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Article source: http://rhinotimes.com/Content/Default/Columns/Article/Uncle-Orson-Reviews-Everything-March-31/-3/7/1117
Reuters/Singapore
Indonesia is about to roll out its first passenger plane, one of several smaller, homegrown aircraft being studied in Asia, designed especially for short hops across the region’s emerging markets, where air travel is booming.
State-owned aerospace firm PT Dirgantara Indonesia’s 19-seat N219, which cost $400mn and took just over five years to make, is scheduled to make its first flight in June and start deliveries in 2018.
South Korea is mulling a 100-seat aircraft, and India has considered a 70-90 seater. Novices in a highly competitive industry, these largely state-owned manufacturers are betting on growing passenger numbers and an increase in short flights operated by small, efficient craft. The planned aircraft would be smaller than the Airbus 320 or Boeing 737, which seat between about 150 and 190 passengers.
Instead, they aim to be cost-effective, nimble alternatives to planes produced by Brazil’s Embraer, Canada’s Bombardier, and European firm ATR, a joint venture between Airbus and Finmeccanica.
Many of these could suit some markets in Asia, South America and Africa, executives say, where demand for air travel is growing but infrastructure development often lags demand. Runways at many smaller airports are not always long enough to accommodate larger planes like the A320 and 737.
But while countries see the launch of a commercial aircraft as an important economic milestone, designing an airplane from scratch is also an expensive gamble. Both China and Japan have struggled to create jets that sell.
Asian
Article source: http://www.gulf-times.com/story/486502/Asian-upstarts-eye-global-aircraft-market
WASHINGTON (CN) – In 2008, the Drug Enforcement Administration bought a plane.
Drug trafficking has long been known to fund terrorist groups, and the DEA wanted to put this aircraft to use in Afghanistan.
With help from the Department of Defense, the agency planned to outfit the $8.6 million, twin-propeller passenger aircraft with surveillance equipment and other bells and whistles.
More than seven years and $86 million later, however, the plane still rests on its jacks. An audit from the Office of the Inspector General released Wednesday says it never flew in Afghanistan and is unlikely to do so ever, as this July marks one year since the DEA wound down its operations in the country.
The plan to buy and modify the plane, dubbed the Global Discovery program, ended up costing four times as much as the agency’s original $22 million estimate, in part because the DEA bought a model that didn’t meet its technical needs and failed to keep the records necessary to guarantee a DOD subcontractor performed the right changes to the aircraft, according to the report.
“We believe that the more than $86 million spent on the purchase and modification of the DEA’s ATR 500 aircraft with advanced surveillance capabilities to support the DEA’s counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan has been an ineffective and wasteful use of government resources,” the 68-page report states.
Problems with the Global Discovery Program began even before the DEA and DOD officially launched the operation, according to the report, which grew
Article source: http://www.courthousenews.com/2016/03/30/audit-slams-dea-for-86-million-wasted-on-afghanistan-spy-plane.htm
The Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) America Corporation is developing safer planes using big data and cloud technology. (Photo : Reuters)
A Chinese aircraft manufacturer has come up with an idea on how to build safer airplanes using big data and cloud technology, amid global concerns on how to reduce safety risks caused by unusual human behavior and how to recover and analyze data from air crashes, the Xinhua News Agency reported.
“The time for revolution in aviation safety has come,” Wei Ye, executive director and president of the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China (COMAC) America Corporation told Xinhua on Friday, March 25.
The announcement came as the Bureau of Enquiry and Analysis for Civil Aviation Safety of France recently confirmed that a co-pilot of the German budget airline Germanwings had been suffering from depression and deliberately caused the plane to crash a year ago.
The same is true in the case of Airbus 320, which crashed in southern France on March 24, 2015 while en route from Barcelona to Duesseldorf, and resulted in the death of 150 people on board, the report said.
Using a big data-based computer, COMAC America Corporation is studying the concept of “unmanned flight with human supervision” which operates without influence from outside in a closed environment, thereby minimizing
Article source: http://en.yibada.com/articles/112262/20160329/chinese-aircraft-manufacturer-build-safer-planes-using-big-data-cloud-technology.htm
Harry Moyer parked next to his 1964 Mooney at the San Luis Obispo County Regional Airport, stepped out to gaze at his airplane and commented, “There’s our time machine.”
“We save a little time when we go places,” Moyer elaborated this week. “My wife, she thinks it’s barbaric to drive to Los Angeles.”
The San Luis Obispo couple has been shaving hours off travel time for decades.
Moyer bought his ’64 Mooney plane in 1975, but the 95-year-old pilot has been flying far longer than that — since 1942, to be precise, when he joined the U.S. Army Air Corps as an aviation cadet while studying engineering at the University of Akron in Ohio.
He received his fighter training in the South, learning how to fly the P-40 Warhawk and P-51 Mustang in Baton Rouge, La.; and the P-47 Thunderbolt in Tallahassee, Fla.
“We were kind of apprehensive about the amount of power — 1,200 horsepower,” Moyer said of piloting the P-40 fighter. “It was exhilarating,”
During World War II, Moyer flew in North Africa, Sicily, Italy and China. A photo of Moyer standing next to a P-40 in China in May 1944 now graces bottles of Tribute, a 2013 Red Blend produced by Pianetta Winery in San Miguel as homage to those who have served or are serving in the U.S. military.
With each bottle purchased, the winery will make a donation to Honor Flight Central Coast California, which takes veterans
Article source: http://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/article69158712.html
On Wednesday, Lockheed Martin signed the first customer for the LMH-1, the giant defense contractor’s hybrid airship. The LMH-1 is a unique new aircraft which is part helium dirigible, part cargo helicopter, part passenger airliner and part hovercraft.
UK-based Straightline Aviation signed a letter of intent with Hybrid Enterprises, the exclusive reseller of the hybrid airship, to purchase up to 12 aircraft with a potential value of roughly $480 million.
When the new aircraft enters commercial service in around three years’ time it would not just be an upgrade to the traditional airship or advertising blimp, but would constitute a whole new class of aircraft says Bob Boyd, program manager for hybrid airships at Lockheed Martin: “It’s a new opportunity, we’re not competing with any other aircraft.”
“It’s a new opportunity, we’re not competing with any other aircraft”
Straightline Aviation is the world’s largest airship company and operates in 30 countries. Chief and co-founder, Michael Kendrick tells MINING.com that the company would own and operate the aircraft: “We see pent-up demand in the mining and oil and gas industries and expect our first customers from this sector.”
MINING.com recently toured Lockheed’s Skunk Works in Palmdale California where work on hybrid airship technology began more than two decades ago under a classified military program that never got off the ground (nothing except an early prototype to be more precise).
But Skunk Works never abandoned the project, spending around $100 million on research and development on a highly modified version of the original concept. The LMH-1 is now the first commercial venture to come out of
Article source: http://www.mining.com/breakthrough-aircraft-to-transform-mining-economics/
Australopithecus sediba did not have the jaw and tooth structure required for a diet of hard foods. Most of australopiths were having adaptations in their jaws, teeth and faces that allowed them to process foods that were difficult to chew.
The researchers believe A. sediba didn’t share the same nutcracker jaw feature as its ancestors, due to its natural inability to crack hard foods. This also suggests that the species was a transitional one in between human ancestors, coming after A. africanus and most likely before Homo habilis or H. erectus.
“Most australopiths had amazing adaptations in their jaws, teeth and faces that allowed them to process foods that were difficult to chew or crack open,” said study lead David Strait of WUSTL in a press statement. “Among other things, they were able to efficiently bite down on foods with very high forces.”
Strait’s team used an A. sediba skull discovered in South Africa in 2008 and put it to an extensive series of tests and modeling simulations, similar to the tests car and airplane parts go through during their manufacture. According to the test results, A. sediba was not predisposed to chewing hard foods, even if it did consume them, and may have eaten softer foods that weren’t as hard to chew than tree bark or nuts.
The
Article source: http://www.albanydailystar.com/health/dietary-changes-shaped-the-evolutionary-paths-of-pro-humans-escondido-health-16246.html
