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Morning Star

This morning at 7:11am - We call her Venus.

Halloween Blue Moon - coming up & going down

 

From DerbyInformer.com

South central Kansas could provide new Space Command headquarters

• By Kelly Breckunitch kelly@derbyinformer.com

Derby and Wichita are two of the four nominees in Kansas being considered as the new headquarters for U.S. Space Command – which is responsible for military operations in outer space.

At the start of September, four Kansas cities were announced as potential sites for the new U.S. Space Command headquarters – with Derby and Wichita among that short list.

The U.S. Air Force announced its search for a new location for Space Command – currently operating out of Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colo. – back in May, distributing screening information to governors across the country.

....

Air capital

Derby and Wichita, along with Kansas City and Leavenworth, were the Kansas cities to be nominated – with 25 other states having nominees approved. Now, Nave [Greater Wichita Partnership's Executive Vice President of Economic Development Andrew Nave] noted the Air Force will review proposals over the next month and select a number of candidate locations by November. Potentially working in Wichita and Derby’s favor are their proximity to a hub of aerospace industry.

 

“We’re extremely proud of Wichita State University and the unparalleled assets that they have in aviation. They have the National Institute for Aviation Research, the National Center for Aviation Training (NCAT), which is now part of WSU Tech,” Nave said. “We have these very unique [sic] assets that few other places in the world have for aerospace, and so that was a big part of our presentation.”

Beyond the area’s aerospace heritage, Nave also highlighted the qualified work force that makes up the bulk of personnel at McConnell – with many of those airmen and women living nearby in Derby. That relationship, along with its quality of life aspects (schools, parks, etc.), are factors that Nave said made Derby’s consideration within the proposal an easy choice.

....

More from Slashdot.org - a bonus from COVID-19

The following posting is from Slashdot.org.

Long-Lost US Military Satellite Found By Amateur Radio Operator (npr.org) 69

Posted by BeauHD on Friday April 24, 2020 @08:40PM from the lost-and-found dept.

Tilley, an amateur radio operator living in Canada, found a "zombie" military satellite that was supposed to shut down in 1972. NPR reports: Recently, Tilley got interested in a communications satellite he thought might still be alive -- or at least among the living dead. LES-5, built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory, was launched in 1967. Tilley was inspired by another amateur who in 2016 had found LES-1, an earlier satellite built by the same lab. What was intriguing to him about LES-5 was that if it was still working, it might be the oldest functioning satellite still in geostationary orbit. By scouring the Internet, he found a paper describing the radio frequency that LES-5, an experimental military UHF communications satellite, should be operating on -- if it was still alive. So he decided to have a look.

"This required the building of an antenna, erecting a new structure to support it. Pre-amps, filters, stuff that takes time to gather and put all together," he says. "When you have a family and a busy business, you don't really have a lot of time for that," he says. But then came the COVID-19 pandemic. British Columbia, where Tilley lives, was on lockdown. Like many of us, suddenly Tilley had time on his hands. He used it to look for LES-5, and on March 24, he hit the ham radio equivalent of pay dirt. While Tilley thinks it may be possible to send commands to the satellite, the MIT lab that built LES-5 didn't comment on the matter when NPR inquired.

 

For more information, go to NPR's posting and/or a Riddles in the Sky posting.

MEV-1

For the first time, a spacecraft has returned an aging satellite to service

It’s a big step forward for satellite servicing.

Eric Berger - 4/17/2020, 8:21 AM

 

In a triumph for the nascent industry of "satellite servicing," an aging communications satellite has returned to service in geostationary orbit.

Northrop Grumman announced Friday that its Mission Extension Vehicle-1, or MEV-1, has restored the Intelsat 901 satellite and relocated it into a position to resume operations.

....

For more of the story and a great video, please click on the above title that is linked to the Ars Technica article.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Disclosure: Each month I draw a pension check from Northrop Grumman. They know nothing of my blog and/or postings so no endorsement of any sort is implied.

Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA)

Credit Hunky Husband with sending me the link to the following, 43-second video. Neither he nor I am receiving direct payment for our interest in Boeing defense products; although, most of our "family wealth" is tied up in HH's Voluntary Investment Plan with Boeing and HH draws retirement pay from Boeing. I recommend viewing the video in full-screen mode.

Basic Rules for Aircraft Pilots

This is one of those mornings when I have no control over myself; thus, I'll post this listing that WichiDude emailed me in January 2005. One of us may well have posted it 'way back then. [I r-e-a-l-l-y need to finish reviewing the files on the backup CDs and get on with my life!]

• Try to stay in the middle of the air. Do not go near the edges of it. The edges of the air can be recognized by the appearance of ground, buildings, sea, trees and interstellar space. It is much more difficult to fly there.
• You know that your landing gear is up and locked when it takes full power to taxi to the terminal.
• The Piper Cub is the safest airplane in the world. It can just barely kill you.
• Blue water Navy truism: There are more planes in the ocean than there are submarines in the sky.
• If the wings are traveling faster than the fuselage, it's probably a helicopter -- and, therefore, unsafe.
• When one engine fails on a twin-engine airplane, you always have enough power left to get you to the scene of the crash.
• Without ammunition, NavAir and USAF would just be expensive flying clubs.
• I remember when sex was safe and flying was dangerous.
• If you're faced with a forced landing, fly the thing as far into the crash as possible.
• You've never been lost until you've been lost at Mach 3.
• Never fly in the same cockpit with someone braver than you.
• Just remember: If you crash because of weather, your funeral will be held on a sunny day.
• When a flight is proceeding incredibly well, something was forgotten.
• The three most common expressions (aka famous last words) in aviation are: "Why is it doing that?", "Where are we?", and "Uh oh."

Sometimes, the timing is perfect

While awaiting the arrival of the JoJac crew who are to do more cleanup work in our woods, today, I watched the podcast of the abort test of Boeing's Starliner Spacecraft, in real time. The best part starts at about 23:30 into the video. There had been a hold of about 15 minutes.

More from slashdot.org - autolanding system

Graphic from AOPA website

Would You Trust a Self-Landing Plane? (aopa.org) 59

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday November 03, 2019 @12:34PM from the fright-or-flight dept.

"Lots of hay has been made over self-driving, self-parking, and summon features of new cars," writes Shotgun (Slashdot reader #30,919). "Now Garmin has a system that will land your plane for you."

He shares this new report from the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association: During this first-ever autoland for me, nothing felt terribly out of the ordinary until the final 100 feet or so when it finally sunk in that in a few seconds we would be hitting the pavement and no one had their hands on the yoke.

But just as briefed, the airplane "decrabbed" from the 10-knot left crosswind and soon plunked us down just left of center on Runway 18 at New Century AirCenter in Olathe, Kansas, and then quickly tracked us back to the centerline. A few seconds later we rolled to a stop... Such was my introduction to Garmin's new autoland system, a first in general aviation...

While the notion of an autoland system seems futuristic, Garmin has been quietly working on it since 2011 and conducted its first autoland in a Columbia piston-powered airplane in 2014 and first briefed the FAA on it in 2015. Since then it has conducted some 800 autolands... Someday, with more experience and the FAA more comfortable with the notion, perhaps Autoland will be available on any given flight where the pilot doesn't feel up to the landing. Meanwhile, it's a great safety feature. "This will save lives," said Ron Gunnarson, Piper's vice president of sales, marketing, and customer support. Once certified, the system will be standard on the 2020 M600 SLS models... Cirrus plans to offer Autoland as a standard feature on the 2020 models.
The article describes it as "a digital parachute" for the pilot and passengers in emergency situations. And the original submission argues that it brings to general aviation a safety feature that the big airliners have already had for years.

T-7A

Hunky Husband forwarded an email to me that he had received from The Boeing Company, from which I excerpted the text below the photo.

The U.S. Air Force has named the Boeing T-X the T-7A Red Hawk. Named and designed to honor the Tuskegee Airmen who flew the red-tailed P-51 Mustang in World War II, the T-7A Red Hawk will train future U.S. Air Force pilots for decades to come.

 

 

Boeing has several more videos posted here.

 

Boeing's win of the contract from USAF was announced one year ago. The St Louis Post-Dispatch carried the announcement on 9/28/2019 in Boeing's St. Louis plant wins major $9.2 billion contract for new Air Force training jet by Jacob Barker. Production is at Boeing's (previously, McDonald Aircraft then McDonald/Douglas) facility on Lambert Field in St Louis.

 

Interesting (to me) side note: I think I saw a couple of T-Xs in flight over McConnell AFB the other day. I had made a mental note to ask HH if he knew of any foreign aircraft taking part in anything at McConnell - and - promptly forgot, of course, until I saw the photo of the T-7A. HH asked if they had red tails. As I was driving in traffic at the time, I could only note the weird silhouettes.