Today’s airframe manufacturers have taken on more of the role of systems integrators, putting the focus on the aircraft as a system-of-many-systems. Sean Barker, FBCS CEng and a former research scientist at BAE Systems in the UK, approaches aircraft as a system of systems (SoS) from a business process perspective in his new book from SAE International in Warrendale, Pa.
In order to help the next generation of entrepreneurs enter that market, Boulder, Colorado-based Techstars and Paris-based Starburst Aerospace have joined forces to start a new Los Angeles-based business accelerator for space technology companies.
To enable the tests required for development work to be performed with maximum efficiency, the Zwick Roell Group (ZwickRoell) – a global supplier of materials testing machines based out of Ulm, Germany – developed a materials testing machine that can be equipped with both a temperature chamber and a high-temperature furnace.
Hundreds of aerospace executives, engineers, scientists, and academics are gathering in London this week for Aerospace Systems and Technology Conference (ASTC) 2018 from SAE International in Warrendale, Pennsylvania. Discussions during the three-day industry event center on the theme of innovating air mobility. Aerospace thought leaders are at ASTC discussing current challenges, the latest enabling technologies, and future opportunities, including those related to urban air mobility (UAM) and supersonic aircraft.
Curtiss-Wright’s Defense Solutions division in Ashburn, Va., has enhanced its range of Advanced Video Display Units (AVDU) high-resolution, rugged LCD touchscreen displays with new software-configurable capabilities to improve flexibility, usability, and reliability.
The modified Chengdu J-10B was spotted in Zhuhai ahead of a performance at at 2018 China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition. During the Zhuhai exhibition, the aircraft demonstrated the Pugachev’s Cobra maneuver.
With Orion capsule testing and the ESM delivery milestone complete, NASA two years out from Orion Exploration Mission 1 – the program’s unmanned spacecraft validation mission around the Moon in 2020.
“The future of urban transportation requires close partnership between regulators, cities, authorities, and the private sector. AeroMobil is closely working with cities around the world to establish opportunities to test, develop, and implement routes for safe personal transportation in the sky,” says Jonathan Carrier, vice president of corporate development of AeroMobil in Slovakia.
Today, Hartford, Conn.-based Pratt & Whitney, a division of United Technologies Corp., incorporates more than 5000 sensors on its latest powerplant, the PW1000G high-bypass geared turbofan (GTF). The massive amount of data requires significant processing capabilities, but results in efficiencies for operators and maintainers.
Lockheed Martin has revealed its concept for a new crewed lunar lander: a single stage, fully reusable system that incorporates flight-proven technologies and systems from the NASA Orion spacecraft. In its initial configuration, the lander would deliver a crew of four and 2,000 pounds of cargo to the Moon’s surface for up to two weeks.
Airshow China is the country’s go-to event for debuting the their latest military and aerospace hardware. One those aircraft debuts – which might look familiar to engineers at Northrop Grumman – is the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) Cai Hong 7 unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV).
A growing number of organizations, including leading aerospace and defense (A&D) companies, are implementing model-based systems engineering (MBSE), a practice developing and exploiting a set of related system models that help define, design, and document a system under development – and reaping the benefits of not only increased productivity, agility, and efficiency, but also time and cost savings.
The electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (eVTOL) revolution is gaining momentum, as evidenced by the unveiling of the Bell Nexus hybrid-electric VTOL air taxi concept at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES), affirms Mike Hirschberg, executive director at the Vertical Flight Society (VFS), a non-profit organization working to advance vertical flight, in Fairfax, Virginia.
Mobility engineers and executives at Bell Helicopter, a Textron Inc. (NYSE:TXT) company, in Fort Worth, Texas, are developing new concepts of mobility to make moving people and products more efficient and effective – and launching urban air mobility (UAM) innovations, including the Bell Nexus air taxi design, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this week. They envision and are helping to enable a fleet of on-demand, quiet vertical-takeoff-and-landing (VTOL) aircraft capable of safely whisking passengers over traffic and across urban landscapes by the mid-2020s.
The companies have partnered to jointly develop and commercialize a next-generation exhaust system for heavy trucks that incorporates thermoelectric waste heat recovery.
NASA’s Space Technology and Mission Directorate awarded Frontier Aerospace with “Tipping Point” funding to qualify Frontier’s Deep Space Engine (DSE) for flight. The compact and lightweight design of the 100-pound force DSE thruster will enable future development of smaller and less expensive spacecraft propulsion systems due to the lower temperature freezing characteristics of its particular propellant.