Innholdsfortegnelse for October/November 2020 i Air & Space

October 31, 2000 was the last time in all of human history that every person could look up and out above our atmosphere knowing we were all within its protective biosphere. But since Bill Shepherd, Yuri Gidzenko, and Sergei Krikalev departed Baikonur Kosmodrome that day, there has always been someone in space—keeping watch over our home on Earth and an eye on our hopeful future among the stars. The crew reached the International Space Station two days later as the first inhabitants of that amazing laboratory, observatory, and symbol of what can be achieved through international cooperation. It took a bit more than the 10 years President Ronald Reagan called for in his 1984 State of the Union address to manufacture on the ground and assemble in space the initial…

Three castaways who were marooned on a small Pacific island are back home, thanks to an international search-and-rescue operation that brought together the U.S. Air Force, Air National Guard, U.S. Coast Guard, and the Royal Australian Navy. On July 29, the three Micronesian mariners set sail from Puluwat to Pulap atolls aboard a 23-foot skiff. Their 21-mile trip took a turn for the worse when their boat ran out of fuel and they sailed off course, eventually finding refuge on tiny, uninhabited Pikelot Island, nearly 125 miles away from their point of departure. When the sailors failed to arrive at their intended destination, a search was requested on July 31 through the U.S. Coast Guard’s Joint Rescue Sub Center in Guam, which then enlisted help from units across the region.…

OUR USUAL SUNDAY MORNING conversation is a little different from the way many couples talk to one another. Instead of sipping our coffee across the table from behind the newspaper, we’re seated on either side of the throttles, flap controls, fuel levers, and speed brakes of a Boeing 737. My husband and I both fly for American Airlines. Passengers are sometimes shocked that a husband and wife are the captain and first officer of their flight. “Who’s in charge?” “Is that allowed?” “You’re not fighting today, are you?” Despite their professed alarm, no one has turned around and run back up the jetway to the terminal…yet. I was here first, so to speak. I was already a pilot for TWA when Kevin and I met at an airshow. But our…

The powerful Sukhoi Su-27 has patrolled Ukrainian skies for 35 years; at first, as a Soviet fighter to counter the threat posed by the U.S. F-15 Eagle and today, as a Ukrainian air force interceptor protecting its airspace from Russian Su-27s and other fighters. The Flanker, as NATO named it, debuted in the West at the 1989 Paris Air Show, four years after it entered service. Test pilot Viktor Pugachev stunned the crowd with his signature “cobra” maneuver, pitching his sky-blue Sukhoi up to beyond vertical and skidding it forward on its tail, proving the fighter’s super-maneuverability. The Soviet air force 1969 specification for its new fighter design boiled down to this: Outperform the F-15. The first attempts failed, and chief designer Mikhail Simonov took a radical step. He halted…

For the past 20 years, without interruption, a small huddle of people—typically six at a time—have been living and working 250 miles over our heads, circling endlessly through the vacuum of space at five miles per second. Their work is demanding and dangerous, and more specialized, perhaps, than any work has ever been. Nobody else, anywhere, does what they do. To date, 240 people from 19 countries have visited the International Space Station, almost half of them for long-term stays in an outpost with the volume of a six-bedroom house. No one person, no one crew, could convey the space station story in its entirety. But we asked some of the people who’ve spent the most time there: What’s it like? Christina Koch returned last February from a nearly yearlong…

A SUNNY OPTIMISM PERVADED the March 9 opening of the Satellite 2020 conference in Washington, D.C., where one of the first sessions was a discussion among operators of large satellite constellations. Panelists included representatives of OneWeb and Elon Musk’s SpaceX, who were competing to gird the globe with satellite Internet connectivity—and grab a share of a broadband market valued at more than $300 billion in 2019. “Very few people are actually happy with their Internet service, especially in the rural areas. A lot of people are unconnected,” said Jonathan Hofeller, SpaceX vice president of Starlink and commercial sales. Starlink is the name SpaceX has given to its planned constellation of more than 12,000 small satellites, aimed at bringing high-speed Internet to those under- and unserved masses. SpaceX has already launched…

THE FURIOUS PACE of cold war weapons development ensured the North American F-86 Sabre burned briefly but brightly, ceasing production at the end of 1956, just nine years after George Welch’s first test flight of the XF-86. But North American’s plants in Los Angeles and Columbus turned out roughly 6,000 of the F-86’s A-through-K variants during that period. Nothing is more beloved than a machine that does its job and Michael Hankins, National Air and Space Museum curator of Air Force history, says the Sabre did a fine job. Although its oft-cited 10-to-one kill ratio is probably inflated, he says that five- or six-to-one is reasonable, given that U.S. pilots enjoyed a greater skill advantage over Chinese and North Korean MiG jockeys than they did against better-trained Soviet pilots earlier…

Moonstruck The recent article “The Moon’s Gold” (Aug. 2020) by Mark Strauss was exciting but failed to make some sort of ethical statement. After depleting, pillaging, and polluting Earth, now it’s moon’s turn. Ironically the author does mention the issue of depleting the surface water and having to go deeper at some point; the awareness is there, it’s just ignored. I’m aware that collectively humans have a stronger impulse for “progress” than for preservation and it’s futile to try to stop it, but it would have been nice to show the courage to own the destruction we cause in the pursuit of our dreams. EUGENIO FERRARI Anchorage, Alaska A great article; I hope it brings attention to this opportunity. I have been a proponent, since the LCROSS water-ice observations in…

Hot on the outside, cool on the inside. That’s how researchers typically describe Venus. At 900 degrees Fahrenheit, the surface temperature of the planet could melt lead. But scientists have long believed that Venus’ interior is inactive and cold, like its siblings Mercury and Mars. New research, however, provides strong evidence that Venus is a geologically active planet that has as many as 37 volcanoes. The proof comes in the form of ring-like structures known as coronae that dot the planet’s scalding surface. Coronae are created when plumes of hot material deep inside the planet push through the mantle layer and crust. It’s never been clear whether those Venusian coronae are relatively new or leftovers from a distant past. Scientists at the University of Maryland and the Institute of Geophysics…

THE JE TSONS-ESQUE DREAM of on-demand commercial delivery took a step closer last October 18, when three Wing 7000 delivery drones departed their “nest” established in a Christiansburg, Virginia parking lot. The first to arrive at its destination—after traveling 2.32 miles in two minutes, 50 seconds—was airframe A1229 with delivery of a FedEx-shipped winter vest to Paul and Susie Sensemeier. Like most drones, it was remotely piloted (or more accurately, monitored) by a human. Wing’s control center has the capability for an operator to control up to 15 drones simultaneously. The National Air and Space Museum has just accepted the donation of A1229 from Wing, one of Alphabet’s companies. Wing began as a Google Moonshot project in 2012 to develop the emergent capabilities of autonomous aircraft made possible by advances…

2000 MOVE-IN DAY Bill Shepherd, Sergei Krikalev, and Yuri Gidzenko arrived in a Soyuz vehicle on November 2, 2000 as the station’s first long-term residents. They returned five months later in space shuttle Discovery. (Six months is the standard tour today.) Shepherd was Expedition 1 commander; Americans and Russians alternated in that role for a decade. 2000-2001 HOME IMPROVEMENT Space shuttles delivered, and spacewalkers installed, key elements of the ISS: the U.S. Destiny lab, with its sleep quarters for the American crew, solar arrays for power (with supporting trusses), an airlock, storage modules and racks of equipment for experiments. Meanwhile, a Russian Soyuz brought a new docking module. 2003 DOWNSIZING The loss of space shuttle Columbia and crew in February 2003 set back the ISS construction schedule and forced a…

FIRST IMPRESSIONS CAN BE MISLEADING. The history of aviation is filled with stories about aircraft that seemed to have limited value but that over time exceeded expectations. We found seven notable aircraft that struggled through their early years to eventually prove their worth. Mach-busting Bomber There’s an old joke in Washington, D.C.: “What’s the difference between Dracula and the B-1 bomber?” Answer: “You can actually kill Dracula.” To be sure, the B-1 experienced many near-death experiences during its long road to deployment, but survive it did. In the 1960s, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara shelved the idea of a bomber to deliver nuclear weapons to Soviet targets, favoring ICBMs instead. The Nixon administration revived it, the Carter administration canceled it, and the Reagan administration brought it back—only to see the…

Orbiting Mars since October 2016, the European Space Agency’s ExoMars spacecraft has made a startling discovery: Mars is lovely in spring. The orbiter’s camera has captured images such as ice receding from the southern highlands, an impact crater encompassing black dune fields surrounded by red soil, and this one—taken on May 5, 2020, just as Mars passed its spring equinox—which shows a part of the floor of the Ius Chasma canyon. Ius Chasma is located in the western part of the Valles Marineris canyon system, which spans nearly a quarter of the circumference of Mars and is the largest known canyon in the solar system. But Ius Chasma itself is no slacker, measuring about 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) long and up to 8 kilometers (5 miles) deep, more than twice…

The Swift HALE unmanned aircraft system completed its first test flight on July 7. It lasted only two hours, but the 72-foot solar-powered aircraft, which can carry 10- to 15-pound payloads, is designed to operate at an altitude of 70,000 feet for 30 days or more. NASA’s Ames Research Center is supporting the project, which it sees as a cheaper alternative to satellites for conducting certain types of scientific research and monitoring the weather.…

On July 24, the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in northern Virginia reopened its doors to the public after being closed for more than four months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Center exhibits a magnificent collection of aerospace artifacts. On display are such favorites as the space shuttle Discovery, the Concorde, the Lear Jet 23, the Piper J-3 Cub, the Lockheed P-38 Lightning, and other icons. Visitors to the Udvar-Hazy Center are asked to reserve a free, time-entry pass and to follow safety requirements. Face coverings are required in the building for all visitors six years old and older. (The Museum’s building on the National Mall remains closed due to the pandemic.) The Center is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; parking is…

IN EARLY 1977, director George Lucas invited some of his friends and associates to view a rough cut of his latest project. It was a kids’ movie that in one early draft had sagged under the title Adventures of the Starkiller, Episode One: The Star Wars . The crowd he’d summoned to his Bay Area home were at least outwardly just like him: Filmmakers with major successes under their belts though not one of them was yet 35 years old. They included screenwriters Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz, who’d worked with Lucas on his 1973 smash American Graffiti, and directors John Milius, Brian De Palma, and Steven Spielberg. When the lights came up, there was embarrassed silence. The movie was long, poorly acted, and staggeringly weird. Lucas was stung by…