AirSpaceMag.com

A more obedient MQ-9 Reaper over Afghanistan (USAF photo)

Aerial warfare took another step into the robo-future on September 13 when a U.S. Air Force F-15E pilot was sent to destroy an out-of-control MQ-9 “Reaper” drone as it headed toward the Afghan border. It was the first time an errant Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) had to be shot down by a human pilot, who used an AIM-9 Sidewinder missile. Frank Hartnett, a spokesman for the U.S. Air Forces Central command, points out that “the order to engage was only made after exhausting all options to establish positive control of the MQ-9. The UAV was on a track to exit Afghani airspace, so decisive action was needed.”

It may take months before an investigating board determines what happened, says Hartnett. But it’s not uncommon for the Reaper or its smaller relation, the MQ-1 Predator, to go awry. Nearly a third of the two dozen serious Air Force aircraft “mishaps” so far this year have involved UAVs. An FAA report summarizing UAV accidents from 1999 to 2003 found that two-thirds of the Predator mishaps were caused by human error, although the more recent crashes appear mostly due to mechanical failure.

Still, the Air Force loves its drones. Next year the service plans to buy more UAVs than piloted aircraft. And use of the Predator and Reaper is on the rise in Afghanistan and Pakistan, for missions ranging from watching over ground troops to hunting down Taliban and Al-Qaeda insurgents.

If you want an idea of what it’s like to control a UAV, the Air Force has an online game where you can simulate flying the MQ-9 Reaper. Just don’t head for the Afghan border.

Photo: NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

From the company that brought you the P-51 Mustang, F-86 Sabre, and F-100 Super Sabre came the F-107, North American’s entry in a 1950s Mach 2 fighter-nuclear bomber competition. Though it was based on the F-100 design, evident in the wings, aft fuselage, and tail section, something went seriously wrong with the rest of it: An internal fire control radar in the fuselage necessitated placing the voracious intake just aft of the cockpit. Any pilot considering an ejection would think long and hard before doing so, hence the nickname, “man eater.”

In the end, Republic’s F-105 won out. Two man eaters went to the NACA High-Speed Flight Station (now NASA Dryden, in California); one retired to the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Ohio.

T-6s vie for the lead at Reno (Photo: David Peters)

For the first time in the 100-year history of air racing, fans can watch a live broadcast of the sport from the aerial race course in Reno, Nevada. This Sunday, September 20, the final races in all six categories will appear at LiveAirshowTV. With cameras in the grandstands and in the control tower at Reno Stead Field, Jeff Lee, LiveAirShowTV president, plans to give fans at home the experience of being at the races—with a little extra. Lee will have a camera in the Extra 330 flown by aerobatic performer David Martin and in the cockpit of at least one of the big warbirds—P-51 Mustangs, F8F Bearcats, and Hawker Sea Furys, among others—racing in the Unlimited Category (the big guys weighing more than 4,500 pounds that everybody comes to see). The Unlimiteds get up to about 500 mph as they roar around pylons set on an eight-mile oval course.

But it’s gonna cost ya.  The live broadcast is a subscription-only offer at LiveAirShowTV.com. Lee says fans should sign up now—or at least before Sunday—so they won’t miss any of the action: before and after interviews with race pilots, a live broadcast of the Blue Angels flying their routine at Reno, and of course the races themselves.

We recently got an announcement that a ca.-1912 hang glider, modeled after an 1896 design by Wright-brother mentor Octave Chanute, had been installed in the Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood, California.

Design centers are sort of shopping malls for interior decorators and architects, with showrooms full of furniture, fabric, lighting, wallpaper–that kind of thing. They’re usually only open to those “in the trade.”

It turns out the Pacific Design Center has a “glass-sheathed” atrium, and how could any designer, preoccupied as he is with the use of space, resist the challenge of finding the perfect accessory for what is essentially a 32-foot-high room? In goes the century-old glider, and from the announcement, it does sound like it has antique-caliber panache: “replete with a cane-backed pilot’s seat, wooden rudder and rubber-rimmed tires for a smooth landing.”

And the president and owner of the design center, Charles S. Cohen, did find the biplane through a New York antiques dealer, Andrew Martin, who’d bought it in London. “We don’t know who built it,” Cohen says, “but I did send photos of it to Smithsonian aeronautical curator Tom Crouch, who verified that it was built sometime between 1912 and 1913, after an original Octave Chanute design. This particular glider is larger than those that Chanute built, but according to Mr. Crouch probably was the design that the Wright brothers adapted” for their early aircraft.

Cohen bought it expressly for the design center. “I couldn’t resist the biplane’s spectacular design,” he says. “Spectacular”—it’s not a word you hear very much from airplane people. But it made me look at the glider a second time, and you know, I think he’s right.

If I were running the space program—which is unlikely, I admit—Saturn’s moon Titan would be very high on the list of destinations for the next major planetary mission. Sure, Mars is appealing, largely because of its similarity to Earth.

Cassini Radar Team/ESA/NASA/JPL

But take a look at this radar image of Titan’s northern polar region, returned by the radar instrument on the Cassini orbiter. Seem familiar? The only other place you’ll find features like this—flowing rivers and lakes still filled with liquid—is Earth.

This is Titan, though, where the temperature is 290 degrees below zero. So the liquids are likely to be methane or ethane, not water. The “lava” oozing from Titan’s ice volcanoes is made of water and ammonia, and is as thick as taffy. It rains there, sometimes heavily, and there may even be fog. All of which makes this place Earthlike and utterly alien at the same time—the perfect target for exploration.

The vehicles proposed for studying Titan are as fun as they are varied: rovers, balloons, airplanes, even boats. And there’s a real chance of finding life, or at least its precursors, on a moon with more organic molecules than any other place beside Earth, and transient liquid water on the surface.

Let’s hope that NASA and the European Space Agency heed a recent recommendation from planetary scientists to send a large “flagship” mission to Titan in the 2020s, and perhaps a small probe even earlier.