‘The Sabre’ 08/17/2011
Posted by Vaughn in Art, Aviation, Design, Editorial.Tags: F-86, Fighter Jets, Korean War, Sabre Jet
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I DON’T KNOW if I hold any more romantic a view of a machine than that which I hold for the F-86, especially given my considerably pronounced romanticizing of war-birds. There was just something about its placement in the annals’ intersection between the modern jet-age fighters of now and the propeller-driven battlers of yesteryear, that makes it stand apart. Being one of the first of the American jets to see heavy air combat before the advent of modern weapons systems, it still remains pure in the mind for me, and still just so much of what a little boy — where much of the inertia behind military aircrafts’ popular culture presence resides — would seem to think a jet would look like; on top of everything else that it brought: From being a versatile combat workhorse to its survivability and maneuverability.
And mind you, this was a design made far before the later iterations of the fighter jet genetic line of my youth and (now) adulthood, which had me first absorbing the signatures of the F-14, F-15, F-16 and now and for sometime into the future the F-22 and the Joint Strike Fighter (J.S.F.) — as ugly and as troubled as the J.S.F. is — into my concept of “The ideal of the Fighter Plane.” The F-86 was also one of the first and final stick-and-rudder jet fighters. It came along before computers took over the cockpit and made for a different experience altogether: higher, faster, more acrobatic; but not as much pilot versus pilot.
The pilots had to fly this completely, which was more challenging in the jet age, because of the speed creating smaller margins of error; there were none of the fancy systems of now to keep it stable or to enhance its abilities against the pull of the laws’ of gravity and rules of physics. It was from a time when the jet was still primarily an extension of the pilot and his skills, and not an extension of vaster power imbalances between nations in regards to technology, wealth and research and development, as it has become today.
Photo Credit: Gizmodo
And in a way, all of those late ’60s and early ’70s designed aircraft of my youth, which went operational in the 1980s all looked the same — with their sleekly pointed noses envisaging a predatory beak and utilizing hyper-aerodynamic, weather-beaten, sand-dune looking silhouettes — particularly for the epochs and technological generations they inhabit. North American’s F-86 was not that. It was not an aircraft representative of its respective time. It is in retrospect the jet version of another beloved, classic air foil of mine, the P-51 Mustang (photo above), produced by the same manufacturer. The P-51 was a World War II leap in propeller fighter technology, which went head-to-head against Nazi ME-262s, the first jet planes, and won many if not most, of those battles.
The F-86 “Sabre,” as it had become to be known, was a sleek first generation 1950′s comic-book drawing of a jet aircraft come-to-life, a plane which earned its respect in battles against an opponent falsely rumored to be its superior, the Russian MiG-15. But it is its style more than its storied operational successes, while in service with many N.A.T.O. countries, that grabs me. Style is something odd which we project onto it now as aviation enthusiasts, but it was obviously an afterthought. Plainly, the thing had to fly and fly well, and aesthetics mattered not a bit, as it was designed to be the protagonist in a struggle against Russia and became a figure in some of the most intriguing and brutal dog-fighting in history.
And so its beauty comes from the pitch-perfect execution of its more utilitarian concerns. It was a silver bullet with wings and a bubble canopy, perfect for a pilot engaged in an ever-expanding, three-dimensional chess match at 580 mph, tens and thousands of feet over the land.
A part of me wants to say that it was more along the lines of something from Buck Rogers, and another part of me wants to say that it was of Disney’s Tommorowland. It just wholly spoke to a kind of 1950′s pop-culture futurism evident in the culture. It was simply one of the smoothest plane designs ever encountered; like some beautiful Bang & Olufsen-meets-late-’90s-and-early-21st-Century Apple creation, an industrial design that could’ve been mistaken for art.
In fact, there was a comic book All American Men of War panel (the first illustration above) dedicated to the plane, which was later adapted by Roy Lichtenstein in “Whaam!!” (directly above, panel 2), to avoid the accusation of plagiarism, and which was ironically made to depict a P-51, the Sabre’s cousin from the propeller age, in a piece that seemed to capture this spirit of the Sabre, in the pop-mind.
It was a reputation that the F-86 famously earned by burning its foes in the skies over Korea, where it dueled both North Korean MiGs and (secretly) Soviet piloted ones, who were used as an auxiliary force, in the infamous “MiG Alley.” During this process it became something greater than a mere beautiful assemblage of parts, but an absolute affirmation of America’s dominance in the skies, against any and all communist air power.
Fiona Banner’s Harrier 03/22/2011
Posted by Vaughn in Art, Aviation, Defense, Design, Global.add a comment
Photo Credit: Fiona Banner
EVEN hung by the tail, the Harrier is a symbol of power. But, like the assassinated Mussolini strung up by his feet, it also shows that power is mutable. I couldn’t resist lying underneath, nose-to-nose, sensing the weight and mass and power of it above me, like a stilled pendulum. From this position all I could see was the circular nose cone, filling my vision like a football about to belt a goalie in the face. I am less certain that Fiona Banner needed to draw feathers on the bodywork and wings of the jet, even though she’s done it discreetly; the Harrier is in any case named after a bird of prey. Maybe she wanted us to think of vermin strung up on a gamekeeper’s gibbet, or a game bird hung in Tate Britain’s neo-classical larder. Banner probably also wants to remind us of earlier drawings she has made, using fighter-plane wings as her canvas or paper. Previously she has written moment-by-moment descriptions of war movies – including Apocalypse Now and Black Hawk Down – and of the experience of drawing from a live model. Now she gives us the real thing.
“Fiona Banner’s Toys for Boys Are a Turn-on at Tate Britain,” The Guardian
[...]
‘WE all hate war but these objects inspire a strange enthusiasm in us. When you reflect on their beauty it’s a strange thing, people say surely they are designed with an aesthetic in mind and, of course, they’re not. They are absolutely designed to function and that function is to kill, and that says something questionable about our aesthetic judgement and makes us ask questions about our moral position.’
Visit Fiona Banner’s site [Here]
Read “Fiona Banner’s Toys for Boys are a Turn-on at Tate Britain” [Here]
Read “Tate Britain: Fiona Banner Exhibition” [Here]
Read more about Fiona Banner’s exhibit prep [Here]
The New, Stealthy, Killer: Drones 08/17/2010
Posted by Vaughn in Aviation, Conflict, Global, Technology.add a comment
Photo Credit: Danger Room
I REPORTED on the RQ-170 Sentinel a while back, here, noting that it was the first time we’ve ever seen an operational drone of its kind: implying stealth capabilities. (There isn’t an answer to whether it is, officially, as far as I can tell. It certainly looks as though it is a low-observable “unmanned.”) Whether or not the Sentinel is a stealthy, radar and infrared detection avoider, the coming wave of unmanned aerial vehicles (U.A.V.) and unmanned combat aerial vehicles (U.C.A.V.) set to come on-line will certainly be stealthy platforms. Tasked with offensive missions, it is simply a necessity for these aircraft to be outfitted with defensive measures, as the desire to knock them out of the sky by their adversaries will only increase.
As well-known and written about in-depth in The New Yorker in Jane Mayer’s “The Predator War,” drones have been performing quite a bit of the heavy lifting in the airpower display in the AfPak sky, and time will only make it more apparent that this war will do for the U.A.V.s and U.C.A.V.s , what Vietnam did for rotary-wing (helicopter) operations in military circles, with them developing a currency and transforming from an alternative to a preferred means, perhaps, to manned aircraft missions and also, my speculation, cruise missile strikes. Not only will these new drones be stealthy, they will be more powerful and fly higher than their current counterparts, further improving their strike efficacy.
Danger Room, Wired‘s outstanding defense blog, has a short breakdown of the newest crop of some known drone systems on the way: From the British B.A.E. Systems’s offering to General Atomics’s, a nuclear physics company which also develops radar systems (and U.A.V.s for both civilian and military use), headquartered in Poway, California; quickly becoming the prime supplier of unmanned aircraft to the American government. General Atomics was also found to be the largest underwriter of travel getaways for members of Congress, according to a 2006 report and a 2006 San Diego Tribune article:
San Diego’s General Atomics, a government contractor, was the biggest corporate underwriter, according to the report. Privately held General Atomics spent more than $660,000 on 86 trips taken by members of Congress, their aides and families between January 2000 and June 2005. Most of that was spent on overseas travel related to the unmanned Predator spy plane made by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, an affiliated company.
General Atomics’s Web site explains the company’s profile in the U.A.V. game:
The business of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) is the development of transformational technologies that deliver paradigm-changing results. An affiliate of privately held General Atomics, GA-ASI is a world leader in proven, reliable unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and tactical reconnaissance radars, as well as advanced high-resolution surveillance systems. The company is dedicated to providing long-endurance, mission-capable aircraft with the integrated sensor and data link systems required to deliver persistent situational awareness and rapid strike capabilities.
Read Danger Room’s “Killer Drones Get Stealthy” [Here]
On ‘Dreamland’ and Her Tentacles 05/07/2010
Posted by Vaughn in Aviation, Film, Global, Journalism.comments closed
Photo Credit: Wikipedia
Area 51. It’s the most famous military institution in the world that doesn’t officially exist. If it did, it would be found about 100 miles outside Las Vegas in Nevada’s high desert, tucked between an Air Force base and an abandoned nuclear testing ground.
Then again, maybe not– the U.S. government refuses to say. You can’t drive anywhere close to it, and until recently, the airspace overhead was restricted–all the way to outer space. Any mention of Area 51 gets redacted from official documents, even those that have been declassified for decades.
“The Road to Area 51,” Los Angeles Times
I HAD known of what is collectively identified as “Area 51″ in the pop-mind, since about the time that I was 9-years-old. It wasn’t that much of a secret. Back in the early 1990s it was often mentioned in part — since Area 51 can and should be thought of as a collection of several Nevada test sites, separated by only a few miles and all perhaps connected by tunnels — in books on the now-retired F-117 “Nighthawk,” as Tonopah Test Range. It was the place where “Skunk Works,” a then semi-secret division of the Lockheed company, now Lockheed-Martin, the United States’ go-to for all things clandestine-aircraft related, often operating in my own So. Cal backyard, would iron-out the kinks in its projects, as they had done with the U-2 in the 1950s, the SR-71 in the 1960s and the F-117 in the 1980s, when they weren’t using Los Angeles’s High Desert of Palmdale. Tonopah was just a short plane ride away (about 70 miles) from Area 51 and it was contained in the same, desolate space as “Groom Dry Lake,” the geographic name of the basin that houses the most well-known, secret anchor of a network of government-ran Nevada test sites.
Over the years, Tonopah or “Groom Dry Lake,” held a pull for me, as it does for those of the more tech-geeky conspiratorial quadrants of the world. But its magnetism wasn’t because of the mysteries and the possibilities of technology yet comprehensible, or for the more fringe out there, “reverse-engineered,” to become man-operated alien technology. For me, it was simply about what was known: there was a remote place in-between California’s defense aircraft hothouse and the rest of the country, where anything that couldn’t be reasonably flown with some level of secrecy in the skies over the sprawling megalopolis of So.Cal, could be transported to a nearby geographic wasteland in Nevada and ran without much notice, just hours away, and near a city where hustlers of all kinds drank, gambled, traded services and caroused; distracted by the lights and debauch of Las Vegas. At one point, I even had a non-immediate family member supposedly slated to work there. (“Supposedly” is in italics, as to offer all kinds of protections. The Internet is permanent and can haunt a younger person’s life.)
Looking back, its location was fitting. After all, everything about Las Vegas has this kind of hazy, Mazzy Star — “Fade Into You” video — feel to it. The area, though desolate outside of its pockets of commerce and tourism, is somewhat dreamy (once you get over its hellish climatic conditions), and is an actual desert oasis where mirages, fantasies and reality have entwined. It is of no insignificant coincidence then, that Area 51 is also known as “Dreamland.” A place where all things become possible in the popular mind and defense mind, from anti-gravity craft, to an entire squadron of grifted Russian jets.
*
Area 51 became something else altogether by the time I was in my teens and Will Smith was making his run on the summer movie box-office. Whether it was in Independence Day or the Men in Black franchise, there was always an allusion to what it had become to many. The place as a Hollywood trope was a wink and a nudge to the growing global conspiracy believers who asserted America had somehow cornered the market on exotic technology that did not belong to humans. By the time I was in, I believe, the 10th grade, there was even a first-person-shooter video game titled Area 51, where you’d blast aliens who once worked with government scientists, but had since overrun the base. But how did this very important base, perhaps the most important, become this? A ceaseless, cultural joke, touchstone and manifestation of a somewhat honest fear in the population of a Machiavellian government plot to secure the perpetual domination of its empire through technology light years ahead of humans’ knowledge, as well as the end-all-be-all of (intelligent) extraterrestrial belief, for some sects? It started in another desert town.
It isn’t surprising, but its mythology started with Roswell, New Mexico — which symmetrically also has long cultural tentacles, just ask Collin Hanks and Sheri Appleby — and a case that has just as long a touch on the cultural pulse, even leading to a television series of the town’s name. The now infamous “Roswell incident” is part and parcel to Area 51, in that if one subscribes to the well-known report of a U.F.O. crash there some 60 years ago, then certainly, the supposed anthropomorphic bodies that were drug from the wreckage had to be sent somewhere for observation, debriefing, scientific inquiry; what have you. Area 51 became that “somewhere,” for some. (If not another based named Wright-Patterson, home of the Air Force’s “Foreign Technologies Division.”)
Whether that long-told story is all true, half-true or not true at all, (I am not making a call either way); the truth has been ultimately obfuscated by time, denials, myths and the admonition of the elite, (then) “Army Air Force” unit at Walker Army Air Force Base, Roswell, New Mexico; the 509th Bomb Wing. It was the very same group who introduced the world to the Enola Gay and the first atomic weapons delivery, who divulged that they did, in fact, recover a spacy, extraterrestrial craft and unearthly bodies, to the local Roswell newspaper. And the admonition was made by none other than Walker Army Air Force Base’s own information officer. This has given Area 51 its one sliver of mythological record, though perhaps in a round-about-way, that ties it to all the possibly imaginary things that have so fruitfully latched to it.
Chances are we will never, ever know the truth of Area 51 and suss out its reality from the urban myths that have defined its existence to so many, and which have led to a number of theories about how American “ingenuity” came to shape the second half of the 20th century. It is to the point that I am buying into a new meta-idea, that the base — while still a semi-secret nerve center for our military-industrial complex — is now really a clever disinformation campaign for even more secretive locations that will never, ever be known. Admittedly, while this is entirely far-fetched, it is no more far-fetched than what is already thought about the base, and it is actually consistent with how such a campaign would work.
For example, if you think that the somewhat-secret military technology you see now is impressive, remember that most of those programs’ development cycles are in the 20-25 year range; from concept, operational fruition, to completely verifiable to the public. Whatever is seen and acknowledged now, is just a tease for an even larger movie, so to speak. And so “Dreamland” being so very public, is truly the best case for an installation greater in import and scope, and even more remote. But one can now at least read about “Dreamland” in a historical albeit, gap-laden, superficial way, and you should, as it has been one of the sites where the Cold War may have turned, and which is still often talked of unofficially.
The Los Angeles Times had recently taken a look behind the fourth wall of the mysterious installation known-but-unknown-officially, culling a cadre of former Area 51 employees from its early days, for interviews on the experience of working there and their shuttling between family life in the wide-open American West to the austere existence at one of the most-secret elements of the Cold War, American defense machine. The piece was featured in L.A. Times Magazine last year and it is the work of Annie Jacobsen, an investigative reporter and frequent contributor to the Bill Buckley introduced, “intellectually minded,” conservative periodical, National Review, primarily reporting on matters of military intelligence.
Read Los Angeles Times Magazine’s “The Road to Area 51″ [Here]
* Lockheed’s Advanced Developments Program “Skunk Works” logo, photo via Wikipedia.
The Unveil of the ‘Beast of Khandahar’ 02/24/2010
Posted by Vaughn in Aviation, Defense, Global.comments closed
Photo Credit: Air & Cosmos
IT has been months now. Several months, in fact, since a grainy photo appeared in the defense news’ blogosphere, that invoked the time of the infamous “donuts-on-a-rope” picture which implied the first operational use of a pulse jet power-plant and a still-fabled project named “Aurora.” And which also backtracked to the the first credible, reported, but never documented, sighting of the rumored TR-3B above an oil rig in the North Sea in the mid-1990s; by a man who once was a spotter for the Royal Observer Corps. All of which have become a part of an internal mythology of the defense world, I follow. But those moments are unlike this one for two reasons: (1) a government admonition, and (2) the long interval of time that has passed between those episodes, with nary an acknowledgment, which is unlike this more recent one.
The United States policy on above-top-secret “black” aircraft, a term that describes programs which are fully-cloaked and only known to a select few with a need to know, is generally: “Deny, deny, deny…until they stop asking.” Which is what happened to those projects that had been speculated on for years such as the U-2 or the SR-71 — until those programs gradually went “white” to the public — due to the inevitable whisper of those on the inside and the exposure of internal government documents that track funding for all military projects — such as those put out by the Congressional Budget Office — even if only what is there, is just an indication of capital flow for “something.”
That is all thanks to the genius of a semi-transparent government and “little-d’” democratic values and measures such as the Freedom of Information Act, even though requesting classified information through the “F.O.I.A.,” can still be a journey down futility’s road. And after succeeding in such a procurement, those documents can still be highly censored. (Quick aside: Some who believe it is a threat to national security to allow some level of openness, seem to be wrong. Government projects still continue under suspicion of existing, and their “truth” while unacknowledged wholly, is usually readily available and verifiable by defense journalists, by way of alternative (legal) means. Such as watching congressional appropriations.)
However, by now, if you follow defense media coverage and President Obama’s controversial but successful — for American objectives but not necessarily humanitarian ones — U.A.V. war over the AfPak skies, you will most certainly have heard of a rumored delta-like, unmanned “B-2 Spirit, mini-contraption” — my term of art, because of the craft’s resemblance to a former black project, the B-2 Stealth Bomber — that is presumably flying surveillance missions, if not handling a portion of the track-and-kill operations dedicated towards al-Qaeda. Fairly recently, the (once) unidentified air foil was featured in a popular post on Flight Global’s: Distant Early Warning Line blog asking its readers to comment, concerning what exactly the pictured jet was, and what the camel-ish “humps” on its wings possibly housed. Some of the more credible guesses were: advanced electronics packages, and perhaps an electronic warfare systems’ battery.
And this is not to mention the obvious stealth signature of it, that sent many readers wondering what exactly it was being used for, since the on-going known war features an enemy that has very little, to no radar capability. For the uninitiated: aircraft, tanks and ships with low radar signatures and sometimes even smaller infrared signatures, feature highly angular or rounded surfaces that either refract radio waves or absorb them, while also using similar techniques to reduce their heat signatures, for instance burying the engines behind grates and a barrier of actual bricks that cool its “infrared sig.” The rounding of surfaces is used to give more area for absorption of waves by way of a special skin and paint usually, while hard angle-shaped surfaces shoot those radio detection waves haphazardly; only not back to their radar station, thus making it difficult for radar operators to recognize a machine of such engineering. And so it becomes apparent from just a mere glance, whether a ship, tank, or aircraft is designed for a low-visibility footprint. Such was the case here.
I had first heard of what has been called the “Beast of Kandahar,” and which is now identified by everyone, even the government, as the RQ-170 Setninel; when the squadron patches for the project had been revealed in the book on mostly Air Force black-ops: I Could Tell You But Then You Would Have to Be Destroyed by Me: Emblems from the Black World. The book’s author, Trevor Paglen, came across the patches and some tertiary information that linked the patches and the Sentinel’s program in his mind, and he was correct, while other defense news and aviation writers and enthusiasts, attempted to link the above first photo of the plane to everything from the well-known Polecat program, to the from-out-of-left-field surmise of an engineer, wondering if it was the BAE Corax. But, Paglen, as far as I know, never weighed in on the image, he just happened to have the right paraphernalia and information; much, much earlier. His talk of the “Desert Prowler” program is exactly what the U.A.V. pictured is linked to, however. Points for him.
Some time in January, the Department of Defense had copped to operating the “Beast” and provided its official number designation, “RQ-170.” Yet, we still have no idea what it exactly does for the counter insurgent operation. Its more recent, noted capacity; is to spy however, and the region it’s operating in says that it more than likely is not only performing counterinsurgency surveillance, but also a more conventional cloak-and-dagger aerial reconnaissance operation, that of: tracking weapons’ inventories and nuclear programs of other nation-states. With a near-by (to the Beast’s area of operation) and a soon-nuclear Iran, with a dictator whose Friday casual attire belies his level of crazy, it seems to be the most logical scenario, along with the specter of some Chinese-related operations. However, the range on the Beast is unknown, but similar U.A.V.s in the theater can and have been operated from as far as bases in Nevada.
Memories of a Childhood Gone By, Part 1 03/15/2009
Posted by Vaughn in Aviation, Journal, Memories of a Childhood, Youth Culture.comments closed
Photo Credit: The ‘Nam, Issue 16, “Milk Run”
I grew up with F-4s routinely buzzing my houses, when I was little, in pre-elementary and early elementary school. I’ve seen the fiery cones from their afterburners, and I’ve heard them break the sound barrier, making that delayed pop that you eventually feel in your shoulders and heart. I’ve glided my hand over their fuselage and looked into their intakes. When I was little, they still used parachutes to slow their landings and whenever my dad was home and I went with him somewhere on the base, it always seemed that I’d end up watching one land from inside the car along the flight line, and I’d be forever loving the moment of the ‘chute deploying. There was something so magical about their-then dark jungle green color schemes and their suddenly appearing, red parachutes contrasting, to me.
One of my favorite early memories is seeing them in the sky in formation and watching them break-off individually, hard. (Rolling off gracefully like a banana peel.) I grew up in the Pacific and so, some of the dudes that flew them in the ’80s were vets from ‘Nam, guys who went into the belly of the beast, regularly, flying fighter escort for B-52 bombers out of Okinawa or Guam and the Special Operations’ AC-130 gunship missions out of Thailand, or on search and destroy for Viet Cong radar sites; waiting for their lock-on warnings to go off and missiles the size of telephone poles to break the jungle canopy at night, so that they could make a visual note on their second pass; after they dodged the projectile intended for their demise. The heavy anti-aircraft flack and near-misses, ejections and hairy moments I’ve heard or read about and were tapped for comics like The ‘Nam, which I would read under the covers, both scare and inspire me. I mean, if a human could go through that, a knowledge of his/her limits is forever entrenched in the psyche.
I’m as old as most of those pilots were now, when they flew their first missions in Vietnam, and I realize I will never ever be tested like that. I have a nice, comfortable trajectory, and a guaranteed permanent middle-classdom and tedium. But a part of me wonders, could I have ever handled that life? Because, well, everything about growing up said that I was going to be them: Going to be strapped to an ejection seat and a flying iron suit, straining against gravitational forces sometimes eight to nine times my weight, and struggling to keep consciousness and bearings, whilst diving inverted against the sun.
I am no fan of combat; not a “hawk,” by any means, but its experience and cultural products defined my youth. I even grew up reading the “escape-and-evasion” manuals designed for military aviators in the case of being shot-down and surviving. The diagrams of how to filter water through a sock, build shelter with a parachute; reasons on why you should bury everything you don’t need and how to signal for rescue with a mirror, without simultaneously giving off your own position to the enemy, still are vividly with me when I close my eyes and conjure them. To this day, I think to myself about how and what I would do in the case of ejection, and having to deal with the lingering questions: “Are they going to pull me out of this mess within a day?”, “Am I going to end up a captive?”, and if so, “Will it be ten weeks, ten months or ten years?”; “How long could I handle interrogation?” The trade-off for not having answers to these questions are ultimately my sanity, and a family never too worried about my safety. But still, oddly, the little boy in me wonders…
Me and Aircraft Models 06/30/2008
Posted by Vaughn in Aviation, Editorial, Journal.comments closed
WHEN I was younger, I regularly built model aircraft. (It’s probably why I have a love for the technical.) I would read about them and then go to the hobby store and discern between three or four models of the same jet, based on color scheme and the bases they came from — their decals meaning more to me than to others, I think. I always opted for the ones that came from the Western bases and the Pacific Rim where I grew up. And, yeah, I was nerdy enough to know how to tell. It was important for me to always get the F-4 from Clark with the “PN” (for Philippines)* on it, because at some point, I was probably hearing the actual version of that plane or watching it, or touching it during air show season, or milling around at the base exchange with one of its pilots in my presence.
I grew out of my model planes, sadly. Where they once used to hang from my ceiling with clear fishing line; years upon years later, I have no idea where any of them even went. Where hours of inhaling glue fumes, sanding down pieces and my dad helping me replicate N.A.T.O. region specific camo patterns with spray paint, Testor’s model paint, my Jane’s (the most important reference site you most likely never heard of) defense books and detail brushes, now disappear into the ether. What I have is memories, now. Memories of me going to the hobby store or the toy store and buying these intricately detailed models, with their boxes so well-chronicling the aircraft’s history, and getting back home to see them in about a thousand pieces, it seems, and knowing that it was going to take a couple of weeks for me to see them come to life. Oh, and besides my memories I have this Flickr pool.
*Referenced: Clark, AB, Philippines F-4 Phantom II
Solar-Powered Flight? 06/04/2008
Posted by Vaughn in Aviation, Technology.comments closed
I recently found myself in one of my flights of fancy (pun intended) filled A.I.M. conversations concerning the feasibility of solar-powered flight, as the discussion’s precursor was a joke about making trips around the world on the cheap and me retorting: “not until these ridiculous oil prices go down.” Neither of us being engineers, we both brought up the problem of solar-powered flight not working without, (cue: Saturday Night Live type impersonation of George Bush), uhmm… “solar.” What happens at night? Is the obvious question. Surely, the amount of batteries to power such an endeavor would be cumbersome and possibly a hindrance to the aerodynamics, or so I thought. ( Problems of aerodynamics are solved by wingspan, it seems.)
So it was a more than a mild surprise to find in Men’s Vogue (of all places) an article more befitting Popular Mechanics, about the plans of two Swiss men to travel around the world in a solar-powered airplane. Clocking what will be 23,000 miles of the globe by air in a “zero-fuel” plane is ambitious to say the least. However if any two men were adequately qualified for such an endeavor it would be the two behind this project. Bertrand Piccard, a hot-air balloonist/psychiatrist, and André Borschberg, a former Swiss fighter-pilot, are the men behind Solar Impulse, a lofty project that brings together engineers from six countries, 100-plus technical advisers, and a near-dozen corporate partners which include the makers of the first watch taken to the moon, Omega.
At $88.7 million, the operation is large, to say the least, somewhat befitting the plane and certainly their goal. With a 260-foot carbon composite wingspan, Solar Impulse will measure wider than an Airbus 340 and weigh less than an S.U.V. The craft will run off of four 12 horsepower engines that will push it at a cruising speed of 44 mph, all the while storing battery energy by way of 2,150-square-feet of photovoltaic cells that stretch across the plane as a skin.
For the Men’s Vouge article [Here]
For the official site [Here]
