The Reusability Component

Elon Musk is the latest in a long line of visionary pioneers responsible for the evolution of the concept of reusability. SpaceX is the first private organisation to do this at scale. A Falcon 9 booster with the serial number 1058 has been reused seventeen times. To track the concept of reusability, considered the Holy Grail of long term rocket technology development, we need to go back 104 years to the year 1919.

The Starship Superheavy full stack at Boca Chica. The dots on the beach in the foreground I’m are road vehicles…gives you a perspective of size.

A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes

Dr Robert Goddard considered the Father of modern rocketry in his pioneering paper of 1919 laid out the outlines which rocketry abides by to this day.

Dr Robert Goddard and his very first rocket.

He was the first  to theorise that rockets could operate in a vacuum unlike conventional aircraft and to achieve that he highlighted Newton’s Third Law of Motion, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. He deacribed experiments with various types of propulsion both solid and liquid, and spoke of the need for further detailed experiments ( which he would carry on for the next twenty five years). Furthermore he was the first person to predict that rockets could get to space ( at that time the demarcation between the atmosphere and space, later known as the Karman Line was not yet clear). He was the first person to create the vision of space travel using rockets (non fiction).

For all his visionary brilliance Dr Robert Goddard never received any of the accolades showered on him posthumously. He was at various times called a madman, viewed with derision or just plain indifference. He rarely had access to funding (which if made available to him might have changed the face of the Space Race decades later). He had over two hundred patents covering rocket designs, propulsion systems and other related engineering concepts such as the stabilising Gyro patent no 1102653 from 1914.

A closeup of the Goddard’s stability gyro in a rocket of his. The basis of rocket directional control.

Herman Oberth ( later considered one of the founding fathers of rocketry) published a book in 1927 called ‘ A Rocket into Planetary Space’, the timeline suggests he might have used ideas from Goddard’s 1919 paper. Oberth researched independently as well.

Charles Lindbergh, now a National Treasure after his Trans Atlantic exploit of 1927, visited Goddard’s laboratory in 1929 and expressed his support. This bought positive attention to an otherwise ignored Goddard.

The Rise of German Technology

Herman Oberth’s 1927 book created a lot of interest in Germany and whereas Goddard was viewed with derision, the Germans looked up to his ideas and formed rocket clubs. The VFRs ( translated to Society for Space Travel) were primarily based around Berlin and they experimented through the late 1920s and 30s with various aspects of rocketry such as propulsion and design. These societies were instrumental in not only contributing to rocket technology development, but nurtured several future rocket scientists, names such as Wernhard Von Braun.

From 1932 through the VFRs Wernhard Von Braun developed an all encompassing interest in rocketry. From then on he devoted the rest of his life to it. After coming to power in 1933 the Nazi party took more than a passing interest in the strides made at the VFRs. At around the same time the societies or the Nazi party using them as fronts (it’s not clear) asked for and received all of Dr Robert Goddard’s over two hundred rocketry patents, from the US Patents office for just 38 cents each!

Von Braun completed his PhD in Physics from the University of Berlin with a dissertation in rocketry in 1937, and began working on the A4/V2 program after first joining the SS as an officer at the Peenemunde rocket development facility on the German Baltic coast. His oratory skills along with his technical dedication to rocketry quickly brought him to the Nazi Party’s attention while still a hobbyist at the VFRs.

Unlike the VFRs which were impoverished and had out of work hobbyists playing around with rockets, the Nazis pretty much gave him a Carte Blanche which he used to construct the state of the art facility at Peenemunde. After almost six years of focused development an A4 demonstration to Hitler failed and the facility was almost closed down.

One of Von Braun’s early A4 rockets, the moonrocket from Tintin’s Destination Moon bears more than a fleeting resemblance to this.

He had one staunch supporter, the SS General Hans Kammler, who urged him to continue his work. In August of 1943 Operation Hydra launched an air raid on Peenemunde. The damage caused to the facility took about six weeks to repair, however the Nazi high command knew the facility needed to be moved, and the decision to move to Mittelwerk Dora, into miles of underground tunnels was taken.

Here using over 60,000 concentration camp prisoners in appalling conditions research on the A4/V2 continued at pace and in June 1944 a V2 rocket became the first manmade object to get to space. (The Nazis did not normally use concentration camp labour for sensitive work, this points to the urgency of development needed.)

This achievement immediately led to an order of 12000 V2s from the Nazi Party to be used as the first missiles ever . Over 5700 were constructed and 3100 launched. The V2s themselves were responsible for only about 2500 casualties, but the Allies and Russia became very aware of a new weapon that radically changed the rules of engagement.

The tragic aspect of Mittelwerk Dora is that over 20,000 prisoners of the 60,000 allocated died at the camp. Over 200 of them hanged for sabotage (it is impossible to estimate how many lives these poor souls saved).

Once Mittelwerk fell to the Allies and Russia, they quickly divided the groups of scientists and the remaining 2600 V2 rockets (some complete, others in various stages of completion) among them to develop their own rocketry expertise.

Wernhard Von Braun a SS and Nazi Officer was brought to America as part of Operation Paperclip along with over 1000 scientists, fourteen tons of rocket research documents and approximately 100 finished V2 rockets.

Once in America Von Braun and his team were  initially with the US Army as they continued with their research on rockets. They were part of the research team that fired the V2 rockets as part of high altitude experiments as the US worked on understanding the characteristics of flight in the upper atmosphere.

In 1950 the entire team was transferred to the ABMA (Army Ballistic Missile Agency) which in turn was transferred to the newly formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958.

A Nazi Officer would become an American Hero. This part of Von Braun’s life has been debated at length, the fact is He never expressed any remorse about Nazi actions during the war and He could not have not known about the appalling conditions of the workers.

He managed to use his expertise as a bargaining chip to avoid any persecution.

The X-15 Program

A X-15 just landed back on ground at Edwards AirForce Base. It was customary for the B-52s that dropped them to buzz them on the ground. Note the sleds for the main landing gear.

Until 1957 each of the arms of the armed services had their own rocket research program and they were in direct competition with each other. On that date in 1957 when Sputnik was launched and the launch a month later of Sputnik II with Laika the dog (went on a one way ticket) was just the kick the US needed. Their attempt to launch the Vanguard TV3 (Test Vehicle 3) ended in a launchpad disaster in December of 1957. The US would finally bring in Von Braun to be on the team that finally had the first successful American satellite launch in January 1958.

The X15 program had been on the drawing boards since 1955 but little progress was made.Once the unification body NASA was formed things began to move ahead albeit slowly at first. The first flight finally happened in June 1959.

The primary objective of the X-15 program was to gather data on high speed and high altitude heating and aircraft behaviour characteristics.

The rocket powered aircraft was shaped like a cross between a missile and plane. It had hydrogen peroxide thrusters in its nose and wings which gave the aircraft maneuverability at high altitudes and speeds and as speed and altitude decreased the control surfaces came into play. The aircraft had sleds for the main landing gear that gave it the ability to handle high speed and temperature landings on a variety of surfaces.

Over 199 flights the X-15 would bring back valuable data which would later be used on the Space Shuttle and other Low Earth Orbit vehicles.

An illustration of X-15s operating corridor.

The fleet of three aircraft had their share of mishaps, casualties and miraculous escapes. Along the way the X-15 set several records, highest altitude at 354,000 feet, highest speed at 4250 mph.

The X-15 finally retired in 1968 and was the first reusable spacecraft.

The Lifting Bodies

The lifting body program ran from 1963 to 1975. They were a series of experimental aerodynamic bodies that were meant to test the handling characteristics  of a small crewed reusable and cost effective spacecraft. They had no wings and the bodies looked like cones cut in half with vertical stabilisers only. The lift was generated by the body itself. They were also known as flying tubs.

The first non-powered body the M2-F1 was initially towed by a heavily modified Pontiac Catalina that got to 110 mph in 10.9 seconds. A true petrolhead car in the name of research. It was later towed by a C-47 to an altitude of approximately 12,000 feet and dropped. The craft descended at 3600 feet per minute.

The M2-F1 and the legendary Pontiac Catalina.

The M2-F1 towed by a C-47 with a 1000 foot line.

Once the low speed flight characteristics were understood, the program progressed to heavier powered bodies such as the M2-F3 which was dropped from 45,000 feet by a the same B-52s that dropped the X-15 and descended at a rate of 10,000 feet a minute and topped Mach1. The other bodies were HL-10, X24, X24A & finally X24B. All of these bodies descended at 10,000 feet a minute and made precise landings on their designated runway at Edwards Air Force Base.

The X-24A, M2-F3 and HL-10 lifting bodies

The X-24B and a 10,000 foot per minute rate of descent into Edwards AFB, take a close look at the runways, The Lifting bodies landed in the elect and the X-15 in the right…look at the skid marks

The data gathered from over two hundred of the lifting body flights went a great way in understanding the gliding behaviour of manned spacecraft and helped in designing the Space Shuttle.

The M2-F1 and the Space Shuttle Enterprise in one frame.

The Moonrocket

Until the Starship Superheavy full stack of April 2023, the Saturn V rocket stack that launched the Apollo missions to the Moon and the Skylab between 1967 and 1973 was the biggest rocket by a long way. It held the record for over fifty years.

The height of 363 feet, thrust of over 7.5 million pounds and heavy lift capacity was staggering.

The immense size of the Saturn V rocket can be seen by the man in front. Musk has mentioned that Von Braun always wanted the rocket to get to Mars and hence over engineered it.

Wernhard Von Braun was at the heart of the design and deployment of this gigantic engineering wonder.

The cost of $185 million a launch in 1960s Dollars ($1.4 Billion in 2023) was staggering as well and Congress could not let this expenditure continue.

Future launches to the Moon could only happen when a more cost effective means of launch was made available.

The promise JFK made to the Nation back in 1962 was kept and Man did walk on the Moon before the 1960s was out, the project had played its part and run its course to a logical end.

The Space Shuttle

The hit single ‘ Space Truckin’ by Deep Purple from their album Machine Head of 1972 reflects the mood of the World and the decision made by the Space Task Group formulated in 1969 by Nixon and presented in 1972.

The group had to assess the future of Human spaceflight from America. The options were the Space Shuttle, the Space Station, Moon Missions, Mars Missions or the rest of the Solar System. 

The committee decided to go with the Space Truck and Low Earth Orbit Infrastructure. The Skylab was already in advanced stages of completion by 1972 (it would be launched in 1973).

The concept of the Space Shuttle was to be reusable, comparatively reasonable in cost ( remember each Saturn V launch), safe and be the enabler to furthering space exploration as Mankind headed into the modalities that went into truly interplanetary travel.

While designing the shuttle was a colossal nightmare it was a success on several fronts such as being the Space Truck that not only transported about 36% of the pressurised components of the ISS (International Space Station), it not only transported the Hubble Telescope to space but also transported personnel to space to fit Hubble’s glasses on. And several other significant missions.

The Shuttle docked with the ISS, Space Truckin at its finest.

Shuttle with Hubble. Cutting edge technology.

However it was not completely reusable. The solid fuel tank was discarded after each launch, and the side boosters needed to be thoroughly refurbished before reuse.

The Shuttle itself had between 24000 and 31000 tiles as thermal protection on them and getting them to stick and stay in place was a nightmare (the Shuttle Columbia burned up on re-entry as a result of compromised thermal protection ).

The Boosters and tank made for a complicated set up and the Shuttle launches themselves were not exactly cheap at about $500 million a launch (2011 Dollars).

The Shuttle did have a total of 135 missions and is today considered a major step in the direction of utilitarian reusability, it however needed to be more reliable and cheaper.

The Ansari X Prize

Originally instituted as the X prize in May 1996 by the multifaceted Peter Diamandis. He was inspired by the Orteig Prize of 1919, a $25,000 prize instituted by New York Hotelier Raymond Orteig for the first solo aviator to fly non stop from New York to Paris or vice versa. The prize would eventually be won by Charles Lindbergh in 1927 and the rest is history.

Diamandis realised that  “such a prize updated and offered as a space prize might be just what was needed to bring space travel to the general public, to jump-start a commercial space industry”. The prize was further developed into a suborbital space barnstorming prize (a doff of the hat to the barnstormers of yore) and a prize money of $10 million was committed (backers were yet to be found). The target: The first crewed, non governmental and experimental spacecraft to launch into space twice in two weeks.

In May 2004, following a donation of $10 million by Anousheh and Amir Ansari, the X Prize became the Ansari X prize. Twenty Six Teams from around the World participated in this contest and much like the Orteig Prize that was won about eight years after it was instituted the Ansari X prize too was won by Burt Rutan and his team at Scaled Composites eight years after it was instituted. The Scaled Composites team was backed by Microsoft founder Paul Allen with a backing of $25 million.

Virgin Galactic on its second commercial flight.

Spaceship One at the National Air and Space Museum, it’s wings in the feathered position as it reenters the atmosphere. Forces never exceed 1G.

The Ansari X Prize did catalyse private commercial spaceflight and Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin stand today offering private space trips. Their rockets / planes / spacecraft are fully reusable.

The Ansari X Prize achieved its set goals much like the Orteig prize seventy five years before it.

SpaceX

The X in SpaceX and The Ansari X Prize stand for different reasons.The X in SpaceX stands for Xploration and the X prize would stand for the person’s name who put the prize money up (but that changed). Founded in 2002 by Elon Musk, the goals of SpaceX were Cheaper space exploration (reusability the holy grail of rocketry), commercial spaceflight,Colonizing Mars (that’s the big one), and contracting NASA.

After nearly bankrupting Musk today SpaceX stands as a giant among the next age breed of private space companies, they have achieved scale of launches with a significant reusability and 99.3% success rate (2023). Today watching the Falcon 9 rockets land back on Earth is nothing short of magical.

Two Falcon Heavy side boosters come into land simultaneously…magical.

A Starship nails a landing

What a Starship re-entry can look like.

They launched their first private spaceflight with an all civilian crew in September 2021 led by Jared Issacman . The mission was billed as a fundraiser for St Jude’s hospital and raised over $243 million. Issacman is reputed to have paid $100 million and Musk topping up another $50 million and other public donations. This mission was a significant step as it proved all civilian crews could fly to space and back and highlighted equipment reliability and autonomy.

The Dragon Capsule used by inspiration 4. As it would not be docking with anything a transparent viewing dome replaced the docking mechanism.

The Starship/Superheavy full stack is today the largest rocket fullstack ever set up. While costs are not available, estimates per stack vary between $60 million and $200 million. This puts the cost in a similar ballpark to what the Saturn V stack cost in 1969! Furthermore the full stack offers a significant percentage of reuseability.

SpaceX have truly proved reusability on an industrial scale and continue to break fresh ground with almost every launch. For 2023 SpaceX plans 100 launches and has already completed over 70 with a very high success rate as of October 05,2023.

The Reusability Component Summation

Reusability the Holy Grail of rocketry has paved the way for an entirely new generation of experimental and commercial space craft. The current crop of experimental and commercial spacecraft today are a linear build up of knowledge from Goddard to Oberth to Von Braun and the gutsy test pilots , innumerable engineers and support staff (starting with Esther Christine, Goddard’s wife of over 40 years) who made Spaceflight what it is today….Reusable!

The Boeing Boeing Effect

The 1965 movie Boeing Boeing has a much deeper aspect to it than what the premise suggests. Tony Curtis an American Journalist based in Paris has an elaborate timetable of Stewardess girlfriends who come in and out of Paris on their turboprop airliners and he is able to manage this beautifully, that is until the new fangled Jetliners begin to make their appearance. They cut travel time in half and the film is a satirical take on the turn of events as theses aircraft enter airline fleets. Jerry Lewis in the film is just being Jerry Lewis!

The poster of the movie Boeing Boeing starring Tony Curtis & Jerry Lewis.

From the coming of age for aviation on that chilly December day in 1903 when the Flyer first took flight, three aspects of aircraft have been centre stage, Speed, Range & Altitude flown.

Airlines – Airplanes

The St Petersburg – Tampa Airboat Line was the very first scheduled airline ever created in 1914. It promised to connect the two cities of St Petersburg and Tampa in twenty three minutes. This was against a time of two hours by boat, twenty hours by car or four to twelve hours by train.

A poster of the St Petersburg – Tampa Airboat Line (left) note the schedule, advance booking and revenue management.The Benoist Type XIV flying over Tampa Bay ( right).

The revenue management was simple. Ticket prices were $5 dollars for a one way ticket and the aeroplane could carry one passenger.A round trip cost $10 and advance booking of seats was possible (although no information exists on advance purchase rules). The very first air passenger ever was Mr Abram C Pheil, a former mayor of St Petersburg and he won the seat in auction for a winning bid of $400. The airboat never flew higher than five feet in the air.

Commenting on the significance of the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat line, Thomas Benoist, the builder of the Benoist airboats, said, “Some day people will be crossing oceans on airliners like they do on steamships today.” The airline served as a prototype for today’s global airline industry.

A sister aeroplane was ordered and this was to carry mail. The first air cargo bundle was a hundred pounds of the St Petersburg Times for $5. This is definitely the first freighter ever!

From the example above, it is clear that Airplane manufacturers and airlines have always gone hand in hand, and together created the global aviation industry what it is today, 110 years on.

The Incremental Years

The first airmail service was on February 11,1911 in India between Allahabad and Naini a distance of 13 kilometres (8.1 miles). Airmail networks quickly developed in the UK, USA,Europe and Australia.

An envelope from the very first airmail flight ever in 1911, note the special franking on the stamps. The early airmail route network in the United States. Possibly the first route network ever.

Airmail took off first before passenger transport as the initial years were about trial and error and most people viewed the aircraft as a dangerous novelty . Airmail was directly responsible for creating the early route networks. Furthermore they were responsible for creating the infrastructure such as airports including layover facilities for crew, runways, route navigation updates and guides , engineering & refuelling services needed to keep the airmail pipeline moving. Of course Government interest and subsidies helped develop them in a big way.

The first major airlines appeared in the late teens and through the twenties, KLM, Qantas, Imperial Airways, United Airlines and Panam to name a few. American Airlines only made its appearance in 1934, Air India in 1932. As people realised there were options to long steamer and rail journeys, they began to look to air as an option. The early air routes were about connecting cities within Europe, UK, Australia & USA and India.

Charles Lindbergh changed all that on those famous days in 1927 when he flew from New York to Paris , solo and non stop. Trans Atlantic passenger services soon followed.

Air Travel was very elitist and most aircraft only had first class and passengers travelled in airborne opulence. As is the same today, first and business class travel is a very limited segment and for airlines to scale up and democratise air travel, aeroplanes needed to be faster, bigger and cheaper to fly on. The race was on.

The Douglas DC-3 (left), the Boeing 247 (middle), the Ford Trimotor (right) were among the dominant aircraft of the 1930s

Early metal airliners such as the Douglas DC-3 , Boeing 247, Lockheed Model 10 Electra ( Amelia Earheart’s plane) and Ford Trimotor competed for the crown of most passengers and speed. The DC-3 outstripped most of the competition with a maximum passenger capacity of 32 passengers and a range of 1500 miles (2400 kilometres). The others had passenger capacities of around 10-15.

Amelia Earheart poses with Her Lockheed Model 10 Electra.

Aircraft needed to fly higher to go faster more economically, and there came the human factor, our bodies react adversely to the cold and lack of oxygen at higher altitudes. The highest we can breathe normally is around 10,000 feet, and the current crop of aircraft were restricted to this height due to the human factor. The barf bags we barely glance at on most flights we take today, were a necessity in the 1930s due to altitude sickness suffered. Aircraft therefore had to fly through rough weather systems instead of over them.  The flights were unpleasant.

The airlines needed to scale up and a solution was needed to tackle the human factor altitude restriction.

The Pressurization & Early Jet Effect

In 1938 the Boeing Stratoliner became the first aircraft to offer a pressurised cabin. Pressurised to 9000 feet. Passengers flew in relative comfort for longer distances. With a cruising altitude of 20,000 feet and range of 2200 miles it was a big improvement over what was currently available. There was one catch, the price was much higher than aircraft such as the DC-3. Airlines could not see the value of such a visionary aircraft. The war soon came and changed everything.

The Boeing Stratoliner the very first aeroplane with a pressurised cabin. Only 10 were ever built.

The Heinkel 178 ( He178) first was the first jet plane to fly in 1939. Owing to the early days this jet was only marginally faster than the current crop of fighters and guzzled much more fuel, the Nazi management could not see the advantage of speed yet and continued with their Messerschmitt Me 109s and Focke-Wulf FW 190s.

The Heinkel He178 (left), the Messerschmitt Me262 (middle), the Gloster Meteor (right)

The first pressurised aircraft to fly for extended periods successfully was the B-29 Superfortress. It first flew in 1942 and its specifications grabbed eyeballs immediately! In addition to a pressurised cabin, it flew at over 31,000 feet, at a cruising speed of 357 mph and a range of over 3000 miles.

The Me262 first flew in 1944 the same year as the Gloster Meteor. The pilots of these aircraft had to carry oxygen masks as the cabins were not pressurised, and the aircraft themselves entered too late in the war to make a difference to the eventual outcome, but their speed and advantage over conventional aircraft was obvious for all to see.

The Boeing B-29 Superfortress (left) and the Boeing B377 Stratocruiser (right),the similarities are clearly visible

Both Boeing and the airlines knew there was synergy here and Boeing quickly converted the B29 into the B377 Stratocruiser that set fresh benchmarks in air passenger travel. Although only 46 were ever sold, it were known for their comfort of travel over long distances.

The age of the pressurised cabin had arrived.

The Transition

Howard Hughes ‘The Aviator’ had a controlling interest in TWA. He wanted to create an aircraft that was far superior to anything in the late 30s and early 40s. Enter the Lockheed Constellation! A cruising speed of over 350 mph(575 km/h), cruising altitude of over 24000 feet and a range of 3500 miles (5600 kilometres). The cabin was pressurised and could carry over 75 passengers.

The Lockheed Constellation …the Connie

Howard Hughes was fanatical about the secrecy of the project and the only reason the project saw light was because of the US war effort and the mandatory inspection of Lockheed’s facilities.

The US Army immediately gave the Connie a designation number of C69 and put 15 of them to work for the US Military. Once the war ended Lockheed bought the aircraft back and fitted them out to airline specs and sold them.

The Super Constellation with an increased range of over 5400 miles (8170 kilometres) came into service in 1951. By then the De Havilland Comet was just making its appearance.

The Constellation is the first example of how closely airlines and airframe manufacturers need to work to create a legend.

The Jet Age

The DeHavilland Comet 1 was an aircraft before its time. It was first introduced in 1952 and could fly at over 500 mph (800 km/h) and carry 36 passengers with a range of over 1500 miles (2400 kilometres). With a cruising altitude of over 25,000 feet, this jet was all airline dreams come true, after initial scepticism they lined up to buy the aircraft. Airlines could not afford not to have them. And then the crashes happened.

The Dehavilland Comet 1 (left) note the square windows, the RAF Nimrod (right).

Aviation’s limited understanding of pressurisation and the resulting effects on the aircraft fuselage skin left the fleet grounded. Dehavilland a visionary company that even made its own engines, had lost the first movers advantage. By the time the Comet 4 was unveiled in 1958 with massive improvements over preceding models the momentum had been lost to another epic aircraft.  Proof the Comet’s ruggedness and endurance can be seen in the 46 RAF Nimrods ( derived from the Comet) that operated until 2011. A testament to engineering of the highest quality.

The Boeing 707-80 or demonstrator aircraft was a passenger jet disguised as military aircraft. The cost of development ( over $16 Million) was worth over 25% of Boeing’s total value. The disguise worked and the Military finally ordered the second iteration of the B707 ( KC135 and used over 800 of them) , and third with a completely redesigned fuselage and wing. The cost of the program development escalated exponentially with each iteration and Boeing needed to sell hundreds of 707s to break even.

The Boeing 707 Demonstrator ( left) and the KC135 Stratotanker (right)

The aircraft with a cruising speed of around 600 mph (960 km/h), cruising altitude of over 35,000 feet and range of around 4000 miles (6500 kilometres). Intercontinental models had higher ranges of over 5750 miles (9260 kilometres), changed aviation forever.

Summation

The B707 along with all that came before it shrank the world. The airlines who were looking to democratise air travel got to do exactly that.Fly more people further and cheaper than ever before.

The B707s biggest advertisement was President Eisenhower used the B707 to travel to 11 countries across the Globe in 19 days. A feat only made possible by the B707. And then there is Tex Johnston and his famous barrel roll.

The B707 as AirForce 1 (left), an image from inside the B707 Demostrator as She does the famous barrel roll (right).

Airline Commercial Infrastructure changed to keep pace. Route Network Planning became a critical department for every major airline. Revenue Management would find its true wings only in the twenty-first century.

Boeing Boeing the movie is a definitive marker of the turning to burning transition.

The Aerospace Equivalence

Aerospace is a term that came into being in the mid 1950s and encompassed a wide array of topics from aeronautics, the study of planes and other flying machines and space flight. The term evolved over a period of almost four centuries.

Pre Flight

Leonardo Da Vinci the Italian painter / wizard / illuminati / visionary first sketched and conceptualised several different flying machines including gliders and ornithopters (a machine that achieves lift by flapping its wings) in the 1500s.

Leonardo Da Vinci’s ornithopter on the left, Sir George Cayley’s Airfoil and aircraft on a silver disc, the irrepressible Otto Lilienthal about to take flight with one of gliders.

It fell upon Sir George Cayley in the early 1800s to get the concepts of aerodynamics organised into the fundamentals of flight. Sir George surmised that flight can be achieved by aerodynamic lift and this can be achieved by making a surface support weight by the application of power to the resistance of air, the surface being the airfoil in a wing of an aircraft and the power coming from an engine.  Cayley’s fundamentals of aeronautics hold true even today and he is considered the ‘Father of Aeronautics’.

While the basic theory of aeronautics held true through rigorous experimentation, constructing an airfoil with control surfaces and a light weight engine to drive propulsion would take another hundred years.

Otto Lilienthal of Germany is considered very influential in the development of airfoil design and conducted over two thousand glider experiments including working on control surfaces. He was killed in a glider crash in 1896 as his glider stalled at height and crashed to the ground (he was testing new control surfaces).

Samuel Langley and his Aerodrome 5 is generally considered to be the first powered flight achieved in 1896. However it was powered by a steam engine and had almost no directional stability or control. It did fly 3300 feet and showed that powered flight was possible.

Samuel Langley’s Aerdrome from the late 1890s.

Enter the Wright Brothers, bicycle mechanics Orville and Wilbur Wright.Over a four year period between 1899 – 1903 they perfected three concepts very important to flight. The first was power delivery, they custom built a lightweight gasoline powered twelve hp internal combustion motor that drove the propellers of the Flyer 1. The second they developed the concept of wing warping which gave the aircraft directional control as it banked. This is the basis of aircrfa design even today. Third : They developed pitch control that controlled the attitude of the aircraft. These three together gave the aircraft three dimensional control. Their first controlled flight was achieved on December 17, 1903 and flew a total of 120 feet. Along the way they did create what will become the first take off track (runway) and definitely was the first MRO facility at Kittyhawk and lounge!

The Flyer 1 takes flight for the first time ever(left). Note the take off track (the first runway). The Kittyhawk airport with a a hanger and MRO facility and a lounge.

By the time they got to the Flyer 3 in 1905 they had flown the longest distance of 24.2 miles, an increase of almost 2000% over their first flight in two short years. In the year 1908 the Wright Brothers were involved in the first fatality involving powered flight when Lt Thomas Selfridge died in a Military Flyer crash at Fort Myers, Virginia.

The Flyer 1 sparked a century of aeronautical evolution that continues to this day.

TransAtlantic Flight

On May 20-21,1927 as Charles Lindbergh flew his way into the history books, little did He know that he would spark a global revolution. He flew ‘The Spirit of St Louis ‘ a single engined monoplane manufactured by Ryan Airlines Corporation for 33.5 hours non stop and a distance of 3,600 miles (5,800 kilometres).

The Spirit of St Louis to the left, note the lack of a windshield, the aircraft was a flying gas can. A Panam Clipper over Ireland (middle), and an Imperial Airways Hannibal (right).

This not only set the benchmark for endurance but with the flight, but this feat created the TransAtlantic Airplane passenger market. Imperial Airways offered passenger flights in The Hannibal with approx 5-6 overnight layovers and Pan Am followed with their Clippers in 1931. This traffic created TransAtlantic infrastructure. Infrastructure creation is the fundamental basis of the Gemini & Apollo programs to the Moon and all other Earthbound and Space missions that followed.

On October 4th, 1957 the term aerospace was fulfilled when Sputnik became Earth’s first artificial satellite in space and Aeronautics was now Aerospace. In the year 1958 aerospace engineering came into being, the first institution to offer the course was MIT.

Space Flight

Sputnik realised a long cherished dream of Mankind when it was launched into space in an elliptical low Earth orbit that ranged between 134 – 583 miles. This first move by the USSR sparked off the space race and an era of enormous technological advances.

The Sputnik 1, Earth’s first artificial satellite from 1957.

In 1961 Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space and the USA could not have another second spot to the USSR. It was in 1962 that President Kennedy announced that the USA would have a man on the Moon before the decade was out.

The Karman Line came into being in 1963 and was officially accepted as the edge of space (where the atmosphere ended) at a height of 62 miles (100 kilometres) above the surface of the Earth. This is the finish line for aeroplanes and the start line for spacecraft!

A pictorial representation of the Karman Line.

While there was plenty of data on aeronautical flight, very little was known about spaceflight. The X 15 program, a hypersonic rocket powered plane that flew at Mach 6.7 was launched from a B-52 Bomber at approx 50,000 feet. It would then ignite its rocket and get upto a height of 100 kilometres (62 miles). A total of 199 flights were conducted from the late 1950s through to the early 70s.

The data gathered by these flights was invaluable to the Gemini & Apollo programmers that eventually landed Man on the Moon and the Space Shuttle program as well.

Post the Moon Flights which created the vision of Mankind as an interplanetary species, a series of missions were undertaken for us to understand the effects of zero gravity on the Human body , these Space Laboratories have contributed immensely to our understanding of space. The ISS has been the longest in space for over twenty three years.

The X-15 is the first example of, is it a rocket, is it a plane? The second was the Space Shuttle and the third will be the SpaceX Starship. The concept of Aerospace just got stronger.

The X-15 dropped off a B-52 on one of it’s runs (left), the Space Shuttle landing (left), the Starship on it’s way back to Earth after a test flight (right). The X-15 is a plane, the other two are spacecraft.

Supersonic Flight

Legendary Gen Chuck Yeager (who once liked my tweet!!) was the first human being to fly supersonic on October 14,1947 in the Bell X-1 named ‘ Glamorous Glennis ‘ after his wife.

Gen Chuck Yeager and the Bell X-1 right after his supersonic flight on October 14,1947.

From that moment in December 1903 when the Flyer 1 first flew, there have been three objectives to all air travel: speed, height and endurance. If Lindbergh was the epitome of endurance then Yeager came to stand for speed. Height ( endurance and speed!) would go to the SR-71.

The amazing Lockheed SR-71 (Habu, meaning ghost) still holds multiple speed and altitude records thirty years after She became a museum piece.

However for speed to be achieved in multiples of Mach (the speed of sound), propellers would not do it, the aircraft needed turbofans (read jets). While the Bell X-1 was powered by a rocket engine, the ubiquitous jet engine of today was invented by Sir Frank Whittle and would be the mainstay of all supersonic aircraft.

Supersonic flight has continued to be the mainstay of air forces across the world, however supersonic speeds are not about endurance, which is what makes the Concorde and the Tu-144 so special. Both aircraft could fly supersonic for hours (the Concorde had far superior endurance) .

The TU-144 (above) and Concorde (below), hard to tell them apart. The picture of the Concorde in supersonic cruise at 60,000 feet was taken from a Panavia Tornado. The fighter could only keep up with the Concorde for less than four minutes! Such is the power and majesty of these aircraft.

Our understanding of Supersonic flight characteristics have gone a long way to bridge our understanding of high speed flight characteristics of reusable spacecraft such as the Space Shuttle and of the future of Space flight the Starship.

Aerospace is a crossover.

Future Flight

The Saturn V rocket that carried the Apollo missions to the Moon and the Skylab to space remains the only rocket to have carried humans beyond the LEO (Low Earth Orbit). At over 363 feet tall and 33 feet in diameter it was huge. Over three stages it generated 7.5 million / 1 million / 200,000 pounds force (lbf), the decreasing order of force over the three stages is the decreasing atmospheric force as the rocket rose and gathered momentum. It remained the largest rocket ever created for over fifty years.

A comparison of the largest rockets ever.

On April 20,2023 Saturn V lost its long held crown of the biggest rocket ever made and flown to the SpaceX SuperHeavy. The SuperHeavy has 33 raptor engines generating over 16 million pounds of thrust and at over 230 feet high and 29.5 feet diameter is only the first stage of the full stack. Sitting on top of SuperHeavy is the Starship with height of 164 feet with the same diameter , which generates an additional 3.3 million lbf. The full stack comes in 394 feet making this biggest ever constructed.

Much like the evolution of flight when Lindbergh created the vision of the TransAtlantic aerial route , airlines and countries followed suit by creating an infrastructure chain to ensure the TransAtlantic Clippers and Hannibals stayed on time , we observe the same happening with SpaceFlight.

The NASA Artemis Base on the Moon surface and gateway are steps in the same direction of creating infrastructure in space as we evolve into an interplanetary species.

SpaceX is sending tanker ships (Starships without windows) in LEO  for their planned Mars missions.

The term Aerospace was born of necessity (even NASA stands forNational Aeronautics & Space Administration) in the considerable overlap between Flight & SpaceFlight.

An important term was born…

Credits:

NASA

SpaceX

ChatGPT

YouTube

Google

Plenty of missed credits…sorry

Chasing ET

Last week Jaime Maussan the Mexican UFOlogist revealed under oath at the Mexican Congress two boxes containing little Aliens. The unboxing event went viral across the World and once again stoked the ‘We Are Not Alone’ debate.

One of the Aliens unveiled by Jaime Maussan at Mexico City in Sept’23

What is lesser known is that Jaime Maussan has a history of perpetrating alien related hoaxes since 2015. This is his fourth attempt after 2015/16 & 17 attempts were proven hoaxes. The jury is still out on the current one due to ongoing investigations.

In October 1869 workers digging a well in Cardiff, New York uncovered a giant petrified man, who came to be known as the Cardiff Giant. At 10 feet and 4 inches in height and 2990 pounds in weight he was indeed a giant. As news spread across the state visitors turned up in droves and paid 50 cents each to view the giant petrified man in awe. Could this be the missing link? Actually, no! It turned out to be an elaborate hoax conceived and executed by tobacconist George Hull over the previous year. Hull spent a total of $2600 ( in 1868 Dollars ) on the giant stone statue aged with various acids and buried. In the end he made at least $23,000 on the stone statue, a return on investment of approx 9 : 1 for a one year investment. George Hull should have been a stock market player.

The Cardiff Giant (left) and cast of the skull of the Piltdown Man (right).

An even longer lasting hoax is the Piltdown Man, a paleontological fraud that lasted between 1912 and 1953 when it was definitely proven to be a fraud. The identity of the hoaxers behind this find has never been established but it is suspected that Charles Dawson a British Amatuer Archeologist was behind this fraud. Whether Dawson acted alone is uncertain, but his hunger for acclaim may have driven him to risk his reputation and misdirect the course of anthropology for decades. Turns out Dawson too had a string of hoaxes beginning 1889 until the Piltdown man discovery. The alleged missing link hoax was still very much on at the time of his death in 1916.

Jaime Maussan’s 2017 discovery of the alien corpses in Peru (and presented in 2023), close to the Nazca Lines rings similar to the Cardiff Giant & The Piltdown man.

The question of ‘ We are not alone? ‘ very much persists.

Ancient Engineering

Erich Von Daniken in his eye opening book ‘ Chariots of the Gods’ espouses the theory that primitive Man had contact with extraterrestrials over several millennia. He speaks of multiple marvels across the ancient world where there is a clear divergence between the capabilities of man and the relics left behind. Moreover the same themes come up across the World be it pyramids or flying machines or illustrations / depictions of men wearing what appear to be space helmets.

A 10,000 year old cave drawing from Chad depicting what looks like a helmeted man.

Across the world we have massive stone structures constructed, individual stones weighing in their hundreds of tons have not only been moved for hundreds of miles over land but cut and placed with extreme precision, even more mysterious the cut marks on the stone look highly machined, one possible only with present day technology.

The devastated ruins of Puma Punku, Bolivia are a great place to start. The stone ruins officially date back to AD 526 but unofficially go back 17,000 years have highly machined cuts and drill holes. The largest of the stones at Puma Punku is over 25 feet long , 17 feet wide and and three and half feet thick, the weight 131 tons. Several theories exist on how the stones were moved into place, the use of llama skins and ramps is one such theory. The precision in placing the stones brings up even more questions than answers. The stones used are andesite, diorite and granite all with a hardness quotient of over 6, the hardest stone being diamond at 10.

Examples of the stonework at Puma Punku

The dimensions of Puma Punku are 549 feet by 383 with projections of 66 feet extending to the North and South of the rectangular mound. To top the exquisite stone cutting and drilling, there is a precise stone interlocking mechanism ( much like a giant lego )that has tolerances of less than one millimetre, this certainly pushes forth the thought of an other worldly hand.

The back of an entry ticket to Puma Punku with what a reconstruction would look like.

The combination discoveries of large quantities of liquid mercury and mica at Teotihuacan begins an entire fresh line of thought and investigations. Both have no ornamental purposes ( although mercury can look like an ornamental river ). Mica is used as an insulator ( what was generating the heat at Teotihuacan?). These discoveriesd give rise to the theory Teotihuacan might have had electricity!

Any narrative on ancient engineering marvels would be incomplete without a quick mention of the Pyramid of Giza, Egypt. This highly documented structure is widely considered the most mathematically precise structure in the World. Christopher Dunn in his book Giza Power explains how the great pyramid of Giza generated power using dilute hydrochloric acid and hydrated zinc. Traces of both these elements have been found in the subterranean chambers Dunn points out to.

Christopher Dunn’s schematic of what power generation at Giza looked like.

Discoveries and theories such as these only serve to reinforce the question of what was their (the pyramids) purpose?

The Nazca Lines of Peru, geoglyphs carved into the desert floor date back to between 500 BC and 500 AD. They are negative images created in the desert floor where shallow incisions (upto 12 inches depth)were made and pebbles and rocks removed. The geoglyphs include the eagle, the hummingbird, the spider,the monkey, the sizes of these glyphs vary from just a few feet to over a 1000 feet in length. Once the size of a glyph exceeds a couple of hundred feet they have a clear perspective only from the air! Von Daniken hypotheses these glyphs were always meant as markers for air travelers. There are over a 1000 glyphs in the desert. One of the more curious glyphs on a hillside near the end of one the runways is the famous Nazca Astronaut. There are several ancient runways, the longest over 30km long, some of the lines have been created on levelled mountain peaks (the relocated rubble is completely missing) to create table tops and criss cross very much like the runways of a modern airport with various geoglyphs representing airport terminals! The theories circulating have to do with the local Indians beseeching the heavens for water. Spiders , birds and plants are water symbols and the lines head towards where the water comes from.

The Nazca Astronaut (left), Nazca Runways visible space (right).

World War II offers an interesting insight into the lines. Right after WW2 saw the birth of cargo cults on many islands in the South Pacific such as Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Guinea and Solomon Islands. During the war as part of the pacific theatre American troops arrived on planes, the big, noisy, flying beasts as they constructed airfields across the primitive islands to act as both bases and launch pad for attacks on Japanese convoys. The troops arrived with a cargo of all kinds of tinned food from corned beef to peaches and other canned goodies. The Islanders who until then had always hunted or gathered their food were taken in by the food and believed the machines to be ‘ The Chariots of the Gods ‘.

The South Pacific Islanders praying to aircraft. Thus was born the Cargo Cult at the end of WW II

Once the war ended and the Americans returned home, the islanders constructed aeroplanes of wood and created shallow carved runways beseeching the Americans to return.

The most startling connection made by Von Daniken is the inscription on the sarcophagus of Lord Pakal who ruled the Mayan City of Palenque for almost 70 years upto 683 A.D.

The sarcophagus to Lord Pakal from 683 A D. Notice the nose mask, the hands looking like they are at the controls of a ship, the left foot looks like its on a pedal and rocket engine to the rear of Lord Pakal and rocket blast coming off the rocket to the right of the image.

The lid is twelve feet long and seven feet wide by nine inches thick. The stone weighs over seven tons. On the lid is a carving of Lord Pakal in what appears to be a spaceship. Pakal has a mask hooked onto his nose and hands appear to be at the controls of the craft and his left foot appears to be on a pedal. Behind Pakal is what looks like a rocket engine. Coming off the base of this craft is what look like flames that can only come off a rocket. The sarcophagus has given rise to the Mayan Astronaut theory.

UFO Conspiracy Theorist Bob Lazar and his allegations, the United States had nine flying saucers in their possession has fueled UFOlogists for over thirty years. Bob further claims he was recruited to work at facility S-4 near Area 51 facility at Groom Lake to help reverse engineer the propulsion system of the flying saucers. His claims of the facility being adjacent to Papoose Lake have been debunked by critics who point out holes in his entire education history.

This did not stop Bob from describing the propulsion system he worked on. Bob alleges the saucers had an antimatter reactor and used a stable form of a chemical element with an atomic number of 115. He said the craft appeared to bend gravity and light to travel invisibly. The element later called Moscovium was finally synthesised in 2003 and proved to be so unstable it barely lasted a few milliseconds. The properties of this element are unknown other than the fact it is very radioactive, due to its instability.

Such allegations only fuel conspiracy theories about the Roswell Incident of 1947. Officially it was a weather balloon that crashed, but conspiracy theorists insist a flying saucer crashed there and alien bodies were recovered. Roswell, New Mexico now has built a lucrative economy based on the UFO/Aliens theme!

Both the Pentagon and NASA have conducted multiple studies on UAP ( Unidentified Aerial Phenomena ) over decades and claim they have nothing to show for it, although conspiracy theorists insist this is part of a cover up. 

Scriptures from almost all religions allude to crafts and Vimanas. Dr Alexandre Petrovick Kazantsev the noted and controversial Soviet UFOlogist actually pictured a vimana from descriptions in Sanskrit from the Mahabharata.

The rocket ship as interpreted by Dr Kazantsev from the Mahabharata.

The fact is all the ancient civilizations that created these marvels of engineering have vanished leaving almost no documentation behind. The divergence between the known ability of primitive man and the engineering ability required to build on the scale they have only raises more questions than answers. 

In the absence of proof such as clear images / videos / documents available to the general public only theories abound.

The Rise of the Telescopes

Mankind has always been fascinated by the vastness of the sky. The unobstructed view of this vastness has only spurred curiosity. During the day we have this shiny orb so bright we cannot look at it directly. We have what wisps of cotton against a blue background by day that can also turn angry and dark unleashing the wrath of typhoons and hurricanes. By night we have the same vastness turn black and filled with twinkling lights. Some of them appeared to be closer to each other than others.

Mankind was in awe and scared of this vastness and had Gods named after the Sun, Moon and pretty much every type of phenomena that made its appearance. There needed to be a logical approach to this vastness. Enter the Telescope.

The inventor of the Telescope is unknown, and the earliest record of the Telescope is a patent request from 1608 in the Netherlands by Middleburg spectacle maker Hans Lipperhey for a refracting telescope.. Word of this instrument quickly spread across Europe.Galileo Galilei the pioneering Italian Astronomer made one for himself in 1609 and the name Telescope came into existence in 1611 coined by Greek astronomer Giovanni Demisiani. 

Progress of the Telescope has only furthered our understanding of the objects we observe in the sky.

The first thing that Galileo turned his telescope on was the Moon in 1609. He quickly deduced the marks we observe on the celestial body with our naked eyes were actually mountains and craters on the surface. He attempted to estimate the heights of the mountains. This excitement of observing the planets through the telescope got him to next turn his sights on Jupiter.

He noticed three fixed stars in a single line around the gas giant, all very small and totally invisible to the naked eye. They appeared fixed but actually were not and then one of them disappeared! This immediately drew him to conclude they were in fact orbiting Jupiter. A planet having smaller planets circling around it was not well received by the astronomy community of the time and raised plenty of debate.

Galileo’s next observation would pitch him directly into the face of controversy. He observed that Venus exhibited a full set of phases similar to that of the Moon and thus observed it must be orbiting the Sun! The heliocentric model of the Solar System developed by Nicholas Copernicus in the 1500s was however the lesser accepted version of the Universe to the geocentric one. The geocentric model stipulated the Earth was at the centre of the Universe as the stars rose and dipped and changed positions in the sky.

A comparison of Galileo’s observation of the rotations of Venus (left) v/s the prevailing ideas ( right) from Wikipedia.

Thus progressed astronomy with further observation of the celestial bodies closest to Earth.

Astronomers knew there was more to be discovered. Telescopes got bigger and bigger but were still Earthbound and stationed at the tops of peaks where atmospheric interference was less, Earthbound nonetheless.

The 1990 launch of the Space Telescope Hubble promised to herald a new era in Mankind’s understanding of the Cosmos. What promised to be the dawn of a new era however turned into a sci-fi space thriller. Due to a manufacturing error the main mirror on the telescope had a focus issue and to solve this NASA astronauts had to get Hubble a pair of glasses to fix the blurry images. In December 1993 Space Shuttle Endeavour went up the 340 miles into space, captured Hubble and got the issue fixed. Hubble over the years had twenty three EVAs ( Spacewalks ) to keep upgraded and keep delivering quality images that have revolutionised our understanding of the Universe.

A comparison of the depth of vision of Hubble and James Webb Telescopes.

The 2021 launch of the James Webb Telescope has taken this understanding to a whole new level. The Telescope positioned at Lagrange Point 2 ( L2 beyond the Moon in a straight line with both the Earth and Sun ) is the spot where the gravitational pull of both Earth and Sun is at equilibrium. This allows the object to hover in an elliptical orbit around the spot. European Space Agency’s Gaia and Euclid Telescopes also occupy spots around L2.

An illustration of Lagrange Points. James Webb is at L2 along with Gaia and Eulclid telescopes. ISRO’s Aditya L1 Sun Misiion is at L1.

These telescopes are peering into the past. The Big Bang happened 13.8 billion years ago. Hubble can see a billion years into the past. The James Webb Telescope can peer over three billion years into the past, just about the time the first stars were forming.

The James Webb Telescope in its short time in space has created a stir with amazing 70mm technicolor images of our Universe. It has discovered exoplanets ( a planet outside our solar system ), has uncovered stars in previously dark areas of the sky and the latest discovery of methane and carbon dioxide on an exoplanet could point to extraterrestrial life!

In the future as technology improves we should be able to peer almost upto the Big Bang. Right now the progression of telescopes is helping mankind plug knowledge gaps that improve our understanding of the expanse.

The Space Probes

Mankind’s ambition to be Interstellar has pushed us to launch a series of probes into deep space. The earliest Pioneer 10 from 1972, entered interstellar space in 1983 followed by Pioneer 11 exited the solar system in the 1990s. These were followed by Voyager 1 and 2 entering interstellar space in 2012 and 18 respectively. The New Horizons space probe is currently in the Kuiper Belt and continuing to send fresh data back.

A schematic of the exit of the five space probes from our Solar System.

These probes are hundreds of thousands of years away from the closest celestial bodies outside the solar system and contain mankind’s attempts to communicate with extraterrestrials should they encounter any. For the immediate infinity they are coasting quietly through the expanse.

These probes launched Mankind into the Interstellar Age.

The Theory of Everything

Prof Stephen Hawking the person who directly made the concepts of the Universe available to the layman says that blackholes at the centre of all galaxies ( the Milky Way has a black hole four million times the size of the Sun ) all end in a singularity (super dense matter where the theory of relativity fails), however there are certain particles that escape the inescapable gravity and these particles create the effect of the event horizon photographed for the first time in 2019 using the event horizon telescope ( a network of telescopes across the World ). Understanding the insides of blackholes practically remains one of our biggest challenges.

Image of a black hole taken by the event event horizon telescope in 2019. The first visual of a black hole event horizon.

Time travel can be possible, but for that we need to forget Euclidean geometry the way we know it.  While we think and understand three dimensions, there is already a fourth dimension, it is time itself. Hawking believes there are upto eleven dimensions (he refers to the movie Interstellar here to help us picture how these dimensions would look) most of these dimensions might be so tiny, we neither know of them nor acknowledge them. But for true time travel to happen we need engines capable of travelling faster than the speed of light (escape velocity of Earth is 11 km/s and that of the Sun is 617 km/s, light travels at 300,000 km/s), and we need engines that can travel faster than light! Furthermore we also need the ability to bend gravity and light to open up wormholes (we do not know if they exist at the moment). So yes it’s a fantasy right now, but might be possible in the future.

Prof Hawking believed alien life forms do exist in our Universe. The odds that we are alone are stacked against us. He however felt Earth might not have contact for several decades or centuries to come, and even if we do find alien beings we should shun contact to avoid the Christopher Columbus effect on both Earth and an Alien planet. 

The Pale Blue Dot is an image of Earth taken by Voyager 1 on February, 14th 1990 taken from a distance of 6 billion kilometres. The size of earth in that image is one pixel. Astronomer Carl Sagan in his ode to that image sums up the size of the solar system as Voyager 1 was just exiting the Solar Syatem on its Interstellar journey.

Earth is the Pale Blue Dot in Voyager 1 image from February 14, 1990. Carl Sagan’s ode to this image is worth listening to. Earth is the whitish blue dot in the first band to the right of the image.

Mankind has always been interstellar by nature.

The Future

The crewed missions of the late 60s and 70s set the tone for Man to be a space traveller. However these missions, while fantastic in their achievement, lacked a broader vision and the World saw a lull for almost thirty years until the ISS once again kick started a more back to basics version of our understanding of extended travel and stays in space.

People like Elon Musk have fueled at personal expense mankind’s push to be multi planetary. Organisations such as SpaceX , NASA, European Space Agency and ISRO are conducting path breaking research on our understanding of the Moon, Mars , Sun and other planets of our solar system, in addition to creating fresh ideas and methods of rocketry.

Astounding progress in fields of robotics and Artificial Intelligence act as accelerators to the greater vision of mankind being an interstellar species.

Visionary authors like Issac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke had already painted a vision of the future over sixty years ago, we are only today achieving the first baby steps in creating this vision.

Using Schrödinger’s cat analogy , aliens both exist and don’t exist at the same time, and only once we definitively open the ET Box will mankind know for sure.

ET – I am Right Here….

Credits:

NASA

Erich Von Daniken

Christopher Dunn

Bob Lazar

Stephen Hawking

Carl Sagan

Wikipedia

CharGPT

Google

Washington Post

ET

The Max v/s Neo Corollary

The A320Neo (left) and The B737 Max (right)

October 29th, 2018 and March 10th, 2019, two dates, two crashes , one aircraft type the New B737 Max 8, one system the MCAS, 346 Souls. What happened? How did matters get to this point? Did this happen overnight? The answers to these questions find their origins 50 years ago.

In his book ‘ Hit Refresh ‘ , Satya Nadella the CEO of Microsoft coins the term ‘afragile’. His definition of the term is that in a rapidly changing and uncertain world, leaders and organisations should be agile enough to pivot and adapt to new challenges, but also open to the idea that they may make mistakes along the way. Being “fragile” in this context means acknowledging and learning from failures, using them as an opportunity for growth and improvement.

This piece tries to trace the path that led to the incidents and their aftermath, more importantly the path to the future.

Boeing and Airbus mark what is effectively a duopoly in the Global Airframe manufacturing space and dominance in the global commercial aircraft market. A competition that has driven innovation, success…. and failures.

The Background

In 2001 Boeing announced the Yellowstone Project. The ambitious project aimed at replacing their entire civilian aircraft offerings and was further broken down into three segments. The Boeing Y1 ( 100-250 passengers), the Boeing Y2 (250-350 passengers) and the Boeing Y3 (350-600+ passengers ). The Boeing Y2 be realised as the B787 Dreamliner that entered service with ANA in 2011.

The Yellowstone project aircraft comparison with existing aircraft

In direct competition to the Boeing Y2 announcement , Airbus announced the A350XWB.The 350XWB was essentially an A330 with upgraded wings and engines. However this cut little ice with Airlines already reeling under escalating oil prices. In 2004 Emirates CEO Tim Clark very publicly rebuffed Airbus for trying to sell a 20 old aircraft with neither the range, the efficiency or seating capacity up to scratch. Airbus went back to the drawing boards and pushed the A350 project back almost 9 years. When the A350 did come out the glowing reviews said it all. Today both the B787 and the A350 are mainstays of global airline fleets, their efficiencies proven.

Moral: If you fail…fail quick and cheap. In the long term game of Innovation v/s Cost, innovation generally trumps.

The Missed Opportunity

In the early 2000s Airbus had the 12 billion Euro A380 development program running. This program was launched to strengthen the needs of high density routes globally. Up until this point the Boeing 747 ‘ The Queen ‘ had ruled the skies for over 30 years. The rise of several future ‘ mega ‘ carriers had just commenced. 

There were two schools of thought. One : the mega hub model , two : the hub network model. Each has merits and demerits in the fine balance of cost v/s capacity v/s demand.

The A380 program targeted at the mega hub model, promised unheard of capacities and Y2K efficiency. Capacity starved markets salivated.

Boeing which up until that point had an almost total domination of the ‘ Jumbo Jet ‘ market had a decision on hand, develop an aircraft for this market segment  and defend the ageing B747-400 or continue with the Yellowstone projects, specifically the Boeing Y1 to replace their ageing narrow body offerings and B767. The full potential and effect of the B777 was unknown and yet to be realised. Eventually they decided to go with the B747-8, which first flew in 2010. Both the A380 and the B747-8 never achieved anything close to their promised potential and are today largely considered museum pieces, their arrivals at global airports attracting plane spotters in droves.

The wisdom of hindsight tells us, Boeing should have gone with the Y1 instead. Global Economic pressures made sure of that.

The Economic Shocks

Oil average prices per barrel on the left and percentage change of the right

Starting from the year 2000 when the average price of Oil was just over $30 a barrel upto the year 2008 when price of oil spiked sat over $145 a barrel and settled at an average cost of $99.67 a barrel, airlines had it rough. The events of 9/11 ensured the Global economy went into a shock recession, the dot com bust very real. The hooray 90s were over.

Airlines already operating on wafer thin margins ( 10% operating margin was considered a benchmark). Fuel cost accounting for approx 22% of global airline costs (the second highest cost after labour)was severely impacted by the fuel price increases. Airlines were in the ICU.

The 2008 subprime crisis further weakened airline balance sheets. The Airline Business needed a Micheal Burry to predict the storm they found themselves in.

This was the backdrop against which the airlines began clamouring for more fuel efficient planes.

Airbus responded first with the A320Neo.

The Neo Balance

In July 2011 the then American Airlines CEO Gerard Arpey announced what was called a ‘ Blockbuster Deal ‘ . Airbus won $11.5 Billion worth of orders for 260 A320neos ( the 320 family ) plus options on a further 365 aircraft of the same .

The A320 Neo

The Neo a re-engined A320 offered fuel efficiencies of upto 20% over aircraft then operating.In view of escalating fuel costs ( AA spent $500 Million more on fuel in the first quarter of 2011 than the year before ). The Neo offered efficiencies of upto 50% more than the oldest planes in the American Airlines fleet in 2011.

Boeing which won an order of 200 B737s plus options on a further 100 was left red faced as American Airlines until then had been a predominantly a Boeing customer.John Leahy the then ‘ Head of Sales ‘ at Airbus mentioned in an email , he would have been happy if Airbus sold 26 aircraft to American Airlines.

Jim Albaugh the Chief of Boeing Commercial Airplanes was forced to confront analyst suggestions Boeing’s  product strategy was in tatters. On a day when Boeing had won a $10Billion deal , they received brickbats instead of bouquets. 

The analyst community watched Boeing’s moves closely as the American order was to be followed by Delta and United later that year. Those results were a mixed bag for Boeing. Airbus was making inroads into the US aviation market.

Boeing, which lost the first mover advantage to Airbus in this market segment, proceeded to announce a re-engined B737…which would become the Max.

When announced in 2011, the required $2 Billion was yet to be approved by Boeing’s board in Chicago.

Moral: Airbus learnt it’s lessons well and heard what it’s customers needed and delivered…First

The Max

A comparison of the B727 on the left and B737 on the right

The B737 first flew in 1967, three years after the B727 that first flew in 1964.The 727 whose capacity was anywhere between 94 and 134 passengers depending on type and configuration was a trijet with amazing characteristics.

The three engines gave it additional power required to take off from short runways. The Trijet configuration set aft and high, near the tail of the aircraft allowed it to operate off gravel runways and yet avoid Foreign Object Damage(FOD). The clean wings provided for extra flaps to give the aircraft high manoeuvrability . The aircraft was set low, as a number of the airports it operated to did not have proper baggage handling facilities (it’s the 60s, remember!) and the cargo area needed to be easily accessible for baggage handlers . For airports that did not have aircraft stairs, the 727 had a ramp that dropped stairs below the tail. An amazing regional aircraft.

Boeing and the Airlines felt a need for an even smaller aircraft. Enter the 737-100. With a capacity of 85-100 passengers in a single class configuration, this was just the answer the market was looking for.

The 737 shared some design ethos as the 727 and the 707 before it. In fact all three aircraft share the same nose! There was landing gear similarity / commonality. The changes included moving the engines under the wing to maintain both aerodynamic and on ground stability. The original engines used were the JT8D-7 low/no bypass engines (same as the 727) and they sat under the wings with room to spare. Subsequent stretches to the Classic series continued to use the JT8D engines successfully.

When the Next Generation Series (NG) first appeared in 1984 as the B737-300 and later the 737-400, the engines had increased bypass and the front profile of the  engines now sported an oblong shape . The engines were still underwing , the changed profile characteristics improved performance and efficiency.

The NGs operated successfully and profitably for over 25 years at the time of  the American Airlines conference in 2011. 

The B737 Family’s biggest strength was cockpit commonality, a B737 type rated pilot could fly any of the aircraft. This was the first time Boeing was confronted with having to make changes so radical on the ageing airframe there would be a need for Pilot retraining.Boeing wanted to avoid this to keep retraining costs down.

The High Bypass engines ( for fuel efficiency ) were proving too big to fit under the low wing of the aircraft and the engines needed to be moved forward, this in turn would change the aerodynamic characteristics of the aircraft , which in turn needed fresh certifications . The entire B737 Max certification process came under deep scrutiny following the fatal accidents. Suffice to say the process had several conflicts of interest.

The result of the sequence of events going back over 50 years led to Boeing finding itself where it was.

Moral: Change is the only constant. Manage it with conviction and vision

The Aftermath

Post the Lion Air crash there was confusion as the flight path on Flightradar24 showed an irregular altitude and speed until the final dive at 348mph considered a high speed for an aircraft in descent. Pilots had raised multiple concerns about MCAS (Manoeuvring Characteristics and Augmentation System) the need for training and the lack of information, however all objections prior to the crash were played down.The Ethiopian aircraft flight showed a very similar path on Flightradar24 as the Lion Air crash.

Flight path comparison of the Lion Air flight on the left and Ethiopian flight on the right

Boeing continued to produce 40 aircraft a month. They did cooperate with all investigations (mostly to the point on an ask for it basis ). Grounding the aircraft was upto the Civil Aviation Authorities of  individual countries the airlines were registered in. The FAA grounded the Max three days after the second crash.

In these two battles between AI and Humans….AI won 2-0.

Monthly / Quarterly ERPs ( Emergency Response Plans ) desktop runs are standard operating procedure with most leading airlines of the World. During these desktop runs as frantic calls are simulated and normal trained airline employees man the various lines of communication (both off and online), the pressure builds quickly.

Volunteers on the frontline are rotated every 30 minutes. A visit to any leading airline’s ICC ( Incident Command Centre ) is a grim experience that sends shivers down a person’s spine as you imagine what a live situation will feel like.

Some of the crisis management training includes

1. Every little bit of information gathering is extremely important
2. Information can only be released once authorised by the Incident Command
3. All speculation is to be avoided
4. Every contact point to be handled with deep empathy and caring

Boeing was confronted by pilots , airlines, general passengers and Kin of Victims. In one particularly acrimonious meeting Boeing vice-president ( product strategy & future airplane development ) Mike Sinnett, claimed the Lion Air disaster was a once-in-a-lifetime accident.

He said: “I don’t know that understanding this system would’ve changed the outcome on this. In a million miles, you’re going to maybe fly this airplane, maybe once you’re going to see this, ever. So we try not to overload the crews with information that’s unnecessary so they actually know the information we believe is important.”

In another very public statement Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg declined to take any bonus for the year 2019. In 2018 He made $18 Million most of it from Bonuses, only $1.7 Million was made as salary. News such as this made Boeing look even worse as instead of showing sympathy for the victims, they came across an inward looking organisation (happens to many large organisations) that appeared out of touch with the real world. When Muilenburg did finally move out of Boeing , he did so with over $60Million in stock options. 

Boeing did settle both the legal cases, and paid almost $3 Billion in compensation ( to the best of my knowledge ).

A reference Point : On May 26th 1991 a Lauda Air 767 had an uncommanded thrust reverser deployment on a flight that had just taken off from Bangkok headed for Vienna. The deployment resulted in the B767 breaking up and crashing into a mountain side nine minutes after take off at almost the speed of sound. Niki Lauda, a motorsport legend, a pilot and the Founder of Lauda Air, went to the crash site himself and spotted the issue of the deployed reverser only on the port engine while the starboard engine appeared to be normal. Niki, who felt the full weight of 223 souls on his shoulders, took the responsibility of getting to the bottom of the disaster and took on Boeing.

While Boeing agreed off the record about the deployment, it took almost 9 months to get them to agree publicly as they feared legal liability. Suffice to say Niki the Legend prevailed.

Moral: When something’s gone wrong, admit it sincerely and correct the fault and move ahead. The general public has a very short memory.

The Recovery

Once Boeing moved past the litigations and global grounding they realised the need to move with Sincerity and Vision. They needed to acknowledge the sequence of blunders that led to this state of affairs, and acknowledge their culpability.

They needed to recover lost ground and move into confidence rebuilding mode. The Max returned to service from late 2020  after the FAA completed the recertification process. The damage to the FAA’s reputation once it came to public knowledge that both Boeing & FAA enjoyed a cosy relationship was severe and this needed to be repaired too.

While returning the aircraft back to service, Boeing had to reassure the World on multiple fronts the aircraft was safe to fly. They needed to showcase the MCAS improvements made to the pilots fraternity & of course train them, goes to say the analysts and the public were watching these developments closely. Additionally they needed to repair lost confidence with airlines, and sweet deals were the order of the day.

Boeing appears to have had seven CEOs in the last 23 years , that comes to an average of just over three years per CEO, while the average tenure of Fortune 100 companies is 7.2 years. Is the issue here? Company Culture??

The Future

A comparison of A320Neo family orders and deliveries v/s the B737 Max orders and deliveries

Current order books and deliveries show the A320Neo Family of aircraft have an advantage of over 80% v/s B737 Max orders and deliveries. This gap might only be closed with the launch of the long overdue Boeing Y1?

Boeing, a legendary company founded over 100 years ago has given several immortal aircraft to the World. Their place in the aviation hall of fame is reserved . For them to be truly ‘afragile’, they need to revisit their greatness under people like  Bill Allen, Boeing CEO between 1945 – 1968. It was under his stewardship that Boeing created several legendary aircraft including the Boeing 737. 

History is the greatest teacher and Boeing will do well to take a look at their past, as they regain lost glory. 

346 ….Afragile…..

The B737 Max

Disclaimer: The data used by the author are from open source.  

Source List:

The Seattle Times

The Guardian

Forbes

Wikipedia

Boeing & Airbus websites

Last but not the least ChatGPT

The 9/11 Peace

Last week on 9/11 eve , The authorities identified two more victims of the acts that claimed over 3000 lives. The victims identified now stand at 1649. The identifications help bring closure to two more families.

The cover of Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book as I remember it from 2007

Nicholas Nassim Taleb in his book describes a Black Swan as a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was.

While the book was more about building robustness in business to cope with such events, there has been one major change since April 2007, the book’s release. Our ability to process data has moved from the realm of reactive to the predictive. There lies the secret of our future.

The Yucatan Peninsula crater…most of it hidden underwater

The mother of Black Swan’s was the extinction level event 66 million years ago above the Yucatán peninsula. The explosion and the resulting blast crater was so vast , it remained undiscovered until the 1980s ! The discovery was possible because of the convergence of data from two unrelated fields of research. In 1979 Walter and Luis Alvarez, discovered a thin layer of clay in Gubbio, Italy that had iridium levels 160 times above the background level. It was theorized the iridium got there due to the atmospheric dissipation of the vaporized impactor . A huge crater lay waiting to be discovered.

In 1978 geophysicists Glen Penfeild and Antonio Camargo working for Pemex of Mexico were conducting an airborne magnetic survey of the Gulf of Mexico north of the Yucatán Peninsula when they discovered an anomaly 180km in diameter. 

Proving the theory right needed multiple cuts of data to match before the reason for the dinosaur extinction was proved.

The 1998 movie Deep Impact is about a comet colliding with Earth. Earth has a year and a lottery decides 200,000 Americans to shelter underground, the rest to fend for themselves. 

Extrapolating the movie and the event from 66 million years ago, there is an element of predictability that has crept in over the last 25 years. All Data driven.

In 2016 OSIRIS-REx was launched by NASA to rendezvous with Asteroid Bennu in 2018, it explored and collected samples and now returns to Earth.Such missions only plug data gaps and assist in Earth’s ability to combat previously extinction level events.

On the 22nd anniversary of 9/11 we can safely say the World is a safer due to strides made in multiple fields working in synergy. Facial and biometric recognition are widely used ( even the iPhone ). Forensic profiling has made strides in synergising nominal and criminal data to create never before observed potential criminal profiles. X-Ray machines at airports are now able to detect possible weapons both inside and outside the body without making contact. 

As our Universe gets increasingly data driven, Mankind will seek synergy with data and create a safer Earth for future generations…

Peace.

The Starman Significance

Starman in his Tesla Roadster orbiting Earth . The shot is taken within the first four hours of launch, at which time batteries ran out.

The Tesla Roadster has been in space for over five years. While it looks like the most out of this World PR stunt ever, where Elon Musk synergized both Tesla and Space X in one big flex, there are several subtle messages that allude to a much bigger vision of things to come.

The setting in the Roadster is a study by itself. Space Oddity by David Bowie is set in a loop at full volume on the sound system. A full size human mannequin was clothed in a Space X pressure spacesuit with his left arm jauntily placed on the window sill of car and the right hand on the steering wheel. A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams in the glove box of the car along with a towel ( an essential for every space traveler ) and a 5D optical disc of Issac Asimov’s Foundation Series. The infotainment screen of the car says ‘ Don’t Panic‘.

The original single cover of Space Oddity by David Bowie

Space Oddity is an oddity in every sense and has a forgotten back story. Released on July 11th 1969 just five days before the Apollo 11 launch by a young and relatively unknown David Bowie.

The single was aimed to capitalize on the frenzy surrounding the manned Moon launch and the lyrics speak of the emotions that Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin & Micheal Collins are going through. In fact they were considered so sensitive and controversial that BBC actually banned the single until the mission was successfully completed. The rest is history. The mannequin is named after another David Bowie single ‘ Starman ‘….

The first addition cover of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy…note the absence of Don’t Panic on the cover!

An acrylic painting of the Tesla Roadster dashboard. Note the Don’t Panic on the infotainment Screen and the mini Hotwheels Roadster between the closed AC Vents.

A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is prophetic in many ways, and the Roadster has tried to capture the essence of it. The story follows Arthur Dent an Englishman and the only survivor of Earth, destroyed to make way for a Hyperspace Bypass and his researcher Alien friend Ford Prefect’s many adventures as they go through the Galaxy. The Don’t Panic refers to mainly two things, one related to their ongoing adventures with surprises at every turn, two the handling of the Guide …a futuristic laptop …from 1979! In this book Earth is a Giant Super Computer ( remember Cray Super Computers !). Surprise today 44 years on we are definitely heading in that direction with the guide a combination of Laptop / Tablet / Encyclopedia / Google and of course ChatGPT! ( Remember Elon has always had reservations about AI? )

The towel in the Hitch hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is considered an essential item for multiple reasons…the most important being a possible Moral Compass.

The Hotwheels Roadster is just a whimsy!

A 3D rendering of how the Roadster was loaded atop the second stage booster of Falcon Heavy

Issac Asimov is considered a visionary, and even today his ideas from 80 years ago sound either current current or futuristic. The Foundation series speaks of The Galactic Empire ( sound familiar? ) and mathematician Hari Seldon looking to develop a theory of psychohistory. One that combines history, sociology and mathematical statistics.

It is only today through Big Data and Machine Learning that mankind is able to combine the three and have actionable points from it….Data Science!

Overall ‘ Starman’ ploughing his lone furrow around the Sun, Earth & Mars is a harbinger of things to come in the not so distant future…the Superheavy looking to liftoff any day now points there.

The Starship almost ready to launch!

The Carreidas 160 Equation

The Carriedas 160 Thumbnail picture from Flight 714 , captured in crayon by my then thirteen year old daughter…precious

The Carreidas 160 is without doubt the most famous and fabulous aircraft that never was. The actual star of Flight 714…it was not just the specs of aircraft but the paces it was put through that thrust this wonderful aircraft into the pantheon reserved for the best.

A rewind back…an impressionable eight year old had just been gifted a new comic by his Dad who had just returned from Bangalore…Flight 714….and the first thing his young eyes caught was the thumb nail…this set off a lifetime of dreaming aviation!

Back to the aircraft…a sixty year old Herge was looking to plan his next adventure…and he wanted to up the technology quotient in his comic books…however his drawing hand was not up to scratch…he enlisted Roger Leloup as his expert…Leloup’s biography says he is a technical artist and an aviation expert. Herge was known was known for the incredible amount of technical detail he put into all the machines in his comics….The moon rocket from Destination Moon…and of course ‘ The Unicorn ‘ from ‘ The Secret of the Unicorn ‘ come readily to mind…it must be said all mechanical equipment in TinTin comics was always very detailed and exacting….The Carreidas 160 ,the best of all.

Herge was also known to incorporate current events in his comics. The time that Carreidas 160 was conceptualised was the period the Concorde was under construction.

The specs are startlingly similar ( and yet different ). We start with the swing wing! Variable Geometry wings were very much in vogue in the 1960s and a number of cutting edge fighter jets. The MIG 23 ‘ Flogger ‘ and F-14 ‘ Tomcat ‘ were both in development at the same time Carriedas 160 was conceptualized.

The Carreidas 160 had three engines each developing 18,500 pounds of thrust again a very similar number of what the MiG 23 produced and about 10% less than the Tomcat ( which was much more recent ).

The glimpses of the cockpit have a very similar feel to that of the Concorde. The give away that the aircraft was designed over 60 years ago is the need for a navigator. The landing gear has a distinct look of the TSR2 again from similar vintage. The extension and compression of the gear on the landing is amazingly detailed…and possibly accurate.

The T Tail configuration appears to have been inspired by the Boeing 727. The trijet setup appears to the Trident. In fact the Trident had a T Tail too…

The cruising altitude of 40,000 feet at Mach 2. The 40,000 feet is very similar to jet aircraft of the day ex: Boeing 707, but way below Concorde’s 60,000 feet. The Mach 2 is a cruise benchmark even today.The Rolls Royce Turbomeca of the Carreidas 160 has a very similar ring to Rolls Royce Snecma engine of the Concorde.

The one weakness in the aircraft is the square windows. Leloup appears to have disregarded the DeHavilland Comet crashes of the 1950’s and instead gone with the aesthetics of square windows.

The internal aesthetics of the aircraft are of course of Biz Jet standards even today. The personal ‘ Battleship ‘ CRT a precursor of the personal entertainment on today’s jets. The fact that Lazlo Carriedas was able to see Captain Haddock’s Battleship setup points to CCTV…again cutting edge.

The fact the aircraft was able to stop on a runway a quarter the length of the runway required points to fantastic brakes! The chute deployment points to no reversers ( once again fighter jet inspiration ).

All in All the Best Aircraft that never was…

The aircraft was the true Hero of ‘ Flight 714 ‘….

Adieu….

A schematic of the Carriedas 160

Disclaimer : Pic credit the owner

The ZNMD Revealation

The ZNMD Poster…there were multiple…all the rage of the time…

This anecdote is from twelve years ago!

Qatar Airways had launched it’s #Barcelona flights in June of 2010 , this was their second destination in Spain after #Madrid. For the first year of operations there was nothing out of the ordinary about sales from India….and suddenly around July – August 2011….there was an exponential spike in bookings! This spike continued to sustain….what was the reason? The answer lay with #ZindagiNaMilegiDobara ….#ZNMD for short….

The #bollywood blockbuster released in July 2011 and the positive effect on outbound tourism from India was almost instantaneous. So why did this happen?

The movie produced by #Excelentertainment managed to bring together the holy trinity of tourism…the tourism boards – the airlines – hotels together. The Spanish Tourism Board gave a subsidy of approx Euros 500,000 to be spent in the region and the production house did just that…the resulting showcase had a posit effect on the Indian outbound Tourism to Spain …

Movies have long been the staple of the Indian populace. Some early movies shot abroad were #LoveinTokyo and #AnEveninginParis . These movies were shot in the 1960s when the Middle Class Indian was not as mobile as today.

Of course needless to say the shooting abroad fad was taken to a whole another level by #YashChopra and his penchant for #Switzerland and #KaranJohar and his penchant for the #UnitedStates

Some of the places that have become popular with the Indian Tourist also have their origins from the Indian Film Industry. To name a few #Turkey #Azerbaijan #Armenia

Finally, the secret of successful leisure destination engineering is alliances. While there exists the Holy Trinity ( Tourism Board – Airlines – Hotels ), in some cases where the tourism boards are weaker we have Destination Management Companies stepping into the gap and doing an admirable job…goes to say nothing is possible without the Travel Agent and of course the Consumer…all working together together in harmony…

Memories

Disclaimer : All image rights belong to the owner

The Steve Jobs Calligraphy

In Steve Jobs 2005 Stanford Commencement address, he famously mentions his tryst with Calligraphy and how it has helped shape all modern computers.

He refers to his time in Reed College where after dropping out, he decides to take a calligraphy class at the college as the beautifully calligraphed signs and labels of the entire college, that caught his eye, were infact created by the class.

Safe to say the iPad I am currently typing on was directly influenced by the class.

He uses this example when he is speaking of ‘ The Connecting the Dots Concept ‘. He further states the dots only connect towards your past and having deep faith in your focused actions will give you confidence to connect to your future and win!

Today forty years after school, I am very lucky to be in touch with a large number of my classmates …my ‘ Chuddi Buddies ‘…and have the unique opportunity of using the ‘ Steve Jobs Prism’ on the class. As in any class ,you have your first rankers and of course your back benchers…all together in this WhatsApp group aptly called ‘ Rascals of 83’…a name that will stick forever.We had students of mediocre academic ability who oozed tremendous confidence and then some who always had a clear vision of what they wanted to be and some…like me who really had no concept of a vision and fell into the mediocre category.

So what happens when you develop a strong sense of vision? Even students of mediocre ability begin to achieve goals. The Rascals of 83 group is full of such successes. And there are some students who were anointed toward success at a very young age. None disappointed. I now realize the absence of a clear vision actually helped in my performance toward mediocrity!

The difference between a Dream and Vision is a series of implementation steps and milestones. Each step and milestone passed only increases your self confidence and propels you forward and upward…

To sum up…Calligraph your own success with your self belief and it will be yours!

Cheers!