The fact that the stabilizer was relatively intact also provides similarities to the crashes of American Airlines Flight 587 in 2001 and the Air New Zealand crash last year. Although the Airbus A330 is equipped with a "rudder limiter" to restrict the movement of the rudder at high speeds, a failure of the computerized control system and disengagement of the autopilot might have allowed the rudder to exceed its limitations, particularly if the plane erroneously exceeded its design speed in the high turbulence of a thunderstorm.
Aided by a French nuclear submarine, the search for the plane’s flight data and cockpit voice recorders continues, even though such recorders have never been recovered from ocean depths as deep as 12,000 feet where Flight 447 crashed.
Unless the "black boxes" are recovered, we may never know if the crash resulted from a failure of the computerized flight control system, including its sensors, or if the system was unable to assist the human pilots cope with an emergency, such as the catastrophic loss of the stabilizer.
As the world waits, Airbus continues to deliver more and more aircraft each year. It has more than 5,000 planes flying, including its new A380, the largest passenger plane in history. First flown commercially on October 25, 2007, and depending upon its seating configuration, the A380 can carry between 555 and 853 passengers on two decks.
The A380 has 330 miles of electrical wiring involving 100,000 separate wires and 40,300 connectors. Cockpit instrumentation has been simplified and made easier to use, and a new Network Systems Server is the file cabinet for a paperless cockpit that does away with paper manuals and charts. The entire electrical power system is computerized and many electrical components have been replaced by solid-state devices.
As we move into the future of commercial aviation, pilots may find themselves increasingly supplanted by computers and ultimately replaced in the cockpit. The military is increasingly launching aircraft without onboard pilots and the day may come when the "welcome aboard" message from the captain is relayed by satellite.
The Spaceplane
The world caught a glimpse of the future as the United States and the former USSR competed to produce the first aircraft capable of orbiting the Earth and landing on runways. Ultimately, the U.S. was able to launch the Space Shuttle, while Russia emerged as the heavy-lift rocket champion. The Shuttle will be grounded next year, and the West will be dependent upon Russian rockets to service the International Space Station.
The Dyna-Soar X-20. Almost forgotten in the race for space is the Dyna-Soar ("Dynamic Soarer") X-20 project originated during the Eisenhower administration as a demonstration of the President’s commitment to the demilitarization of space. Originally envisioned as a winged craft launched into orbit by a large rocket, the program was ultimately cancelled during the Kennedy administration by Secretary of Defense McNamara in favor of the ICBM and Apollo programs.
The Air Force wanted a spaceplane to perform a variety of missions, including the maintenance of U.S. satellites and the destruction of U.S.S.R. satellites. In addition, the Air Force imagined the spaceplane could be used as a nuclear-armed bomber subject to recall. Ultimately, the Nixon administration pressured the Air Force to give up the X-20 and its progeny in favor of the space shuttle program.
The X-30. The spaceplane idea was resurrected during the Reagan administration as a project of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) between 1982 and 1985. The program called for a supersonic combustion ramjet (scramjet) aircraft that could achieve Mach 8 speeds. The administration encouraged competition between the major defense contractors to produce a hypersonic, air-breathing Single State to Orbit (SSTO) aircraft known as the X-30.
President Reagan was relying on the X-30 project when, during his 1986 State of the Union address, he called for "a new Orient Express that could, by the end of the next decade, take off from Dulles Airport, accelerate up to 25 times the speed of sound, attaining low earth orbit or flying to Tokyo within two hours." The X-30 program remained under development until 1993, when it was cancelled by the Clinton administration for both technical and budgetary reasons. The program was probably a secret part of the government’s Space Defense Initiative and lost favor as its development proved too complicated.
Aerodynamically, the X-30 was a "waverider" that achieved compression lift under a fuselage that looked much like a surfboard with small tail fins. The design relied upon low weight, high temperature surface materials to deal with the heating problems, and was to be equipped with scramjet engines that compressed and heated hypersonic air in a combustion chamber, where it ignited liquid hydrogen and produced thrust.
Details of the X-30 remain classified; however U.S. interest in spaceplane transport of both passengers and freight continues. There are several basic problems that have to be overcome, including the need for wings to provide lift for takeoff and landings, which become a heating and stability problem during reentry. Moreover, jet engines can be used during takeoff and landing when atmospheric oxygen is available; however, an onboard oxidizer is required to fuel rockets in space.
One solution is a two-stage operation combining a large jet-powered lifting body to transport and launch a smaller rocket-powered craft from high altitudes. A single-stage solution combines a turbojet to reach supersonic speed (Mach 1), a ramjet to attain hypersonic speed (Mach 4), a scramjet to achieve Mach 15, and a rocket to achieve escape velocity (Mach 25) and to perform space operations.
The X-43. Following cancellation of the X-30, NASA developed a B-52 launched and rocket-accelerated aircraft known as the X-43 to test hypersonic flight and scramjet engines. The aircraft was disposable and was designed to crash into the ocean after flight testing. It was successfully flown several times and set a speed record of 7,546 mph (Mach 9.68) in 2004. The X-43 program was indefinitely suspended in 2004 and replaced by an experimental program operated by the U.S. military.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
