would take offfrom a runway, deliver cargo such as

small satellites to orbit and fly home.The Skylon spaceplane is currently

in the proof-of-concept phase. If even-tually built by a team of contractors, itwould be about the size of big airliner 85 meters long, 6.75 meters wide,with a wingspan of 25.4 meters andcould carry 12 tons of cargo into orbit.

Powering Skylons flight from run-way to space would be two hydrogen-fueled SABRE, or Synergistic Airbreath-ing Rocket Engines synergisticbecause theyre designed to operate intwo modes. In the airbreathing mode,they would take in oxygen from the at-mosphere to begin the first leg of thejourney. At an altitude of 26-30 kilome-ters and a speed of Mach 5, the SABREswould switch over to rocket mode anduse a tank of liquid oxygen to blastinto orbit at a speed of Mach 25.

The U.K. Space Agency gave Reac-tion Engines 60 million ($100 million)in June 2013 to work on SABRE as thelinchpin for a future spaceplane. Sky-lon will be fully reusable, cheaper tooperate about one-fiftieth the costof conventional spacecraft more ef-ficient to operate, with the intention ofhaving more launches per year with afar lower failure rate, predicts Eliza-beth Seaman of the U.K. Space

The British company Reaction Engines Ltd. hopes to achieve

what the U.S. couldnt under the National Aerospace Plane

program: Build an engine capable of propelling a spaceplane

to orbit in a single stage, albeit without people. The U.S.

canceled NASP in 1993 in favor of a more tightly focused

research agenda, a decision that eventually gave rise to the

X-51A WaveRider program. With the WaveRider program

now over, Erik Schechter compares its technologies to those

in the engine that would power Skylon, the spaceplane that

Reaction Engines hopes to convince major manufacturers

to build and operate.

The Skylon spaceplane showing one of its two SABRE engines. The SABREs

are airbreathing in the atmosphere and then switch to rocket mode.

European Space Agency

The X-51A mounted below the B-52wing at Edwards Air Force Base. This was the second of the four expendable, unmanned WaveRiders.

Agency, the agencys lead for theSABRE project.

Promises like these have beenheard for decades, and the challengesare daunting. Air would blow by a hy-personic vehicle at many times thespeed of sound, and the crafts engineor engines would need to gleanenough oxygen from it to maintaincombustion. Propulsion engineer An-thony Haynes, the senior developmentengineer at Reaction Engines, says thecompany has figured out how to slowand cool the air enough for subsoniccombustion without making the vehi-cle so heavy that it would undercutthe value of airbreating propulsion.This approach is very different fromthat of the WaveRider. The Air Force-Boeing team let air race at supersonicspeeds through the engine, called asupersonic combustion ramjet engine,or scramjet for short.

Keeping their coolBecause of friction, the air flowingover a hypersonic vehicle gets exceed-ingly hot, posing a thermal challengefor engine designers. Temperatures in-side the WaveRider vehicles rose to ashigh as 1,870 degrees Celsius. To dealwith this heat, the team built the en-

gines from Inconel, a heat-tolerantnickel-chromium alloy. In addition, JP-7 fuel was pumped through channelsin WaveRider engine walls to provideconduction cooling.

Using JP-7 as a conduction coolanthad an additional benefit. As that fueltravels through the walls of the en-gine, it becomes a supercritical gas.And therefore, when you take thatfuel and collect it, [and] then you putit into the combustor and burn thatfuel, the fuel is prepared better toburn, says Joseph Vogel, director of

air launch space access at BoeingPhantom works.

Reaction Engines also employs In-conel but in a very different coolingsystem and for a very different reason.Slowing the air to subsonic speed cre-ates even more friction and heat. Theair is simply too hot to compress andfeed into the combustion chamber,and so it must be cooled. This will bedone inside a heat exchanger, or pre-cooler, comprised of 1-millimeter-widetubes thousands of them coiled inlayers. These tubes wont contain fuel,


U.S. Air Force

U.S. Air Force

Final test: The fourth and last X-51AWaveRider, carried under the wing of a B-52H. The WaveRider attained a speed of Mach 5.1 on this flight.


says Haynes. So for Skylon, the teammoved the two SABRE engines for-ward to establish a center of gravity,and placed them at the tips of thewings so the spaceplane would stayclear of its own exhaust. As for the na-celles, they droop a bit so the intakecone can better take advantage of air-flow during airbreathing mode.

Essentially, the rocket engines areangled one way, to keep the directionof thrust pointed towards the center ofgravity, and the airbreathing enginesare pointed the opposite direction inorder to capture as much air as possibleduring the ascent, Haynes explains.

In airbreathing mode, the cone in-take is open, allowing air to rush in.Some of that flow passes through thecenter of the engine, where it iscooled, compressed and passed alongto the injectors and, finally, expelledout the rocket nozzles as exhaust.Meanwhile, the rest of the air passesuncooled around the engine, goingthrough a ring of bypass burners be-fore exiting SABRE.

A single-stage-to-obit plane is alofty goal, and that might not be thefirst application for airbreathing hy-personics. Strike weapons will proba-bly come first, predicts aerospace en-gineer Charlie Brink, deputy directorof the U.S. Air Force Research Labora-torys High Speed Systems Division.That suite of propulsion technologies[as exemplified by the WaveRider] is,I would say, ready today or in thevery near term to provide the capabil-ity, if our decision-makers so desire.

Erik [email protected]

as was the case with WaveRider chan-nels. Instead, they will use helium thathas been cooled by the crafts liquidhydrogen fuel.

The helium passes through theheat exchanger and is cooled downdirectly by the hydrogen at a singlepoint in the system, Haynes explains,and then after the helium emergesfrom the pre-cooler, its heated up bythe incoming airflow. So you end upwith very hot helium and very coldair.

The process is quick and efficient,Haynes adds. At Mach 5, air suckedinto the engine goes from 1,000 Cel-sius to -150 Celsius in one-hundredthof a second, and a frost control systemkeeps the moisture from turning intoice and clogging the heat exchanger.Then, as the chilled air moves ontothe turbo-compressor, the now-hot he-lium helps drive that compressor be-fore cycling back through the pre-cooler. And the process begins allover again.

The pre-cooler and frost controlsystem are the revolutionary elementsof SABRE, Haynes says. Reaction En-gines has been working on this tech-nology for the last 10 to 20 years, ba-sically figuring out a way of making aheat exchanger compact and lightenoughto fly it on this sort of vehi-cle, he says.

In March 2012, engineers at Reac-tion tested a demonstration pre-coolerat the companys B9 test facility, nearAbingdon. The test system used a Rolls-Royce Viper Mk 535 turbojet, heliumloop system, and, to save money, liquidnitrogen instead of hydrogen. The nextstep will be to test the thermodynamiccycle of the system. Finalization of theengine design is scheduled to begin inNovember, and test flights are tenta-tively scheduled for 2019.

In terms of design, the WaveRiderand Skylon blueprints are nothingalike. WaveRiders resembled cruisemissiles with air inlets under their flat,tungsten-covered noses. The inlet fedan Aerojet Rocketdyne SJY61 scramjetengine meaning a supersonic com-busting ramjet in which the air flowedsupersonically throughout the engine.As the vehicle traveled along at Mach

4.5 and above, air would hit the frontof the vehicle, get compressed and en-ter the engine. Inside the scramjet, theoxygen mixed with propellant, was ig-nited and then expelled out the backof the engine with the exhaust. Therewere no moving parts.

One of the challenges was startingthe engine. The WaveRider needed tobe boosted to a speed of Mach 4.5 tostart the engine, which is why boosterrockets were needed. At that speed,ethylene was sprayed to heat the en-gine and initiate combustion. For fuel,the WaveRiders scramjet engine usedJP-7 the kind used by the SR-71Blackbird in both vapor and liquidform. We transition to the JP-7 onceits hot enough, and were off to theraces. By contrast, SABRE is designedto operate from a standing start on therunway without special preparation oradditives.

Sleek and balanced Unlike the WaveRider, which lookssleek and straightforward, the Skylonmockup resembles a plane with nocockpit, with droopy nacalles, one onthe tip of each wing. There is oneSABRE per nacelle though in rocketmode each SABRE effectively com-prises two engines. The shape of Sky-lon reflects the lessons learned from aprevious spaceplane program calledHOTOL for Horizontal Take-Off andLanding. The U.K. cancelled that pro-gram in 1988.

The HOTOL engines were placedat the rear of the vehicle, a rocket-style arrangement that made the craftfairly unstable in ascent and re-entry,

Cutaway: The SABRE engine mounted on one of Skylon's two nacelles. The engines revolutionary elementsinvolve the cooling system, says the company.

Reaction Engines Ltd

47 AUGUST 2014 SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

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Case Study

Typically, the ducts and flow tubesof an aircrafts warm air mixer aremade by pouring metal into castsand welding the finished pieces to-gether. CalRAM, the company I co-founded in Simi Valley, Calif., figuredout how to build warm air mixers asa single piece (including complex in-ner structures) by using an electronbeam to melt titanium powder alayer at a time. This is illustrative ofour part count reduction ability; verysignificant for the aerospace world,where up until now each of the multi-ple pieces produced by conventionalmethods had to be designed, built,inspected, tracked, inventoried andthen assembled. Furthermore, eachjoint becomes a potential failuremechanism. By eliminating these in-terfaces, part count is reduced, relia-bility is increased and delivery sched-ules are compressed.

The X-47Bs warm air mixers areamong the hundreds of devices Cal-RAM has made with the electronbeam melting EBM techniquesince our founding in 2005. We be-lieve the Navys willingness to in-clude them at the urging of

Northrop Grumman shows that cus-tomers are beginning to embraceadditive manufacturing and EBM inparticular. In the months and yearsto come, we are confident that EBMwill perform well compared to otheradditive techniques, such as a ver-sion of EBM called wire feed, wheresolid metal, not powder, is melted,and laser sintering, in which pho-tons heat metal so it can be formedinto shapes without melting it.

The X-47B warm air mixers werenot considered flight-critical compo-nents, but we have no doubt that themilitary and FAA will one day allowEBM components to be used for suchapplications. The economics of addi-tive manufacturing are just too com-pelling not to seize the opportunity.Our EBM process requires no customtooling to recreate broken or wornparts that might no longer be in pro-duction. A component can be laserscanned and turned into a CAD file,and in about two weeks we can de-liver a finished component. We cal-culate that with EBM, our customersin the aircraft maintenance, repairand overhaul market can cut 85 per-


Near the forward avionics bays of the U.S. Navystwo X-47B experimental planes are titanium alloy components that were made by meltingmetal powder into a complex shape a layer at a time. The components were built by CalRAM,short for California Rapid Manufacturing,a 10-person company that got its start in 2005partly through a congressional earmark. CalRAM co-founder Dave Ciscel gives a glimpse ofhow such additive processes could revolutionize aerospace manufacturing.

Dave Ciscel is a retired Air Force lieutenantcolonel and acquisitionexpert. He co-founded CalRAM in 2005 with materials engineer JohnWooten.

Shaping the things to come

duce material up to five times fasterthan laser methods. Additionally theEBM process creates a cleaner mate-rial than the laser process due tothe vacuum environment in whichEBM works.

A challenge we faced was toprevent sagging and swelling duringthe build. We solved this by learningto add small, temporary titaniumstruts to physically support the part,if necessary, as it takes shape. Thesupports also act as thermal and elec-trical shunts from the melt pool, sothat each layer cools at a precise rate,which is a key to preventing swellingof the material as it solidifies.

The machine also must operatewithin a precise temperature win-dow about 700 C for Ti-64. If thepowder is not hot enough, it wontsinter to the preceding layer andelectrical charge will build up. Ifthat happens, the powder will repelitself and go airborne as a fine dustresembling smoke that can blockthe electron beam gun. But if theoperating temperature is too hot,the material will swell. Staying inthe precise temperature window be-

Our engineers have solvedmany challenges to bring EBM man-ufacturing to todays high level of re-liability. Using proprietary softwarewe digitally slice existing 3-D designmodels into a series of separate lay-ers, much as a modern CAT scanmachine does. With this softwareready to direct the melting, powdercan then be spread on the start plateby the rake in the build chamber.Layers are typically btween 0.000050meters and 0.000070 meters thick.The first layer is sintered to the plateby heat from the electron beam, andthen melted by a second higher en-ergy pass. Each successive layer issintered to the previous layer to en-sure a conductive path for the elec-trons. The second pass consolidatesthe material into shape. We repeatthis process layer-by-layer, until theentire part is complete. Since partsare formed directly in the powderbed, EBM is fast, with maximumbuild times that are normally lessthan 60 hours. We calculate that be-cause of the higher energy of theelectron beam compared to lasers (3kilowatts vs. 700 watts), we can pro-

cent to 90 percent off the cost of re-placing titanium parts. For engineerswho are working on entirely new air-frames, CalRAM can deliver a proto-type part within about two weeks ofreceiving a CAD file. Further itera-tions can follow the same manufac-turing path, significantly reducing aclients time to market.

Our process takes place insidean EBM machine provided by theSwedish company Arcam AB, whomweve been working with since ourfounding. Current is run through afilament to produce an electronbeam. A series of magnetic coils fo-cuses this beam into an enclosedbuild tank that receives titanium alloypowder from two hoppers, one oneither side. A small rake the onlymoving part in the machine spreads the powder across the com-ponent a layer at a time. The beam issteered across the powder by varyingthe magnetic field. It sinters and thenmelts the powder on the build plat-form precisely as planned in the CADfile. We use Ti-64 powder, an alloy oftitanium with 6 percent vanadiumand 4 percent aluminum.


Northrop Grumman

A Navy X-47B UCAS at Palmdale, Calif.

be done by filing the part, blowingair over it or loading it in a chuckand machining it. Those finishingprocesses add cost and are an arearipe for innovation.

Overall, however, EBM is giv-ing designers new options for in-

corporating Ti-64 into theirplans. Engineers love titaniumbecause of its strength at high

temperatures, but those on thebusiness sides of their companiesor agencies have often been de-terred by its high cost and designchallenges. Our EBM process is be-ginning to shift that calculus. Engi-neers might soon be able to choosetitanium where they are today usingaluminum or steel in short, allover the aircraft.

Dave [email protected]

is because particles adjacent to themelt pool are melted a little bit aseach layer is added. For many com-ponents, the roughness is not an is-sue. But for some parts, cleanup

work is required. This can

tween smoke and swelling was anearly issue thats been resolved withthe advent of more reliable EBMmachines.

A goal in any additive process isto avoid oxygen contamination of thetitanium melt. EBM minimizes con-tamination by operating in a vacuuminstead of an inert gas environment,as in laser sintering. This leads to im-proved microstructure with excellentmechanical and physical properties.The high temperatures used duringEBM (700 C for titanium and up to1,000 C for nickel-based superalloysand other materials) leave partsstress-free after cooling, eliminatingthe need for separate post-build ther-mal treatments to develop full tita-nium mechanical properties.

As good as EBM has become,there remains room for innovation.The size of parts we can make islimited by the size of the buildchambers in the EBM machines. Ar-cam and others are working onlarger machines. Also, there is cur-rently no database that designerscan consult to learn about the prop-erties of EBM-built parts. That isslowing adoption of the technology.Also, the surfaces of finished com-ponents are somewhat rough. This


Case Study

CalRAM makes aerospace componentsby raking metal powder onto a platformand melting it into shape with an electron beam, one layer at a time. The process is an example of additivemanufacturing.Source: CalRAM Inc.

Inside thebeammachine

Electron beam column

Heat shield

Vacuum chamber

Electron beam

Powderhopper

Powderhopper

Powder

Start plate

Rake

Build tankBuild platform

Close-up: Warm air mixers are located near the avionics bay on each X-47B. CalRAM used anelectron beam melting technique to manufacturethe components in one piece, a layer at a time.

North

rop

Grum

man

CalRAM Inc.

Filament

Lenses

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31 July1 August 2014 Cleveland, OhioHybrid Rocket PropulsionInstructor: Joe Majdalani

Summary: The purpose of this course is to present and discuss fundamental theory alongside research ndings with emphasis on unsolved problems, open questions, and benchmark tests.

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Honoring Achievement: An AIAA Tradition

AIAA Aeroacoustics AwardEdward J. RiceAerospace Engineer (Retired)NASA Glenn Research CenterCleveland, Ohio

AIAA Aerodynamic Measurement Technology AwardAlexander J. SmitsEugene Higgins Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace EngineeringDepartment of Mechanical and Aerospace EngineeringPrinceton University, Princeton, New Jersey

AIAA Aerodynamics AwardMichael S. SeligAssociate Professor Aerospace Engineering DepartmentUniversity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Urbana, Illinois

AIAA Aircraft Design AwardBoeing 787 Dreamliner TeamSeattle, WashingtonAward Accepted by Michael Sinnett, Vice President Product Development, The Boeing Company

AIAA Distinguished Service AwardMichael I. YarymovychPresident and CEOSarasota Space AssociatesOsprey, Florida

AIAA Engineer of the YearWilliam B. BlakePrincipal Aerospace EngineerAerospace Systems Directorate, Air Force Research LaboratoryWright-Patterson AFB, Ohio

AIAA Fluid Dynamics AwardPaul E. DimotakisJohn K. Northrop Professor of Aeronautics and Professor of Applied PhysicsCalifornia Institute of TechnologyPasadena, California

AIAA Foundation Award for ExcellenceX-51A WaveRider TeamThe Boeing Company, Aerojet Rocketdyne, U. S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL)Award accepted by Charles Brink, AFRL; George Thum, Aerojet Rocketdyne; and Joseph Vogel, The Boeing Company

AIAA Goddard Astronautics AwardGlynn S. LunneyNASA Flight Director and Program Manager Rockwell Division President of Satellite Systems Division, Seal Beach and Rockwell Space Operations Co. HoustonUnited Space Alliance Vice President and Program Manager

AIAA Ground Testing AwardJeffrey HaasChief, Testing Division (retired) Facilities and Testing DirectorateNASA Glenn Research CenterCleveland, Ohio

AIAA Hap Arnold Award For Excellence in Aeronautical Program ManagementSteven H. WalkerDeputy DirectorDefense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)Arlington, Virginia

AIAA is proud to recognize the very best in our industry: those individuals and teams who have taken aerospace technology to the next level ... who have advanced the quality and depth of the aerospace profession ... who have leveraged their aerospace knowledge for the benet of society. Their achievements have inspired us to dream and to explore new frontiers.

We celebrate our industrys discoveries and achievements from the small but brilliantly simple innovations that affect everyday lives to the major discoveries and missions that fuel our collective human drive to explore and accomplish amazing things. For over 75 years, AIAA has been a champion to make sure that aerospace professionals are recognized for their contributions.

AIAA congratulates the following individuals and teams who were

recognized from April 2014 to June 2014.

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AIAA Piper General Aviation AwardMark D. MaughmerProfessor of Aerospace EngineeringPennsylvania State UniversityUniversity Park, Pennsylvania

AIAA Public Service AwardKathie L. OlsenFounder and Managing Director ScienceWorksWashington, D.C.

AIAA Reed Aeronautics AwardBen T. ZinnDavid S. Lewis, Jr. Chair, School of Aerospace Engineering and Regents ProfessorGeorgia Institute of TechnologyAtlanta, Georgia

AIAA Thermophysics AwardVan P. CareyProfessor, A. Richard Newton ChairMechanical Engineering DepartmentUniversity of California at BerkeleyBerkeley, California

Daniel Guggenheim Medal (Sponsored by AIAA, AHS, ASME, and SAE)Abraham KaremPresident and Founder Karem Aircraft, Inc.Lake Forest, California

SAE/AIAA William Littlewood Memorial LectureAxel Krein Senior Vice President Research & TechnologyAirbus GroupBremen, Germany

AIAA Hypersonic Systems and Technologies AwardJohn I. ErdosPresident and CEO (retired)GASL, Inc.Ronkonkoma, New York

AIAA International Cooperation AwardJohn E. LaGraffEmeritus Professor, Mechanical and Aerospace EngineeringSyracuse University, Syracuse, New York

AIAA James A. Van Allen Space Environments Award Stamatios M. KrimigisEmeritus Head, Space DepartmentJohns Hopkins University/Applied Physics LaboratoryLaurel, Maryland

AIAA Losey Atmospheric Sciences AwardJohn HallettResearch Professor Emeritus Division of Atmospheric SciencesDesert Research Institute, Reno, Nevada

AIAA Multidisciplinary Design Optimization AwardRobert A. CaneldProfessor and Assistant Department HeadAerospace and Ocean EngineeringVirginia Polytechnic Institute and State UniversityBlacksburg, Virginia

AIAA National Capital Section Barry M. Goldwater Educator AwardArthur F. Rick ObenschainDeputy Center DirectorNASA Goddard Space Flight CenterGreenbelt, Maryland

AIAA Plasmadynamics and Lasers AwardJohn T. LineberryPresident and General Manager (retired)LyTec LLCManchester, Tennessee

20 AEROSPACE AMERICA/JULY-AUGUST 2014 Copyright 2014 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

The International Civil AviationOrganization reacted to the disappearanceof Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 by calling ex-perts from more than 30 countries to ameeting in Montreal in May. As thingsstand, the worlds airlines and air trafficcontrollers have no system in place to trackplanes as they cross the worlds vast oceanand desert regions. For the normally re-strained ICAO, the meetings official an-nouncement amounted to a bureaucraticscream about the need to fix that problem.ICAO said the goal was to try and increasecurrent momentum on deliberations overthe specific aircraft and satellite-based ca-pabilities needed to permit global imple-mentation of worldwide flight tracking.

Pundits and airline passengers wereshocked in March to learn that a

Boeing 777 like FlightMH370 could simply dis-

appear into the black ofnight in this age of satellite

phones, in-flight Wi-Fi and re-motely piloted aircraft. But those

who gathered inMontreal

were prob-ably not surprised. Today, the

passengers and crews of airliners are virtu-ally on their own once they move beyondthe approximately 290-statute-mile range ofshore radars and radio towers. Before

Learning fast from MH370

The international aviation communitywants to put an airliner-tracking system in place to prevent more mysteries like that of Malaysia AirlinesFlight 370. And it wants to do soquickly. Natalia Mironova and Philip Butterworth-Hayes examine the options.

Photo by Laurent Errera

AEROSPACE AMERICA/JJULY-AUGUST 2014 21

MH370 vanished, the desire for better sur-veillance had been driven mostly by the al-lure of cutting fuel costs by allowing planesto fly closer together and spend less time inholding patterns.

The world is about to learn whetherthe mystery of Flight 370 will be enough toprompt the airlines and the worlds air nav-igation service providers meaning theFAA and equivalent organizations aroundthe globe to finally resolve the technical,financial and policy challenges posed byglobal airliner tracking. Whatever technol-ogy is chosen, the goal would be to plugthe radar dead zones that could, in the-ory, put other jets at risk.

Whats clear is that the aviation indus-try has a fresh determination: I hope welearn more from Flight 370 than lets havelonger-life batteries, says Allan McArtor,chairman and CEO of Airbus Group, for-merly EADS North America, referring tocalls for longer lasting black boxes.

Time is of the essence. Coming out ofthe May meeting, ICAO set up a new Air-craft Tracking Task Force to identify and as-sess the options. An ambitious deadline ofOctober 14 was set for a final report.

The choiceOne camp would like to adapt the existingAircraft Communications Addressing andReporting System to relay position data

over geosynchronous satellites and groundgateways. Airlines use ACARS mainly to re-ceive intermittent performance reports fromplanes in flight so maintenance work onengines or electrical systems can be doneonce the planes land. It is used less often torelay navigation data. The maintenancedata arrives at airline operations centers viaradio links when the planes are over landor via Iridium and Inmarsat satellites whenthey are over the oceans. As the world nowknows, the satellite carrying ACARS datakept shaking hands hourly with MH370 viaan Inmarsat geosynchronous satellite, al-though no data was sent.

There is another camp, and this campwould like to take advantage of the factthat airliners are starting to be equipped to

by Natalia Mironova andPhilip Butterworth-Hayes

Bo

eing

Tamper proof? Fire concerns aremaking authorities hesitant todeny the crew the ability to turnoff GPS broadcasts. Shown here isan artists rendering of the cockpitof Boeing's new 737 MAX familyof aircraft.

broadcast GPS coordinates via new auto-matic dependent surveillance-broadcast, orADS-B, transponders, as required by theFAA under its NextGen air traffic controlmodernization initiative. These transpon-ders broadcast GPS signals through anten-nas positioned on the roofs and bellies ofplanes so the plane doesnt lose connectiv-ity with receiving towers when it banks.The signals are meant for those groundtowers, but they also radiate into space.Thats where satellite operator Iridium andthe multinational venture called Aireoncome in. Even before MH370 disappeared,Aireon executives were laying plans to lis-ten in on ADS-B signals with antennasaboard Iridiums forthcoming next-genera-tion low-Earth-orbit satellites.

The task force is saying only that itwants to examine timely solutions. The[task force] is focused on identifying near-term options for global tracking of aircraft.One of the primary activities of [the taskforce] will be to assess the products andservices that exist today to see how theymay be used to implement global flighttracking. Because the industry has commit-ted to an extremely aggressive timeline todevelop recommendations, it is imperativeto limit the scope of the assessment, saysPerry Flint, spokesman for the Americas forIATA, the International Air Transportation

Association, which rep-resents the interests ofthe worlds airlines andleads the new task force.

Which options oroption would constitutenear-term solutions?Thats unclear at thispoint. Flint says it will beup to the task force toidentify those options.

Going globalThe main alternative tothe ACARS-Inmarsat pro-posal comes from Aireon,the joint venture betweenIridium Communications,Inc., and Nav Canada, thenot-for-profit companythat owns and operatesCanadas air navigationsystem. Aireon payloadswill be installed on 66Iridium NEXT satellites,which Iridium plans tobegin launching next

year, with the tracking service expected tostart in 2017. Aireon is banking that itstimetable will mesh well with installation ofthe ADS-B technology on airliners. Each air-crafts avionics compartment (usually locatedbelow the pilots) must be fitted with atransponder box the size of a microwaveoven that sends out the planes GPS locationdata every 10 to 15 seconds to a ground-based data center, which processes the infor-mation and distributes it to the airlines andair traffic control. The FAA is already rollingout ADS-B in U.S. airspace as part of theNextGen initiative, and it will be mandatoryfor all aircraft flying into the U.S. by 2020.

If ADS-B is going to be turned into atracking solution, it needs a global roll-out...not just in the U.S., cautions McArtorof Airbus.

Aireon hopes to make ADS-B a globalsystem by fixing its one disadvantage: Thestations and towers that receive ADS-Bbroadcasts and relay them to controllersare all on land, which limits coverage towhen planes are over land or within a fewhundred miles.

ADS-B has not been fully rolled outaboard planes, but advocates note that thetowers and networking equipment are inplace and that aviation authorities beyondthe FAA are beginning to mandate it al-though not yet the satellite version. Europe

Sources: FAA, Iridium, Exelis Illustrations by John Bretschneider

Controltower

Data processing center

Data processing center

Iridium gateway

ADS-B tower

290-mile range

GPS signal

GPS satellite Iridium NEXT

Iridium NEXTcross links

EXPANDED SURVEILLANCEAirlines are equipping planes to broadcast GPS locations to controllers via automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast, ADS-B, services. These signals are meant for ground towers, but they also radiate to space, where new Iridium satellites would listen for them and track planes when they are out of range of towers.

Position b

roadcast

Position b

roadcast

IP-based networks Teleport network

1090 MHz ES (extended squitter

transmission format)



has a similar thing in place. And more andmore countries are moving to that model,says Ed Sayadian, vice president of air traf-fic management at Exelis, which built andis maintaining the ground system for theFAAs portion of ADS-B and will also buildand maintain the data management and dis-tribution system for Aireon. According toSayadian, the transition to satellite-basedADS-B would be seamless for aircraft al-ready equipped with ADS-B transmittersbecause of the omni-directional nature ofthe antennas.

Even so, the FAA hasnt signed on to bepart of Aireon just yet. Onboard so far areNav Canada, the Irish Aviation Authority,the Italian Company for Air NavigationServices known by the Italian acronymENAV and Naviair, which provides avia-tion infrastructure in Denmark, Greenlandand the Faroe Islands.

Wayne Plucker, an aviation industry ex-pert with global consulting firm Frost & Sul-livan, says the heavyweights like the FAAand Eurocontrol will have to adopt Aireonfor it to become a global standard for flighttracking, and he says he is not convincedeveryone is onboard yet. There is still a lotof talking going on about data-sharing, hesays. No one wants a terrorist to use track-ing information for ill use, he adds.

On top of that, making sure smallerand less financially stable nations can af-ford to participate will be key to makingAireon truly global. Aireon President andCEO Don Thoma tells Aerospace Americathats an issue Aireons partners have al-ready thought through: To take advantageof Aireons service there are no additionalservice charges that they already incurfrom ANSPs (air navigation serviceproviders) and we expect those additionalfees will be based on a net savings to theairlines, as the cost of the Aireon servicewill be less than the value of fuel saved,he explains by email.

The case for existing technologyThe ACARS proponents say they have anedge, because while ADS-B transpondersare being installed in some planes, ACARSis already aboard many more. ACARS datalink service providers SITA of Geneva andARINC of Annapolis, Md., have been usingInmarsat and Iridium satellites to comple-ment the VHF and HF radio communica-tions used over land.

The primary role of ACARS has beenmaintenance messages, but even now air-

lines sometimes use it to transmit positioninformation. In this model known as ADS-C (the C standing for contract), the air-planes position message is automaticallybroadcast to a requesting air navigationservice provider as part of an internationalinitiative called FANS for Future Air Naviga-tion System, using ACARS as the communi-cations medium. A plane entering an au-thoritys airspace establishes a real-timecommunications contract after its re-quested by air traffic control. The contractspells out how often position informationwill be transmitted. This is different fromADS-B, in which airliner positions arebroadcast almost continuously for anyonewith the right equipment to receive them.

Inmarsat wants the airlines to makegreater use of ADS-C, and following the lossof MH370, the company has offered to pro-vide this position reporting data for free. AsInmarsat aviation vice president DavidCoiley explains: What were trying to do isstimulate the routine use of that capabilityglobally other than the way that its currentlyused for flight-tracking. What we would liketo see is more ANSPs take this up.

Inmarsat-compatible communicationsantennas are already on 90 percent of theworlds widebody, long-haul airliners, Coileysays. There is no additional expenditure re-quired or hardware, and the solution facil-ity and the flight-tracking capability alreadyexist on the aircraft. So its an immediatehit, an immediate improvement we are try-ing to stimulate to encourage the broaderadoption of ADS-C positional reporting,he adds.

SITA, the ACARS communicationprovider, has an idea for how to expandADS-C smoothly. Prompted by the Montrealmeeting, the company announced in Junethat it will offer what it called an enhanceddata sharing capability to complement In-marsats proposal. The SITA AIRCOMServer Flight Tracker service would allowan airlines flight dispatchers to access ADS-C data currently only available to air navi-gation service providers.

But ACARs has its own limitations as aflight tracking service. The service relies ongeosynchronous satellites whose positionsover the equator limit how far north or souththey can reach, and so some regions are un-covered. There is the problem of reliabilityand security a new back-up and systemmonitoring network will be needed to en-sure the space-based and ground-based sys-tems are operating to the required standards.


sure bulkhead. But then you would needto re-consider aircraft certification issues,says David Gleave, an aviation accident in-vestigator based in the U.K. Today, long-haul aircraft must be ready to fly on batterypower alone for 30 minutes. Adding a flighttracking device would increase the load onthe batteries, and this could mean thatmany aircraft would not be able to operatefor the required 30 minutes.

Inmarsat is exploring a potential solu-tion to the off switch problem independ-ently of the free flight-tracking service thecompany is offering. The one piece ofequipment that stays on even if the avionicsare turned off is the aircrafts antenna,which sends hourly signals to the satellitewith the airplanes unique code to ensurecontinuous connectivity. This is known ashandshaking. It provided the only cluesabout MH370s possible flight path afterother communications were lost.

Handshaking, however, is not a greattool for flight tracking the updates hap-pen only once an hour and the signaldoesnt include any position data, so thedirection of flight had to be calculated fromthe angle between the aircraft and thesatellite. Coiley says Inmarsat is working tofix that. What Inmarsat is evaluating at themoment is enhancing the handshake capa-bility the signaling capability in our net-work to actually include positional reportdata. It is currently possible for us to en-hance the handshake to include positiondata, he says.

Tamper proof?Besides the logistics of data sharing and af-fordability issues, one topic keeps comingup in discussions about onboard trackingdevices all of them can be turned off bythe pilot. The Flight 370 mystery has beenpunctuated by speculation that someone the flight crew or perhaps terrorists inten-tionally switched off or disabled the com-munications equipment that would transmitposition data.

So far, no one has proposed a devicethat would be locked away in a tamper-proofbox with its own wiring and power source,similar to the way airliner black boxes oper-ate. The main reason for that is the pilotsneed to be able to turn off avionics or any-thing else electrical in case of fire, be it withan off switch or a circuit breaker. Its a safetyissue, according to the pilots. The Interna-tional Federation of Air Line Pilots Associa-tions supports the concept of global trackingof aircraft; however, as with any issue relatedto aviation, there needs to be a safety andcost benefit analysis for procedures and/orequipage proposals, says Valerie McLeod, aspokeswoman for the federation. IFALPA isnot in favor of simply making aircraft com-munications equipment tamper proof theability to turn off electrical equipment in theaircraft in the event of a malfunction or elec-trical fire is essential.

One solution could be to place theflight tracking device in a part of the aircraftthat cannot be accessed by the flight crew such as in the tail behind the rear pres-

Airliner surveillance: Iridium'sAireon venture plans to use theforthcoming Iridium NEXT satellitesto gather up position broadcasts.

Aireon


Policy questionsWhether the international community willembrace Aireon or sign on to Inmarsatsproposal depends on how a host of institu-tional challenges are resolved. Agreementwould be needed about which class of air-craft must be covered. Should the smallesttype of aircraft be required to engage inthe global flight tracking service? If an air-lines aircraft is never out of radar range, isit really necessary to re-equip with a sat-com transmission system? Where does theinformation go? Directly to the nearest airnavigation service provider, or to a groundstation that would automatically distributethe information to the relevant en-route,approach or airport centers? Who wouldbe responsible for tracking the aircrafts lo-cation against the flight plan, and alertingfirst the crew then the appropriate securityand safety organizations in case the aircraftdid not return to its agreed flight plan?How fast should the data update rate be?What sort of timescale should be consid-ered for implementation?

This is the work that ICAO is currentlyundertaking after Montreal, separatelyfrom the airliner tracking task force. Thedata-sharing is likely to be based on thecurrent system, in which the communica-tions service providers (ARINC and SITA)distribute aeronautical telecommunicationsdata to different clients, but use the samecore system.

Not all governments are waiting forthose questions to be sorted. In early MayIndias civil aviation regulator instructedIndian airlines to track all aircraft in realtime using onboard ACARS or ADS-B. Itordered flight crews to report aircraft co-ordinates, speed and altitude every 15minutes while flying over areas not cov-ered by radar.

One thing experts agree on is that mak-ing airliner tracking global will require in-novation and compromise. As Frost & Sulli-vans Plucker says, Its a study ininternational conundrums. There is not agood answer at this point. Or at least notan easy one.

59 JANUARY 2015 KISSIMMEE, FLORIDA

14-336

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by Marc Selinger


When the U.S. signedan agreement in 1994to import RD-180rocket engines builtby Russias NPO En-ergomash, many de-

fense officials figured the U.S. would oneday get around to doing what a panel ofexperts chaired by retired Air Force Maj.Gen. H.J. Mitch Mitchell now recom-mends it should do: figure out how to pro-pel the first stage of the Atlas 5 without re-lying cooperation with Russia. Specifically,the Mitchell report recommends a domesti-cally produced engine.

No one through the years was clairvoy-ant enough to predict that a Russian deputyprime minister would tweet a threat to cutoff the supply of RD-180s because of ten-sions over Ukraine. But U.S. defense andintelligence officials were not unaware ofthe risk they were taking. Some inside thePentagon argued that Boeing-built Delta 4rockets could back up the Atlas 5 rockets ifthe inventory of RD-180s at a UnitedLaunch Alliance manufacturing plant in De-catur, Ill., ran out. Mitchell recommendsmaking sure payloads are also compatiblewith Delta 4s, but cautions there is no op-tion that would fully replace the RD-180sthrough fiscal 2017.

Most recently, in 2007, then-Pentagonacquisition chief John Young penned an ac-

quisition decision memorandum or ADM directing the Air Force to develop anequivalent to the RD-180 on its own or be-come a co-producer of the engine, meaninga second nation to build RD-180s not thatit would build them jointly with Russia.

I am deeply troubled by dependenceon Russian-produced RD-180s for its spacelift, Young wrote in cursive at the bottomof the one-page document. I want to see arobust, aggressive, fully funded plan to de-velop a new engine, co-produce RD-180s,or both!

Young tells Aerospace America that inlight of the long history of roller-coasterrelations between the United States andRussia, it was too risky to rely on Russianengines for vital space launches. That con-cern is reflected in his memorandum,which tells the Air Force to maintain asufficient RD-180 inventory to ensure ac-cess to space in the event of a disruptionin the supply of Russian engines. This in-ventory is intended to allow for thesmooth transition to a new engine for At-las 5 or for the orderly transfer of payloadsto the Delta 4 system.

As a Georgia Tech-educated aerospaceengineer, Young also strongly believed thatthe U.S. military could and should useAmerican-made engines.

I saw it as a matter of national pride,recalls Young. In a nation that created the

Growing concerns over U.S. dependence on Russias RD-180 engine for

launching Atlas 5 rockets led to the recently released Mitchell Report,

named for the chairman of the panel that studied the issue. Marc Selinger

explains the reports recommendations and looks behind the scenes at

the long-simmering controversy.

Learningto let go

Copyright 2014 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

RD-180:

AEROSPACE AMERICA/JULY-AUGUST 2014 29NASA

Source of controversy: The two thrustchambers on the RD-180 engine on an Atlas 5rocket. The U.S. depends on the Russian-builtengine to power the rockets first stage.


of utilizing alloys that can withstand anoxygen-rich combustion environment likethat inside the RD-180 an environmentthat can burn parts absent the right engi-neering solution.

There are not many things you wouldstart with 40-year-old technology, androcket engines are no exception, one in-dustry official says.

Also, an agreement allowing the U.S. toco-produce the RD-180 expires in 2022, andthere is no guarantee Russia would approverenewing that agreement, especially withU.S.-Russian relations tense over Ukraine.

On the other hand, developing a new en-gine would create its own set of challenges.

The 46 Atlas 5 launches powered by theRD-180 have gone well. If we do a new en-gine, there will be no track record, Youngsays. Were going to have to start over andwere going to be taking some risk. But I be-lievethe U.S. should have the capabilityand the national will to have a rocket engineindustrial base that can launch any payloadwe need to launch.

aerospace industry or the vast majority ofit we were using Russian engines. Thatwas never a satisfying condition for me.

Despite Youngs effort, Air Force fund-ing for a new or co-produced engine nevermaterialized, and Young says the issue fellby the wayside when he left office in 2009.

It just got buried in the Pentagonbudget process, Young says.

The Air Force, in a prepared statement,said it did continue R&D efforts to im-prove understanding [of the RD-180] as di-rected by the ADM. Those efforts continueto inform the ongoing review of the issueand any decisions that may be made.

U.S. lawmakers are also concernedabout continued reliance on Russian en-gines. The House Appropriations Commit-tee has proposed spending $220 million infiscal year 2015 to begin developing a newU.S.-made engine.

Starting anew?The Mitchell panel estimates it would takesix years to develop a new engine, whichis typical, even aggressive, for a new rocketengine program, industry officials say. Theprogram would begin with two yearsof technical risk-reduction efforts, followedby four years of full-scale development.

The risk reductionphase would coverstandard issues for anew engine, includingpre-burner and main-chamber combustionstability, the injectorand turbo-pump de-signs, and metallurgytechnology.

U.S. rocket expertssay developing a newengine would bepreferable to learningto make the RD-180 inthe U.S. Domestic pro-duction of the RD-180would save little timeor money and woulduse a 40-year-old de-sign, these industry of-ficials say. One prob-lem is that Russianengineers protect met-als parts inside the RD-180s by applying coat-ings. The U.S., bycontrast, would preferthe newer approach

United Launch Alliance

Boeing

Standby: A Boeing Delta 4 lifts off.Some in the Pentagon have arguedthat if the RD-180 engine becameunavailable, this heavy-lift rocketcould fill in for the Atlas 5.

Blasting off: An Atlas 5 launch at Vandenberg Air Force Base.An angry tweet by a Russian official during the Ukraine crisisthreatened to cut off the supply of RD-180 engines thatpower the rockets first stage.

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14-223

he financial world was abuzz earlier thisyear with rumors that Facebook was aboutto pay $60 million to buy Titan Aerospace.Out of nowhere came Google, with a planto buy the 14-person unmanned planemaker for an undisclosed sum.

Why would two online giants be lockedin a tug-of-war over a small company spe-cializing in solar-powered drones? Busi-nesses like Facebook and Google know thattwo-thirds of the worlds people dont haveInternet connections of any kind, and theysee long-duration aircraft as a potentiallycost-effective way to soar beyond an obvi-ous roadblock to their long-term growth.

Facebook and Google, which com-pleted the Titan acquisition in April, are notalone in sensing the potential of long-dura-tion aircraft. For more than two decades,government agencies and aerospace heavy-weights have dabbled in attempts to buildairplanes and aerostats that would spendmonths or years in the stratosphere, relay-ing communications, providing surveillanceand serving as stand-ins for satellites. Somerefer to their proposed craft as atmosphericsatellites, and their key advantage over theorbiting kind would be their relatively lowcost and ease of launch. So far, the techni-cal challenges have been too much forthese craft to pose competition to satellites,which need occasional station keeping

boosts but dont have to be constantly mov-ing to stay aloft. Engineers have yet to provethat batteries or fuel cells can function reli-ably on a solar-powered plane for months ata time. Aerostats have the advantage thatthey can be reeled down to change theirbatteries. But if too much maintenance is re-quired or their lightweight materials cantwithstand the elements, then their economicadvantages disappear quickly.

Enter the impressive financial resourcesof Google and Facebook. Observers are be-ginning to wonder aloud whether the pri-vate sectors research dollars can be com-bined with the research to date to makethis the age of the atmospheric satellite.

32 AEROSPACE AMERICA/JULY-AUGUST 2014 Copyright 2014 by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics

by Debra Werner

AtmosThe desire by Google and Facebook to make broadbandaccess truly ubiquitous is breathing new life into work on atmospheric satellites aircraft or aerostats thatwould y for months at time. Debra Werner examines the technology.

T


that would have to han-dle the journey upwardthrough wind andweather to calmer skiesabove 18 kilometers.

Some atmosphericsatellites have achievedimpressive results.Zephyr, an unmannedaircraft built by Qine-tiq, a defense technol-ogy company based inFarnborough, England, set an endurancerecord in 2010 when its 50-kilogram planewith a 22.5-meter wingspan remained air-borne for 14 days. Earlier this year, a high-

In the last 5 years, the aeronauticaltechnology needed, the actual structural as-pects as well as solar panels have becomemore efficient and the storage mechanismfor the electrical energy have become muchbetter. We are now finding a situationwhere it is possible to build a solar pow-ered plane we were originally looking atover a decade ago, says David Grace, headof the communications and signal process-ing research group at Englands Universityof York.

Why its hardVirtually limitless flight would require get-ting to the stratosphere in a light airframe

Titan Aerospace

phericsatellites

Artists rendering of Solara 50, designed to stay airborne for five years. The plane is under development by Titan Aerospace,the New Mex

aerospace america - august 2014

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