Model Airplanes

The Chicago-based company delivered an industry record of 762 airliners a year ago, far ahead of the 635 planes Airbus shipped.

Deliveries are seen by many as a truer reflection of the state of the market and health of an aircraft manufacturer than sales, as airlines do not pay for new jets until they take delivery of them.

Another notable highlight for Airbus in 2015 was the official opening of the first Airbus factory in the United States, at Mobile on Alabama’s Gulf Coast, where between 40 and 50 A320 Family aircraft will be produced annually by 2018.

“It’s a sign that the vision you have that share prices drop and everything collapses is disconnected from the real economy, he said at the company’s annual news conference”.

Both planemakers are now ramping up production of their best-selling models, to meet rising demand from the world’s airlines, which are demanding new aircraft to reduce operating costs and cater for rising passenger traffic.

A similar situation played out the previous year, as Boeing topped Airbus in deliveries, 723 to 629, but Airbus edged its US rival in future orders, with 1,456 to Boeing’s 1,432.

There were also two orders for its flagship A380 model, whose sales have been struggling, it said.

Airbus’s A350-900, introduced in 2014, typically seats 325, with the

Article source: http://nanonews.org/airbus-wins-sales-battle-with-boeing-but-lags-behind-in/

Elon Musk has confirmed that the Falcon 9 rocket his firm landed last month has successfully completed a test firing with almost no problems.

Conducted hold-down firing of returned Falcon rocket. Data looks good overall, but engine 9 showed thrust fluctuations.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 16, 2016

Musk said that the issues with the ninth engine, one of those positioned on the outside ring of the rocket’s motors, could be down to debris that was sucked in during December’s launch. Engineers will be using a borescope – a flexible camera designed to examine crevices in machinery – to check for the cause.

Most of the rocket’s parts have been extensively tested since SpaceX got the hardware back to its labs, but today’s test burn shows that Musk’s plans for reusable rockets that could dramatically lower the cost of orbital delivery look sound. The data on the other eight rocket motors looks good he said.

Elon’s Musketeers may soon have another engine to test out, if Sunday’s launch and landing goes ahead as planned. SpaceX is launching NASA’s JASON-3 ocean-monitoring satellite from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but this time the landing will be doubly difficult.

Countdown to Sunday has begun! #Jason3 heads to the @SpaceX pad atop the Falcon 9 rocket. https://t.co/vPPnuUFeXd pic.twitter.com/s1g7XBekde

— NOAA Satellites (@NOAASatellites) January 16, 2016

The Falcon 9 that SpaceX has already landed was its most advanced model, the Version 1.1

Article source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/01/16/test_burn_on_recycled_spacex_rocket_shows_almost_all_systems_are_go/

Dr. Albert Woo held the tiny skull in his hands, turning it over and studying its imperfections. There was too much bone around the nose. The right eye socket was out of place. The reconstructive facial surgery would have to protect the tear ducts and delicate structures of the eye.

Woo and a colleague planned out the operation using the replica created with a 3-D printer. The next morning, when they opened up the skull of 5-year-old Myah McWilliams, they already knew what to do.

“If I’m going to take a child to the operating room, I want to know that it counts,” Woo said.

Thirty years ago, a doctor who printed out prescription orders on paper was considered revolutionary. Now doctors can print three-dimensional plastic skulls, collagen ears, even prosthetic arms. In the next 30 years, they aim to create viable human organs with 3-D printing technology.

Three-dimensional printers were invented in the 1980s and use “ink” made of heated plastic, ceramic or metal to create objects by dropping the liquid in layers as instructed by design software. The technology was originally adopted by the transportation and manufacturing industries to build molds for car, airplane and machine parts. In the 2000s, consumers joined in to print their own jewelry, toys and household goods on home printers that cost about $1,000, with 3-D patterns widely available for download.

The medical field eased into 3-D printing with simple plastic devices including hearing aids and umbilical cord clamps. By 2014, medical uses made up less

Article source: http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med-fit/health/d-printing-comes-to-the-hospital/article_bd0ac87b-2f02-5d37-ae75-c761e10f7e45.html

Bionic Partition from David Benjamin on Vimeo.

A full-sized piece of the partition.

Finding strong but lightweight materials and structures is a key design challenge for aeronautics firms trying to shrink the carbon footprint of jet travel. This project was created over the last two years using a generative design workflow, which tested thousands of designs utilizing the processing power of cloud computing, to more quickly arrive on a final shape. An algorithm developed by The Living devised potential shapes for the partition. By cycling through thousands of designs, then “learning” to create a better, stronger design, its akin to computer-modeled evolution.

“The final design was the result of running 10,000 design options,” says Benjamin. “You could only do this with a certain level of computer power that was only available recently.”

The final design was then 3D printed in collaboration with APWorks, an Airbus Group subsidiary, using a material called Scalmalloy, a second-generation aluminum-magnesium-scandium alloy that has more give than other materials used for aeronautics (this is the first application of the material, developed for lightweight structural applications).

This piece, called the Bionic Partition, is the first part of a collaboration between The Living and Airbus. An initial test has been completed on the partition, and further tests will continue this year, including a test flight on an A320 and crash tests to assess it’s durability, to prove this design test works. Airbus is exploring the possibility of creating other parts based on

Article source: http://curbed.com/archives/2016/01/15/the-living-just-created-a-3d-printer-jet-part-based-on-the-shape-of-bones.php

If you look at the Hangar Playfair Theatre website, you might get the mistaken impression the theater began in 1975, but it actually began in 1969 with Bill Carpenter as the director.

One October day, I went to Freeville to visit Bill, a former drama critic for The Ithaca Journal and the first director of the Hangar Theatre. His wife, Lotte, walked me from the back of their home to a small cottage where I found Bill in front of his computer, being tended to by his daughter, Tess, who was adjusting the respirator he had come to use in his final stages of ALS.

I met Bill more than two years ago when he joined the Lansing Writers’ Group. He told us he had ALS and was at work on his final artistic project, a book called “Movie Journeys,” that would attempt to combine his knowledge of movies and his familiarity with the different countries to which he had traveled. He soon decided his project would make a good website.

Curtain goes up

Bill was born in 1942 in Stratford, Connecticut, a town known for its focus on Shakespearean drama. His parents both attended Pratt, a college in Brooklyn that specializes in the arts. Even his high school education was focused on the arts.

“I wanted to be a painter and was taking almost entirely art courses,” he said.

At the end

Article source: http://www.ithacajournal.com/story/news/local/2016/01/15/bill-carpenter-helped-hangar-theatre-take-flight/78674418/

Article source: http://www.greensboro.com/news/local_news/fatal-plane-crash-in-burlington-likely-caused-by-pilot-disorientation/article_c3fa42dd-c28b-5acf-a714-680a10ebf8d8.html