AEROSPACE January 2017 44 Number 1 Volume Society Royal Aeronautical JANUARY 2017 NEWSPACE START- UPS AIM FOR ORBIT BREXIT – TAILWIND OR TURBULENCE? VIRTUAL HELICOPTER DESIGN www.aerosociety.com REDRESSING THE BALANCE RECRUITING MORE FEMALE PILOTS Have you renewed your Membership Subscription for 2017? Your membership subscription is due on 1 January 2017 and any unpaid memberships will lapse on 31 March 2017. As per the Society’s Regulations, all How to renew: membership benefits will be suspended where Online: a payment for an individual subscription has Log in to your account on the Society’s www.aerosociety.com not been received after three months of the website to pay at . If you due date. However, this excludes members do not have an account, you can register online paying their annual subscriptions by Direct and pay your subscription straight away. Debits in monthly instalments to October. Telephone: Call the Subscriptions Department +44 (0)20 7670 4315 / 4304 We don’t want you to lose all of your on membership benefits, which include: Cheque: Cheques should be made payable to • Your monthly subscription to AEROSPACE the Royal Aeronautical Society and sent to the magazine Subscriptions Department at No.4 Hamilton • Use of your RAeS post nominals as Place, London W1J 7BQͭ UK. applicable Direct Debit: Complete the Direct Debit • Over 400 global events yearly mandate form included in your renewal letter • Discounted rates for conferences or complete the mandate form online once you • Online publications including Society News, have logged into your account by 16 January. blogs and podcasts BACS Transfer: • Involvement with your local branch Pay by Bank Transfer (or by • Networking opportunities BACS) into the Society’s bank account, quoting your name and membership number. Bank • Support gaining Professional Registration details: • Opportunities & recognition with awards and medals Bank: HSBC plc • Professional development and support Sort Code: 40-05-22 ... and much more! Find out more ways to get Account No: 01564641 involved and utilise your membership benefits: BIC: MIDLGB2107K [email protected] IBAN: GB52MIDL400522 01564641 With your support the Royal Aeronautical Society remains the world’s foremost professional institution dedicated to the entire aerospace and aviation industry. THANK YOU Volume 44 Number 1 January 2017 SpaceX Where no commerce Redressing the has gone before balance British Airways How low-cost start- How can airlines 14 up companies are recruit more female 28 revolutionising the pilots? utilisation of space. Contents Correspondence on all aerospace matters is welcome at: The Editor, AEROSPACE, No.4 Hamilton Place, London W1J 7BQ, UK [email protected] Comment Regulars 4 Radome 12 Transmission The latest aviation and Your letters, emails, tweets aeronautical intelligence, and feedback. analysis and comment. 58 The Last Word 10 Antenna Keith Hayward on the pros Perils of protectionism Howard Wheeldon and cons of satellite imagery. considers the implications of As we enter 2017 it is clear that the world is entering a new phase of President-elect Trump. uncertainty and change – and something that for many is without precedent in living memory. For civil aerospace this is particularly unsettling. Over the past 20 years it has shaken off 9/11, SARS, wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, high oil prices, fi nancial crashes (1998 and 2008) and rare but Features high-profi le aviation accidents such as MH17 and MH370 to keep growing exponentially as the expanding global middle class gets a taste for air travel. This, in turn, has powered airliner production lines in Toulouse, Seattle, Rolls-Royce Canada, Brazil and elsewhere – along with a vast interconnected global supply chain that touches almost every nation on Earth. Despite social media, videoconferencing and now even virtual reality – there still is no substitute University of Liverpool The 26 for being there in person. Yet aviation now, perhaps, faces its stiffest test of 18 Raising the UK’s all, as protectionism looms and states retreat to national borders – following Virtual helicopters aerospace ambitions the political shift we saw in 2016 on both sides of the Atlantic. The slowing The potential of virtual Gary Elliott, CE of the (or even reversal) of globalisation then has deep implications for commercial engineering to model Aerospace Technology rotorcraft at different stages Institute, talks about the aviation – from lower GDP growth hitting discretionary spending and of their life cycles. work of the ATI toboost tourism, to punitive tariffs or trade war, or even supranational projects such aerospace R&T. as the EU’s Single European Sky. However, it is important to remember that, even before the latest phase of ‘globalisation’ – aerospace and aviation has 32 Plane Speaking always been a global industry – with the most skilled pilots, designers and Interview with Sir Michael engineers fi nding work outside their place of birth. Connecting people and Airbus Arthur, President of Boeing Europe. far-away places and bringing them closer is simply what aircraft do. As the most visible symbol of our global, interconnected modern society, mass air travel has helped power globalisation but it also means that commercial MoD aviation arguably now has the most to lose. 22 Tim Robinson Tailwind or turbulence? Brexit and its effects on UK [email protected] aerospace. 36 NEWS IN BRIEF Sentinel reloaded Editor-in-Chief AEROSPACE is published by the Royal AEROSPACE subscription rates: Upgrading the RAF’s Tim Robinson Aeronautical Society (RAeS). Non-members, £160 Sentinel surveillance aircraft. +44 (0)20 7670 4353 Chief Executive Please send your order to: [email protected] Simon C Luxmoore Dovetail Services Ltd, 800 Guillat Deputy Editor Advertising Avenue, Kent Science Park, 41 Afterburner Bill Read Simon Levy Sittingbourne, Kent ME9 8GU, UK. +44 (0)20 7670 4351 +44 (0)20 7670 4346 +44 (0)1795 592939 [email protected] [email protected] +44 (0)844 856 0650 (fax) 42 Message from our President [email protected] Publications Manager Unless specifi cally attributed, no 43 Message from our Chief Executive Chris Male material in AEROSPACE shall be taken Any member not requiring a print +44 (0)20 7670 4352 to represent the opinion of the RAeS. version of this magazine, please 44 Book Reviews [email protected] contact: [email protected] Reproduction of material used in this 47 Library Additions Production Editor USA: Periodical postage paid at Online publication is not permitted without the Wayne J Davis written consent of the Editor-in-Chief. Champlain New York and additional 48 Wilbur & Orville Wright Lecture Additional features and content +44 (0)20 7670 4354 offi ces. [email protected] Printed by Buxton Press Limited, 49 150th retrospective are available to view online on Palace Road, Buxton, Derbyshire Postmaster: Send address changes www.aerosociety.com/news- Book Review Editor SK17 6AE, UK to IMS of New York, PO Box 1518, 50 Washington DC Branch Champlain NY 12919-1518, USA. expertise/aerospace-insight/ Brian Riddle 51 NAL aircraft factory Including: Visions of the future, Ten beyond Editorial Offi ce Distributed by Royal Mail site plans awesome VR fl ight fl ight experiences, Tailwind Royal Aeronautical Society ISSN 2052-451X or turbulence – the effect of Brexit on Britain’s No.4 Hamilton Place 52 Diary aviation, aerospace and space sectors, Clint London W1J 7BQ, UK 55 Corporate Partners +44 (0)20 7670 4300 Eastwood speaks about the making of [email protected] 56 RAeS Elections the Sully movie, In the December www.aerosociety.com Front cover: Rachel Barrett, First Offi cer for Thomson Airways. Thomson issue of AEROSPACE 57 Tribute to John Glenn @aerosociety i Find us on LinkedIn f Find us on Facebook www.aerosociety.com JANUARY 2017 13 Radome INTELLIGENCE / ANALYSIS / COMMENT Three stages to space 1. The 39m tall Austral Launch Vehicle (ALV) reusable rocket booster blasts off from the launchpad. 2. Once it reaches hypersonic speed of over Mach 5, the ALV will drop away and deploy wings and a propeller to enable it to fl y back to base. 3. The 20m long SPARTAN scramjet will fl y up into the upper atmosphere at Mach 10. When it runs out of air, the SPARTAN will separate and a small conventional rocket provide the fnal kick to put the satellite into space. Spin-off applications As well as reducing the cost of sending satellites into orbit, the Spartan scramjet launch system could also be used for space tourism and fast point-to-point travel. As part of the project, UQ has already developed a range of low-cost ground stations which can be used for all types of aerospace vehicles, from launch vehicles and sounding rockets to CubeSats and UAVs. SPACEFLIGHT This is SPARTAN Researchers at the University of Queensland’s (UQ) Centre for Hypersonics are working on plans for a three-stage low-cost reusable hypersonic space launch system. The concept started as an academic research project to identify design drivers to reduce the cost of reusable launch vehicles. These were identifi ed as modularity, fl exibility and simplicity. The launch system is comprised of three stages, the Austral Launch Vehicle (ALV) reusable rocket booster, and the uncrewed SPARTAN hypersonic scramjet powered spaceplane (pictured) and a small conventional rocket. With this system, there is 95% reusability of hardware, says the University. The project team envisages a phased development with sub-scale demonstrators, with the eventual aim to scale-up the system with a launch site on the north coast of Queensland. 4 AEROSPACE / JANUARY 2017 Technology demonstrators The ALV project plans to develop four progressively more complex and expensive vehicles. Starting with low-cost scale models, each vehicle will include the lessons learned from the previous one. The initial focus is on the development of the ALV boosters, as the development of SPARTAN prototypes will not begin until the ALV-2 test vehicle is available.