Category FLIGHT and M ОТІOIM

Date of birth: June 1, 1907.

Place of birth: Coventry, England.

Died: August 9, 1996.

Major contributions: Invented the jet engine; built a jet engine used in an air­plane that set speed and altitude records. Awards: Knight of the Order of the British Empire; Albert Medal; Order of Merit; Charles Stark Draper Prize; SAE Aerospace Engineering Award.

he son of a mechanic, Frank Whittle joined the British Royal Air Force (RAF) at the age of six­teen. His work with model airplanes caught the eye of an officer who recom­mended him for officer training. During training, Whittle wrote a detailed essay about the possibility of developing a new kind of aircraft engine that would not turn a propeller. He wrote that planes could reach higher altitudes and faster speeds if exhaust from the engine provided the thrust.

Higher-ranking offi­cers dismissed Whittle’s ideas, but he continued to pursue them. His ini­tial plan used a piston to compress air, but he con­cluded that such an engine would weigh too much. Whittle developed a new approach using a turning turbine. Once again, however, his supe­riors rejected the idea. In 1930, Whittle patented the idea himself.

Little happened with Whittle’s idea until he was approached six years later by Rolf Dudley- Williams and James Tinlin, about the possi­bility of developing his engine. The three formed a company-Power Jets Limited-in 1936 and began work on building a model of Whittle’s
engine plans. On April 12, 1937, they tested the engine, which was mounted on a stand on the ground. It worked per­fectly. A scientist who learned of the success convinced the RAF to provide funding to develop an airplane that used the new engine.

That work took place slowly. A suc­cessful test of a newer version of the engine in 1939 spurred quicker work. The prototype plane, built by Gloster, arrived late in 1940, and Whittle built the engine at Power Jets facilities. The engine was tested successfully late in 1940. On May 15, 1941, the Gloster plane, with Whittle’s engine inside, flew for 17 minutes. It reached a top speed of 340 miles per hour (545 kilometers per
hour). The success convinced RAF offi­cials to move ahead with the aircraft.

In 1944, the British government took control of Whittle’s company. In 1948, Whittle resigned from the company and from the RAF due to ill health. For the next twenty years or so, he worked as a consultant for various companies. Some of his work focused on jet engines. Whittle also designed a new kind of drilling head for oil drills. In 1976, he moved to the United States, where he taught at the U. S. Naval Academy.

Airplanes joined the civilian bombing campaign in November 1916, when a German plane dropped six bombs on London. A typical large bomber plane of the war was the British Handley Page 0/100 (1916). The figure 100 referred to its wingspan, which was 100 feet (30 meters). The Handley Page 0/100 had two Rolls-Royce engines, giving it a top speed of 97 miles per hour (156 kilometers per hour), and it could fly for 8 to 9 hours. Such bombers flew from Britain to attack railroad depots, docks, and submarine bases along the coast of Belgium and in Germany. In 1917, a single 0/100 flew in several legs from Britain to the Greek island of Lemnos. From an airfield there, it bombed German warships in the Turkish city of Constantinople (now Istanbul).

Even larger bombers took to the sky. These giants included the four – engine Russian Ilya Muromets (designed by Igor Sikorsky) and the three-engine Italian Caproni Ca 42 (a triplane). The Zeppelin company in Germany built the R-type bombers, which carried engineers to service the

EDWARD RICKENBACKER (1890-1973)

Born in Columbus, Ohio, in 1890, Eddie Rickenbacker was a professional auto­mobile racer before World War I. He enlisted in the U. S. Army in 1917, serving as a driver before becoming a pilot. Rickenbacker shot down twenty-two enemy planes and four balloons, becom­ing the leading American ace pilot in World War I. During World War II, he worked as an inspector of military air­bases and survived three weeks on a raft in the Pacific Ocean after his plane came down. A successful businessman in peacetime, Rickenbacker later co-owned the Indianapolis Speedway and was president of Eastern Airlines.

engines on long flights. The biggest R – type bomber was still unfinished when the war ended. It had six engines and longer wings than a World War II Lancaster bomber.

A smaller German bomber, the Gotha, was made of plywood. It cruised at 80 miles per hour (130 kilometers per hour) and carried over 1,000 pounds (450 kilograms) of bombs, including incendiaries (firebombs). Gothas were used to raid London by night during 1917 and 1918. Gotha crews had to be tough-they sat in open cockpits, muf­fled against the cold.

The British and French retaliated with small, fast bombers, such as the DH-4 and Breguet Br-14, single-engine airplanes flying at around 120 miles per hour (190 kilometers per hour), which

was as fast as a fighter. The British were planning raids on Berlin, using their new V/1500 bomber, when the war ended in 1918. This plane could carry almost 100 times the weight of bombs carried by a 1914 plane.

The Wrights offered to build airplanes for the U. S. Army, but the army turned them down until 1908, when it agreed to pay $25,000 for an airplane that could carry a passenger and fly for an hour. Soon after, the Wrights struck a deal to license the plane to French investors as well. They designed and tested a new airplane with a passenger seat. On May 14, 1908, Wilbur took mechanic Charles Furnas into the air in the world’s first passenger plane.

In 1909, the brothers opened the Wright Company in Dayton to build air­planes. They also started a flying school. The brothers became unpopular, how­ever, when they brought several lawsuits charging other aviators with taking their ideas. Although law courts typically found in their favor, the brothers’ actions struck the public as mean-spirited.

In 1912, Wilbur died of typhoid fever, and Orville took over running the business. He spent much of the rest of his life vigorously promoting the brothers’ achievement. In 1948, at the age of seventy-seven, Orville died of a heart attack.

THE GRANDEST SIGHT "When it first turned that circle, . . .

I said then, and I believe still, it was. . . the grandest sight of my life. Imagine a locomotive that has left its track, and is climbing up in the air right toward you-a locomotive without any wheels, we will say, but with white wings instead. . . . Well, now, imagine this white locomotive, with wings that spread 20 feet each way, coming right toward you with a tremendous flap of its propellers, and you will have something like what I saw."

When it reaches its destination, a probe may stay in orbit, radioing data and images back to Earth, or it may attempt to land a capsule on the surface. Landing on a planet many millions of miles away, under remote control, is always a challenge. The speeds of approach can be enormous. In 2003, the Galileo probe accelerated to 108,000 miles per hour (173,780 kilometers per hour) as it dived toward Jupiter.

Once on the target planet, a lander can use remote-controlled arms and scoops to collect samples of rock and soil. Its instruments analyze the samples and the gases in the atmosphere and measure temperature, pressure, and radi­ation levels. A few probes have released a small rover to explore the areas farther from the lander.

Some probes are sent to collect mate­rial and return it to Earth at the end of their mission. A reentry capsule drops down through Earth’s atmosphere, by parachute, for recovery on the ground or in the air using the “air snatch” tech­nique, by which an airplane scoops up the capsule before it hits the ground.

After a trouble-free start, the Space Shuttle program was severely affected by the losses of two spacecraft, Challenger and Columbia, which caused the deaths of fourteen astronauts. On January 28, 1986, Challenger blew up

just seconds after takeoff from Kennedy Space Center and on February 1, 2003, Columbia was destroyed 16 minutes before it was due to land back on Earth at Kennedy Space Center. On its twenty-eighth mission (STS-107), Columbia disintegrated at a height of about 40 miles (64 kilometers).

After both tragedies, NASA suspended planned Space Shuttle flights while experts investigated the causes of the accidents. On both occasions, after modifications to the remaining fleet, the Space Shuttles went back into space. After the 2003 disaster, flights resumed in July 2005, with the launch of Discovery on mission STS-114. This mission experienced a new scare, when onboard cameras showed a section of foam breaking off during launch (the problem that had caused the destruction of Columbia). During its orbital mission, when Discovery docked with the International Space Station, two astro­nauts made a spacewalk to check for damage-the first time astronauts had worked beneath the craft in space.

Although the Space Shuttles are fly­ing again, the two accidents damaged NASA’s high reputation for “safety first” engineering. Critics of the Space Shuttle complain of the cost. At times, the pro­gram has consumed 30 percent of NASA’s budget, and overall it has cost more than $150 billion. Some people argue that the Space Shuttles were sim­
ply overworked, launching all kinds of payloads, including commercial and military satellites. The size of payloads was reduced after the 1986 Challenger accident. Heavy-lift rockets, such as Delta IV and Ariane, now provide an alternative to the Space Shuttle for satellite launches but not for Space Station visits. The Shuttles are due to be retired in 2010 and replaced by NASA’s new Orion spacecraft.

SEE ALSO:

• Astronaut • Challenger and

Columbia • Future of Spaceflight

• NASA • Spaceflight

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The B-2 Spirit bomber, which first flew in 1989 after years of secret develop­ment, is much larger and heavier than the F-117. It was built by Northrop – Grumman, a manufacturer that pio­neered flying wing designs in the 1940s.

In the 1980s, Northrop-Grumman tested a stealth plane, code-named Tacit Blue, which has been described as “an upside – down bathtub with wings.” The B-2 was more elegant, shaped like a flying arrowhead. Computer-aided design gave the B-2 similar radar-baffling character­istics to the F-117. The B-2 carries a crew of two and has a range of 6,000 miles (9,650 kilometers). It relies on its stealthy approach to outwit defenses because it is relatively slow, flying at around 500 miles per hour (800 kilome­ters per hour). The B-2’s uses are very specialized, and the plane is expensive to produce. Like the F-117, the B-2 has been built in small numbers—there are only about twenty B-2s in existence.

Other modern warplanes, such as the F-22 Raptor, the F-35 Lightning II (Joint Strike Fighter), and the European Typhoon have stealth characteristics, but their shapes are more conventional
than that of the F-117 and the B-2. A key element in their design is that no feature (such as an engine outlet or weapons bay) gives off more than the minimum radar reflection. Stealth fea­tures must be balanced against other elements of the design, such as the high speed that is essential for a fighter plane.

akeoff and landing are the maneu­vers that aircraft or spacecraft per­form to launch into flight and then return to the ground. They are potentially the most hazardous part of a journey in the air or in space.

Airplane Takeoff

Whether an airplane is a small, single­engine light aircraft or the biggest air­liner, the process of taking off is much the same. The crew goes through a checklist to ensure that all switches and other controls are in the right positions for takeoff. Flaps and leading-edge slats are deployed to produce more lift for takeoff. The aircraft taxis out to the end
of the runway. When it is cleared for takeoff, the engine power levers are pushed forward, the brakes are released, and the takeoff run begins.

A typical takeoff speed for a small plane is about 65 miles per hour (105 kilometers per hour). A large airliner takes off at about 140-190 miles per hour (225-305 kilometers per hour). The actual speed depends on the aircraft type, its weight, and the weather condi­tions. As an airliner accelerates along a runway, it reaches a speed called V1. Beyond this point, there is not enough runway left for the plane to stop safely,
so it must take off. The aircraft then reaches VR-the speed at which the pilot raises the plane’s nose and takes off. The plane lifts off and continues to acceler­ate. The next significant speed is V2, the minimum speed the plane must reach to climb away from the ground safely. The normal climb-out speed is a little higher than V2.

Gliders have no power of their own to get off the ground, so they are usual­ly towed into the air. One end of a cable is attached to the glider’s nose. The other end is attached to an airplane, and the glider is towed until its wings generate enough lift to fly. The pilot drops the cable by pulling a lever in the cockpit, and the glider soars away.

wind tunnel is a piece of test equipment used by designers, scientists, and engineers to study the effects of air flowing around aircraft, rockets, missiles, automobiles, and even buildings. Every modern aircraft makes its first flight in a wind tunnel. Instead of the aircraft moving through the air, the aicraft is held still and the air moves around it.

Wind tunnel tests help designers and engineers to find problems with a design and to test solutions without risking a pilot in test flights and without the expense of building a full-size aircraft.

Most wind tunnels are not big enough to hold an entire aircraft. A small and very accurately built model of an air­craft may be used, or just part of an aircraft. Wind tunnels vary greatly in size and airspeed, but they have the same basic parts.

The United States entered World War I in April 1917 with hardly any airplanes. U. S. pilots, some of whom trained in Europe, flew mostly French planes, although DH-4s were built in the United States. Flying schools were set up to train American pilots, and in February 1918 the 95 th Pursuit Squadron was the first U. S. Army fighter squadron to arrive in France. The 94th Pursuit Squadron scored the Americans’ first victories, in April 1918, when two of its pilots flying French Nieuport 28 fighters shot down two German planes. The 96 th Aero Squadron, formed in France in May 1918, was the first U. S. bomber squadron.

Air commanders such as Britain’s Hugh Trenchard wanted to use air power independently of the armies and navies, but they were restricted by lack of air­planes and by orders to support Allied army offensives. Trenchard got his wish in April 1918 with the formation of the British Royal Air Force (RAF). By the end of the war, the RAF had 22,000 air­craft and had destroyed more than 8,000 enemy airplanes and airships.

Even at this late stage of the war, most air battles were small. Just two British 0/400 bombers, for example, flew to attack the Badische industrial plant in Germany in August 1918. On a rare occasion, large numbers of airplanes were used together. In September 1918, U. S. Brigadier General Billy Mitchell massed 1,500 Allied aircraft for an attack on German positions during the Battle of Saint Mihiel in France.

When the space age began in the 1950s, scientists were eager to expand their knowledge of the worlds beyond Earth, previously seen only through tele­scopes. After the launch of the first satellites by the United States and Soviet Union in 1957 and 1958, the world waited expectantly for the first

rocket shot at the Moon. This came in January 1959, when the Soviet probe Luna 1 flew within 3,700 miles (5,920 kilometers) of the Moon. Two months later, the United States sent its probe Pioneer 4 to fly by the Moon. In September 1959, the Soviet Luna 2 probe crashed onto the Moon. Luna 3 flew around the Moon in October 1959 and took photographs of the far side, never before seen from Earth.