Today’s story is about one of those pioneers in aerospace industry, concretely about a very known company that revolutionized the history of aviation, not with iconic planes, not with powerful thrusters or revolutionary structures, yet with seats. However, Martin-Baker born as a plane manufacturer in the thirties being a collaboration between the engineer James Martin and the captain Valentine-Baker. The idea behind this enterprise was…
Tag: aeronautical
The queen of the skies
The first of its class Truly the first Jumbo jet, Boeing 747 also referred to as “The queen of the skies” is in service for over 50 years now. It was introduced in 1970 to the public with the now-defunct company Pan Am which wanted a large airplane that could lower the price of tickets for the average paid man. Boeing accepted the challenge and designed a four engines, two-deck airplane that now has decades of faithful service. The thing that differentiates the 747 from other airplanes is its specific hump that houses the cockpit, a feature that makes this airplane not only a great passenger aircraft but a cargo-capable one too. For Boeing 747 to become a reality, it needed a big factory which the company constructed in Everett, 50 km outside Seattle and almost three million cubic meters of earth had to be moved to make space for a queen palace. But the queen had its problems too, initially, the airplane did not meet the FAA requirements for the evacuation process which had to be done in 90 seconds, then, the pilots were not trained for such high deck airplanes so Boeing mounted a cabin above a truck to make pilots train for taxing. The 747 had problems with its structure also when tests showed that wings suffered oscillations under certain conditions but this was solved by reducing the stiffness of some wing components, however, a particularly severe high-speed flutter problem was solved only after depleted uranium counterweights were introduced in the outboard engine nacelles of the early 747s. This measure worried people, especially when these aircraft crashed, for example in 1992 in Amsterdam, the airplane had 282 kilograms of uranium in the tailplane. This and other problems did not stop Boeing from bringing the 747 to Paris Air Show in mid-1969, where it was displayed to the public for the first time. Before the end of development, the company was over $2 billion in debt to a banking syndicate, and if the airplane was a failure this could have meant the end of Boeing, but the gamble succeeded and Boeing had the only Jumbo Jet at the time and held a monopoly in this category for many years. The program’s final cost was 1 Billion US $ (7.4 Billion today). On January 15,…
DC-3, where it all began
Many times referred to as the aircraft that changed the world, the DC-3 had a great impact on the airline industry in the 1930s/1940 and on World War II. For that, we have to thank C.R. Smith, American Airlines CEO. Smith persuaded Donald Douglas through a marathon telephone call into designing an aircraft based on…
F-104, an Starfighter
Evolution is a curious process,while searching for wealth and advantages mistakes and weird combinations can happen. In aeronautics it happens too. Our todays look is for one of those weird steps in evolution, those that one is not sure to hate or love instead. I`m talking about a huge jump in aerospace technology, maybe too…
The ‘Caspian Sea Monster’
After being abandoned for decades, the Lun-Class Ekranoplan faces a new life as museum. The history of the “Caspian Sea Monster” as CIA called it, or KM (Korabl Maket, which in Russian means Ship-prototype, the original name), starts in the 1960’s when the Soviet Union experimented with ground effect vehicles, basically, airplane-like vehicles that fly only…
What was wrong with the 737Max?
The plane that costs millions of dollars to Boeing has received authorization again. As some of you may have noticed, Boeing’s crown jewel, the 737Max, is again on the skies. The past 18 of November, the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) finally revoked this plane’s prohibition to fly since March of 2019 after two fatal accidents,…