AirSpaceMag.com

Wow. Aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal would have loved this. German automation company Festo has built a “SmartBird” modeled on the herring gull that, according to the company, can take off, fly, and land autonomously—just by flapping its wings.

The design features a number of innovations, including active torsion of the wings and a torso that bends aerodynamically. And it only weighs a pound.

Strange that the video doesn’t show the thing taking off and landing. But it’s pretty cool to watch in flight (via Kurzweilai.net).

Crash test dummies aboard the Boeing 720, before the test. Credit: NASA

With ever-mounting budget cuts, and pressure to reduce the national deficit, NASA and the FAA just don’t crash airplanes intentionally like they used to. Here’s a golden oldie of a test the two agencies jointly conducted on December 1, 1984, when they took a Boeing 720 (a smaller, faster version of the 707) fully loaded with jet fuel and belly-flopped it onto the desert near Edwards Air Force Base in California. Engineers running the test, called the Controlled Impact Demonstration, were evaluating an anti-misting kerosene added to the standard Jet-A fuel, to see how the additive mitigated fuel ignition and flame propagation.

The test didn’t go quite as planned, as the remote control equipment used to direct the airplane brought it down off the centerline of the runway, with the left wing striking the ground first.

The researchers did get lots of useful data on features from test dummies to burn-resistant windows. But the fireball seen here, and the inferno that raged afterward, showed that a fuel additive wouldn’t make much difference in this kind of crash.

When we last left the Garvey Space Craft/Cal State Long Beach rocketeers at the Friends of Amateur Rocketry test site in Mojave, California, they had static-tested their P-18 engine, designed to launch nanosatellites to low Earth orbit, for the 150 seconds required to launch an orbital first stage. On March 5, author Stephen Joiner reports, “The engine flew for the first time. It was just a 3-second burn — a tap on the accelerator pedal — but it cranked out a lot of altitude.” (Not enough to bust its Class 2 altitude restriction, though.) “When they tested it in November, the sonic shock almost knocked us down.”

Says John Garvey: “The next launch is scheduled for April. We tentatively have at least one payload provider signed up who will help co-sponsor the flight. We are going to try to fly the P-18 on a regular basis while the vehicle and funds hold out. There are lots of opportunities for improvement.”

In a photo of the just-landed vehicle, a “Buzz Lightyear payload flown on behalf of a first-grade class in Long Beach” hangs on for dear life to steel-plate ballast.

One thing I’ve always liked about the Russian space program is that it keeps the “human” in human spaceflight. NASA often seems more interested in technology than people. You can see it in the different feel of the  international space station modules: the American, European and Japanese labs are full of wires and machinery, while the Russian module has pictures and religious icons on the walls, and generally seems a warmer, more personalized space.

This human touch is reflected in the charming welcome home ceremony after a Soyuz landing. In this case, it’s Kazakhs rather than Russians, but it’s the same idea. Instead of kick-the-tires walkarounds, the cosmonauts get gifts and traditional greetings, as in the video below, from Wednesday. Sure, the crew might be fidgeting inside. But wouldn’t you want one of those Russian nested dolls with your face on it?

Skip ahead to 5:45 to hear Scott Kelly describe the Soyuz landing as a “series of explosions followed by a car crash.”

That’s one interesting question that a few former space shuttle astronauts and other experts were grappling with one day in early March at the National Research Council’s Keck building in downtown Washington, D.C. Around a large conference table sat NASA veterans Fred Gregory, history’s first black spacecraft commander, and Dick Covey, the pilot on the first shuttle mission after the Challenger disaster, along with former astronauts Dick Richards, Bonnie Dunbar, and Tom Jones, and several other subject experts. Called the Committee on Human Spaceflight Crew Operations, the dozen-plus members of the group are holding three meetings this winter and spring in Texas, Washington, and Massachusetts to study issues related to the shuttle’s retirement, such as the future activities of NASA’s Flight Crew Operations Directorate (FCOD), the requirements of crew-related ground facilities, and the size, nature, and mix of the astronaut corps’ fleet of training aircraft and whether that fleet will meet future training needs. The group had former space shuttle astronaut Ken Bowersox on a conference call from where he works at Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, in Hawthorne, California.

Falcon 9 lifts off with the first Dragon capsule, December 8, 2010. Photo: SpaceX

Bowersox is SpaceX’s vice-president of astronaut safety and mission assurance, and is an advocate for the new commercial space opportunities being funded by NASA’s Commercial Crew Development program. “Sox,” as his old NASA colleagues call him (Covey was his commander on STS-61), said that the company’s Dragon spacecraft may operate in some modes as a “rental car,” where SpaceX would lease the vehicle to NASA, whose astronauts would then be in charge of the vehicle for trips to the International Space Station. The other possibility is that Dragon would operate in “taxi” mode, with a SpaceX astronaut taking NASA or international astronauts to and from the station.

But a larger discussion also looms about the extent to which a driver is necessary, as automation has become so advanced for launch, rendezvous, docking, reentry, and landing, that a pilot-astronaut on board actually takes up a seat that might be filled by some other qualified person, such as a scientist. (Attention Apollo astronauts and shuttle commanders: Please send no hate mail—we’re just the messenger.)

The Dragon spacecraft will carry seven people to the ISS. Image: SpaceX

It’s hard to imagine former space shuttle pilots agreeing to become basically passengers. But unmanned Russian Progress vehicles, European Automated Transfer Vehicles (ATVs), and Japanese H-II Transfer Vehicles (HTVs) dock unmanned at the ISS pretty frequently, the HTVs with the help of the station’s robotic arm.

For his part, Bowersox, who has flown four times as either a shuttle commander or pilot, and a fifth time as a shuttle passenger to the ISS, is open-minded to what the future may bring. A former U.S. Navy fighter pilot and test pilot, he admitted that the rental car mode is a bit more attractive to him than the taxi mode. But he did point out that many highly experienced cosmonauts, some of whom have commanded Soyuz capsules, have not come from Russia’s test pilot/fighter pilot culture, as all shuttle pilots and commanders have. Sergei Krikalev, with more time in space than any human being, was not even a jet pilot, but learned to fly in light aircraft. Alexander Kaleri, just returned from the ISS, has very limited aviation experience, according to Bowersox. Kaleri was the commander of Soyuz TMA-01M, which returned to Earth on March 16. And then there was Nikolai Budarin, another Soyuz commander. “Budarin was an anti-aircraft officer,” said Bowersox. “He was trained to shoot down pilots.”

ISS astronauts will berth Dragon to the station with the robotic arm. Image: Courtesy NASA

Automated spaceflight will take another step forward this summer with the next launch of SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, which, on its second trip to orbit, will rendezvous with the International Space Station. Bowersox told the group that SpaceX will halt the approach about 2.5 kilometers, or a couple miles, from the ISS. The third Dragon demo flight, planned before the end of 2011, will fly unmanned all the way to the station, where ISS astronauts will grapple the spacecraft with the station’s robotic arm and berth it to the station. If all goes well, Dragon will bring cargo to the ISS on 12 more unmanned flights before SpaceX would be ready for human spaceflight.