Will Climate Change Soon Make Airline Flight-Times Take Longer?

Though still dismissed by conservative Evangelical skeptics as a left-wing conspiracy, is there evidence that climate change will soon make airline flight-times take longer?

By: Ringo Bones 

Ever since the neo-Conservatives successfully managed to seamlessly use both politics and organized religion to discredit the validity of the science behind climate change and global warming during the latter half of the 1990s, climate change concerns by the world’s poorest 99-percent were largely dismissed by right-wing Evangelical conservatives as nothing more than left-wing conspiracy to tax the world’s richest 1-percent. Sadly, it seems that the longer we ignore the signs of climate change and put off ways to mitigate and even reverse its worst effects on humanity, all of humanity will be doomed – just that the richest 1-percent will be the very last to feel its worst effects. But will the frequent-flying richest 1-percent be affected by the insidious effects of climate change in the form of longer flight times as they jet-set to their various dens of iniquities?

Even though this will too affect the working-class frequent-flyers, flights from the U.K. to the U.S. could take longer due to changes in the climate, according to a new study. Global warming is likely to speed up the jet stream, say researchers and slow down airplanes travelling from the U.K. to the U.S. While eastbound flights from the U.S. to the U.K. will be quicker but overall round trip journeys will “significantly lengthen.” The University of Reading scientists believe the changes will increase carbon emissions and fuel consumption and potentially raise airline ticket prices. The study has been published in the journal Environmental Research Letters. 

High altitude jet streams in the northern and southern hemisphere are the powerful winds that help move weather systems around the globe. Air traffic normally tries to take advantage of these speedy flows of the Atlantic jet stream from west to east to reduce journey times on routes between Europe and North America. This is one of the world’s busiest air routes with around 600 flights every day. Previous studies have shown that climate change is likely to increase turbulence on these transatlantic flights. In this new study, researchers modelled how atmospheric winds would change given a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide. They fed the results into the same route algorithms that airlines routinely use to plan their transatlantic journeys. They found that winds in the New York to London route will become 15-percent faster on average. Flights from London to New York will become twice as likely to take over seven hours while the flights from New York to London will speed up and will become twice as likely to take under five hours and twenty minutes. While on average, flights will only gain and lose a few minutes each way, the cumulative impact is “significant” says the study. 

“If you look at the round trips, the eastbound flights are getting shorter by less than the westbound flights are getting longer.” Lead author Dr. Paul Williams from the University of Reading told BBC News. “So there is a robust increase in the round trip journey time, which means planes spending longer in the air, when you add that up for all transatlantic aircraft you get an extra 2,000 hours of planes in the air every year, with US$22-million extra in fuel costs and 70-million kilograms of carbon dioxide.” The researchers say the extra carbon dioxide generated is equivalent of the annual carbon dioxide emissions of 7,000 British homes. 

The Anti Satellite Missile Is Now 30 Years Old?

It was a technological tour-de-force of the Ronald Reagan Administration when it was tested back in 1985, but did you know that the anti-satellite missile or ASAT is now 30 years old?

By: Ringo Bones 

Back in 1985, a heavily modified F-15 Strike Eagle capable of reaching over 100,000 feet successfully tested the ASM-135 anti-satellite (ASAT) missile. It managed to destroy a P78-1 Solar Observatory Satellite in a 345-mile (555-Km.) orbit through sheer kinetic energy strike. The F-15 was piloted by US Air Force Major Wilbert D. “Dough” Pearson. The successful test of this Reagan Administration era technological tour-de-force inspired the techno-thriller author Tom Clancy to write Red Storm Rising which featured a similar anti-satellite weapons system. Thanks to the popularity of Tom Clancy’s Red Storm Rising that through the rest of the 1980s, many Tom Clancy fans in America and the rest of the world got the perception that the U.S. Air Force pilot that tested the ASAT was a woman – in the name of Major Amelia “Buns” Nakamura – as opposed to USAF Major Pearson. 

Even though the program was officially terminated in 1988, it took more than 20 years for another country beside the United States to successfully test an anti-satellite or ASAT weapons system. Back in 2007, Mainland China managed to develop a comparable high-altitude plane launched anti-satellite weapons system by successfully downing one of its retired satellites in orbit around the Earth. During Operation Desert Storm, there were concerns by the pentagon that Saddam Hussein could use a modified Scud missile capable of downing several of the United States’ Department of Defense’s Global Positioning System satellites that could jeopardize the accuracy of hand-held GPS units used by American forces poised to liberate Kuwait after the January 17, 1991 deadline. Given that so far, Mainland China is the only military power that had developed its own ASAT weapons system, is the technology behind how it works still out of reach of other world military powers?  

Will BAE Systems Make UK The Next Major Space-Faring Nation?

With the 20-percent purchase of Reaction Engines, will BAE Systems soon make the UK the next major space-faring nation?

By: Ringo Bones 

Well, at least in the near future, BAE Systems could sell to Virgin CEO Richard Branson a space tourism “aerospace-plane” that’s more reliable than the Virgin Galactic Space Ship Two, but as BAE Systems purchases 20-percent of Oxfordshire-based Reaction Engines for UK£20.6-million in a deal that will see the defence giant’s expertise applied to research on a privately held company’s engine, which combines jet and rocket technology.     

Nigel Whitehead, managing director at BAE Systems, said: “The potential for this engine is incredible. I feel like we’re in the same position as the people who were the first to consider putting a propeller on an internal combustion engine: we understand that there are amazing possibilities but don’t fully understand what they are, as we just can’t imagine them all. It could be very high speed flight, low-cost launches into orbit or other fantastic achievements.” 

For 20 years, Reaction Engines has been developing its Synergetic Air-Breathing Rocket Engine (SABRE) which works like a conventional jet engine while in the Earth’s atmosphere, sucking in oxygen-rich air to burn with its hydrogen fuel. However, once it hits hypersonic speed starting at five times the speed of sound – about 4,000 mph or three-times the speed of a typical hunting rifle bullet – in the thin upper atmosphere, it switches over to become a conventional liquid-fueled rocket engine using the liquid oxygen that it carries as the oxidizer to burn with its hydrogen fuel. The ability to switch between two very different modes of operation means that the SABRE engine system is lighter than existing conventional liquid fuel rocket engines which have to carry much more liquid oxygen in its operation where used up tanks are then jettisoned. 

Reaction Engine’s SABRE’s technological tour-de-force is the development of a proprietary heat exchanger which cools the air going into the engine to a level where it is almost liquid before it is ignited, allowing the SABRE engine to swap between jet and rocket modes. The proprietary heat exchanger can cool hot air from more than 1,000 degrees Celsius to minus 150 degrees Celsius in less than 1/100 of a second. With further research and funding, the UK would be able to operate its own practical aerospace plane that can send astronauts to low Earth orbit at a much reduced operational costs than NASA’s Space Shuttle or those Russian rockets launched at Baikonur Cosmodrome.

Will COMAC’s C919 Revolutionize Asia’s Airline Industry?

As the first Mainland Chinese built passenger jet, will the C919 revolutionize Asia’s airline industry?

By: Ringo Bones 

As the first Mainland Chinese built passenger plane, the C9191 was aimed to rival Boeing 737 and the Airbus A320 – two of the most oft-used planes in the small to medium airline companies in Asia. As Mainland China’s attempt to propel itself into the “top flight” of the global aviation industry, the roll off of the C919 was witnessed by 4,000 spectators, including Beijing’s senior communist party leaders, engineers and journalist as they gathered at a hangar at Shanghai’s Pudong International Airport for the viewing of the new 158-seat passenger plane. 

The C919 is a product of the Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China or COMAC. Work on the C919 began back in 2008 but its first test flight, originally scheduled back in 2014, was postponed until 2016 according to COMAC’s chief executive. While the “C” in C919 stands for China, many of the plane’s subsystems have been provided by foreign companies, including Honeywell and Rockwell Collins. 

While it is no secret that the civil aviation business is one of the fastest growing industry in Mainland China and the rest of East Asia, Boeing predicts that by the year 2034, Mainland Chinese airline companies will need to buy 4,630 new single-aisle passenger planes with a total worth of about 490 billion US dollars and 1,500 new wide-bodied passenger planes worth 450 billion US dollars. So despite of the foreign competition, there would still be buyers for COMAC’s C919 passenger jets. But despite growing demands for new jet airliners in the Far East, most major airline companies in the region at the moment prefer to buy their planes form the “big boys” – i.e. the established passenger jet makers like the United State’s Boeing, the E.U.’s Airbus and Brazil’s Embraer. 

Metrojet Flight 9268 Crash: A Game Changer For The Aviation Industry Again?

In our post 9/11 world does the October 31, 2015 crash of the Russian Metrojet Flight 9268 represent another game changer for the civil aviation industry?

By: Ringo Bones 

With the latest findings of the European investigators of the Russian Metrojet Flight 9268 after extensive forensic examination of its black-box now point with 99-percent confidence that a smuggled explosive device was the cause of the crash, the world now precociously face another “game-changer” yet again for the post 9/11 civil aviation industry. Ever since the “shoe-bomber incident”, air travel for ordinary folks in our post 9/11 world has been marked by very invasive and draconian security checks where even items as innocuous as baby formula exceeding a certain volume are banned in flights for fear that they might be a “terrorist’s explosive device”. But does the recent Metrojet Flight 9268 crash over the Sinai back in Halloween point that lax security checks for airport workers might be the air travel industry’s weakest point? 

While Russian newspapers loyal to the strongman Vladimir Putin had been busy publishing “conspiracy theories” that MI-5 , CIA agents and even those handful of Ukrainians fighting for Islamic State / Daesh are the ones responsible for the crash of Metrojet Flight 9268 before Islamic State / Daesh released a statement that they managed to successfully smuggle an explosive device on board the flight that brought the plane down with the loss of 217 passengers and 7 flight crew, it seems that this tragic event means that another “inconvenient” security routine will be passed on to us, the average airline commuter, yet again. And ordinary “budget tourists” of Russian, British and other nationalities currently visiting Egypt are the very one’s inconvenienced by the security implications of the tragic incident. 

The aircraft involved was Airbus A321-231 operated by the Russian airline company Kogalymavia – which is branded as Metrojet to non Russian speakers exploded in mid air over the northern Sinai back in October 31, 2015 after it departed from Sharm el-Sheikh en route to St. Petersburg. While Egyptian authorities have beefed up security in its major airports, this tragic incident could ruin the still recovering tourism industry of Egypt.