Aeronautical Engineer, business magnate, film director…Howard Hughes was it all. Born on December 24th 1905 in Humble, Texas (USA), Howard was known during his life as one of the most financially successful individuals worldwide. He started as a film producer, persuaded by Ralph Graces, producing and financing a short film, “Swell Hogan”, which turned out…
Category: Aerospace Articles
Alberto Santos Dumont
On the 20th of July 1873, Alberto Santos Dumont, an important pioneer aviator, was born in Palmira, Brazil. The 6th of 8 children of Henrique Dumont and Francisca de Paula Santos traveled in 1891 at the age of 18 to Europe, where he perfected his English by spending some months in England. He also climbed…
Urban Air Mobility
Have you ever wondered how would it be to fly to school or work? In the next 3 to 5 years it could become a possibility. Urban Air Mobility (UAM) envisions a safe and efficient aviation transportation system that will use highly automated aircraft that will operate and transport passengers or cargo at lower altitudes within urban…
An endurance record
Have you ever wondered how it is to fly for one or two days without stopping? How about 64 days, 22 hours, 19 minutes, and 5 seconds? This is the world record for an endurance flight and it was established by Robert Timm and John Cook in 1959. But where did it all began? In 1958…
The Starship
If you are a passionate of the space exploration and its colonization ultimately, you may have attended to two events this week: the space bingo of where the Chinese rocket “Long March” was about to crash (which ended happily) and the first successful flight and landing of the SpaceX’s SN15 Starship, this is what we…
The UltraFan by Rolls-Royce
The UltraFan is a new generation turbofan engine manufactured by Rolls-Royce which could be ready for service from 2025. The main purpose of this new engine is to get a better fuel economy, promising at least 25% improvement in fuel burn, achieved by a variable pitch fan system. The geared pitch UltraFan aims for a 15:1 bypass ratio and…
The Bell X-1
The history of engineering is a history of breaking barriers and in aviation we all know one barrier that seems easy on today’s planes to break but was a huge trouble in late 40s, and yes, it’s the sound barrier. Back in the World War II, the necessity of having faster and better planes than the enemy lead to a great jump in aviation technology: the mad…
Welcome on board, this is your airplane speaking…
As the years pass by, the technology around us is evolving day by day and even we have artificial intelligence on our smartphones or in our cars, aviation is lagging behind in this area. But what is AI? Artificial intelligence (AI) is a wide-ranging branch of computer science concerned with building smart machines capable of performing…
The future of supersonic flight?
The Concorde was that beautiful dream that could have ended better (Better not talking about the Tu144). After more than 25 years of supersonic flights, the Concorde was retired in 2003 and since then, nothing like it has ever been seen on airways. But it is time. Let’s look at what is going on. Possibly the most known option of this time is…
Where all started
Mankind has always been fascinated by the mirage of flight, but when was the first time we tried to soar into the sky? One of the fathers of aviation is Abbas Abu Al-Qassim Ibn Firnas Ibn Wirdas Al-Takurini but he is usually referred to as Abbás Ibn Firnás. He was born in what is known today as Ronda,…