Category FLIGHT and M ОТІOIM

During the 1920s, Boeing won govern­ment contracts for airplanes such as the Boeing 15, a biplane fighter that entered service with the U. S. Navy in 1925. The 15 was followed by the 21, a primary trainer. The 40, a mail plane ordered by the U. S. Postal Service, was flown from 1927 on the San Francisco-Chicago route. The newly formed Boeing Air

Transport Corporation managed and flew the mail route.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Boeing gained valuable experience in air transportation, flying its first purpose – built passenger plane, the 80, in 1928. The three-engine 80 airplane could carry eighteen passengers at up to 138 miles per hour (220 kilometers per hour). Boeing was also successful in selling fighter planes, such as the P-12 and P-26 pursuit planes.

Date of birth: Between 1905 and 1913. Place of birth: Pensacola, Florida.

Died: August 9, 1980.

Major contribution: Set many speed and altitude records; headed Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) during World War II.

Awards: Distinguished Service Medal; fifteen Clifford Harmon Trophies;

William Mitchell Memorial Award;

French Legion d’Honneur; gold medal from Federation Aeronautique Internationale; U. S. Aviation Hall of Fame; International Aerospace Hall of Fame.

acqueline Cochran was perhaps the most accomplished women flier of all time as well as the holder of many records. She also gave important service to both Britain and the United States during World War II.

It is believed that Cochran was orphaned and raised in foster homes as a child. She lived in poverty and went to work in a cotton mill while still very young. Cochran later was trained as a beautician, work that she enjoyed. Sometime around 1930, she moved to New York City, hoping to gain more suc­cess in beauty salons there.

In 1932, on a trip to Florida, she met Floyd Bostwick Odium, a millionaire. They married 4 years later. When they first met, Cochran had told Odium that she hoped to produce and sell her own cosmetics. Odium suggested that she

learn to fly an airplane so she that could carry her products to different cities. Cochran went to flight school and earned her pilot’s license in just a few weeks.

Two years later, in 1934, Cochran entered a flying race from London to Melbourne, Australia. She was forced to abandon that race, and another the next year, due to mechanical difficulties. In 1937, however, Cochran had success in the Bendix race from Los Angeles to Cleveland. She finished first among the women competitors and trailed only two male pilots. That same year, Cochran set a speed record by flying from New York to Miami in just over 4 hours and 12 minutes. She also set a female speed record of nearly 204 miles per hour (328 kilometers per hour) that year. The fol­lowing year, Cochran won the Bendix,

beating all competitors, male and female. In 1939 Cochran flew higher than any woman had before, reaching 30,052 feet (9,160 meters). Later in the same year, she set two new speed records.

In 1939 World War II broke out in Europe. In 1941 Cochran joined other women fliers in piloting planes from the United States to the United Kingdom. Once there, she trained women to do noncombat flying tasks. The goal was to free men from these jobs so they could fly combat missions.

After the United States entered the war, Cochran recrossed the Atlantic to do similar work back home. She was put in charge of a new unit, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP). Its thou­sand or so pilots moved aircraft to need­ed locations and helped train male pilots. These women logged more than 60 million miles (97 million kilometers) of flying, performing a vital service.

Although the WASP force was dis­banded, Cochran remained devoted to flying. When jet airplanes were devel­oped, she learned how to fly them and worked as a test pilot for aircraft compa­nies Lockheed and Northrop. In 1953 Cochran set various speed records and became the first woman to fly faster than the speed of sound. In the early 1960s she set new records for women in altitude (55,253 feet, or 16,841 meters) and speed (1,429 miles per hour or 2,299 kilometers per hour). As the United States began forming its space program, Cochran pushed to be named a

woman astronaut. Government officials, however, decided against selecting any women at the time.

Cochran was slowed in the 1970s by a heart condition. Although she had to cut back on her flying, she continued to work as an advisor to the U. S. Air Force, the Federal Aviation Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and several museums. She died in 1980.

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SEE ALSO:

• Pilot • Supersonic Flight

• World War II

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Type: Jet passenger transport. Manufacturer: De Havilland.

First flight: July 27, 1949.

Primary use: Airlines.

he De Havilland Comet was the first jet airliner. Its appearance in 1952 caused great interest because of its unrivaled speed, but the Comet success story was interrupted by a series of crashes.

The Comet Project

In 1944, before the end of World War II, the British government anticipated the growth of aviation in the postwar era. It requested airplane manufacturers to plan a new generation of aircraft for civilian use. The government wanted to see designs for a jet airliner able to fly faster than any existing passenger air­craft. The airplane would travel routes between the United Kingdom and the United States as well as to the various nations of the British Commonwealth, such as India and South Africa.

De Havilland was asked to consider the project. This British company was no stranger to high-speed aircraft: In 1934, it had built the Comet, a two-seater rac­ing plane. During World War II, De Havilland had built one of the most suc­cessful Allied warplanes: the very fast Mosquito fighter-bomber.

De Havilland designers started work on a jet airliner in 1946. They decided it, too, would be called the Comet. At this

TECH^TALK

COMET 1

Capacity: 36-44 passengers.

Engines: Four De Havilland Ghost turbojets.

Wingspan: 115 feet (35 meters).

Length: 93 feet (26.4 meters).

Weight: 105,000 pounds (47,670 kilograms).

Range: 1,750 miles (2,816 kilometers).

Cruising speed: 490 miles per hour (788 kilometers per hour).

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stage in aviation history, jet engines were very new technology. Little was known about the effects on airplanes of prolonged high-speed flight at great altitudes. The Comet builders were pioneers-they also were designing an airplane much bigger than any jet plane so far flown. At the time, there were only a handful of jet planes flying, and almost all were single-seat fighters.

In the early days of military flying, a pilot could simply bail out. This meant jumping out of the plane using a para­chute. Fighter pilots and bomber crews during World War II were sometimes able to escape from crashing aircraft, but only after opening cockpit canopies and exit hatches. As aircraft flew faster and higher, engineers came up with the idea of a “flying seat” to automatically separate pilot from aircraft.

On July 24, 1946, British pilot Bernard Lynch successfully ejected from a Meteor jet flying at 320 miles per hour (515 kilometers per hour) at the height of about 8,000 feet (about 2,440 meters), and later from as high as 30,000 feet (9,145 meters). The first American test of an ejection seat was on August 17, 1946, from a P-61 airplane.

The first American pilot to make an emergency ejection from a jet plane was Lieutenant J. L. Fruin of the U. S. Navy. On August 9, 1949, he ejected from his F2H-1 Banshee fighter, at around 575 miles per hour (925 kilometers per hour). The effectiveness of an ejection seat at zero level was shown during tests car­ried out by the Martin-Baker Company in 1955. A squadron leader in the British air force was shot out of a Meteor jet speeding along a runway at 120 miles an hour (193 kilometers per hour). The

A LONG LANDING

The longest-ever parachute descent after ejecting was that of Lieutenant Colonel William H. Rankin of the U. S. Marine Corps in 1959. After ejecting from his F8U Crusader jet at

47,0 feet (14,325 meters), he fell through a violent thunderstorm. Instead of taking just a few minutes to reach the ground, he was in the air for an amazing 40 minutes. The strong currents of air generated by the storm kept whisking him upward.

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seat rose 70 feet (21.3 meters) into the air before the parachute opened. In 1955 American test pilot George F. Smith ejected from an F-100 Super Sabre while diving at more than 700 miles per hour (1,126 kilometers per hour)—the first supersonic ejection escape.

The modern combat pilot still has cause to be grateful for ejection seats. In June 1995, U. S. Air Force Captain Scott O’Grady ejected over Bosnia in Europe after his F-16 fighter was hit by a surface-to-air missile. He landed safely and, after evading capture for six days, was rescued by a search team.

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SEE ALSO:

• Aircraft, Military • Ballistics

• Force • Parachute • Pilot

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lying boats and sea­planes are airplanes that can take off and land on water. A seaplane, or float­plane, looks like a regular air­plane. Instead of landing gear with wheels, however, it has a pair of canoe-shaped floats to keep the seaplane afloat.

A flying boat is a type of sea­plane, but it has a boat-shaped hull, or body, which rests in the water. It has floats fitted on struts beneath the wings to provide extra balance. An amphibian is a seaplane that also has wheels for landing at an airfield.

Most flying boats and seaplanes are high-winged designs, sometimes using a “gull-wing” V-shape. The shape places the engines as high above the water as possible, clear of spray. To take off and land, the aircraft skim over the water.

The Age of Water-Based Aircraft

For a time, seaplanes were the fastest planes in the world. In 1931 the British Supermarine S6B held the world’s air speed record, at 406.9 miles per hour (654.8 kilometers per hour). Small sea­planes were carried on battleships for reconnaissance missions. The seaplane was launched by catapult; on return, it landed on the ocean’s surface and was lifted up out of the water by a crane on
the ship. Today, helicopters do the same job on many naval ships.

A flying boat was bigger than a reg­ular seaplane-some were very large. In some situations it was safer than a land plane because, in an emergency, it could land on the ocean and float until rescue arrived. Flying boats were very popular in the 1930s for carrying passengers. The big cabin of a flying boat offered a high standard of luxury to passengers, who could go ashore when the plane landed, spend a night in a hotel, and resume their journey next day.

In World War II (1939-1945), flying boats were used for ocean patrols and for hunting enemy submarines. They also pioneered new air routes across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. After World War II, land planes got faster. More

airports were built in cities-and it was between cities that most air passengers wanted to travel. By 1950, the age of the flying boat had ended.

Currently, the F-15 Eagle is the fastest U. S. jet fighter. At around 1,800 miles per hour (2,900 kilometers per hour), it is slightly slower than the Russian MiG-25, which flies at 2,115 miles per hour (3,403 kilometers per hour). It is unlikely that
fighter plane speeds will increase much beyond this in the next twenty or thirty years. Instead, the military wants to make high-speed airplanes more flexi­ble. Air forces will use a new generation of drones-robot planes that will fly the same combat missions as a piloted air­plane, but at far lower cost.

About 80 percent of the useful work­ing life of a modern combat airplane is given over to pilot training. It is very expensive to train jet pilots, so why not give the most dangerous jobs to a robot?

An unmanned combat air vehicle (UCAV) can be made half the size of a conventional airplane, so it is cheaper, harder to detect, and more difficult to shoot down. Since no pilot training is required, a drone uses expensive fuel only on actual combat missions.

Combat drones are expected to carry miniaturized weapons with the same destructive power as the bombs and mis­siles of today, but the weapons will be only one-tenth the weight. The U. S. Air Force’s experimental X-45A is already potent enough to destroy a truck from

35,0 feet (10,800 meters). In the future, the military could deploy squadrons of unmanned airplanes, including microdrones—aircraft no big­ger than birds that are armed with mini­weapons of awesome destructive power.

Military airplanes are so expensive that, in the future, the number of new designs that actually go into production will be very few. One airframe will be adapted to carry out many tasks. A highly complex, multirole combat plane, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, is a good example. The F-35 has a lift-fan STOVL (short takeoff vertical landing) capabili­ty, so it can operate at sea or from small airfields. Its advanced stealth design makes it hard to detect on radar. Over the next ten to fifteen years, this one aircraft will replace several existing frontline fighters and strike aircraft, not just in the U. S. armed forces, but in other forces around the world. A number of nations—including Norway, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, and Denmark—

SCRAMJETS

Scramjets could be the supersonic transports of the middle twenty – first century. In 2004, a hypersonic, unmanned plane raced into the record books at 7,000 miles per hour (11,263 kilometers per hour). NASA’s X-43A ”scramjet” (short for "super­sonic combustion ramjet") has an air-breathing engine similar to that proposed for HyperSoar. The X-43A was launched from a B-52 bomber and then boosted by a Pegasus rock­et until its own engine fired. Its scramjet engine, which (unlike a tur­bine engine) has no spinning blades, can send the X-43A accelerating to almost ten times the speed of sound at an altitude of approximately

110,0 feet (33,530 meters).

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have helped to develop the F-35, which is manufactured by the Lockheed Martin Corporation, Northrop Grumman, and British Aerospace.

SEE ALSO:

• Aerospace Manufacturing Industry • Aircraft, Commercial

• Aircraft, Experimental • Aircraft, Military • Aircraft Design • Fuel

• Supersonic Flight

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SATELLITES

In the twenty – first century, the regular launches of commercial satellites for the purposes of tele­communications and navigation are an everyday occurrence. These uses for satellites will continue to grow over the next decades.

As every Inter­net user knows, it is now possible to call up a satellite image of your neighborhood at the click of a mouse. Satellite images also are used for scientific purposes, such as scanning Earth from orbital spacecraft for signs of global warming or even tracking migrat­ing caribou. NASA and other space agencies will continue to use scientific satellites to gain knowledge. In the near future, for example, MicroSCOPE will orbit Earth to test a scientific theory related to gravity called the Equivalence Principle. This satellite will survey Earth’s surface to provide new data on erosion, deforestation, land use, fuel reserves, and other environmental issues. Jason 2, to be launched by European agencies in partnership with the United States, will study the oceans’ currents and sea levels, which will help scientists understand and pre­dict changes in the world’s climate.

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prelude to a mission to Mars. No astronauts have walked on the Moon since the Apollo program ended. With its Constellation Program, however, NASA is planning a Moon landing before 2020. The near future also may see the con­struction of a permanent base on the Moon. One day, there could even be a lunar “factory” making rocket fuel from the Moon’s soil.

From the Moon, spacecraft could voyage to Mars. Ever since NASA’s Mariner 4 space­craft flew by Mars in 1965, scientists have been eager to explore Earth’s neighboring planet. Future missions by robot spacecraft will include the Mars Science Laboratory, scheduled for 2009. It will explore the surface of Mars for a full Martian year (which lasts nearly two years in Earth days). There are plans for robot craft to land, take samples of Martian soil, and return to Earth. A manned landing on Mars could happen before 2040. In the meantime, new orbital probes such as the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, launched in 2005, will scan the planet and look for more evi­dence of water on its surface, which would make a manned landing more feasible.

GPS has three parts, or segments. They are the Space Segment, the Control Segment, and the User Segment.

Satellites form the Space Segment. GPS satellites are divided into six groups of four. Each group is in a different orbit. The satellites orbit at a height of 12,600 miles (about 20,270 kilometers). At this height, they take 12 hours to cir­cle Earth, so they go around the world twice in one day. The satellites travel at a speed of

О The satellites in the GPS occupy six orbital planes 60 degrees apart, all tilted at 55 degrees to the equator. Receivers on Earth determine their positions by picking up signals from four satellites.

ATOMIC CLOCKS

Each GPS satellite carries three or four atomic clocks, depending on which type of satellite it is. Amazingly, the clocks carried by GPS satellites are accurate to about 1 second in 300,000 years! Only one atomic clock is used at a time; the others are there as backups. If a clock fails for any reason, a backup takes its place.

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about 7,000 miles per hour (11,260 kilo­meters per hour). Electric power for the clocks, onboard computer, and radio equipment is generated by solar panels. As the satellites orbit Earth, their solar panels turn automatically to face the Sun, while the radio antennae keep pointing at Earth.

The Control Segment on Earth runs the system. Monitor stations check the orbit, position, and clock time of every satellite and send all the information to the Master Control Station at a U. S. Air Force base in Colorado. This information is compared with the information trans­mitted by the satellites, and any errors are corrected.

The User Segment includes all the GPS receivers that use the system. The receiver gets three pieces of information from the satellites: a code that identifies each satellite and two packets of data called ephemeris data and almanac data. Ephemeris data tell a receiver where each satellite should be. Almanac data tell the receiver the date, time, and whether or not the satellite is work­ing correctly.

The rotor of a helicopter serves as both wings and propeller. Lift is produced by changes in air pressure caused by the spinning blades of the rotor. As a blade moves, air flows faster over its curved upper surface than over its flat lower surface. This results in reduced air pres­sure above the blade; the difference in air pressure produces lift.

The helicopter pilot can control the amount of lift by altering the angle of the rotor blade. If the blade is tilted so that more air presses up against the bot­tom of the blade, the air pressure beneath it increases, and so does the helicopter’s lift.

A helicopter can fly straight up and forward or backward. It can hover, fly straight down, and fly sideways, but it cannot glide. A helicopter pilot can never let go of the controls-just to hover requires the pilot to make con­stant tiny corrections to maintain the correct position.

In spite of these failures, Hughes turned his manufacturing company into a lead­ing force in the aviation field after World War II. One division made helicopters. Another eventually made satellites. Over the years, the company produced more than one-third of all the satellites being used by businesses. Eventually, the company was broken up, and its divisions were sold to other corporations.

Од 1972 issue of Time magazine featured the reclusive Howard Hughes on its cover. There were rumors that his mind and appearance deteriorated in his later years, but there were no photo­graphs of him.

Hughes also became involved in the airline industry. In 1939, he bought the majority of Trans­World Airlines (TWA), which he hoped to build into the world’s leading airline. As part of that effort, he made an agreement with Lockheed to build a new passenger plane. The result-the Constellation-was an innovative new plane.

Hughes’s effort to build the airline clashed with the ambi­tions of Juan Trippe, the head of Pan American World Airways.

Senator Owen Brewster of Maine, an ally of Trippe’s, called Hughes to testify before a Senate committee. Under harsh criticism, Hughes counter­attacked by revealing the senator’s con­nections with Pan Am. Hughes was never charged with any wrongdoing. He later funded the victorious campaign of the man who defeated Brewster in his bid for reelection.

Hughes’s troubles with the govern­ment did not end, however. Federal officials informed him it was a conflict of interest for him to own both TWA and an aircraft manufacturing company. Eventually, Hughes had to sell his inter­est in TWA.

Always shy and eccentric, Hughes lived as a recluse from the 1960s on. Obsessed with living in a completely germ-free environment, he ate almost no food, and took many drugs. These actions destroyed his health. He died in 1976-a lonely, often ridiculed, and vastly wealthy old man.

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SEE ALSO:

• Aerospace Manufacturing

Industry • Aircraft Design

• Aircraft, Experimental • Satellite

• Flying Boat and Seaplane

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Insects are among the animals on Earth which have wings (the others are bats and birds). About 400 mil­lion years ago, the first animals to fly included insects. There are about 1 mil­lion species of insects—three times as many as all the other animal species in the world. The most common features of insects are their small size, their crawl­ing motion, and their ability to fly.

Wings and Other Parts

Insects have small, light bodies. The body of an adult insect has three parts: the head, the thorax, and the abdomen. The thorax is the “engine room” of the animal. An insect’s wings are attached to the middle and rear segments of the thorax. The wings are worked by two sets of powerful muscles, which make the wings beat up and down and also twist. Muscles attached to the base of each wing control the direction of flight, allowing an insect to change direction, fly backward and forward, or hover in midair like a helicopter.

Flies have two wings, fixed to the center body section or thorax. Other insects have four wings in two pairs. Examples of four-winged insects are butterflies, moths, dragonflies, bees, and wasps. In a four-winged insect, the two wings on one side of the body often beat together as if they were one wing. In some insects, the wings overlap slightly, while in others the wings are locked together by a system of hooks or hairs.

Many insects have wings in their adult state, although many flying insects (dragonflies, for example) are flightless as juveniles. The wings of a young insect start to grow as tiny pads, visible only through a microscope, or sometimes (as in caterpillars), they are inside the body.

When the young insect molts (sheds its skin as it grows larger), the wing pads grow. After the last molt, the pads become fully formed wings. This change, or metamorphosis, is seen to startling effect in moths and butterflies.

The adult emerges from the chrysalis with its wings damp and still folded. As the wings dry and are stiffened by blood flowing through the veins inside them, they unfold and often reveal brilliant colors.

In beetles, the front wings have become hard covers called elytra. The elytra are folded over the rear wings, until the beetle starts to fly. Then they swing outward, like airplane wings. The rear wings do the actual flying.

Other insects have no wings at all or only weak vestiges (remains) of wings that are no use for flying. Most ants, for example, are wingless. Only males and female queens have wings, which are used to fly from the nest during their mating flight. The males die after mat­ing, and the queens spend the rest of their lives underground.

Aircraft and spacecraft are not the only vehicles that make use of jet power. Some battle tanks and fast warships are propelled by gas turbines. It is not the jet thrust of the engine that propels these vehicles, however. The Abrams tank’s gas turbine engine drives its tracks. A warship’s gas turbine drives its propellers.

Other vehicles do use jet thrust to accelerate to very high speeds. The fastest cars in the world are powered by thrust. The problems designers face in
creating thrust-powered cars are similar to those faced by aircraft designers. The shape of the car is very important, because drag must be cut to a minimum.

The world’s fastest car has traveled faster than the speed of sound. On October 15, 1997, Thrust SSC, driven by British fighter pilot Andy Green, set a land speed record of 763 miles per hour (1,228 kilometers per hour) in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada. It was powered by two Rolls-Royce Spey fighter engines, which, together, were more powerful than 150 Indy racecars.

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SEE ALSO:

• Engine • Force • Laws of

Motion • Rocket • Whittle, Frank

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