Hall Ticket No Question Paper Code: AAEB54

INSTITUTE OF AERONAUTICAL ENGINEERING

(Autonomous)
Dundigal, Hyderabad - 500 043

ANSWER KEY – SET I

B.Tech V Semester End Examinations, November- 2020

Regulations: R18
AIRFRAME STRUCTURAL DESIGN
(Mechanical Engineering)
Time: 3 hours Max. Marks: 70

Answer ONE Question from each Module

All Questions Carry Equal Marks
All parts of the question must be answered in one place only

MODULE– I
1. a) [7M]

Jet engines can be dated back to the invention of

the aeolipile around 150 BC. This device used steam power directed
through two nozzles so as to cause a sphere to spin rapidly on its
axis.[1] So far as is known, it was not used for supplying mechanical
power, and the potential practical applications of this invention
were not recognized. It was simply considered a curiosity.
Archytas, the founder of mathematical mechanics, as described in
the writings of Aulus Gellius five centuries after him, was reputed
to have designed and built the first artificial, self-propelled flying
device. This device was a bird-shaped model propelled by a jet of
what was probably steam, said to have actually flown some 200
meters.
Ottoman Lagari Hasan Çelebi is said to have taken off in 1633 with
what was described to be a cone-shaped rocket and then to have
glided with wings into a successful landing, winning a position in
the Ottoman army. However, this was essentially a stunt. The
problem was that rockets are simply too inefficient at low speeds to
be useful for general aviation.
The first working pulsejet was patented in 1906 by Russian
engineer V.V. Karavodin, who completed a working model in 1907.
The French inventor Georges Marconnet patented his valveless
pulsejet engine in 1908, and Ramon Casanova,
in Ripoll, Spain patented a pulsejet in Barcelona in 1917, having
constructed one beginning in 1913. Robert Goddard invented a
pulsejet engine in 1931, and demonstrated it on a jet-propelled
bicycle.[2] Engineer Paul Schmidt pioneered a more efficient design
based on modification of the intake valves (or flaps), earning him
government support from the German Air Ministry in 1933.[3]

Ramon Casanova and the pulsejet engine he constructed and

patented in 1917
Some early attempts at airbreathing jet engines were hybrid designs
in which an external power source first compressed air, which was
then mixed with fuel and burned for jet thrust. In one such system,
called a thermojet by Secondo Campini but more
commonly, motorjet, the air was compressed by a fan driven by a
conventional piston engine. Examples include the Caproni Campini
N.1 and the Japanese Tsu-11 engine intended to
power Ohka kamikaze planes towards the end of World War II.
None was entirely successful and the CC.2 ended up being slower
than the same design with a traditional engine
and propeller combination.

Albert Fonó's ramjet-cannonball from 1915

In 1913, French aerospace engineer René Lorin patented a design
for the world's first ramjet, but it was not possible to develop a
working prototype as no existing airplane could achieve sufficient
speed for it to operate, and thus the concept remained theoretical.
Engineers in the 1930s realized that the maximum performance of
piston engines was limited,[4] as propulsive efficiency declined as
blade tips approached the speed of sound. For engine performance
to increase beyond this barrier, a way would have to be found to
radically improve the design of the piston engine, or a wholly new
type of powerplant would have to be developed. Gas turbine
engines, commonly called "jet" engines, could do that.

Albert Fonó's German patent for jet engines (January 1928 –

granted 1932). The third illustration is a turbojet
The key to a practical jet engine was the gas turbine, used to extract
energy from the engine itself to drive the compressor. The gas
turbine was not an idea developed in the 1930s: the patent for a
stationary turbine was granted to John Barber in England in 1791.
The first gas turbine to successfully run self-sustainingly was built
in 1903 by Norwegian engineer Ægidius Elling. Limitations in
design and practical engineering and metallurgy prevented such
engines reaching manufacture. The main problems were safety,
reliability, weight and, especially, sustained operation.
In Hungary, Albert Fonó in 1915 devised a solution for increasing
the range of artillery, comprising a gun-launched projectile which
was to be united with a ramjet propulsion unit. This was to make it
possible to obtain a long range with low initial muzzle velocities,
allowing heavy shells to be fired from relatively lightweight guns.
Fonó submitted his invention to the Austro-Hungarian Army but the
proposal was rejected. In 1928 he applied for a German patent on
aircraft powered by supersonic ramjets, and this was awarded in
1932.[5][6][7]
The first patent for using a gas turbine to power an aircraft was filed
in 1921 by Frenchman Maxime Guillaume.[8] His engine was an
axial-flow turbojet.
In 1923, Edgar Buckingham of the US National Bureau of
Standards published a report[9] expressing scepticism that jet
engines would be economically competitive with prop driven
aircraft at the low altitudes and airspeeds of the period: "there does
not appear to be, at present, any prospect whatever that jet
propulsion of the sort here considered will ever be of practical
value, even for military purposes."
Instead, by the 1930s, the piston engine in its many different forms
(rotary and static radial, air-cooled and liquid-cooled inline) was the
only type of powerplant available to aircraft designers. This was
acceptable as long as only low-performance aircraft were required,
and indeed all that were available.

Pre World War II

The Whittle W.2/700 engine flew in the Gloster E.28/39, the first

British aircraft to fly with a turbojet engine, and the Gloster Meteor.
In 1928, RAF College Cranwell cadet [10] Frank Whittle formally
submitted his ideas for a turbo-jet to his superiors. In October 1929,
he developed his ideas further.[11] On 16 January 1930 in England,
Whittle submitted his first patent (granted in 1932).[12] The patent
showed a two-stage axial compressor feeding a single-
sided centrifugal compressor. Practical axial compressors were
made possible by ideas from A.A. Griffith in a seminal paper in
1926 ("An Aerodynamic Theory of Turbine Design"). Whittle
would later concentrate on the simpler centrifugal compressor only,
for a variety of practical reasons. Whittle had his first engine
running in April 1937. It was liquid-fuelled, and included a self-
contained fuel pump. Whittle's team experienced near-panic when
the engine would not stop, accelerating even after the fuel was
switched off. It turned out that fuel had leaked into the engine and
accumulated in pools.

Heinkel He 178, the world's first aircraft to fly purely on turbojet

power.
In 1935, Hans von Ohain started work on a similar design in
Germany, and it is often claimed that he was unaware of Whittle's
work.[13] Ohain said that he had not read Whittle's patent, and
Whittle believed him (Frank Whittle 1907–1996). However, the
Whittle patent was in German libraries, and Whittle's son had
suspicions that Ohain had read or heard of it.[citation needed]
Years later, it was admitted by von Ohain in his biography [14] that
this was so. Author Margaret Conner states ″Ohain's patent attorney
happened upon a Whittle patent in the years that the von Ohain
patents were being formulated". Von Ohain himself is quoted as
saying "We felt that it looked like a patent of an idea" "We thought
that it was not seriously being worked on." As Ohain's patent was
not filed until 1935, this admission clearly shows that he had read
Whittle's patent and had even critiqued it in some detail prior to
filing his own patent and some 2 years before his own engine ran.
VON OHAIN: ″Our patent claims had to be narrowed in
comparison to Whittle’s because Whittle showed certain
things." "When I saw Whittle's patent, I was almost convinced that
it had something to do with boundary layer suction combinations. It
had a two-flow, dual entrance flow radial flow compressor that
looked monstrous from an engine point of view. Its flow reversal
looked to us to be an undesirable thing but it turned out that it
wasn't so bad after although it gave some minor instability
problems.″
His first device was strictly experimental and could only run under
external power but he was able to demonstrate the basic concept.
Ohain was then introduced to Ernst Heinkel, one of the larger
aircraft industrialists of the day, who immediately saw the promise
of the design. Heinkel had recently purchased the Hirth engine
company, and Ohain and his master machinist Max Hahn were set
up there as a new division of the Hirth company. They had their
first HeS 1 centrifugal engine running by September 1937. Unlike
Whittle's design, Ohain used hydrogen as fuel, supplied under
external pressure. Their subsequent designs culminated in the
gasoline-fuelled HeS 3 of 1,100 lbf (5 kN), which was fitted to
Heinkel's simple and compact He 178 airframe and flown by Erich
Warsitz in the early morning of 27 August 1939, from Rostock-
Marienehe aerodrome, an impressively short time for development.
The He 178 was the world's first turbojet-powered aircraft to fly.[15]
The world's first turboprop was the Jendrassik Cs-1 designed by the
Hungarian mechanical engineer György Jendrassik. It was produced
and tested in the Ganz factory in Budapest between 1938 and 1942.
It was planned to fit to the Varga RMI-1 X/H twin-engined
reconnaissance bomber designed by László Varga in 1940 but the
program was cancelled. Jendrassik had also designed a small-scale
75 kW turboprop in 1937.
Whittle's engine was starting to look useful and his Power
Jets Ltd. started receiving Air Ministry money. In 1941, a flyable
version of the engine called the W.1, capable of 1000 lbf (4 kN) of
thrust, was fitted to the Gloster E28/39 airframe specially built for it
and first flew on 15 May 1941 at RAF Cranwell.

A picture of an early centrifugal engine (DH Goblin II) sectioned to

show its internal components.
British aircraft engine designer, Frank Halford, working from
Whittle's ideas, developed a "straight through" version of the
centrifugal jet; his design became the de Havilland Goblin.
One problem with both of these early designs, which are
called centrifugal-flow engines, was that the compressor worked
by accelerating air outward from the central intake to the outer
periphery of the engine, where the air was then compressed by a
divergent duct set-up, converting its velocity into pressure. An
advantage of this design was that it was already well understood,
having been implemented in centrifugal superchargers, then in
widespread use on piston engines. However, given the early
technological limitations on the shaft speed of the engine, the
compressor needed to have a very large diameter to produce the
power required. This meant that the engines had a large frontal area,
which made it less useful as an aircraft powerplant due to drag. A
further disadvantage of the earlier Whittle designs was that the air
flow was reversed through the combustion section and again to the
turbine and tailpipe, adding complexity and lowering efficiency.
Nevertheless, these types of engines had the major advantages of
light weight, simplicity and reliability, and development rapidly
progressed to practical airworthy designs.

A cutaway of the Junkers Jumo 004 engine.

Austrian Anselm Franz of Junkers' engine division (Junkers
Motoren or Jumo) addressed these problems with the introduction
of the axial-flow compressor. Essentially, this is a turbine in
reverse. Air coming in the front of the engine is blown towards the
rear of the engine by a fan stage (convergent ducts), where it is
crushed against a set of non-rotating blades called stators (divergent
ducts). The process is nowhere near as powerful as the centrifugal
compressor, so a number of these pairs of fans and stators are
placed in series to get the needed compression. Even with all the
added complexity, the resulting engine is much smaller in diameter
and thus, more aerodynamic. Jumo was assigned the next engine
number in the RLM numbering sequence, 4, and the result was
the Jumo 004 engine. After many lesser technical difficulties were
solved, mass production of this engine started in 1944 as a
powerplant for the world's first jet-fighter aircraft,
the Messerschmitt Me 262 (and later the world's first jet-bomber
aircraft, the Arado Ar 234). A variety of reasons conspired to delay
the engine's availability, this delay caused the fighter to arrive too
late to decisively impact Germany's position in World War II.
Nonetheless, it will be remembered as the first use of jet engines in
service.
The Heinkel-Hirth aviation powerplant firm also tried to create a
more powerful turbojet engine, the Heinkel HeS 011 of nearly
3,000 pounds of thrust at full power, very late in the war to improve
the propulsion options available to new German military jet aircraft
designs, and to improve the performance of existing designs. It used
a unique "diagonal" compressor section that combined the features
of both centrifugal and axial-flow compressor layouts for turbojet
powerplants, but remained on the test bench, with only some
nineteen examples ever produced.
In the UK, their first axial-flow engine, the Metrovick F.2, ran in
1941 and was first flown in 1943. Although more powerful than the
centrifugal designs at the time, the Ministry considered its
complexity and unreliability a drawback in wartime. The work at
Metrovick led to the Armstrong Siddeley Sapphire engine which
would be built in the US as the J65.

Post World War II

Following the end of the war, the German jet aircraft and jet
engines were extensively studied by the victorious allies and
contributed to work on early Soviet (see Arkhip Lyulka) and US jet
fighters. The legacy of the axial-flow engine is seen in the fact that
practically all jet engines on fixed wing aircraft have had some
inspiration from this design.
Centrifugal-flow engines have improved since their introduction.
With improvements in bearing technology the shaft speed of the
engine was increased, greatly reducing the diameter of the
centrifugal compressor. The short engine length remains an
advantage of this design, particularly for use in helicopters where
overall size is more important than frontal area. Also, as their
engine components are more robust they are less liable to foreign
object damage than axial-flow compressor engines.
Although German designs were more advanced aerodynamically,
the combination of simplicity and the lack of requisite rare metals
for the necessary advanced metallurgy (such
as tungsten, chromium and titanium) for high-stress components
such as turbine blades and bearings, etc. meant that the later
 produced German engines had a short service life and had to be
changed after 10–25 hours. British engines were also widely
manufactured under license in the US (see Tizard Mission), and
were sold to Soviet Russia who reverse engineered them with
the Nene going on to power the famous MiG-15. American and
Soviet designs, independent axial-flow types, for the most part,
would strive to attain superior performance until the 1960s,
although the General Electric J47 provided excellent service in
the F-86 Sabre in the 1950s.
By the 1950s, the jet engine was almost universal in combat
aircraft, with the exception of cargo, liaison, and other specialty
types. By this point some of the British designs were already
cleared for civilian use, and had appeared on early models like
the de Havilland Comet and Avro Canada Jetliner. By the 1960s all
large civilian aircraft were also jet powered, leaving the piston
engine in such low-cost niche roles such as cargo flights.
Relentless improvements in the turboprop pushed the piston engine
(an internal combustion engine) out of the mainstream entirely,
leaving it serving only the smallest general aviation designs and
some use in drone aircraft. The ascension of the jet engine to almost
universal use in aircraft took well under twenty years.
However, the story was not quite at an end, for the efficiency of
turbojet engines was still rather worse than piston engines, but by
the 1970s with the advent of high bypass jet engines, an innovation
not foreseen by the early commentators like Edgar Buckingham, at
high speeds and high altitudes that seemed absurd to them, only
then did the fuel efficiency finally exceed that of the best piston and
propeller engines,[16] and the dream of fast, safe, economical travel
around the world finally arrived, and their dour, if well founded for
the time, predictions that jet engines would never amount to much,
were killed forever.

b) The near-earth radiative environment. The magnetosphere. [7M]

Environmental impact on spacecraft: Space environment is a branch
of astronautics, aerospace engineering and astronomy that seeks to
understand and address conditions existing in space that would
impact both the operation of spacecraft and also affect our planet's
atmosphere and geomagnetic field. Problems for spacecraft can
include radiation, space debris, upper atmospheric drag, and the
solar wind. Effects on Earth of space environmental conditions can
include ionospheric storms, temporary decreases in ozone densities,
disruption to radio communication, to GPS signals and submarine
 positioning. Some scientists also theorize links between sunspot
activity and ice ages. Solutions explored by scientists and engineers
in the area of space environment study include, but are not limited
to, spacecraft shielding, various collision detection systems, and
atmospheric models to predict drag effects encountered in lower
orbits and during re entry. The field often overlaps with the
disciplines of astrophysics, atmospheric science, space physics, and
geophysics, albeit with a stronger emphasis on application. The
United States government maintains a Space Environment Center at
Boulder, Colorado. The Space Environment Center (SEC) is part of
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
SEC is one of the National Weather Service's (NWS) National
Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP)
2. a)
The history of aviation extends for more than two thousand years,
from the earliest forms of aviation such as kites and attempts at
tower jumping to supersonic and hypersonic flight by
powered, heavier-than-air jets.
Kite flying in China dates back to several hundred years BC and
slowly spread around the world. It is thought to be the earliest
example of man-made flight. Leonardo da Vinci's 15th-century
dream of flight found expression in several rational designs, but
which relied on poor science.
The discovery of hydrogen gas in the 18th century led to the
invention of the hydrogen balloon, at almost exactly the same time
that the Montgolfier brothers rediscovered the hot-air balloon and
began manned flights.[1] Various theories in mechanics by physicists
during the same period of time, notably fluid
dynamics and Newton's laws of motion, led to the foundation of
modern aerodynamics, most notably by Sir George Cayley.
Balloons, both free-flying and tethered, began to be used for
military purposes from the end of the 18th century, with the French
government establishing Balloon Companies during the Revolution.
[2]

Experiments with gliders provided the groundwork for heavier-

than-air craft, and by the early 20th century, advances in engine
technology and aerodynamics made controlled, powered flight
possible for the first time. The modern aeroplane with its
characteristic tail was established by 1909 and from then on the
history of the aeroplane became tied to the development of more
and more powerful engines.
The first great ships of the air were the rigid dirigible balloons
pioneered by Ferdinand von Zeppelin, which soon became
synonymous with airships and dominated long-distance flight until
the 1930s, when large flying boats became popular. After World
War II, the flying boats were in their turn replaced by land planes,
and the new and immensely powerful jet engine revolutionised both
air travel and military aviation.
In the latter part of the 20th century, the advent of digital
electronics produced great advances in flight instrumentation and
"fly-by-wire" systems. The 21st century saw the large-scale use of
pilotless drones for military, civilian and leisure use. With digital
controls, inherently unstable aircraft such as flying wings became
possible.

Etymology
The term aviation, noun of action from stem of Latin avis "bird"
with suffix -ation meaning action or progress, was coined in 1863
by French pioneer Guillaume Joseph Gabriel de La Landelle (1812–
1886) in "Aviation ou Navigation aérienne sans ballons".[3][4]

Primitive beginnings

Tower jumping

Daedalus working on Icarus' wings.

Since antiquity, there have been stories of men strapping birdlike
wings, stiffened cloaks or other devices to themselves and
attempting to fly, typically by jumping off a tower. The Greek
legend of Daedalus and Icarus is one of the earliest known;[5] others
originated from ancient Asia[6] and the European Middle Age.
During this early period, the issues of lift, stability and control were
not understood, and most attempts ended in serious injury or death.
The Andalusian scientist Abbas ibn Firnas (810–887 AD) is
claimed to have made a jump in Córdoba, Spain, covering his body
with vulture feathers and attaching two wings to his arms. [7]
[8]
 Muhammad I of Córdoba's 9th-century court poet Mu'min ibn
Said and 17th-century Algerian historian Ahmed Mohammed al-
Maqqari, based on sources no longer extant, recount that Firnas
flew some distance before landing with some injuries, attributed to
his lacking a tail (as birds use to land). [7][9] According to John
Harding, Ibn Firnas' glider was the first attempt at heavier-than-air
flight in aviation history.[10] Writing in the 12th century, William of
Malmesbury stated that the 11th-century Benedictine monk Eilmer
of Malmesbury attached wings to his hands and feet and flew a
short distance,[7] but broke both legs while landing, also having
neglected to make himself a tail.[9]
Many others made well-documented jumps in the following
centuries. As late as 1811, Albrecht Berblinger constructed
an ornithopter and jumped into the Danube at Ulm.[11]
Kites

Woodcut print of a kite from John Bate's 1635 book The Mysteryes

of Nature and Art.
The kite may have been the first form of man-made aircraft. [1] It
was invented in China possibly as far back as the 5th century BC
by Mozi (Mo Di) and Lu Ban (Gongshu Ban).[12] Later designs
often emulated flying insects, birds, and other beasts, both real and
mythical. Some were fitted with strings and whistles to make
musical sounds while flying.[13][14][15] Ancient and medieval Chinese
sources describe kites being used to measure distances, test the
wind, lift men, signal, and communicate and send messages.[16]
Kites spread from China around the world. After its introduction
into India, the kite further evolved into the fighter kite, where an
abrasive line is used to cut down other kites.
Man-carrying kites
Man-carrying kites are believed to have been used extensively in
ancient China, for both civil and military purposes and sometimes
enforced as a punishment. An early recorded flight was that of the
prisoner Yuan Huangtou, a Chinese prince, in the 6th century AD.
[17]
 Stories of man-carrying kites also occur in Japan, following the
introduction of the kite from China around the seventh century AD.
It is said that at one time there was a Japanese law against man-
carrying kites.[18]
Rotor wing
The use of a rotor for vertical flight has existed since 400 BC in the
form of the bamboo-copter, an ancient Chinese toy.[19][20] The
similar "moulinet à noix" (rotor on a nut) appeared in Europe in the
14th century AD.[21]
Hot air balloons

A sky lantern.
From ancient times the Chinese have understood that hot air rises
and have applied the principle to a type of small hot air
balloon called a sky lantern. A sky lantern consists of a paper
balloon under or just inside which a small lamp is placed. Sky
lanterns are traditionally launched for pleasure and during festivals.
According to Joseph Needham, such lanterns were known in China
from the 3rd century BC. Their military use is attributed to the
general Zhuge Liang (180–234 AD, honorific title Kongming), who
is said to have used them to scare the enemy troops.[22]
There is evidence that the Chinese also "solved the problem of
aerial navigation" using balloons, hundreds of years before the 18th
century.[23]
Renaissance

One of Leonardo's sketches

Eventually, after Ibn Firnas's construction, some investigators
began to discover and define some of the basics of rational aircraft
design. Most notable of these was Leonardo da Vinci, although his
work remained unknown until 1797, and so had no influence on
developments over the next three hundred years. While his designs
are rational, they are not scientific.[24] He particularly
underestimated the amount of power that would be needed to propel
a flying object,[25] basing his designs on the flapping wings of a bird
rather than an engine-powered propeller.[26]
Leonardo studied bird and bat flight,[25] claiming the superiority of
the latter owing to its unperforated wing.[27] He analyzed these and
anticipating many principles of aerodynamics. He understood that
"An object offers as much resistance to the air as the air does to the
object."[28] Isaac Newton would not publish his third law of
motion until 1687.
From the last years of the 15th century until 1505, [25] Leonardo
wrote about and sketched many designs for flying machines and
mechanisms, including ornithopters, fixed-wing gliders, rotorcraft
(perhaps inspired by whirligig toys), parachutes (in the form of a
wooden-framed pyramidal tent) and a wind speed gauge. [25] His
early designs were man-powered and included ornithopters and
rotorcraft; however he came to realise the impracticality of this and
later turned to controlled gliding flight, also sketching some designs
powered by a spring.[29]
In an essay titled Sul volo (On flight), Leonardo describes a flying
machine called "the bird" which he built from starched linen,
leather joints, and raw silk thongs. In the Codex Atlanticus, he
wrote, "Tomorrow morning, on the second day of January, 1496, I
will make the thong and the attempt."[26] According to one
commonly repeated, albeit presumably fictional story, in 1505
Leonardo or one of his pupils attempted to fly from the summit
of Monte Ceceri.[25]

Lighter than air

Beginnings of modern theories
In 1670, Francesco Lana de Terzi published a work that suggested
lighter than air flight would be possible by using copper foil spheres
that, containing a vacuum, would be lighter than the displaced air to
lift an airship. While theoretically sound, his design was not
feasible: the pressure of the surrounding air would crush the
spheres. The idea of using a vacuum to produce lift is now known
as vacuum airship but remains unfeasible with any
current materials.
In 1709, Bartolomeu de Gusmão presented a petition to King John
V of Portugal, begging for support for his invention of an airship, in
which he expressed the greatest confidence. The public test of the
machine, which was set for 24 June 1709, did not take place.
According to contemporary reports, however, Gusmão appears to
have made several less ambitious experiments with this machine,
descending from eminences. It is certain that Gusmão was working
on this principle at the public exhibition he gave before the Court
on 8 August 1709, in the hall of the Casa da Índia in Lisbon, when
he propelled a ball to the roof by combustion.[clarification needed]
Balloons
Lithographic depiction of pioneering events (1783 to 1846).
1783 was a watershed year for ballooning and aviation. Between 4
June and 1 December, five aviation firsts were achieved in France:

 On 4 June, the Montgolfier brothers demonstrated their

unmanned hot air balloon at Annonay, France.
 On 27 August, Jacques Charles and the Robert brothers (Les
Freres Robert) launched the world's first unmanned hydrogen-
filled balloon, from the Champ de Mars, Paris.
 On 19 October, the Montgolfiers launched the first manned
flight, a tethered balloon with humans on board, at the Folie
Titon in Paris. The aviators were the scientist Jean-François
Pilâtre de Rozier, the manufacture manager Jean-Baptiste
Réveillon, and Giroud de Villette.
 On 21 November, the Montgolfiers launched the first free
flight with human passengers. King Louis XVI had originally
decreed that condemned criminals would be the first pilots, but
Jean-François Pilâtre de Rozier, along with the Marquis
François d'Arlandes, successfully petitioned for the honor. They
drifted 8 km (5.0 mi) in a balloon-powered by a wood fire.
 On 1 December, Jacques Charles and the Nicolas-Louis
 Robert launched their manned hydrogen balloon from the Jardin
des Tuileries in Paris, as a crowd of 400,000 witnessed. They
ascended to a height of about 1,800 feet (550 m)[15] and landed
at sunset in Nesles-la-Vallée after a flight of 2 hours and 5
minutes, covering 36 km. After Robert alighted Charles decided
to ascend alone. This time he ascended rapidly to an altitude of
about 9,800 feet (3,000 m), where he saw the sun again, suffered
extreme pain in his ears, and never flew again.
Ballooning became a major "rage" in Europe in the late 18th
century, providing the first detailed understanding of the
relationship between altitude and the atmosphere.
Non-steerable balloons were employed during the American Civil
War by the Union Army Balloon Corps. The young Ferdinand von
Zeppelin first flew as a balloon passenger with the Union Army of
the Potomac in 1863.
In the early 1900s, ballooning was a popular sport in Britain. These
privately owned balloons usually used coal gas as the lifting gas.
This has half the lifting power of hydrogen so the balloons had to
be larger, however, coal gas was far more readily available and the
local gas works sometimes provided a special lightweight formula
for ballooning events.[30]
Airships

Santos-Dumont's "Number 6" rounding the Eiffel Tower in the

process of winning the Deutsch de la Meurthe Prize, October 1901.
Airships were originally called "dirigible balloons" and are still
sometimes called dirigibles today.
Work on developing a steerable (or dirigible) balloon continued
sporadically throughout the 19th century. The first powered,
controlled, sustained lighter-than-air flight is believed to have taken
place in 1852 when Henri Giffard flew 15 miles (24 km) in France,
with a steam engine driven craft.
Another advance was made in 1884, when the first fully
controllable free-flight was made in a French Army electric-
powered airship, La France, by Charles Renard and Arthur Krebs.
The 170-foot (52 m) long, 66,000-cubic-foot (1,900 m3) airship
covered 8 km (5.0 mi) in 23 minutes with the aid of an 8½
horsepower electric motor.
However, these aircraft were generally short-lived and extremely
frail. Routine, controlled flights would not occur until the advent of
the internal combustion engine (see below.)
The first aircraft to make routine controlled flights were non-rigid
airships (sometimes called "blimps".) The most successful early
pioneering pilot of this type of aircraft was the Brazilian Alberto
Santos-Dumont who effectively combined a balloon with an
internal combustion engine. On 19 October 1901, he flew his
airship Number 6 over Paris from the Parc de Saint Cloud around
the Eiffel Tower and back in under 30 minutes to win the Deutsch
de la Meurthe prize. Santos-Dumont went on to design and build
several aircraft. The subsequent controversy surrounding his and
others' competing claims with regard to aircraft overshadowed his
great contribution to the development of airships.
At the same time that non-rigid airships were starting to have some
success, the first successful rigid airships were also being
developed. These would be far more capable than fixed-wing
aircraft in terms of pure cargo carrying capacity for decades. Rigid
airship design and advancement was pioneered by the German
count Ferdinand von Zeppelin.
Construction of the first Zeppelin airship began in 1899 in a
floating assembly hall on Lake Constance in the Bay of
Manzell, Friedrichshafen. This was intended to ease the starting
procedure, as the hall could easily be aligned with the wind. The
prototype airship LZ 1 (LZ for "Luftschiff Zeppelin") had a length
of 128 m (420 ft) was driven by two 10.6 kW
(14.2 hp) Daimler engines and balanced by moving a weight
between its two nacelles.
Its first flight, on 2 July 1900, lasted for only 18 minutes, as LZ 1
was forced to land on the lake after the winding mechanism for the
balancing weight had broken. Upon repair, the technology proved
its potential in subsequent flights, bettering the 6 m/s speed attained
by the French airship La France by 3 m/s, but could not yet
convince possible investors. It would be several years before the
Count was able to raise enough funds for another try.
Although airships were used in both World War I and II, and
continue on a limited basis to this day, their development has been
largely overshadowed by heavier-than-air craft.

Heavier than air

17th and 18th centuries
Italian inventor Tito Livio Burattini, invited by
the Polish King Władysław IV to his court in Warsaw, built a
model aircraft with four fixed glider wings in 1647.[31] Described as
"four pairs of wings attached to an elaborate 'dragon'", it was said to
have successfully lifted a cat in 1648 but not Burattini himself.
[32]
 He promised that "only the most minor injuries" would result
from landing the craft.[33] His "Dragon Volant" is considered "the
most elaborate and sophisticated aeroplane to be built before the
19th Century".[34]
The first published paper on aviation was "Sketch of a Machine for
Flying in the Air" by Emanuel Swedenborg published in 1716. This
flying machine consisted of a light frame covered with strong
canvas and provided with two large oars or wings moving on a
horizontal axis, arranged so that the upstroke met with no resistance
while the downstroke provided lifting power. Swedenborg knew
that the machine would not fly, but suggested it as a start and was
confident that the problem would be solved. He wrote: "It seems
easier to talk of such a machine than to put it into actuality, for it
requires greater force and less weight than exists in a human body.
The science of mechanics might perhaps suggest a means, namely,
a strong spiral spring. If these advantages and requisites are
observed, perhaps in time to come someone might know how better
to utilize our sketch and cause some addition to be made so as to
accomplish that which we can only suggest. Yet there are sufficient
proofs and examples from nature that such flights can take place
without danger, although when the first trials are made you may
have to pay for the experience, and not mind an arm or leg".
Swedenborg would prove prescient in his observation that a method
of powering of an aircraft was one of the critical problems to be
overcome.
On 16 May 1793, the Spanish inventor Diego Marín
Aguilera managed to cross the river Arandilla in Coruña del
Conde, Castile, flying 300 – 400 m, with a flying machine.[35]
19th century
Balloon jumping replaced tower jumping, also demonstrating with
typically fatal results that man-power and flapping wings were
useless in achieving flight. At the same time scientific study of
heavier-than-air flight began in earnest. In 1801, the French
officer André Guillaume Resnier de Goué managed a 300-metre
glide by starting from the top of the city walls of Angoulême and
broke only one leg on arrival.[36] In 1837 French mathematician and
brigadier general Isidore Didion stated, "Aviation will be successful
only if one finds an engine whose ratio with the weight of the
device to be supported will be larger than current steam machines
or the strength developed by humans or most of the animals".[37]
Sir George Cayley and the first modern aircraft[edit]
Sir George Cayley was first called the "father of the aeroplane" in
1846.[38] During the last years of the previous century he had begun
the first rigorous study of the physics of flight and would later
design the first modern heavier-than-air craft. Among his many
achievements, his most important contributions to aeronautics
include:

 Clarifying our ideas and laying down the principles of

heavier-than-air flight.
 Reaching a scientific understanding of the principles of bird
flight.
 Conducting scientific aerodynamic experiments
demonstrating drag and streamlining, movement of the centre of
pressure, and the increase in lift from curving the wing surface.
 Defining the modern aeroplane configuration comprising a
fixed-wing, fuselage and tail assembly.
 Demonstrations of manned, gliding flight.
 Setting out the principles of power-to-weight ratio in
sustaining flight.
Cayley's first innovation was to study the basic science of lift by
adopting the whirling arm test rig for use in aircraft research and
using simple aerodynamic models on the arm, rather than
attempting to fly a model of a complete design.
In 1799, he set down the concept of the modern aeroplane as
a fixed-wing flying machine with separate systems for lift,
propulsion, and control.[39][40]
In 1804, Cayley constructed a model glider which was the first
modern heavier-than-air flying machine, having the layout of a
conventional modern aircraft with an inclined wing towards the
front and adjustable tail at the back with both tailplane and fin. A
movable weight allowed adjustment of the model's centre of
gravity.[41]

"Governable parachute" design of 1852

In 1809, goaded by the farcical antics of his contemporaries (see
above), he began the publication of a landmark three-part treatise
titled "On Aerial Navigation" (1809–1810).[42] In it he wrote the
first scientific statement of the problem, "The whole problem is
confined within these limits, viz. to make a surface support a given
weight by the application of power to the resistance of air". He
identified the four vector forces that influence an
aircraft: thrust, lift, drag and weight and distinguished stability and
control in his designs. He also identified and described the
importance of the cambered aerofoil, dihedral, diagonal bracing and
drag reduction, and contributed to the understanding and design
of ornithopters and parachutes.
In 1848, he had progressed far enough to construct a glider in the
form of a triplane large and safe enough to carry a child. A local
boy was chosen but his name is not known.[43][44]
He went on to publish in 1852 the design for a full-size manned
glider or "governable parachute" to be launched from a balloon and
then to construct a version capable of launching from the top of a
hill, which carried the first adult aviator across Brompton Dale in
1853.
Minor inventions included the rubber-powered motor,[citation
needed]
 which provided a reliable power source for research models.
By 1808, he had even re-invented the wheel, devising the tension-
spoked wheel in which all compression loads are carried by the rim,
allowing a lightweight undercarriage.[45]
Drawing directly from Cayley's work, Henson's 1842 design for
an aerial steam carriage broke new ground. Although only a design,
it was the first in history for a propeller-driven fixed-wing aircraft.

1843 artist's impression of John Stringfellow's plane "Ariel" flying

over the Nile
1866 saw the founding of the Aeronautical Society of Great
Britain and two years later the world's first aeronautical exhibition
was held at the Crystal Palace, London,[46] where John
Stringfellow was awarded a £100 prize for the steam engine with
the best power-to-weight ratio.[47][48] In 1848, Stringfellow achieved
the first powered flight using an unmanned 10 feet (3.0 m)
wingspan steam-powered monoplane built in a disused lace factory
in Chard, Somerset. Employing two contra-rotating propellers on
the first attempt, made indoors, the machine flew ten feet before
becoming destabilised, damaging the craft. The second attempt was
more successful, the machine leaving a guidewire to fly freely,
achieving thirty yards of straight and level powered flight.[49][50]
[51]
 Francis Herbert Wenham presented the first paper to the newly
formed Aeronautical Society (later the Royal Aeronautical
Society), On Aerial Locomotion. He advanced Cayley's work on
cambered wings, making important findings. To test his ideas, from
1858 he had constructed several gliders, both manned and
unmanned, and with up to five stacked wings. He realised that long,
thin wings are better than bat-like ones because they have more
leading edge for their area. Today this relationship is known as
the aspect ratio of a wing.
The latter part of the 19th century became a period of intense study,
characterized by the "gentleman scientists" who represented most
research efforts until the 20th century. Among them was the British
scientist-philosopher and inventor Matthew Piers Watt Boulton,
who studied lateral flight control and was the first to patent
an aileron control system in 1868.[52][53][54][55]
In 1871, Wenham and Browning made the first wind tunnel.{{refn|
Frank H. Wenham, inventor of the wind tunnel, 1871, was a fan,
driven by a steam engine, propelled air down a 12 ft (3.7 m) tube to
the model.[56]

Félix du Temple's 1874 Monoplane.

Meanwhile, the British advances had galvanised French
researchers. In 1857, Félix du Temple proposed a monoplane with a
tailplane and retractable undercarriage. Developing his ideas with a
model powered first by clockwork and later by steam, he eventually
achieved a short hop with a full-size manned craft in 1874. It
achieved lift-off under its own power after launching from a ramp,
glided for a short time and returned safely to the ground, making it
the first successful powered glide in history.
In 1865, Louis Pierre Mouillard published an influential book The
Empire Of The Air (l'Empire de l'Air).
Jean-Marie Le Bris and his flying machine, Albatros II, 1868.
In 1856, Frenchman Jean-Marie Le Bris made the first flight higher
than his point of departure, by having his glider "L'Albatros
artificiel" pulled by a horse on a beach. He reportedly achieved a
height of 100 meters, over a distance of 200 meters.

Planophore model aeroplane by Alphonse Pénaud, 1871

Alphonse Pénaud, a Frenchman, advanced the theory of wing
contours and aerodynamics and constructed successful models of
aeroplanes, helicopters and ornithopters. In 1871 he flew the first
aerodynamically stable fixed-wing aeroplane, a model monoplane
he called the "Planophore", a distance of 40 m (130 ft). Pénaud's
model incorporated several of Cayley's discoveries, including the
use of a tail, wing dihedral for inherent stability, and rubber power.
The planophore also had longitudinal stability, being trimmed such
that the tailplane was set at a smaller angle of incidence than the
wings, an original and important contribution to the theory of
aeronautics.[57] Pénaud's later project for an amphibian aeroplane,
although never built, incorporated other modern features.
A tailless monoplane with a single vertical fin and twin tractor
propellers, it also featured hinged rear elevator and rudder surfaces,
retractable undercarriage and a fully enclosed, instrumented
cockpit.
The Aeroplane of Victor Tatin, 1879.
Equally authoritative as a theorist was Pénaud's fellow
countryman Victor Tatin. In 1879, he flew a model which, like
Pénaud's project, was a monoplane with twin tractor propellers but
also had a separate horizontal tail. It was powered by compressed
air. Flown tethered to a pole, this was the first model to take off
under its own power.
In 1884, Alexandre Goupil published his work La Locomotion
Aérienne (Aerial Locomotion), although the flying machine he later
constructed failed to fly.

Clément Ader Avion III (1897 photograph).

In 1890, the French engineer Clément Ader completed the first of
three steam-driven flying machines, the Éole. On 9 October 1890,
Ader made an uncontrolled hop of around 50 metres (160 ft); this
was the first manned airplane to take off under its own power.
[58]
 His Avion III of 1897, notable only for having twin steam
engines, failed to fly:[59] Ader would later claim success and was not
debunked until 1910 when the French Army published its report on
his attempt.

Maxim's flying machine

Sir Hiram Maxim was an American engineer who had moved to
England. He built his own whirling arm rig and wind tunnel and
constructed a large machine with a wingspan of 105 feet (32 m), a
length of 145 feet (44 m), fore and aft horizontal surfaces and a
crew of three. Twin propellers were powered by two lightweight
compound steam engines each delivering 180 hp (130 kW). The
overall weight was 8,000 pounds (3,600 kg). It was intended as a
test rig to investigate aerodynamic lift: lacking flight controls it ran
on rails, with a second set of rails above the wheels to restrain it.
Completed in 1894, on its third run it broke from the rail, became
airborne for about 200 yards at two to three feet of altitude[60] and
was badly damaged upon falling back to the ground. It was
subsequently repaired, but Maxim abandoned his experiments
shortly afterwards.[61]
Learning to glide

The Biot-Massia glider, restored and on display in the Musee de

l'Air.
In the last decade or so of the 19th century, a number of key figures
were refining and defining the modern aeroplane. Lacking a
suitable engine, aircraft work focused on stability and control in
gliding flight. In 1879, Biot constructed a bird-like glider with the
help of Massia and flew in it briefly. It is preserved in the Musee de
l'Air, France, and is claimed to be the earliest man-carrying flying
machine still in existence.
The Englishman Horatio Phillips made key contributions to
aerodynamics. He conducted extensive wind tunnel research
on aerofoil sections, proving the principles of aerodynamic lift
foreseen by Cayley and Wenham. His findings underpin all modern
aerofoil design. Between 1883 and 1886, the American John Joseph
Montgomery developed a series of three manned gliders, before
conducting his own independent investigations into aerodynamics
and circulation of lift.

Otto Lilienthal, 29 May 1895.

Otto Lilienthal became known as the "Glider King" or "Flying
Man" of Germany. He duplicated Wenham's work and greatly
expanded on it in 1884, publishing his research in 1889
as Birdflight as the Basis of Aviation (Der Vogelflug als Grundlage
der Fliegekunst). He also produced a series of hang gliders,
including bat-wing, monoplane and biplane forms, such as
the Derwitzer Glider and Normal soaring apparatus. Starting in
1891, he became the first person to make controlled untethered
glides routinely, and the first to be photographed flying a heavier-
than-air machine, stimulating interest around the world. He
rigorously documented his work, including photographs, and for
this reason is one of the best known of the early pioneers. Lilienthal
made over 2,000 glides until his death in 1896 from injuries
sustained in a glider crash.
Picking up where Lilienthal left off, Octave Chanute took up
aircraft design after an early retirement, and funded the
development of several gliders. In the summer of 1896, his team
flew several of their designs eventually deciding that the best was a
biplane design. Like Lilienthal, he documented and photographed
his work.
In Britain Percy Pilcher, who had worked for Maxim, built and
successfully flew several gliders during the mid to late 1890s.
The invention of the box kite during this period by the
Australian Lawrence Hargrave would lead to the development of
the practical biplane. In 1894, Hargrave linked four of his kites
together, added a sling seat, and was the first to obtain lift with a
heavier than air aircraft, when he flew up 16 feet (4.9 m). Later
pioneers of manned kite flying included Samuel Franklin Cody in
England and Captain Génie Saconney in France.
Langley

First failure of Langley's manned Aerodrome on the Potomac River,

7 October 1903
After a distinguished career in astronomy and shortly before
becoming Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, Samuel Pierpont
Langley started a serious investigation into aerodynamics at what is
today the University of Pittsburgh. In 1891, he
published Experiments in Aerodynamics detailing his research, and
then turned to building his designs. He hoped to achieve automatic
aerodynamic stability, so he gave little consideration to in-flight
control.[62] On 6 May 1896, Langley's Aerodrome No. 5 made the
first successful sustained flight of an unpiloted, engine-driven
heavier-than-air craft of substantial size. It was launched from a
spring-actuated catapult mounted on top of a houseboat on the
Potomac River near Quantico, Virginia. Two flights were made that
afternoon, one of 1,005 metres (3,297 ft) and a second of 700
metres (2,300 ft), at a speed of approximately 25 miles per hour
(40 km/h). On both occasions, the Aerodrome No. 5 landed in the
water as planned, because, in order to save weight, it was not
equipped with landing gear. On 28 November 1896, another
successful flight was made with the Aerodrome No. 6. This flight,
of 1,460 metres (4,790 ft), was witnessed and photographed
by Alexander Graham Bell. The Aerodrome No. 6 was
actually Aerodrome No. 4 greatly modified. So little remained of
the original aircraft that it was given a new designation.
With the successes of the Aerodrome No. 5 and No. 6, Langley
started looking for funding to build a full-scale man-carrying
version of his designs. Spurred by the Spanish–American War, the
U.S. government granted him $50,000 to develop a man-carrying
flying machine for aerial reconnaissance. Langley planned on
building a scaled-up version known as the Aerodrome A, and
started with the smaller Quarter-scale Aerodrome, which flew
twice on 18 June 1901, and then again with a newer and more
powerful engine in 1903.
With the basic design apparently successfully tested, he then turned
to the problem of a suitable engine. He contracted Stephen Balzer to
build one, but was disappointed when it delivered only 8 hp
(6.0 kW) instead of 12 hp (8.9 kW) he expected. Langley's
assistant, Charles M. Manly, then reworked the design into a five-
cylinder water-cooled radial that delivered 52 hp (39 kW) at
950 rpm, a feat that took years to duplicate. Now with both power
and a design, Langley put the two together with great hopes.
To his dismay, the resulting aircraft proved to be too fragile. Simply
scaling up the original small models resulted in a design that was
too weak to hold itself together. Two launches in late 1903 both
ended with the Aerodrome immediately crashing into the water. The
pilot, Manly, was rescued each time. Also, the aircraft's control
system was inadequate to allow quick pilot responses, and it had no
method of lateral control, and the Aerodrome's aerial stability was
marginal.[62]
Langley's attempts to gain further funding failed, and his efforts
ended. Nine days after his second abortive launch on 8 December,
the Wright brothers successfully flew their Flyer. Glenn
Curtiss made 93 modifications to the Aerodrome and flew this very
different aircraft in 1914.[62] Without acknowledging the
modifications, the Smithsonian Institution asserted that
Langley's Aerodrome was the first machine "capable of flight".[63]
Whitehead

The No. 21 monoplane seen from the rear. Whitehead sits beside it
with daughter Rose in his lap; others in the photo are not identified.
Gustave Weißkopf was a German who emigrated to the U.S., where
he soon changed his name to Whitehead. From 1897 to 1915, he
designed and built early flying machines and engines. On 14
August 1901, two and a half years before the Wright Brothers'
flight, he claimed to have carried out a controlled, powered flight in
his Number 21 monoplane at Fairfield, Connecticut. The flight was
reported in the Bridgeport Sunday Herald local newspaper. About
30 years later, several people questioned by a researcher claimed to
have seen that or other Whitehead flights.[citation needed]
In March 2013, Jane's All the World's Aircraft, an authoritative
source for contemporary aviation, published an editorial which
accepted Whitehead's flight as the first manned, powered,
controlled flight of a heavier-than-air craft.[64] The Smithsonian
Institution (custodians of the original Wright Flyer) and many
aviation historians continue to maintain that Whitehead did not fly
as suggested.[65][66]
Wright brothers
The Wright Flyer: the first sustained flight with a powered,
controlled aircraft.
Using a methodical approach and concentrating on the
controllability of the aircraft, the brothers built and tested a series of
kite and glider designs from 1898 to 1902 before attempting to
build a powered design. The gliders worked, but not as well as the
Wrights had expected based on the experiments and writings of
their predecessors. Their first full-size glider, launched in 1900, had
only about half the lift they anticipated. Their second glider, built
the following year, performed even more poorly. Rather than giving
up, the Wrights constructed their own wind tunnel and created a
number of sophisticated devices to measure lift and drag on the 200
wing designs they tested.[67] As a result, the Wrights corrected
earlier mistakes in calculations regarding drag and lift. Their testing
and calculating produced a third glider with a higher aspect
ratio and true three-axis control. They flew it successfully hundreds
of times in 1902, and it performed far better than the previous
models. By using a rigorous system of experimentation, involving
wind-tunnel testing of airfoils and flight testing of full-size
prototypes, the Wrights not only built a working aircraft the
following year, the Wright Flyer, but also helped advance the
science of aeronautical engineering.
The Wrights appear to be the first to make serious studied attempts
to simultaneously solve the power and control problems. Both
problems proved difficult, but they never lost interest. They solved
the control problem by inventing wing warping for roll control,
combined with simultaneous yaw control with a steerable rear
rudder. Almost as an afterthought, they designed and built a low-
powered internal combustion engine. They also designed and
carved wooden propellers that were more efficient than any before,
enabling them to gain adequate performance from their low engine
power. Although wing-warping as a means of lateral control was
used only briefly during the early history of aviation, the principle
of combining lateral control in combination with a rudder was a key
advance in aircraft control. While many aviation pioneers appeared
to leave safety largely to chance, the Wrights' design was greatly
influenced by the need to teach themselves to fly without
unreasonable risk to life and limb, by surviving crashes. This
emphasis, as well as low engine power, was the reason for low
flying speed and for taking off in a headwind. Performance, rather
than safety, was the reason for the rear-heavy design because
the canard could not be highly loaded; anhedral wings were less
affected by crosswinds and were consistent with the low yaw
stability.

Within weeks of the first powered flight, this Ohio newspaper

described "what the Wright Brothers' invention has accomplished"
— after years of glider tests, four successful flights in a powered
flier that has "no balloon attachments of any kind, but is supported
in the air by a pair of aerocurves, or wings", placing "Santos-
Dumont and Lebaudys, with their dirigible balloons... in eclipse".[68]
This 1906 article describes how the Wrights' experiments were
conducted in "strict secrecy for several years", with "not more than
a dozen persons" being in on the secret. [69] One insider stated that
the brothers had "not sought for spectacular success", and instead
described their "progressive accumulation of experiences",
including gradual progression from gliders to powered flight, and
from straight flights to circuits requiring turning the aeroplane.
[69]
 The account reported "some slight success in flying through the
air at the end of the Summer of 1903".[69] The Wrights were said to
have solved flight control issues to achieve controlled turns on a
one-mile circuit on 20 September 1904, followed by five-minute
flights in the ensuing weeks, and a 24-mile, 38-minute flight in
summer 1905.[69]
According to the Smithsonian Institution and Fédération
[70][71]
Aéronautique Internationale (FAI),  the Wrights made the first
sustained, controlled, powered heavier-than-air manned flight
at Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, four miles (8 km) south of Kitty
Hawk, North Carolina on 17 December 1903.[72]
The first flight by Orville Wright, of 120 feet (37 m) in 12 seconds,
was recorded in a famous photograph. In the fourth flight of the
same day, Wilbur Wright flew 852 feet (260 m) in 59 seconds. The
flights were witnessed by three coastal lifesaving crewmen, a local
businessman, and a boy from the village, making these the first
public flights and the first well-documented ones.[72]
Orville described the final flight of the day: "The first few hundred
feet were up and down, as before, but by the time three hundred feet
had been covered, the machine was under much better control. The
course for the next four or five hundred feet had but little
undulation. However, when out about eight hundred feet the
machine began pitching again, and, in one of its darts downward,
struck the ground. The distance over the ground was measured to be
852 feet (260 m); the time of the flight was 59 seconds. The frame
supporting the front rudder was badly broken, but the main part of
the machine was not injured at all. We estimated that the machine
could be put in condition for flight again in about a day or two".
[73]
 They flew only about ten feet above the ground as a safety
precaution, so they had little room to manoeuvre, and all four
flights in the gusty winds ended in a bumpy and unintended
"landing". Modern analysis by Professor Fred E. C. Culick and
Henry R. Rex (1985) has demonstrated that the 1903 Wright Flyer
was so unstable as to be almost unmanageable by anyone but the
Wrights, who had trained themselves in the 1902 glider.[74]
The Wrights continued flying at Huffman Prairie near Dayton,
Ohio in 1904–05. In May 1904 they introduced the Flyer II, a
heavier and improved version of the original Flyer. On 23 June
1905, they first flew a third machine, the Flyer III. After a severe
crash on 14 July 1905, they rebuilt the Flyer III and made important
design changes. They almost doubled the size of the elevator and
rudder and moved them about twice the distance from the wings.
They added two fixed vertical vanes (called "blinkers") between the
elevators and gave the wings a very slight dihedral. They
disconnected the rudder from the wing-warping control, and as in
all future aircraft, placed it on a separate control handle. When
flights resumed the results were immediate. The serious pitch
instability that hampered Flyers I and II was significantly reduced,
so repeated minor crashes were eliminated. Flights with the
redesigned Flyer III started lasting over 10 minutes, then 20, then
30. Flyer III became the first practical aircraft (though without
wheels and needing a launching device), flying consistently under
full control and bringing its pilot back to the starting point safely
and landing without damage. On 5 October 1905, Wilbur flew 24
miles (39 km) in 39 minutes 23 seconds."[75]
According to the April 1907 issue of the Scientific
American magazine,[76] the Wright brothers seemed to have the
most advanced knowledge of heavier-than-air navigation at the
time. However, the same magazine issue also claimed that no public
flight had been made in the United States before its April 1907
issue. Hence, they devised the Scientific American Aeronautic
Trophy in order to encourage the development of a heavier-than-air
flying machine.

Pioneer Era (1903–1914)

This period saw the development of practical aeroplanes and
airships and their early application, alongside balloons and kites, for
private, sport and military use.
Pioneers in Europe

The 14-bis, or Oiseau de proie.

Early Voisin biplane
Although full details of the Wright Brothers' system of flight
control had been published in l'Aerophile in January 1906, the
importance of this advance was not recognised, and European
experimenters generally concentrated on attempting to produce
inherently stable machines.
Short powered flights were performed in France by Romanian
engineer Traian Vuia on 18 March and 19 August 1906 when he
flew 12 and 24 meters, respectively, in a self-designed, fully self-
propelled, fixed-wing aircraft, that possessed a fully wheeled
undercarriage.[77][78] He was followed by Jacob Ellehammer who
built a monoplane which he tested with a tether in Denmark on 12
September 1906, flying 42 meters.[79]
On 13 September 1906, a day after Ellehammer's tethered flight and
three years after the Wright Brothers' flight, the Brazilian Alberto
Santos-Dumont made a public flight in Paris with the 14-bis, also
known as Oiseau de proie (French for "bird of prey"). This was
of canard configuration with pronounced wing dihedral, and
covered a distance of 60 m (200 ft) on the grounds of the Chateau
de Bagatelle in Paris' Bois de Boulogne before a large crowd of
witnesses. This well-documented event was the first flight verified
by the Aéro-Club de France of a powered heavier-than-air machine
in Europe and won the Deutsch-Archdeacon Prize for the first
officially observed flight greater than 25 m (82 ft). On 12
November 1906, Santos-Dumont set the first world record
recognized by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale by flying
220 m (720 ft) in 21.5 seconds.[80][81] Only one more brief flight was
made by the 14-bis in March 1907, after which it was abandoned.[82]
In March 1907, Gabriel Voisin flew the first example of his Voisin
biplane. On 13 January 1908, a second example of the type was
flown by Henri Farman to win the Deutsch-Archdeacon Grand Prix
d'Aviation prize for a flight in which the aircraft flew a distance of
more than a kilometer and landed at the point where it had taken
off. The flight lasted 1 minute and 28 seconds.[83]
Flight as an established technology

Alberto Santos-Dumont flying the Demoiselle over Paris

Santos-Dumont later added ailerons, between the wings in an effort
to gain more lateral stability. His final design, first flown in 1907,
was the series of Demoiselle monoplanes (Nos. 19 to 22).
The Demoiselle No 19 could be constructed in only 15 days and
became the world's first series production aircraft. The Demoiselle
achieved 120 km/h.[84] The fuselage consisted of three specially
reinforced bamboo booms: the pilot sat in a seat between the main
wheels of a conventional landing gear whose pair of wire-spoked
mainwheels were located at the lower front of the airframe, with a
tailskid half-way back beneath the rear fuselage structure. The
Demoiselle was controlled in flight by a cruciform tail unit hinged
on a form of universal joint at the aft end of the fuselage structure to
function as elevator and rudder, with roll control provided through
wing warping (No. 20), with the wings only warping "down".
In 1908, Wilbur Wright travelled to Europe, and starting in August
gave a series of flight demonstrations at Le Mans in France. The
first demonstration, made on 8 August, attracted an audience
including most of the major French aviation experimenters, who
were astonished by the clear superiority of the Wright Brothers'
aircraft, particularly its ability to make tight controlled turns. [85] The
importance of using roll control in making turns was recognised by
almost all the European experimenters: Henri Farman fitted ailerons
to his Voisin biplane and shortly afterwards set up his own aircraft
construction business, whose first product was the
influential Farman III biplane.
The following year saw the widespread recognition of powered
flight as something other than the preserve of dreamers and
eccentrics. On 25 July, Louis Blériot won worldwide fame by
winning a £1,000 prize offered by the British Daily Mail newspaper
for a flight across the English Channel, and in August around half a
million people, including the President of France Armand
Fallières and David Lloyd George, attended one of the first aviation
meetings, the Grande Semaine d'Aviation at Reims.
Rotorcraft
In 1877, Enrico Forlanini developed an
unmanned helicopter powered by a steam engine. It rose to a height
of 13 meters, where it remained for 20 seconds, after a vertical take-
off from a park in Milan.

Paul Cornu's helicopter, built in 1907, was the first manned flying

machine to have risen from the ground using rotating wings instead
of fixed wings.
The first time a manned helicopter is known to have risen off the
ground was on a tethered flight in 1907 by the Breguet-Richet
Gyroplane. Later the same year the Cornu helicopter, also French,
made the first rotary-winged free flight at Lisieux, France.
However, these were not practical designs.
Military use[

Nieuport IV, operated by most of the world's air forces before

WW1 for reconnaissance and bombing, including during
the Italian-Turkish war.
Almost as soon as they were invented, airplanes were used for
military purposes. The first country to use them for military
purposes was Italy, whose aircraft made reconnaissance, bombing
and artillery correction flights in Libya during the Italian-Turkish
war (September 1911 – October 1912). The first mission (a
reconnaissance) occurred on 23 October 1911. The first bombing
mission was flown on 1 November 1911.[86] Then Bulgaria followed
this example. Its airplanes attacked and reconnoitered
the Ottoman positions during the First Balkan War 1912–13. The
first war to see major use of airplanes in offensive, defensive and
reconnaissance capabilities was World War I.
The Allies and Central Powers both used airplanes and airships
extensively.
While the concept of using the airplane as an offensive weapon was
generally discounted before World War I,[87] the idea of using it for
photography was one that was not lost on any of the major forces.
All of the major forces in Europe had light aircraft, typically
derived from pre-war sporting designs, attached to
their reconnaissance departments. Radiotelephones were also being
explored on airplanes, notably the SCR-68, as communication
between pilots and ground commander grew more and more
important.
World War I (1914–1918)

German Taube monoplane, illustration from 1917

Combat schemes
It was not long before aircraft were shooting at each other, but the
lack of any sort of steady point for the gun was a problem. The
French solved this problem when, in late 1914, Roland
Garros attached a fixed machine gun to the front of his plane, but
while Adolphe Pegoud would become known as the first "ace",
getting credit for five victories before also becoming the first ace to
die in action, it was German Luftstreitkräfte Leutnant Kurt
Wintgens who, on 1 July 1915, scored the very first aerial victory
by a purpose-built fighter plane, with a synchronized machine gun.
Aviators were styled as modern-day knights, doing individual
combat with their enemies. Several pilots became famous for their
air-to-air combat; the most well known is Manfred von Richthofen,
better known as the Red Baron, who shot down 80 planes in air-to-
air combat with several different planes, the most celebrated of
which was the Fokker Dr.I. On the Allied side, René Paul Fonck is
credited with the most all-time victories at 75, even when later wars
are considered.
France, Britain, Germany and Italy were the leading manufacturers
of fighter planes that saw action during the war,[88] with German
aviation technologist Hugo Junkers showing the way to the future
through his pioneering use of all-metal aircraft from late 1915.

Between the World Wars (1918–1939

The years between World War I and World War II saw great
advancements in aircraft technology. Airplanes evolved from low-
powered biplanes made from wood and fabric to sleek, high-
powered monoplanes made of aluminum, based primarily on the
founding work of Hugo Junkers during the World War I period and
its adoption by American designer William Bushnell Stout and
Soviet designer Andrei Tupolev. The age of the great rigid airships
came and went. The first successful rotorcraft appeared in the form
of the autogyro, invented by Spanish engineer Juan de la Cierva and
first flown in 1919. In this design, the rotor is not powered but is
spun like a windmill by its passage through the air. A separate
powerplant is used to propel the aircraft forwards.

Flagg biplane from 1933.

After World War I, experienced fighter pilots were eager to show
off their skills. Many American pilots became barnstormers, flying
into small towns across the country and showing off their flying
abilities, as well as taking paying passengers for rides. Eventually,
the barnstormers grouped into more organized displays. Air shows
sprang up around the country, with air races, acrobatic stunts, and
feats of air superiority. The air races drove engine and airframe
development—the Schneider Trophy, for example, led to a series of
ever faster and sleeker monoplane designs culminating in
the Supermarine S.6B. With pilots competing for cash prizes, there
was an incentive to go faster. Amelia Earhart was perhaps the most
famous of those on the barnstorming/air show circuit. She was also
the first female pilot to achieve records such as the crossing of the
Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
Qantas De Havilland biplane, c. 1930
Other prizes, for distance and speed records, also drove
development forwards. For example, on 14 June 1919, Captain John
Alcock and Lieutenant Arthur Brown co-piloted a Vickers
Vimy non-stop from St. John's, Newfoundland to Clifden, Ireland,
winning the £13,000 ($65,000)[89] Northcliffe prize. The first flight
across the South Atlantic and the first aerial crossing using
astronomical navigation, was made by the naval aviators Gago
Coutinho and Sacadura Cabral in 1922, from Lisbon, Portugal,
to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with only internal means of navigation, in
an aircraft specifically fitted for himself with an artificial
horizon for aeronautical use, an invention that revolutionized air
navigation at the time (Gago Coutinho invented a type
of sextant incorporating two spirit levels to provide an artificial
horizon).[90][91] Five years later Charles Lindbergh took the Orteig
Prize of $25,000 for the first solo non-stop crossing of the Atlantic.
Months after Lindbergh, Paul Redfern was the first to solo the
Caribbean Sea and was last seen flying over Venezuela.

Map of record breaking flights of the 1920s

Australian Sir Charles Kingsford Smith was the first to fly across
the larger Pacific Ocean in the Southern Cross. His crew left
Oakland, California to make the first trans-Pacific flight to
Australia in three stages. The first (from Oakland to Hawaii) was
2,400 miles (3,900 km), took 27 hours 25 minutes, and was
uneventful. They then flew to Suva, Fiji 3,100 miles (5,000 km)
away, taking 34 hours 30 minutes. This was the toughest part of the
journey as they flew through a massive lightning storm near the
equator. They then flew on to Brisbane in 20 hours, where they
landed on 9 June 1928 after approximately 7,400 miles (11,900 km)
total flight. On arrival, Kingsford Smith was met by a huge crowd
of 25,000 at Eagle Farm Airport in his hometown of Brisbane.
Accompanying him were Australian aviator Charles Ulm as the
relief pilot, and the Americans James Warner and Captain Harry
Lyon (who were the radio operator, navigator and engineer). A
week after they landed, Kingsford Smith and Ulm recorded a disc
for Columbia talking about their trip. With Ulm, Kingsford Smith
later continued his journey being the first in 1929 to circumnavigate
the world, crossing the equator twice.
The first lighter-than-air crossings of the Atlantic were made by
airship in July 1919 by His Majesty's Airship R34 and crew when
they flew from East Lothian, Scotland to Long Island, New York
and then back to Pulham, England. By 1929, airship technology had
advanced to the point that the first round-the-world flight was
completed by the Graf Zeppelin in September and in October, the
same aircraft inaugurated the first commercial transatlantic service.
However, the age of the rigid airship ended following the
destruction by fire of the zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg just before
landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey on 6 May 1937, killing 35 of the
97 people aboard. Previous spectacular airship accidents, from
the Wingfoot Express disaster (1919) to the loss of the R101 (1930),
the Akron (1933) and the Macon (1935) had already cast doubt on
airship safety, but with the disasters of the U.S. Navy's rigids
showing the importance of solely using helium as the lifting
medium; following the destruction of the Hindenburg, the
remaining airship making international flights, the Graf
Zeppelin was retired (June 1937). Its replacement, the rigid
airship Graf Zeppelin II, made a number of flights, primarily over
Germany, from 1938 to 1939, but was grounded when Germany
began World War II. Both remaining German zeppelins were
scrapped in 1940 to supply metal for the German Luftwaffe; the last
American rigid airship, the Los Angeles, which had not flown since
1932, was dismantled in late 1939.
Meanwhile, Germany, which was restricted by the Treaty of
Versailles in its development of powered aircraft,
developed gliding as a sport, especially at the Wasserkuppe, during
the 1920s. In its various forms, in the 21st century sailplane
aviation now has over 400,000 participants.[92][93]

First female combat pilot, Sabiha Gökçen, reviews her Breguet 19.

In 1929, Jimmy Doolittle developed instrument flight.
1929 also saw the first flight of by far the largest plane ever built
until then: the Dornier Do X with a wingspan of 48 m. On its 70th
test flight on 21 October 1929, there were 169 people on board, a
record that was not broken for 20 years.
Less than a decade after the development of the first practical
rotorcraft of any type with the autogyro, in the Soviet Union, Boris
N. Yuriev and Alexei M. Cheremukhin, two aeronautical engineers
working at the Tsentralniy Aerogidrodinamicheskiy Institut,
constructed and flew the TsAGI 1-EA single rotor helicopter, which
used an open tubing framework, a four-blade main rotor, and twin
sets of 1.8-meter (5.9 ft) diameter anti-torque rotors; one set of two
at the nose and one set of two at the tail. Powered by two M-2
powerplants, up-rated copies of the Gnome Monosoupape rotary
radial engine of World War I, the TsAGI 1-EA made several
successful low altitude flights. By 14 August 1932, Cheremukhin
managed to get the 1-EA up to an unofficial altitude of 605 meters
(1,985 feet) with what is likely to be the first successful single-lift
rotor helicopter design ever tested and flown.
Only five years after the German Dornier Do-X had flown, Tupolev
designed the largest aircraft of the 1930s era, the Maksim Gorky in
the Soviet Union by 1934, as the largest aircraft ever built using the
Junkers methods of metal aircraft construction.
In the 1930s, development of the jet engine began in Germany and
in Britain – both countries would go on to develop jet aircraft by the
end of World War II.
After enrolling in the Military Aviation Academy in Eskisehir in
1936 and undertaking training at the First Aircraft
Regiment, Sabiha Gökçen, flew fighter and bomber planes
becoming the first Turkish, female aviator and the world's first,
female, combat pilot. During her flying career, she achieved some
8,000 hours, 32 of which were combat missions.[94][95][96][97]

World War II (1939–1945)

World War II saw a great increase in the pace of development and
production, not only of aircraft but also the associated flight-based
weapon delivery systems. Air combat tactics and doctrines took
advantage. Large-scale strategic bombing campaigns were
launched, fighter escorts introduced and the more flexible aircraft
and weapons allowed precise attacks on small targets with dive
bombers, fighter-bombers, and ground-attack aircraft. New
technologies like radar also allowed more coordinated and
controlled deployment of air defense.

Me 262, world first operational jet fighter

The first jet aircraft to fly was the Heinkel He 178 (Germany),
flown by Erich Warsitz in 1939, followed by the world's first
operational jet aircraft, the Me 262, in July 1942 and world's first
jet-powered bomber, the Arado Ar 234, in June 1943. British
developments, like the Gloster Meteor, followed afterwards, but
saw only brief use in World War II. The first cruise missile (V-1),
the first ballistic missile (V-2), the first (and to date only)
operational rocket-powered combat aircraft Me 163—with attained
velocities of up to 1,130 km/h (700 mph) in test flights—and the
first vertical take-off manned point-defense interceptor, the Bachem
Ba 349 Natter, were also developed by Germany. However, jet and
rocket aircraft had only limited impact due to their late introduction,
fuel shortages, the lack of experienced pilots and the declining war
industry of Germany.
Not only airplanes, but also helicopters saw rapid development in
the Second World War, with the introduction of the Focke Achgelis
Fa 223, the Flettner Fl 282 synchropter in 1941 in Germany and
the Sikorsky R-4 in 1942 in the USA.

Postwar era (1945–1979)

D.H. Comet, the world's first jet airliner. As in this picture, it also
saw RAF service

A 1945 newsreel covering various firsts in human flight

After World War II, commercial aviation grew rapidly, using
mostly ex-military aircraft to transport people and cargo. This
growth was accelerated by the glut of heavy and super-heavy
bomber airframes like the B-29 and Lancaster that could be
converted into commercial aircraft.[citation needed] The DC-3 also made
for easier and longer commercial flights. The first commercial jet
airliner to fly was the British de Havilland Comet. By 1952, the
British state airline BOAC had introduced the Comet into scheduled
service. While a technical achievement, the plane suffered a series
of highly public failures, as the shape of the windows led to cracks
due to metal fatigue. The fatigue was caused by cycles of
pressurization and depressurization of the cabin and eventually led
to catastrophic failure of the plane's fuselage. By the time the
problems were overcome, other jet airliner designs had already
taken to the skies.
USSR's Aeroflot became the first airline in the world to operate
sustained regular jet services on 15 September 1956 with
the Tupolev Tu-104. The Boeing 707 and DC-8 which established
new levels of comfort, safety and passenger expectations, ushered
in the age of mass commercial air travel, dubbed the Jet Age.
In October 1947, Chuck Yeager took the rocket-powered Bell X-
1 through the sound barrier. Although anecdotal evidence exists that
some fighter pilots may have done so while dive-bombing ground
targets during the war,[citation needed] this was the first controlled, level
flight to exceed the speed of sound. Further barriers of distance fell
in 1948 and 1952 with the first jet crossing of the Atlantic and the
first nonstop flight to Australia.
The 1945 invention of nuclear bombs briefly increased the strategic
importance of military aircraft in the Cold War between East and
West. Even a moderate fleet of long-range bombers could deliver a
deadly blow to the enemy, so great efforts were made to develop
countermeasures. At first, the supersonic interceptor aircraft were
produced in considerable numbers. By 1955, most development
efforts shifted to guided surface-to-air missiles. However, the
approach diametrically changed when a new type of nuclear-
carrying platform appeared that could not be stopped in any feasible
way: intercontinental ballistic missiles. The possibility of these was
demonstrated in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik 1 by the Soviet
Union. This action started the Space Race between the nations.
In 1961, the sky was no longer the limit for manned flight, as Yuri
Gagarin orbited once around the planet within 108 minutes, and
then used the descent module of Vostok I to safely reenter the
atmosphere and reduce speed from Mach 25 using friction and
converting the kinetic energy of the velocity into heat. The United
States responded by launching Alan Shepard into space on a
suborbital flight in a Mercury space capsule. With the launch of
the Alouette I in 1963, Canada became the third country to send a
satellite into space. The space race between the United States and
the Soviet Union would ultimately lead to the landing of men on the
moon in 1969.
In 1967, the X-15 set the air speed record for an aircraft at
4,534 mph (7,297 km/h) or Mach 6.1. Aside from vehicles designed
to fly in outer space, this record was renewed by X-43 in the 21st
century.
Apollo 11 lifts off on its mission to land a man on the moon
The Harrier Jump Jet, often referred to as just "Harrier" or "the
Jump Jet", is a British designed military jet aircraft capable of
Vertical/Short Takeoff and Landing (V/STOL) via thrust vectoring.
It first flew in 1969, the same year that Neil Armstrong and Buzz
Aldrin set foot on the moon, and Boeing unveiled the Boeing
747 and the Aérospatiale-BAC Concorde supersonic passenger
airliner had its maiden flight. The Boeing 747 was the largest
commercial passenger aircraft ever to fly, and still carries millions
of passengers each year, though it has been superseded by
the Airbus A380, which is capable of carrying up to 853
passengers. In 1975, Aeroflot started regular service on the Tu-144
—the first supersonic passenger plane. In 1976, British
Airways and Air France began supersonic service across the
Atlantic, with Concorde. A few years earlier the SR-71 Blackbird
had set the record for crossing the Atlantic in under 2 hours, and
Concorde followed in its footsteps.
In 1979, the Gossamer Albatross became the first human-powered
aircraft to cross the English channel. This achievement finally saw
the realization of centuries of dreams of human flight.

Digital age (1980–present)

Concorde, G-BOAB, in storage at London Heathrow

Airport following the end of all Concorde flying. This aircraft flew
for 22,296 hours between its first flight in 1976 and final flight in
2000.
The last quarter of the 20th century saw a change of emphasis. No
longer was revolutionary progress made in flight speeds, distances
and materials technology. This part of the century instead saw the
spreading of the digital revolution both in flight avionics and in
aircraft design and manufacturing techniques.
In 1986, Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager flew an aircraft, the Rutan
Voyager, around the world unrefuelled, and without landing. In
1999, Bertrand Piccard became the first person to circle the earth in
a balloon.
Digital fly-by-wire systems allow an aircraft to be designed
with relaxed static stability. Initially used to increase the
manoeuvrability of military aircraft such as the General Dynamics
F-16 Fighting Falcon, this is now being used to reduce drag on
commercial airliners.
The U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission was established in 1999
to encourage the broadest national and international participation in
the celebration of 100 years of powered flight. [98] It publicized and
encouraged a number of programs, projects and events intended to
educate people about the history of aviation.

21st century
21st-century aviation has seen increasing interest in fuel savings
and fuel diversification, as well as low cost airlines and facilities.
Additionally, much of the developing world that did not have good
access to air transport has been steadily adding aircraft and
facilities, though severe congestion remains a problem in many up
and coming nations. Around 20,000 city pairs[99] are served by
commercial aviation, up from less than 10,000 as recently as 1996.
There appears to be newfound interest [100] in returning to the
supersonic era whereby waning demand in the turn of the 20th
century made flights unprofitable, as well as the final commercial
stoppage of the Concorde due to reduced demand following a fatal
accident and rising costs.
At the beginning of the 21st century, digital technology allowed
subsonic military aviation to begin eliminating the pilot in favor of
remotely operated or completely autonomous unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs). In April 2001 the unmanned aircraft Global
Hawk flew from Edwards AFB in the US to Australia non-stop and
 unrefuelled. This is the longest point-to-point flight ever undertaken
by an unmanned aircraft and took 23 hours and 23 minutes. In
October 2003, the first totally autonomous flight across the Atlantic
by a computer-controlled model aircraft occurred. UAVs are now
an established feature of modern warfare, carrying out pinpoint
attacks under the control of a remote operator.
Major disruptions to air travel in the 21st century included
the closing of U.S. airspace due to the September 11 attacks, and
the closing of most of European airspace after the 2010 eruption of
Eyjafjallajökull.
In 2015, André Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard flew a record
distance of 4,481 miles (7,211 km) from Nagoya, Japan to
Honolulu, Hawaii in a solar-powered plane, Solar Impulse 2. The
flight took nearly five days; during the nights the aircraft used its
batteries and the potential energy gained during the day.[101]
On 14 July 2019, Frenchman Franky Zapata attracted worldwide
attention when he participated at the Bastille Day military parade
riding his invention, a jet-powered Flyboard Air. He subsequently
succeeded in crossing the English Channel on his device on 4
August 2019, covering the 35-kilometre (22 mi) journey from
Sangatte in northern France to St Margaret's Bay in Kent, UK, in 22
minutes, with a midpoint fueling stop included.[102]
24 July 2019 was the busiest day in aviation,
for Flightradar24 recorded a total of over 225,000 flights that day. It
includes helicopters, private jets, gliders, sight-seeing flights, as
well as personal aircraft. The website has been tracking flights since
2006.[103]
On 10 June 2020, the Pipistrel Velis Electro became the first
electric aeroplane to secure a type certificate from EASA.[104]
In the early 21st Century, the first fifth-generation military fighters
were produced, starting with the F-22 Raptor and currently Russia,
America and China have 5th gen aircraft (2019).

b) Solar System Outer space within the solar system is called [7M]
interplanetary space, which passes over into interstellar space at the
heliopause. The vacuum of outer space is not really empty; it is
sparsely filled with several dozen types of organic molecules
 discovered to date by microwave spectroscopy. According to the
Big bang theory, 2.7 K blackbody radiation was left over from the
'big bang' and the origin of the universe, and cosmic rays, which
include ionized atomic nuclei and various subatomic particles.
There is also gas, plasma and dust, and small meteors and material
left over from previous manned and unmanned launches that are a
potential hazard to spacecraft. Some of this debris re-enters the
atmosphere periodically. The absence of air makes outer space (and
the surface of the Moon) ideal locations for astronomy at all
wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum, as evidenced by the
spectacular pictures sent back by the Hubble Space Telescope,
allowing light from about 13.7 billion years ago - almost to the time
of the Big Bang - to be observed. Pictures and other data from
unmanned space vehicles have provided invaluable information
about the planets, asteroids and comets in our solar system
MODULE– II
3. a) HELICOPTERS [7M]
A helicopter main rotor or rotor system is a type of fan that is used to generate both
the aerodynamic lift force that supports the weight of the helicopter, and thrust which
counteracts aerodynamic drag in forward flight. Each main rotor is mounted on a
vertical mast over the top of the helicopter, as opposed to a helicopter tail rotor, which
is connected through a combination of drive shaft(s) and gearboxes along the tail
boom. A helicopter's rotor is generally made up of two or more rotor blades. The blade
pitch is typically controlled by a swash plate connected to the helicopter flight
controls. Rotors are sometimes referred to as rotary wings, for they are the wings (as
well as propellers) of a rotary-wing aircraft.

Design
The helicopter rotor is powered by the engine, through the transmission, to the
rotating mast. The mast is a cylindrical metal shaft which extends upward from—and
is driven by—the transmission. At the top of the mast is the attachment point for the
rotor blades called the hub. The rotor blades are then attached to the hub. Main rotor
systems are classified according to how the main rotor blades are attached and move
relative to the main rotor hub. There are three basic classifications: rigid, semi-rigid,
or fully articulated, although some modern rotor systems use an engineered
combination of these classifications. The rotors are designed to operate in a narrow
range of RPM. Unlike the small diameter fans used in turbofan jet engines, the main
rotor on a helicopter has a quite large diameter, permitting a large volume of air to be
accelerated. This permits a lower downwash velocity for a given amount of thrust. As
it is more efficient at low speeds to accelerate a large amount of air by a small degree
than a small amount of air by a large degree, a low disc loading (thrust per disc area)
greatly increases the aircraft's energy efficiency and this reduces the fuel use and
permits reasonable range.

Parts and functions 

The simple rotor (Main Rotor), rotor head with mast  Tail Rotor, Tail Boom 
Swash plate  Cockpit, Fuselage, Cabin  Landing skids Main rotor The main rotor
serves to provide lift and propulsion to the helicopter. The main rotor blade performs
the same function as an airplane's wings, providing lift as the blades rotate -- lift being
one of the critical aerodynamic forces that keeps aircraft aloft. A pilot can affect lift by
changing the rotor's revolutions per minute (rpm) or its angle of attack, which refers to
the angle of the rotary wing in relation to the oncoming wind.
1. Rotor mast -- Also known as the rotor shaft, the mast connects
the transmission to the rotor assembly. The mast rotates the upper
swash plate and the blades. 2. Stabilizer -- The stabilizer bar sits
above and across the main rotor blade. Its weight and rotation
dampen unwanted vibrations in the main rotor, helping to stabilize
the craft in all flight conditions. Arthur Young, the gent who
designed the Bell 47 helicopter, is credited with inventing the
stabilizer bar. 3. Transmission –
Just as it does in a motor vehicle, a helicopter's transmission
transmits power from the engine to the main and tail rotors. The
transmission's main gearbox steps down the speed of the main rotor
so it doesn't rotate as rapidly as the engine shaft. A second gearbox
does the same for the tail rotor, although the tail rotor, being much
smaller, can rotate faster than the main rotor.
Fuselage
The fuselage holds the aircraft together and accommodates
passengers and cargo, as appropriate. Cockpit The cockpit, at the
front end of the fuselage, is the control and command centre, where
the pilots sit and all the instrumentation is located. Cabin The cabin
serves to accommodate passengers and cargo. Landing skids The
skids serve to stand the helicopter while on the ground. Tail boom
The tail boom holds the tail rotor for stabilizing the aircraft. Tail
rotor The tail rotor prevents the helicopter from spinning as well as
turns the aircraft. Engine The engine generates power for the
aircraft. Early helicopters relied on reciprocating gasoline engines,
but modern helicopters use gas turbine engines like those found in
commercial airliners.
Swash plate
The pitch of main rotor blades can be varied cyclically throughout
its rotation in order to control the direction of rotor thrust vector
(the part of the rotor disc where the maximum thrust will be
developed, front, rear, right side, etc.). Collective pitch is used to
vary the magnitude of rotor thrust (increasing or decreasing thrust
over the whole rotor disc at the same time). These blade pitch
variations are controlled by tilting and/or raising or lowering the
swash plate with the flight controls. The vast majority of helicopters
maintain a constant rotor speed (RPM) during flight, leaving only
the angle of attack of the blades as the sole means of adjusting
thrust from the rotor. The swash plate is two concentric disks or
plates, one plate rotates with the mast, connected by idle links,
while the other does not rotate. The rotating plate is also connected
to the individual blades through pitch links and pitch horns. The
non-rotating plate is connected to links which are manipulated by
 pilot controls, specifically, the collective and cyclic controls. The
swash plate can shift vertically and tilt. Through shifting and tilting,
the non-rotating plate controls the rotating plate, which in turn
controls the individual blade pitch
b) [7M]
In aeronautics, the aspect ratio of a wing is the ratio of its span to its mean chord. It is
equal to the square of the wingspan divided by the wing area. Thus, a long, narrow wing
has a high aspect ratio, whereas a short, wide wing has a low aspect ratio. [1]
Aspect ratio and other features of the planform are often used to predict the aerodynamic
efficiency of a wing because the lift-to-drag ratio increases with aspect ratio, improving
the fuel economy in powered airplanes and the gliding angle of sailplanes.

Airfoil nomenclature

The forward section of the airfoil is named the leading edge and the rear the trailing
edge. The airfoil upper and lower surfaces meet at the leading and trailing edges.
The length of the airfoil from leading to trailing edge is known as the airfoil chord.
This often varies down the span of the wing as the wing tapers from the root to the tip.
The thickness of the airfoil is a very important design parameter and as always
expressed as a percentage of the total chord. The airfoil plotted above has a thickness-
to-chord ratio of 12%. This means that the thickest section has a height equal to 12%
of the total chord.
 The final design parameter camber is a measure of the asymmetry between the upper
and lower surface. Camber is generally introduced to an airfoil to increase its
maximum lift coefficient, which in turn decreases the stall speed of the aircraft. The
camber line is a line drawn equidistant between the upper and lower surface at all
points along the chord. Highly cambered airfoils produce more lift than lesser
cambered airfoils, and an airfoil that has no camber is symmetrical upper and lower
surface.

Symmetric airfoil and Cambered

A cambered, or "airfoil-shaped" wing cross section will have a significant curve

(bulge) on the top surface, usually with the thickest part nearer the leading edge,
while the bottom surface will have no or minimum curve. The result of this is that
air passing over the top surface of the airfoil has a longer distance to travel than air
passing over the bottom surface. This means air on the top surface flows at a
higher relative speed. Since Total air pressure = Static (directly onto the airfoil)
Pressure plus Dynamic Pressure (speed of the air), and the Dynamic pressure
(speed) on the top is higher, that means to balance the total pressure, the static
pressure on the top must be lower. The result of all this head-spinning
aerodynamics is that the pressure directly on the bottom (at right angles to) surface
of the airfoil is higher than that on the top surface, resulting in aerodynamic lift on
that wing (airfoil), even at zero degrees angle of attack. If you inverted the airfoil,
so the curved surface was on the bottom, there would be negative lift (downward
pressure) at zero degrees angle of attack.

On the other hand, symmetrical wings (airfoils) have no aerodynamic camber, but
rather have equal distances for the air to travel over both the top and bottom
surfaces. This means they will produce exactly zero lift at zero AOA, and require
some angle to produce lift
4. a) Aerodynamic forces on wings; [7M]
Generation of lift; Sources of drag: Aerfoil is defined by the
following characteristics: • Chord Line • Camber line drawn with
respect to the chord line. • Thickness Distribution which is added to
the camber line, normal to the camber line. • Symmetric airfoils
have no camber.
An aerodynamic force is a force exerted on a body by the air (or
other gas) in which the body is immersed, and is due to the relative
motion between the body and the gas. There are two causes
of aerodynamic force: [1]:§4.10[2][3]:29

 the normal force due to the pressure on the surface of the

body
 the shear force due to the viscosity of the gas, also known
 as skin friction.
Pressure acts normal to the surface, and shear force acts parallel to
the surface. Both forces act locally. The net aerodynamic force on
the body is equal to the pressure and shear forces integrated over
the body's total exposed area.[4]
When an airfoil (such as a wing) moves relative to the air, it
generates an aerodynamic force in a rearward direction, at an angle
determined by the direction of relative motion. This aerodynamic
force is commonly resolved into two components, acting through
the body's center of pressure:[3]:14[1]:§ 5.3

 drag is the force component parallel to the direction of

relative motion,
 lift is the force component perpendicular to the direction of
relative motion.
In addition to these two forces, the body may experience an
aerodynamic moment.
The force created by propellers and jet engines is called thrust, and
is also an aerodynamic force (since it acts on the surrounding air).
The aerodynamic force on a powered airplane is commonly
represented by three vectors: thrust, lift and drag.[3]:151[1]:§ 14.2
The other force acting on an aircraft during flight is its weight,
which is a body force and not an aerodynamic force.
b) The NACA airfoils are airfoil shapes for aircraft wings developed by the National [7M]
Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The shape of the NACA airfoils is
described using a series of digits following the word "NACA". The parameters in the
numerical code can be entered into equations to precisely generate the cross-section of
the airfoil and calculate its properties.
1-series[edit]
A new approach to airfoil design pioneered in the 1930s, in which the airfoil shape was
mathematically derived from the desired lift characteristics. Prior to this, airfoil shapes
were first created and then had their characteristics measured in a wind tunnel. The 1-
series airfoils are described by five digits in the following sequence:

1. The number "1" indicating the series.

2. One digit describing the distance of the minimum-pressure area in tenths of chord.
3. A hyphen.
4. One digit describing the lift coefficient in tenths.
5. Two digits describing the maximum thickness in percent of chord.
For example, the NACA 16-123 airfoil has minimum pressure 60% of the chord back with
a lift coefficient of 0.1 and maximum thickness of 23% of the chord.

6-series[edit]
An improvement over 1-series airfoils with emphasis on maximizing laminar flow. The
airfoil is described using six digits in the following sequence:

1. The number "6" indicating the series.

2. One digit describing the distance of the minimum pressure area in tenths of the
chord.
3. The subscript digit gives the range of lift coefficient in tenths above and below the
design lift coefficient in which favorable pressure gradients exist on both
surfaces.
4. A hyphen.
5. One digit describing the design lift coefficient in tenths.
6. Two digits describing the maximum thickness as percent of chord.
7. "a=" followed by a decimal number describing the fraction of chord over which
laminar flow is maintained. a=1 is the default if no value is given.

For example, the NACA 612-315 a=0.5 has the area of minimum pressure 10% of the
chord back, maintains low drag 0.2 above and below the lift coefficient of 0.3, has a
maximum thickness of 15% of the chord, and maintains laminar flow over 50% of the
chord.

7-series[edit]
Further advancement in maximizing laminar flow achieved by separately identifying the
low-pressure zones on upper and lower surfaces of the airfoil. The airfoil is described by
seven digits in the following sequence:

1. The number "7" indicating the series.

2. One digit describing the distance of the minimum pressure area on the upper
surface in tenths of the chord.
3. One digit describing the distance of the minimum pressure area on the lower
surface in tenths of the chord.
4. One letter referring to a standard profile from the earlier NACA series.
 5. One digit describing the lift coefficient in tenths.
6. Two digits describing the maximum thickness as percent of chord.
For example, the NACA 712A315 has the area of minimum pressure 10% of the chord
back on the upper surface and 20% of the chord back on the lower surface, uses the
standard "A" profile, has a lift coefficient of 0.3, and has a maximum thickness of 15% of
the chord.

8-series
Supercritical airfoils designed to independently maximize laminar flow above and below
the wing. The numbering is identical to the 7-series airfoils except that the sequence
begins with an "8" to identify the series

MODULE – III
5. a) [7M]

Lift/Drag Ratio
Drag is the price paid to obtain lift. The lift to drag ratio (L/D) is the
amount of lift generated by a wing or airfoil compared to its drag. The
lift/drag ratio is used to express the relation between lift and drag and
is determined by dividing the lift coefficient by the drag coefficient,
CL/CD. A ratio of L/D indicates airfoil efficiency. Aircraft with
higher L/D ratios are more efficient than those with lower L/D ratios.

The shape of an airfoil and other lift producing devices (i.e., flaps)
affect the production of lift which will vary with changes in the AOA
(Angle of Attack (AOA)). The maximum lift/drag ratio occurs at one
specific CL (Lift Coefficient) and AOA (Angle of Attack (AOA)). If
the aircraft is operated in steady flight at Lift/Drag maximum ratio, the
total drag is at a minimum. Any AOA lower or higher than that
producing the maximum Lift/Drag ratio reduces the Lift/Drag ratio
and consequently increases the total drag for a given aircraft’s lift.

Lift/drag ratio also determines the glide ratio and gliding range. Since
the glide ratio is based only on the relationship of the aerodynamics
forces acting on the aircraft, aircraft weight will not affect it. The only
effect weight has is to vary the time that the aircraft will glide for. The
heavier the aircraft is, the higher the airspeed must be to obtain the
same glide ratio. If two aircraft have the same L/D ratio but different
weights and start a glide from the same altitude, the heavier aircraft
gliding at a higher airspeed will arrive at the same touchdown point in
a shorter time. Both aircraft will cover the same distance but the
lighter one will take a longer time to do so.
From the practical point of view one should remember that although it
is well known that winglets reduce drag and save fuel, their effect on
speed control may not have been highlighted before. Crews therefore
need to be aware that reduced drag makes speed control on the
approach more difficult.

Drag will also increase if the landing gear or flaps are extended and
the airspeed will then decrease unless the pitch attitude is reduced.
When pitch is reduced, the glide angle increases and the distance
traveled will reduce

There are four forces that act on an aircraft in flight: lift, weight, thrust, and
drag. Forces are vector quantities having both a magnitude and a direction.
The motion of the aircraft through the air depends on the relative magnitude
 and direction of the various forces. The weight of an airplane is determined by
the size and materials used in the airplane's construction and on the payload
and fuel that the airplane carries. The weight is always directed towards the
center of the earth. The thrust is determined by the size and type of propulsion
system used on the airplane and on the throttle setting selected by the pilot.
Thrust is normally directed forward along the center-line of the
aircraft. Lift and drag are aerodynamic forces that depend on the shape and size
of the aircraft, air conditions, and the flight velocity. Lift is directed
perpendicular to the flight path and drag is directed along the flight path.

Because lift and drag are both aerodynamic forces, the ratio of lift to drag is an
indication of the aerodynamic efficiency of the airplane. Aerodynamicists call
the lift to drag ratio the L/D ratio, pronounced "L over D ratio." An airplane
has a high L/D ratio if it produces a large amount of lift or a small amount of
drag. Under cruise conditions lift is equal to weight. A high lift aircraft can
carry a large payload. Under cruise conditions thrust is equal to drag. A low
drag aircraft requires low thrust. Thrust is produced by burning a fuel and a
low thrust aircraft requires small amounts of fuel be burned. As discussed on
the maximum flight time page, low fuel usage allows an aircraft to stay aloft
for a long time, and that means the aircraft can fly long range missions. So an
aircraft with a high L/D ratio can carry a large payload, for a long time, over a
long distance. For glider aircraft with no engines, a high L/D ratio again
produces a long range aircraft by reducing the steady state glide angle at which
the glider descends.

As shown in the middle of the slide, the L/D ratio is also equal to the ratio of
the lift and drag coefficients. The lift equation indicates that the lift L is equal
to one half the air density r times the square of the velocity V times the wing
area A times the lift coefficient Cl:

L = .5 * Cl * r * V^2 * A

Similarly, the drag equation relates the aircraft drag D to a drag coefficient Cd:

D = .5 * Cd * r * V^2 * A

Dividing these two equations give:

L/D = Cl/ Cd

Lift and drag coefficients are normally determined experimentally using a wind
tunnel. But for some simple geometries, they can be determined
mathematically.

b) [7M]
The angle of attack of an airfoil is the angle that the airfoil strikes the oncoming
air. Trimming is the action of moving and locking an airfoil into a position so that
it stay in that position without the pilot having to maintain physical input pressure
on the controls. The pilot can use the controls to put the aircraft in a selected angle
of attack then trim the controls so that the aircraft stays in that position without
him having to constantly pull or push on the controls. This is very handy when
certain angle of attack is required for an extended period of time.
6. a) [7M]
b) [7M]
 MODULE – IV
7. a) Types of Metal – Pure Metals, Alloys & Their Applications [7M]

Metals and advances in manufacturing processes gave us the industrial revolution.

This lead to an exponential growth of human civilisation bringing us where we are
today. Today, different types of metals are all around us. From the computer you
are using to read this information on to the clamps in your plumbing. More than
eighty different types of metals find use today.

Table of Contents  
I Types of Metal and Their Classification
II Iron, Its Alloys and Their Properties
III Different Types of Metals
Types of Metal and Their Classification
A large number of metals are available in nature. They can be classified in a variety
of ways depending on what property or characteristic you use as a yardstick.
Classification by Iron Content
The most common way of classifying them is by their iron content.
When a metal contains iron, it is known as a ferrous metal. The iron imparts
magnetic properties to the material and also makes them prone to corrosion. Metals
that do not have any iron content are non-ferrous metals. These metals do not
possess any magnetic properties. Examples include but are not limited to
aluminium, lead, brass, copper and zinc.
 Peri
odic Table
Classification by Atomic Structure
They may also be classified based on their atomic structure according to the
periodic table. When done, a metal may be known as alkaline, alkaline earth, or a
transition metal. Metals belonging to the same group behave similarly when
reacting with other elements. Thus, they have similar chemical properties.
Magnetic and Non-Magnetic Metals
Another way to differentiate metals is by looking how they interact with magnets. It
is possible to divide metals as magnetic and non-magnetic on that basis.
While ferromagnetic metals attract strongly to magnets, paramagnetic ones only
show weak interactions. Lastly, there is a group called diamagnetic metals that
rather show a weak repulsion to magnets.
Iron, Its Alloys and Their Properties
All the metals share some similar mechanical properties of materials. But when
judged closely, one metal will have a slight edge over another in certain properties.
It is possible to tweak the properties when creating alloys by mixing pure elements.
When selecting a metal for a particular application, there’s quite a few factors to
consider to find the most suitable option. These factors include melting point, cost,
ease of machining, sufficient safety factor, space available, temperature coefficient,
thermal and electrical conductivity, density, etc. Let us take a look at some of the
popular metals and why they are chosen for their applications.
Iron
The Eiffel Tower is made of wrought iron
It would not be an exaggeration to refer to iron as the lifeblood of our civilisation.
Approximately 5 per cent of the Earth’s crust is iron. Thus, it is an incredibly easy
metal to find. Pure iron is an unstable element though. At the first opportunity, it
reacts with the oxygen in the air to form iron oxide.
Extracting iron from its ores uses a blast furnace. Pig iron is achieved from the first
stage of the blast furnace which can be further refined to obtain pure iron. This iron
often ends up in steels and other alloys. Almost 90 per cent of manufactured metals
are ferrous metals.
Steel, for instance, is a ferrous metal that finds a variety of applications. We cannot
comprehend the true potential of iron without learning about steel.
Steel
Pure iron is stronger than other metals but it leaves much to be desired. For one,
pure iron is not resistant to corrosion. To keep iron from corroding, a lot of money
and energy must be spent. Secondly, it is also extremely heavy due to its high
density. These disadvantages can make structures harder to build and maintain.
Adding carbon to iron alleviates these weaknesses to a certain extent. This mixture
of iron and carbon up to specified limits is known as carbon steel. Adding carbon to
iron makes the iron much stronger along with imparting other great characteristics.
Other elements may be added in trace amounts to incorporate their properties. Let’s
take a look at how to categorise steel and what it is capable of.
What are the Types of Steel and Their Uses?
Steel is a popular building material thanks to its excellent properties. Over 3500
grades of steel are available today. It has high tensile strength and a high strength-
to-weight ratio. This means more strength per unit mass of steel. This allows usage
of steel parts and components that are small in size but still strong.
Steel is also extremely durable. This means a steel structure can last longer and
withstand external factors better than other alternatives. It is also ductile and can be
shaped into required forms without compromising its properties. Depending on the
iron content, steel is classified into three categories.
Carbon Steel AISI Classification
Low carbon steel rebars

Low carbon steel. Up to 0.25% of carbon in iron give us low carbon steel, also
known as mild steel. It is used for tubing in moderate pressure applications. Reinforcing
bars and in I-beams in construction are usually from low carbon steel. Any applications that
require a high amount of steel without much forming or bending are also suitable for it. An
example is a ship’s hull.
Medium carbon steel. Contains 0.25…0.6% of carbon. Medium carbon steel’s
applications include ones that need high tensile strength and ductility. They find
applications in gearing and shafts, railway wheels and rails, steel beams in buildings and
bridges etc. Another use is pressure vessels, except if it contains cold gases or liquids
because of its tendency to cold cracking.
High carbon steel. Steel that contains more than 0.6% of carbon is high carbon
steel. This steel is harder and more brittle than the previous two. It finds applications in
making chisels and cutting tools. Great qualities include hardness and good resistance
to material wear. It may also be used in presses and for manufacturing drill bits.

Although all the above-mentioned steels are commonly referred to as carbon steels,
they contain other elements to improve certain properties. Like chromium for
corrosion resistance or manganese to improve hardenability and tensile strength.
Alloy steels
This type of metal contains multiple elements to enhance various properties. Metals
such as manganese, titanium, copper, nickel, silicon, and aluminium may be added
in different proportions.
This improves steel’s hardenability, weldability, corrosion resistance, ductility and
formability. Applications for alloy steels are electric motors, bearings, heating
elements, springs, gears, and pipelines.

Stainless steel: Stainless steel contains high amounts of chromium. This is why it

has 200 times higher resistance to corrosion than mild steel. It makes it the ideal candidate
to manufacture kitchen utensils, piping, surgical and dental equipment. Also, as no coating
is necessary, you can have a metallic look like you want with the right surface finish.

Tool steel: Tool steels are used for making cutting and drilling tools. Their high
hardness make them an ideal choice for these applications. They contains molybdenum,
vanadium, cobalt, and tungsten as constituent metals.

Shock-resisting tool steel in use

Tool steel is a type of metal that also finds applications in manufacturing rails,
wires, pipes, shafts and valves. Tool steel is primarily used in the automotive,
shipbuilding, construction, and packaging sectors.
Different Types of Metals
In addition to ferrous metals, we have a large selection of non-ferrous ones. Each
has certain qualities that make them useful in different industries. 
Aluminium
Aluminium derives primarily from its ore bauxite. It is light, strong and functional.
It is the most widespread metal on Earth and its use has permeated applications
everywhere.
This is because of its properties such as durability, light weight, corrosion resistance
(learn more about the types of aluminium corrosion here), electrical conductivity
and ability to form alloys with most metals. It also doesn’t magnetise and is easy to
machine.
Copper
When talking about different types of metals, copper and its alloys can not be
overlooked. It has a long history because it is easy to form. Even today, it is an
important metal in the industry. It does not occur in nature in its pure form. Thus,
smelting and extracting from ore is necessary.
Metals are good conductors and copper stands out more than the others. Due to its
excellent electrical conductivity, it finds application in electrical circuits as a
conductor. Its conductivity is second only to silver. It has also excellent heat
conductivity. This is why many cooking utensils are from copper.
Brass

Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc. The amount of each of the metals may vary
depending on the electrical and mechanical properties sought of the metal. It also
 contains trace amounts of other metallic elements such as aluminium, lead, and
manganese. Brass is a great candidate for low friction applications such as
locks, bearings, plumbing, musical instruments, tools and fittings. It is
indispensable in intrinsically safe applications to prevent sparks and allow usage in
flammable environments.
Bronze
Bronze is also an alloy of copper. But instead of zinc, bronze contains tin. Adding
other elements such as phosphorus, manganese, silicon, and aluminium may
improve its properties and suitability for a particular application. Bronze is brittle,
hard, and resists fatigue well. It also has good electrical and thermal conductivity
and corrosion resistance. Bronze finds application in the manufacturing of mirrors
and reflectors. It is used for electrical connectors. Due to its corrosion resistance, it
finds usage in submerged parts and ship fittings.
Titanium
Titanium is an important engineering metal due to being strong and lightweight. It
also has high thermal stability even at temperatures as high as 480 degrees Celsius.
Due to these properties, it finds application in the aerospace industry. Military
equipment is one use-case for this metal. Since titanium is also corrosion resistant,
medical applications also use it. Titanium is also used in the chemical and sporting
goods industry.
Zinc
Galvanised steel
Zinc is a widespread metal and finds a lot of use in the medical and industrial
sector. Its primary use is to galvanise steel. This protects the steel from corrosion.
Zinc is also used to manufacture die castings for the electrical, hardware, and
automobile industry. Since zinc has low electrochemical potential, its uses include
marine applications to prevent corrosion of other metals through cathodic
protection. Sacrificial zinc anodes may protect valves, pipelines, and tanks.
Lead
Lead is a highly machinable, corrosion resistant metal. Piping and paint represent
some use-cases. Lead was used as an anti-knocking agent in gasoline. Later, it was
discovered that the byproduct of this lead was responsible for serious health
complications. Lead is still common in ammunition, car batteries, radiation
protection, lifting weights, cable sheathing etc.




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NON METALLIC MATERIALS

Non-metallic materials--structural plastics, extrusions, moldings, single-skin and sandwich
structures--are finding increasing use, and consideration for further use, in the field of
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reach new goals in the areas of corrosion resistance, electromagnetic interference (EMI)
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b) A composite material is a combination of two materials with different physical and [7M]
chemical properties. When they are combined they create a material which is
specialised to do a certain job, for instance to become stronger, lighter or resistant to
electricity. They can also improve strength and stiffness. The reason for their use over
traditional materials is because they improve the properties of their base materials and
are applicable in many situations.

What are the Different Types?

Some common composite materials include:

 Ceramic matrix composite: Ceramic spread out in a ceramic matrix.

These are better than normal ceramics as they are thermal shock and
fracture resistant
 Metal matrix composite: A metal spread throughout a matrix
 Reinforced concrete: Concrete strengthened by a material with high
tensile strength such as steel reinforcing bars
 Glass fibre reinforced concrete: Concrete which is poured into a glass
fibre structure with high zirconia content
 Translucent concrete: Concrete which encases optic fibres
 Engineered wood: Manufactured wood combined with other cheap
materials. One example would be particle board. A speciality material
like veneer can also be found in this composite
  Plywood: Engineered wood by gluing many thin layers of wood
together at different angles
 Engineered bamboo: Strips of bamboo fibre glued together to make a
board. This is a useful composite due to the fact it has higher
compressive, tensile and flexural strength than wood
 Parquetry: A square of many wood pieces put together often out of
hardwood. It is sold as a decorative piece
 Wood-plastic composite: Either wood fibre or flour cast in plastic
 Cement-bonded wood fibre: Mineralised wood pieces cast in cement.
This composite has insulating and acoustic properties
 Fibreglass: Glass fibre combined with a plastic which is relatively
inexpensive and flexible
 Carbon Fibre reinforced polymer: Carbon fibre set in plastic which
has a high strength-to-weight ratio
 Sandwich panel: A variety of composites that are layered on top of
each other
 Composite honeycomb: A selection of composites in many hexagons
to form a honeycomb shape.
 Papier-mache: Paper bound with an adhesive. These are found in
crafts
 Plastic coated paper: Paper coated with plastic to improve durability.
An example of where this is used is in playing cards
 Syntactic foams: Light materials created by filling metals, ceramics or
plastics with microballoons. These ballons are made using either glass,
carbon or plastic

What are the Advantages of Composite Material

 Low costs compared to metals

 Design flexibility

 Resistance to a wide range of chemical agents

 Low weight

 Durability

 Electric insulation

 High Impact strength

Why use Composites?

Weight saving is one of the main reasons for using composite materials rather
than conventional materials for components. While composites are lighter they
can also be stronger than other materials, for example, reinforced carbon-fibre
can be up to five times stronger than 1020 grade steel and only one fifth of the
weight, making it perfect for structural purposes.

Another advantage of using a composite over a conventional type of material is

the thermal and chemical resistance as well as the electrical insulation
properties. Unlike conventional materials, composites can have multiple
properties not often found in a single material.

Fibre reinforced composites, such as fibre reinforced plastic (FRP composites),

are finding increasing use in the design and manufacture of final products for
commercialisation.

Examples of Composite Uses

 Electrical equipment
 Aerospace structures
 Infrastructure
 Pipes and tanks
 Homes can be framed using plastic laminated beams

Advantages of Composites Usage in Aerospace

Some of the key benefits of using composites for aerospace applications
include the following:

 Weight reduction up to 20 to 50%.

 Single-shell molded structures provide higher strength at lower weight.
 High impact resistance. For instance, Kevlar (aramid) armor shields
planes have reduced accidental damage to the engine pylons that carry
fuel lines and engine controls.
 High thermal stability
 Resistant to fatigue/corrosion
 Structural components made of composite materials are easy to
assemble.

Composite Aircrafts and the Environment

Recycling used parts from decommissioned aircrafts is another option available
when using  aerospace composites.

The Boeing Company is particularly involved in improving the environmental

performance of the airplanes by adopting recycling of all the aircraft materials
manufactured using composites.

The recycling of composites is a two-step process that involves separating

composites from other aircraft materials during an aircraft’s retirement and
recovering good quality fibers to be re-introduced as a materials source in
aerospace manufacturing.

>Although recycling of an aircraft structure is a complex and expensive

process, it may save money in purchasing expensive first-hand parts.

The Future of Composites in Aerospace

With increasing fuel costs, commercial aerospace manufacturers are under
pressure to enhance the performance of aircrafts, for which weight reduction is
a key factor.

Based on the progress that is being made in composite construction techniques,

it is very likely that the airplane of tomorrow will be manufactured using
composite materials.

However, there are still some hurdles to overcome before composites can
replace aluminum and other metal alloys completely, particularly in case of
large airplanes.

For one, composites are expensive and require a large labor force plus complex
and expensive fabrication machines.

Composite technology continues to advance, and the invention of new types of

composites such as carbon nanotubes and basalt forms will further accelerate
composite usage.
8. a) [7M]
A turboprop engine is a turbine engine that drives an aircraft propeller.[1]
A turboprop consists of an intake, reduction gearbox, compressor, combustor, turbine, and
a propelling nozzle.[2] Air is drawn into the intake and compressed by the compressor. Fuel
is then added to the compressed air in the combustor, where the fuel-air mixture
then combusts. The hot combustion gases expand through the turbine. Some of the power
generated by the turbine is used to drive the compressor.
The rest is transmitted through the reduction gearing to the propeller. Further expansion of
the gases occurs in the propelling nozzle, where the gases exhaust to atmospheric pressure.
The propelling nozzle provides a relatively small proportion of the thrust generated by a
turboprop.[3]
In contrast to a turbojet, the engine's exhaust gases do not contain enough energy to create
significant thrust, since almost all of the engine's power is used to drive the propeller.
 Turboprops and turboshafts usually have a free-turbine or power turbine to drive the
propeller or the main rotor blade (turboshafts). • Stress limitations require that the
large diameter propeller rotate at a much lower rate and hence a speed reducer is
required. • Turboprops may also have a thrust component due to the jet exhaust in
addition to the propeller thrust. • In turboshafts, however, there is no thrust component
due to the nozzle

In turboprops, thrust consists of two components, the propeller thrust and the nozzle
thrust. • The total thrust of a propeller is equal to the sum of the nozzle thrust and the
propeller thrust.

Ramjet is the simplest of all the airbreathing engines. • It consists of a diffuser,

combustion chamber and a nozzle. • Ramjets are most efficient when operated at
supersonic speeds. • When air is decelerated from a high Mach number to a low
subsonic Mach number, it results in substantial increase in pressure and temperature. •
Hence Ramjets do not need compressors and consequently no turbines as well.

b) [7M]
Rocket Principles
A rocket in its simplest form is a chamber enclosing a gas under pressure. A small opening
at one end of the chamber allows the gas to escape, and in doing so provides a thrust that
propels the rocket in the opposite direction. A good example of this is a balloon. Air inside
a balloon is compressed by the balloon's rubber walls. The air pushes back so that the
inward and outward pressing forces are balanced. When the nozzle is released, air escapes
through it and the balloon is propelled in the opposite direction.
When we think of rockets, we rarely think of balloons. Instead, our attention
is drawn to the giant vehicles that carry satellites into orbit and spacecraft to
the Moon and planets. Nevertheless, there is a strong similarity between the
two. The only significant difference is the way the pressurized gas is
produced. With space rockets, the gas is produced by burning propellants that
can be solid or liquid in form or a combination of the two.

One of the interesting facts about the historical development of rockets is that
while rockets and rocket-powered devices have been in use for more than two
thousand years, it has been only in the last three hundred years that rocket
experimenters have had a scientific basis for understanding how they work.

The science of rocketry began with the publishing of a book in 1687 by the
great English scientist Sir Isaac Newton. His book, entitled Philosophiae
Naturalis Principia Mathematica, described physical principles in nature.
Today, Newton's work is usually just called the Principia. In the Principia,
Newton stated three important scientific principles that govern the motion of
all objects, whether on Earth or in space. Knowing these principles, now
called Newton's Laws of Motion, rocketeers have been able to construct the
modern giant rockets of the 20th century such as the Saturn V and the Space
Shuttle. Here now, in simple form, are Newton's Laws of Motion.

1. Objects at rest will stay at rest and objects in motion will stay in
motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an unbalanced force.
2. Force is equal to mass times acceleration.
3. For every action there is always an opposite and equal reaction.

As will be explained shortly, all three laws are really simple statements of
how things move. But with them, precise determinations of rocket
performance can be made.

Newton's First Law

This law of motion is just an obvious statement of fact, but to know what it
means, it is necessary to understand the terms rest, motion, and unbalanced
force.
Rest and motion can be thought of as being opposite to each other. Rest is the
state of an object when it is not changing position in relation to its
surroundings. If you are sitting still in a chair, you can be said to be at rest.
This term, however, is relative. Your chair may actually be one of many seats
on a speeding airplane. The important thing to remember here is that you are
not moving in relation to your immediate surroundings. If rest were defined
as a total absence of motion, it would not exist in nature. Even if you were
sitting in your chair at home, you would still be moving, because your chair is
actually sitting on the surface of a spinning planet that is orbiting a star. The
star is moving through a rotating galaxy that is, itself, moving through the
universe. While sitting "still," you are, in fact, traveling at a speed of
hundreds of kilometers per second.

Motion is also a relative term. All matter in the universe is moving all the
time, but in the first law, motion here means changing position in relation to
surroundings. A ball is at rest if it is sitting on the ground. The ball is in
motion if it is rolling. A rolling ball changes its position in relation to its
surroundings. When you are sitting on a chair in an airplane, you are at rest,
but if you get up and walk down the aisle, you are in motion. A rocket
blasting off the launch pad changes from a state of rest to a state of motion.

The third term important to understanding this law is unbalanced force. If you
hold a ball in your hand and keep it still, the ball is at rest. All the time the
ball is held there though, it is being acted upon by forces. The force of gravity
is trying to pull the ball downward, while at the same time your hand is
pushing against the ball to hold it up. The forces acting on the ball are
balanced. Let the ball go, or move your hand upward, and the forces become
unbalanced. The ball then changes from a state of rest to a state of motion.

In rocket flight, forces become balanced and unbalanced all the time. A
rocket on the launch pad is balanced. The surface of the pad pushes the rocket
up while gravity tries to pull it down. As the engines are ignited, the thrust
from the rocket unbalances the forces, and the rocket travels upward. Later,
when the rocket runs out of fuel, it slows down, stops at the highest point of
its flight, then falls back to Earth.

Objects in space also react to forces. A spacecraft moving through the solar
system is in constant motion. The spacecraft will travel in a straight line if the
forces on it are in balance. This happens only when the spacecraft is very far
from any large gravity source such as Earth or the other planets and their
moons. If the spacecraft comes near a large body in space, the gravity of that
body will unbalance the forces and curve the path of the spacecraft. This
happens, in particular, when a satellite is sent by a rocket on a path that is
parallel to Earth's surface. If the rocket shoots the spacecraft fast enough, the
spacecraft will orbit Earth. As long as another unbalanced force, such as
friction with gas molecules in orbit or the firing of a rocket engine in the
opposite direction from its movement, does not slow the spacecraft, it will
orbit Earth forever

Now that the three major terms of this first law have been explained, it is
possible to restate this law. If an object, such as a rocket, is at rest, it takes an
unbalanced force to make it move. If the object is already moving, it takes an
unbalanced force, to stop it, change its direction from a straight line path, or
alter its speed.

Newton's Third Law

For the time being, we will skip the second law and go directly to the third.
This law states that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If you
have ever stepped off a small boat that has not been properly tied to a pier,
you will know exactly what this law means.

A rocket can lift off from a launch pad only when it expels gas out of its
engine. The rocket pushes on the gas, and the gas in turn pushes on the
rocket. The whole process is very similar to riding a skateboard. Imagine that
a skateboard and rider are in a state of rest (not moving). The rider jumps off
the skateboard. In the third law, the jumping is called an action. The
skateboard responds to that action by traveling some distance in the opposite
direction. The skateboard's opposite motion is called a reaction. When the
distance traveled by the rider and the skateboard are compared, it would
appear that the skateboard has had a much greater reaction than the action of
the rider. This is not the case. The reason the skateboard has traveled farther
is that it has less mass than the rider. This concept will be better explained in
a discussion of the second law.

With rockets, the action is the expelling of gas out of the engine. The reaction
is the movement of the rocket in the opposite direction. To enable a rocket to
lift off from the launch pad, the action, or thrust, from the engine must be
greater than the mass of the rocket. In space, however, even tiny thrusts will
cause the rocket to change direction.

One of the most commonly asked questions about rockets is how they can
work in space where there is no air for them to push against. The answer to
this question comes from the third law. Imagine the skateboard again. On the
ground, the only part air plays in the motions of the rider and the skateboard
is to slow them down. Moving through the air causes friction, or as scientists
call it, drag. The surrounding air impedes the action-reaction.

As a result rockets actually work better in space than they do in air. As the
exhaust gas leaves the rocket engine it must push away the surrounding air;
this uses up some of the energy of the rocket. In space, the exhaust gases can
escape freely.

Newton's Second Law

This law of motion is essentially a statement of a mathematical equation. The

three parts of the equation are mass (m), acceleration (a), and force (f). Using
letters to symbolize each part, the equation can be written as follows:
f = ma
By using simple algebra, we can also write the equation two other ways:
a = f/m
m = f/a
The first version of the equation is the one most commonly referred to when
talking about Newton's second law. It reads: force equals mass times
acceleration. To explain this law, we will use an old style cannon as an
example.

When the cannon is fired, an explosion propels a cannon ball out the open
end of the barrel. It flies a kilometer or two to its target. At the same time the
cannon itself is pushed backward a meter or two. This is action and reaction
at work (third law). The force acting on the cannon and the ball is the same.
What happens to the cannon and the ball is determined by the second law.
Look at the two equations below.

f = m(cannon) * a(cannon)
f = m(ball) * a(ball)
The first equation refers to the cannon and the second to the cannon ball. In
the first equation, the mass is the cannon itself and the acceleration is the
movement of the cannon. In the second equation the mass is the cannon ball
and the acceleration is its movement. Because the force (exploding gun
powder) is the same for the two equations, the equations can be combined
and rewritten below.
m(cannon) * a(cannon) = m(ball) * a(ball)

In order to keep the two sides of the equations equal, the accelerations vary
with mass. In other words, the cannon has a large mass and a small
acceleration. The cannon ball has a small mass and a large acceleration.

Let's apply this principle to a rocket. Replace the mass of the cannon ball
with the mass of the gases being ejected out of the rocket engine. Replace the
mass of the cannon with the mass of the rocket moving in the other direction.
Force is the pressure created by the controlled explosion taking place inside
the rocket's engines. That pressure accelerates the gas one way and the rocket
the other.

Some interesting things happen with rockets that don't happen with the
cannon and ball in this example. With the cannon and cannon ball, the thrust
lasts for just a moment. The thrust for the rocket continues as long as its
engines are firing. Furthermore, the mass of the rocket changes during flight.
Its mass is the sum of all its parts. Rocket parts includes engines, propellant
tanks, payload, control system, and propellants. By far, the largest part of the
rocket's mass is its propellants. But that amount constantly changes as the
engines fire. That means that the rocket's mass gets smaller during flight. In
order for the left side of our equation to remain in balance with the right side,
acceleration of the rocket has to increase as its mass decreases. That is why a
rocket starts off moving slowly and goes faster and faster as it climbs into
space.

Newton's second law of motion is especiaily useful when designing efficient

rockets. To enable a rocket to climb into low Earth orbit, it is necessary to
achieve a speed, in excess of 28,000 km per hour. A speed of over 40,250 km
per hour, called escape velocity, enables a rocket to leave Earth and travel out
into deep space. Attaining space flight speeds requires the rocket engine to
achieve the greatest action force possible in the shortest time. In other words,
the engine must burn a large mass of fuel and push the resulting gas out of the
engine as rapidly as possible. Ways of doing this will be described in the
next chapter, practical rocketry..

Newton's second law of motion can be restated in the following way: the
greater the mass of rocket fuel burned, and the faster the gas produced can
escape the engine, the greater the thrust of the rocket.

Putting Newton's Laws of Motion Together

An unbalanced force must be exerted for a rocket to lift off from a launch pad
 or for a craft in space to change speed or direction (first law). The amount of
thrust (force) produced by a rocket engine will be determined by the mass of
rocket fuel that is burned and how fast the gas escapes the rocket (second
law). The reaction, or motion, of the rocket is equal to and in the opposite
direction of the action, or thrust, from the engine (third law).

MODULE – V
9. a) [7M]
Project Mercury was the first human spaceflight program of the United States, running
from 1958 through 1963. An early highlight of the Space Race, its goal was to put a man
into Earth orbit and return him safely, ideally before the Soviet Union. Taken over from
the US Air Force by the newly created civilian space agency NASA, it conducted twenty
uncrewed developmental flights (some using animals), and six successful flights
by astronauts. The program, which took its name from Roman mythology, cost
$2.25 billion adjusted for inflation.[1][n 2] The astronauts were collectively known as the
"Mercury Seven", and each spacecraft was given a name ending with a "7" by its pilot.
The Space Race began with the 1957 launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik 1. This came as
a shock to the American public, and led to the creation of NASA to expedite existing US
space exploration efforts, and place most of them under civilian control. After the
successful launch of the Explorer 1 satellite in 1958, crewed spaceflight became the next
goal. The Soviet Union put the first human, cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, into a single orbit
aboard Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. Shortly after this, on May 5, the US launched its first
astronaut, Alan Shepard, on a suborbital flight. Soviet Gherman Titov followed with a
day-long orbital flight in August 1961. The US reached its orbital goal on February 20,
1962, when John Glenn made three orbits around the Earth. When Mercury ended in May
1963, both nations had sent six people into space, but the Soviets led the US in total time
spent in space.
The Mercury space capsule was produced by McDonnell Aircraft, and carried supplies of
water, food and oxygen for about one day in a pressurized cabin. Mercury flights were
launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, on launch vehicles modified
from the Redstone and Atlas D missiles. The capsule was fitted with a launch escape
rocket to carry it safely away from the launch vehicle in case of a failure. The flight was
designed to be controlled from the ground via the Manned Space Flight Network, a system
of tracking and communications stations; back-up controls were outfitted on board.
Small retrorockets were used to bring the spacecraft out of its orbit, after which an ablative
heat shield protected it from the heat of atmospheric reentry. Finally, a parachute slowed
the craft for a water landing. Both astronaut and capsule were recovered by helicopters
deployed from a US Navy ship.
The Mercury project gained popularity, and its missions were followed by millions on
radio and TV around the world. Its success laid the groundwork for Project Gemini, which
carried two astronauts in each capsule and perfected space docking maneuvers essential
for crewed lunar landings in the subsequent Apollo program announced a few weeks after
the first crewed Mercury flight.

b) [7M]
The main components of a satellite consist of the
communications system, which includes the antennas and
transponders that receive and retransmit signals, the power
system, which includes the solar panels that provide power, and
the propulsion system, which includes the rockets that propel
the satellite. A satellite needs its own propulsion system to get
itself to the right orbital location and to make occasional
corrections to that position. A satellite in geostationary
orbit can deviate up to a degree every year from north to south
or east to west of its location because of the gravitational pull
of the Moon and Sun. A satellite has thrusters that are fired
occasionally to make adjustments in its position. The
maintenance of a satellite’s orbital position is called “station
keeping,” and the corrections made by using the satellite’s
thrusters are called “attitude control.” A satellite’s life span is
determined by the amount of fuel it has to power these
thrusters. Once the fuel runs out, the satellite eventually drifts
into space and out of operation, becoming space debris.

A satellite in orbit has to operate continuously over its entire

life span. It needs internal power to be able to operate its
electronic systems and communications payload. The main
source of power is sunlight, which is harnessed by the
satellite’s solar panels. A satellite also has batteries on board to
provide power when the Sun is blocked by Earth. The batteries
are recharged by the excess current generated by the solar
panels when there is sunlight.

Satellites operate in extreme temperatures from −150 °C (−238

°F) to 150 °C (300 °F) and may be subject to radiation in
space. Satellite components that can be exposed to radiation are
shielded with aluminium and other radiation-resistant material.
A satellite’s thermal system protects its sensitive electronic and
mechanical components and maintains it in its optimum
functioning temperature to ensure its continuous operation. A
satellite’s thermal system also protects sensitive satellite
components from the extreme changes in temperature by
activation of cooling mechanisms when it gets too hot or
heating systems when it gets too cold.

The tracking telemetry and control (TT&C) system of a

satellite is a two-way communication link between the satellite
and TT&C on the ground. This allows a ground station to track
a satellite’s position and control the satellite’s propulsion,
thermal, and other systems. It can also monitor the temperature,
electrical voltages, and other important parameters of a
satellite.

Communication satellites range from microsatellites weighing

less than 1 kg (2.2 pounds) to large satellites weighing over
6,500 kg (14,000 pounds). Advances in miniaturization and
digitalization have substantially increased the capacity of
satellites over the years. Early Bird had just one transponder
capable of sending just one TV channel. The Boeing 702 series
of satellites, in contrast, can have more than 100 transponders,
and with the use of digital compression technology each
transponder can have up to 16 channels, providing more than
1,600 TV channels through one satellite.

Satellites operate in three different orbits: low Earth

orbit (LEO), medium Earth orbit (MEO), and geostationary or
geosynchronous orbit (GEO). LEO satellites are positioned at
an altitude between 160 km and 1,600 km (100 and 1,000
miles) above Earth. MEO satellites operate from 10,000 to
20,000 km (6,300 to 12,500 miles) from Earth. (Satellites do
not operate between LEO and MEO because of the inhospitable
environment for electronic components in that area, which is
caused by the Van Allen radiation belt.) GEO satellites are
positioned 35,786 km (22,236 miles) above Earth, where they
complete one orbit in 24 hours and thus remain fixed over one
spot. As mentioned above, it only takes three GEO satellites to
provide global coverage, while it takes 20 or more satellites to
cover the entire Earth from LEO and 10 or more in MEO. In
addition, communicating with satellites in LEO and MEO
requires tracking antennas on the ground to ensure seamless
connection between satellites.

A signal that is bounced off a GEO satellite takes

approximately 0.22 second to travel at the speed of light from
Earth to the satellite and back. This delay poses some problems
for applications such as voice services and mobile telephony.
Therefore, most mobile and voice services usually use LEO or
MEO satellites to avoid the signal delays resulting from
the inherent latency in GEO satellites. GEO satellites are
usually used for broadcasting and data applications because of
the larger area on the ground that they can cover.

Launching a satellite into space requires a very powerful

multistage rocket to propel it into the right orbit. Satellite
launch providers use proprietary rockets to launch satellites
from sites such as the Kennedy Space Center at Cape
Canaveral, Florida, the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan,
Kourou in French Guiana, Vandenberg Air Force Base in
California, Xichang in China, and Tanegashima Island in
Japan.

Satellite communications use the very high-frequency range of

1–50 gigahertz (GHz; 1 gigahertz = 1,000,000,000 hertz) to
transmit and receive signals. The frequency ranges or bands are
identified by letters: (in order from low to high frequency) L-,
S-, C-, X-, Ku-, Ka-, and V-bands. Signals in the lower range
(L-, S-, and C-bands) of the satellite frequency spectrum are
transmitted with low power, and thus larger antennas are
needed to receive these signals. Signals in the higher end (X-,
Ku-, Ka-, and V-bands) of this spectrum have more power;
therefore, dishes as small as 45 cm (18 inches) in diameter can
receive them. This makes the Ku-band and Ka-band spectrum
ideal for direct-to-home (DTH) broadcasting, broadband data
communications, and mobile telephony and data applications.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a

specialized agency of the United Nations, regulates satellite
communications. The ITU, which is based in Geneva,
Switzerland, receives and approves applications for use of
orbital slots for satellites. Every two to four years the
ITU convenes the World Radiocommunication Conference,
which is responsible for assigning frequencies to various
applications in various regions of the world. Each country’s
telecommunications regulatory agency enforces these
regulations and awards licenses to users of various frequencies.
In the United States the regulatory body that governs frequency
allocation and licensing is the Federal Communications
Commission.

Satellite Applications
Advances in satellite technology have given rise to a healthy
satellite services sector that provides various services to
broadcasters, Internet service providers (ISPs), governments,
the military, and other sectors. There are three types of
communication services that satellites
provide: telecommunications, broadcasting, and data
communications. Telecommunication services
include telephone calls and services provided to telephone
companies, as well as wireless, mobile, and cellular network
providers.

Broadcasting services include radio and television delivered
directly to the consumer and mobile broadcasting services.
DTH, or satellite television, services (such as the DirecTV and
DISH Network services in the United States) are received
directly by households. Cable and network programming is
delivered to local stations and affiliates largely via satellite.
Satellites also play an important role in delivering
programming to cell phones and other mobile devices, such as
personal digital assistants and laptops.

Data communications involve the transfer of data from one

point to another. Corporations and organizations that require
financial and other information to be exchanged between their
various locations use satellites to facilitate the transfer of data
through the use of very small-aperture terminal (VSAT)
networks. With the growth of the Internet, a significant amount
of Internet traffic goes through satellites, making ISPs one of
the largest customers for satellite services.

Satellite communications technology is often used during

natural disasters and emergencies when land-based
communication services are down. Mobile satellite equipment
can be deployed to disaster areas to provide emergency
communication services.

One major technical disadvantage of satellites, particularly

those in geostationary orbit, is an inherent delay in
transmission. While there are ways to compensate for this
delay, it makes some applications that require real-time
transmission and feedback, such as voice communications, not
ideal for satellites.

Satellites face competition from other media such as fibre

optics, cable, and other land-based delivery systems such
as microwaves and even power lines. The main advantage of
satellites is that they can distribute signals from one point to
many locations. As such, satellite technology is ideal for
“point-to-multipoint” communications such as broadcasting.
Satellite communication does not require massive investments
on the ground—making it ideal for underserved and isolated
areas with dispersed populations.

Satellites and other delivery mechanisms such as fibre optics,

cable, and other terrestrial networks are not mutually exclusive.
A combination of various delivery mechanisms may be needed,
which has given rise to various hybrid solutions where
satellites can be one of the links in the chain in combination
with other media. Ground service providers called “teleports”
have the capability to receive and transmit signals from
satellites and also provide connectivity with other terrestrial
networks.

The Future Of Satellite Communication

 In a relatively short span of time, satellite technology has
developed from the experimental (Sputnik in 1957) to the
sophisticated and powerful. Mega-constellations of thousands
of satellites designed to bring Internet access to anywhere on
Earth are in development. Future communication satellites will
have more onboard processing capabilities, more power, and
larger-aperture antennas that will enable satellites to handle
more bandwidth. Further improvements in satellites’
propulsion and power systems will increase their service life to
20–30 years from the current 10–15 years. In addition, other
technical innovations such as low-cost reusable launch
vehicles are in development. With increasing video, voice, and
data traffic requiring larger amounts of bandwidth, there is no
dearth of emerging applications that will drive demand for the
satellite services in the years to come. The demand for more
bandwidth, coupled with the continuing innovation and
development of satellite technology, will ensure the long-term
viability of the commercial satellite industry well into the 21st
century.

10. a) [7M]
Power budget is power utilisation and consumption calculation associated with a system. It
can be seen as net power balance of the system while in operation. The power generated
and consumed can vary according to mode of operation.
In case of a satellite, typically, solar panels generate power and battery stores it for use.
While designing the satellite, we have to calculate how much power needs to be generated
so as to cater the needs of all the electronics onboard. This calculation of how much power
needs to be generated will be responsible for solar panel parameters. A storage capacity of
battery is also dictated by the power needs in the eclipse region of the orbit, wherein solar
panels do not generate power.It may seem as if the power budget can be calculated only
when entire design of all the electrical components is known. But, a tentative budget
calculation starts at the beginning. The parameters for the solar panels, battery and various
loads get fixed iteratively and eventually the power budget get refined. Starting with
ballpark values, helps us get to the initial design parameters which are later analysed and
changed iteratively, as required to meet the requirements from various subsystems. The
ballpark values can be obtained by studying the literature of previous satellite missions,
from studying particular class of components etc. System Engineer plays an important role
in making and maintaining the power budget of the system.

Case Studies of Power Budget

Power budget can be calculated by listing all the major components which consume some
significant power. We will be calculating the power consumption of Pratham by taking
one subsystem of Pratham and calculate the power consumed by it and do the same for
other subsystem and add them up.
b) [7M]
A space suit or spacesuit is a garment worn to keep a human alive in the harsh
environment of outer space, vacuum and temperature extremes. Space suits are often worn
inside spacecraft as a safety precaution in case of loss of cabin pressure, and are necessary
for extravehicular activity (EVA), work done outside spacecraft. Space suits have been
worn for such work in Earth orbit, on the surface of the Moon, and en route back to Earth
from the Moon. Modern space suits augment the basic pressure garment with a complex
system of equipment and environmental systems designed to keep the wearer comfortable,
and to minimize the effort required to bend the limbs, resisting a soft pressure garment's
natural tendency to stiffen against the vacuum. A self-contained oxygen supply and
environmental control system is frequently employed to allow complete freedom of
movement, independent of the spacecraft.
Three types of space suits exist for different purposes: IVA (intravehicular activity), EVA
(extravehicular activity), and IEVA (intra/extravehicular activity). IVA suits are meant to
be worn inside a pressurized spacecraft, and are therefore lighter and more comfortable.
IEVA suits are meant for use inside and outside the spacecraft, such as the Gemini
G4C suit. They include more protection from the harsh conditions of space, such as
protection from micrometeorites and extreme temperature change. EVA suits, such as
the EMU, are used outside spacecraft, for either planetary exploration or spacewalks. They
must protect the wearer against all conditions of space, as well as provide mobility and
functionality.[1]
Some of these requirements also apply to pressure suits worn for other specialized tasks,
such as high-altitude reconnaissance flight. At altitudes above the Armstrong limit, around
19,000 m (62,000 ft), water boils at body temperature and pressurized suits are needed.
The first full-pressure suits for use at extreme altitudes were designed by individual
inventors as early as the 1930s. The first space suit worn by a human in space was
the Soviet SK-1 suit worn by Yuri Gagarin in 1961.

United States suit models

 In the early 1950s, Siegfried Hansen and colleagues at Litton Industries designed
and built a working hard-shell suit, which was used inside vacuum chambers and was
the predecessor of space suits used in NASA missions.[9]
 Navy Mark IV high-altitude/vacuum suit used for Project Mercury (1961–1963).
 Gemini space suits (1965–1966), there were three main variants developed: G3C
designed for intra-vehicle use; G4C specially designed for EVA and intra-vehicle use;
and a special G5C suit worn by the Gemini 7 crew for 14 days inside the spacecraft.
 Manned Orbital Laboratory MH-7 space suits for the canceled MOL program.
 Apollo Block I A1C suit (1966–1967) was a derivative of the Gemini suit, worn
by primary and backup crews in training for two early Apollo missions. The nylon
pressure garment melted and burned through in the Apollo 1 cabin fire. This suit
became obsolete when crewed Block I Apollo flights were discontinued after the fire.
 Apollo/Skylab A7L EVA and Moon suits. The Block II Apollo suit was the
primary pressure suit worn for eleven Apollo flights, three Skylab flights, and the US
astronauts on the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project between 1968 and 1975. The pressure
garment's nylon outer layer was replaced with fireproof Beta cloth after the Apollo 1
fire. This suit was the first to employ a liquid-cooled inner garment and outer
micrometeroid garment. Beginning with the Apollo 13 mission, it also introduced
"commander's stripes" so that a pair of space walkers will not appear identical on
camera.[10]
 Shuttle Ejection Escape Suit used from STS-1 (1981) to STS-4 (1982) by a two-
man crew used in conjunction with the then-installed ejection seats. Derived from
a USAF model.[11] These were removed once the Shuttle became certified.
 From STS-5 (1982) to STS-51-L (1986) no pressure suits were worn during
launch and reentry. The crew would wear only a blue-flight suit with an oxygen
helmet.
 Launch Entry Suit first used on STS-26 (1988), the first flight after
the Challenger disaster. It was a partial pressure suit derived from a USAF model. [12] It
was used from 1988 to 1998.
 Advanced Crew Escape Suit used on the Space Shuttle starting in 1994. [13] The
 Advanced Crew Escape Suit or ACES suit, is a full-pressure suit worn by all Space
Shuttle crews for the ascent and entry portions of flight. The suit is a direct
descendant of the United States Air Force high-altitude pressure suits worn by SR-71
Blackbird and U-2 spy plane pilots, North American X-15 and Gemini pilot-
astronauts, and the Launch Entry Suits worn by NASA astronauts starting on the STS-
26 flight. It is derived from a USAF model.
 Extravehicular Mobility Unit (EMU) used on both the Space Shuttle
and International Space Station (ISS). The EMU is an independent anthropomorphic
system that provides environmental protection, mobility, life support, and
communications for a Space Shuttle or ISS crew member to perform an EVA in Earth
orbit. Used from 1982 to present, but only available in limited sizing as of 2019.[14]
 Aerospace company SpaceX developed an IVA suit which is worn by astronauts
involved in Commercial Crew Program missions operated by SpaceX since
the Demo-2 mission (see #SpaceX suit ("Starman suit")).
 Orion Crew Survival System (OCSS) will be used during launch and re-entry
on the Orion MPCV. It is derived from the Advanced Crew Escape Suit but is able to
operate at a higher pressure and has improved mobility in the shoulders