Search This Blog

Wikipedia

Search results

Monday, September 14, 2015

Dutch Air Force Chief Slams US Army Helicopter Plan





While there is debate over design, experts can agree on many bells and whistles they would like to see in the helicopter of the future.

LONDON — The head of the Royal Netherlands Air Force has a message for his U.S. Army colleagues developing the military helicopter of the future: You’re doing it all wrong.


In a blunt address to a room of global helicopter experts, Lt. Gen. Alexander Schnitger said the two primary designs currently being evaluated by the Army are not ambitious enough and could fall far short of what NATO needs to win a war.
“Sure, requirements call for a helicopter that is twice as fast and can fly twice as far as the current generation, but both solutions are based on 80s technology, refreshed a little bit,” Schnitger said at the DSEI global security conference.
Through a project called Future Vertical Lift, the Army has tasked Bell Helicopter and a Sikorsky-Boeing team with building prototypes that could evolve into the design for thousands of new helicopters for the American military and its allies. The Bell design is a new tiltrotor that has rotating propellers — like the V-22 Osprey — so the aircraft can takeoff like a helicopter and fly at faster speeds like an airplane. The Sikorsky-Boeing design includes a compound main rotor and a rear propeller that pushes the helicopter forward, helping it reach high speed. But Schnitger is not impressed.
“[I]is that really, really the cutting edge? Is that truly disruptive, vertical lift technology?,” he said. “When I look at the [Future Vertical Lift] designs, I see today’s technology being incrementally improved toward the future. What I would like to see is a disruptive vision of the vertical lift capabilities that is ready for any operation in 2040. Instead of extrapolating today into the future I’d like to start with the future and then decide how to get there.”
Helicopter experts can agree that there are certain attributes that the helicopters of 2030 and beyond need. The helicopters must have drastically improved performance over today’s helicopters, these experts say. They need to fly higher, faster, further and carry more.
“We’d like to carry more with a platform that basically weighs the same,” said Pat Collins, an engineer in the British military’s Defence Equipment and Support division. “That might lead us to go into more dedicated aircraft rather than multirole platforms.”
The U.S. Army’s current plan is a scalable helicopter, depending on the missions, with lots of similar components.
“If you actually want to have a viable platform that would be able to get stuff out, long distance, fast, with a large quantity of [onboard], it may have to be dedicated for that,” Collins said.
Helicopters in the future need to survive, able to evade small arms fire, rocket propelled grenades or missiles.
“This is an area that demands our immediate attention given the rapidly increasing proliferation of more sophisticated threat systems,” said Maj. Gen. Richard Felton, commander of British military’s Joint Helicopter Command.
They must be able to fly in all types of weather, fog, dust, rain and snow. This is a major priority for the U.S. Army. Then there’s reducing vibrations and the wear and tear on rotor blades, two other areas eyed for improvement.
The British military already has a project to prevent helicopters from flying into power lines and other types of wires. More needs to be done to prevent helicopters from colliding with one another on the battlefield when their not transmitting their location, Collins said.
New helicopters must be able to talk to one another electronically and be built in a way that they can receive upgrades without little modification.
While some future helicopters will be pilotless, the manned ones will operate in concert with drones. The Army is already doing this with Apaches and Shadow and Grey Eagle drones.
Schnitger also said there needs to be more participation from European companies for European countries to buy in. In his position as Air Force commander, Schnitger oversees The Netherlands 83 military helicopters, a fleet that includes American-made Chinooks and Apaches.
“[I]f they don’t get it right — we the warfighter, the maintainer, the industry and our political masters — will be stuck with the wrong vertical lift for future missions for a very, very long time,” he said. “That’s why we need to get it right, and we probably need to get it right together.”
Military planners are bad at predicting threats five years from now, as evident of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rapid rise and spread of Islamic State militants. The two designs are based on a present view of the world and technology, Schnitger said.
“So far I am not impressed nor convinced that the current plans are advanced enough to serve us past 2040,” he said.
“When we start thinking about future vertical lift capabilities, our primary consideration should be the effects that the need to be able to achieve in tomorrow’s operations, Schnitger said.

4 lessons from the failure of the Ford Edsel, one of Bill Gates' favorite case studies

http://www.businessinsider.com/

ford edsel
The Edsel has new life today as a collector's item.
On this day in 1957, Ford released a car that flopped so spectacularly that it has become a timeless case study on how not to develop and launch a product.
The 1958 Ford Edsel was supposed to be the new premiere car for middle-class Americans.
Ford was so confident in the product that it pumped $250 million into it. But instead of starting a revolution, the company lost $350 million on the unattractive gas-guzzler.
In the late John Brooks' book "Business Adventures," a collection of New Yorker articles from the '60s that was republished last year, Brooks explains what went wrong in the story, "The Fate of the Edsel."
"Business Adventures" is Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates' favorite business book, and he finds the Edsel piece especially interesting. He explains in his blog:
[Brooks] refutes the popular explanations for why Ford's flagship car was such a historic flop. It wasn't because the car was overly poll-tested; it was because Ford's executives only pretended to be acting on what the polls said.
"Although the Edsel was supposed to be advertised, and otherwise promoted, strictly on the basis of preferences expressed in polls, some old-fashioned snake-oil selling methods, intuitive rather than scientific, crept in."
It certainly didn't help that the first Edsels "were delivered with oil leaks, sticking hoods, trunks that wouldn't open, and push buttons that … couldn't be budged with a hammer."
Here are some lessons from the failed launch that are still relevant today:

Don't let egos trump research

Ford's designers and marketers began development on the car in 1955, with the intent of creating an automobile tailored to the desires of the American people, as determined through seemingly endless polling.
Ad men got to work thinking up thousands of names and testing them in focus groups with civilians and Ford execs, and even consulted the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Marianne Moore for the perfect name for the perfect car. (Moore suggested such absurd names as the Utopian Turtletop and The Intelligent Whale.) Despite endless hours of testing and consultation, the chairman of the board decided at the last minute that he was going to go with Edsel, the name of Henry Ford's son.
"As for the design," Brooks writes, "it was arrived at without even a pretense of consulting the polls, and by the method that has been standard for years in the designing of automobiles — that of simply pooling the hunches of sundry company committees."

Focus your vision

In the late '50s, American consumers had a limited choice of car models, and there weren't tremendous differences in performance from model to model, at least by today's standards. Edsel's designers knew that they were creating an image, a character, but instead of refining their vision, they decided to make it everything at once.
In a lazy attempt to please everybody, they made the terrible decision to debut 18 variations of the car at launch. The academic S. I. Hayakawa dubbed the car the Edsel Hermaphrodite because it seemed as if it were explicitly trying to be masculine and feminine.
And, because it was 1957, Ford decided to have two media previews, one for male reporters and one for their wives. In the former, the Edsel was driven around a stunt course as if it were in a Hollywood blockbuster — at one point an Edsel almost flipped.
Gates mentions in his blog that the women's event, a fashion show, was one of his favorite passages in the story because the host was revealed to be a "female impersonator" (i.e. a man in drag), which was not only bizarre but, as Gates says, "would have been scandalous for a major American corporation in 1957."

ford edsel 
Ford advertisement for some of the many variations of the Ford Edsel.

Don't put yourself in a situation you can't get out of

A year before launch, Ford began a teaser campaign for the E-Car, the code name for the Edsel as it was being developed. It gave customers the expectation that they were going to get an irresistible car of the future.
Ford execs seemed to never once consider failure to be an option. They created an entire Edsel division and persuaded dealerships to order a certain number of cars before the Edsel was even finished.
Had they acted more cautiously and avoided betting so much on the car, they could have pulled back once the stock market took a nosedive in the summer of 1957, and people stopped buying mid-priced cars. Mere weeks before the car's launch in September, Brooks writes, "Automotive News reported that dealers in all makes were ending their season with the second-largest number of unsold cars in history."

If you fail, accept it and move on, all the wiser for it

At launch, the car was too expensive, used up too much gas, and was mocked in the press. A redesigned 1959 Edsel debuted to better reviews, but the damage was done. Nobody wanted an Edsel. A 1960 Edsel came out in limited production, but Ford president and future secretary of defense Robert McNamara finally pulled the plug in 1960.
Brooks estimates that "every Edsel the company manufactured cost it in lost money about $3,200, or the price of another one."
Even though Ford recovered from the setback, the executives who led the project expressed to Brooks no recognition of their countless mistakes and even looked back fondly on their time developing and marketing the car.
J.C. Doyle, an Edsel marketing manager, even went so far as blaming the American public for the failed launch. He tells Brooks that he was flabbergasted that the American consumer dared to be so fickle.
"What they'd been buying for several years encouraged the industry to build exactly this kind of car," he says. "We gave it to them, and they wouldn't take it. Well, they shouldn't have acted like that ... And now the public wants these little beetles. I don't get it!"

Sunday, September 13, 2015

Steps to Interstellar laser pushed propulsion and a 16 year trip to Alpha Centauri

 http://nextbigfuture.com/

September 11, 2015


The impossible task of traveling 25.6 trillion miles to Alpha Centauri, our closest star, is now possible. Using a Directed Energy System for Targeting of Asteroids and exploRation (DE-STAR), a versatile, scalable phased-array laser system, it can be reached in a short 16 years. Our project entails carrying out both computational and experimental studies of specific uses of DE-STAR to investigate photon recycling and spacecraft propulsion. Photon recycling is a unique term used to describe a form of energy conservation relative to this project. This effect will greatly improve the efficiency of spacecraft making interstellar flight more plausible. What lies beyond our solar system is one of the biggest mysteries of mankind and it finally has the potential to be solved.

The DESTAR interstellar laser propulsion system is modular, scalable and on a very rapid development path. It lends itself to a roadmap.

There has been a game change in directed energy technology whose consequences are profound for many applications including photon driven propulsion. This allows for a completely modular and scalable technology without "dead ends".

Laser efficiencies are near 50%. The rise in efficiency will not be one of the enabling elements along the road map but free space phase control over large distances during the acceleration phase will be. This will require understanding the optics, phase noise and systematic effects of our combined on-board metrology and off-board phase servo feedback.

Reflector stability during acceleration will also be on the critical path as will increasing the TRL of the amplifiers for space use. For convenience we break the roadmap into several steps. One of the critical development items for space deployment is greatly lowering the mass of the radiators. While this sounds like a decidedly low tech item to work on, it turns out to be one of the critical mass drivers for space deployment. Current radiators have a mass to radiated power of 25 kg/kw, for radiated temperatures near 300K. This is an area where some new ideas are needed. With our current Yb fiber baseline laser amplifier mass to power of 5kg/kw (with a likely 5 year roadmap to 1 kg/kw) and current space photovoltaics of less than 7 kg/kw, the radiators are a serious issue for large scale space deployment.

The same basic system can be used for many purposes including both stand-on and stand-off planetary defense from virtually all threats with rapid response, orbital debris mitigation, orbital boosting from LEO to GEO for example, future ground to LEO laser assisted launchers, standoff composition analysis of distant object through molecular line absorption, active illumination of asteroids and other solar system bodies, beamed power to distant spacecraft among others. The same system can also be used for beaming power down to the Earth via micro or mm waves for selected applications. This technology will give us transformative options that are not possible now and allows us to go far beyond our existing chemical propulsion systems.

Consider a 1 gram payload attached to a 0.7 meter diameter sail. Image Adrian Mann


Fiber solid state lasers (SSLs) are widely used in industry—tens of thousands are used by auto and truck manufacturing firms for cutting and welding metal. They are considered to be a very robust technology. One fiber SSL prototype demonstrator developed by the Navy, called the Laser Weapon System(LaWS), had a beam power of 33 kW.

Operational Maturation and Steps:

Step 1 - Ground based - Small phased array, beam targeting and stability tests - 10 kw
Step II – Ground based - Target levitation and lab scale beam line acceleration tests - 10 kw
Step III – Ground based - Beam formation at large array spacing –
Step IV – Ground based - Scale to 100 kW with arrays sizes in the 1-3 m size –
Step V – Ground based - Scale to 1 MW with 10 m optics –
Step VI – Orbital testing with small 1-3 class arrays and 10-100kw power – ISS possibility
Step VII – Orbital array assembly tests in 10 m class array
Step VIII – Orbital assembly with sparse array at 100 m level –
Step IX – Orbital filled 100 m array
Step X – Orbital sparse 1km array
Step XI – Orbital filled 1 km array
Step XII – Orbital sparse 10 km array
Step XIII – Orbital filled 10 km array

The more modest size systems can be completely tested on the ground as well as sub-orbital flight tested on balloons or possibly sounding rocket. While the largest sized systems (km scale) are required for interstellar missions, small systems have immediate use for roadmap development and applications such as sending small probes into the solar system and then working our way outward as larger laser arrays are built. The laser array is modular, leading to mass production, so that a larger array can be built by adding elements to a smaller array. Array testing and propulsion tests are feasible at all levels allowing for roadmap development rather than "all or nothing". Small array can also be used for orbital debris removal, ISS defense from space debris as well as stand-on systems for planetary defense so again there is a use at practically every level and funding is well amortized over multiple uses. This allows practical justification for construction. In addition there is an enormous leveraging of DoD and DARPA funds for Directed Energy systems that dramatically lowers the NASA costs.

Phase lockable lasers and current PV performance - New fiber-fed lasers at 1 μm have efficiencies near 40% (DARPA Excalibur program currently at 5 kg/kW with near term goal of 1 kg/kW). They assume incremental efficiency increases to 70% though current efficiencies are already good enough to start the program. It is conceivable that power density could increase to 10 kW/kg in 10-20 years given the current pace. Current space multi-junction PV has an efficiency of nearing 40% with deployable mass per power of less than 7 kg/kW (ATK Megaflex as baselined for DE-STARLITE). Multi junction devices with efficiency in excess of 50% are on the horizon with current laboratory work exploring PV at efficiencies up to 70% over the next decade. We anticipate over a 20 year period PV efficiency will rise significantly, though it is NOT necessary for the roadmap to proceed. The roadmap is relatively "fault tolerant" in technology develop. Array level metrology as a part of the multi level servo feedback system is a critical element and one where recent advances in low cost nanometer level metrology for space applications is another key technology. One surprising area that needs significant work is the simple radiators that radiate excess heat. Currently this is the largest mass sub system at 25 kg/kw (radiated). The increase in laser efficiency reduces the radiator mass as does the possibility to run the lasers well above 300K. Radiation hardening/ resistance and the TRL levels needed for orbital use are another area they are currently exploring.



Wafer Scale Spacecraft. Recent work at UCSB on Si photonics now allows us to design and build a "spacecraft on a wafer". The recent (UCSB) work in phased array lasers on a wafer for ground-based optical communications combined with the ability to combine optical arrays (CMOS imagers for example) and MEMS accelerometers and gyros as well as many other sensors and computational abilities allows for extremely complex and novel systems. Traditional spacecraft are still largely built so that the mass is dominated by the packaging and interconnects rather than the fundamental limits on sensors. Our approach is similar to comparing a laptop of today to a super computer with similar power of 20 years ago and even a laptop is dominated by the human interface (screen and keyboard) rather than the processor and memory. Combining nano photonics, MEMS and electronics with recent UCSB work on Si nano wire thermal converters allows us to design a wafer that also has an embedded RTG or beta converter power source (recent LMCO work on thin film beta converters as an example) that can power the system over the many decades required in space. Combined with small photon thrusters (embedded LEDs/lasers for nN thrust steering on the wafer gives a functional spacecraft

Adding a second reflector we get double or triple amount of force than on just one reflector.

Technology Maturation:

Laser and Phased Array
* Increase TRL of laser amplifiers to at least TRL 6
* Test of low mass thin film optics as an option
* Reduce SBS effect to lower bandwidth and increase coherence time/ length
* Optimize multiple lower power amplifiers vs fewer higher power units – SBS/coherence trades
* Maturation and miniaturization of phase control elements for phased array
* Phase tapping and feedback on structure
* Structural metrology designs
* Study of optimized Kalman filters as part of phase control and servo targeting loop
* Study and test near field phase feedback from small free-flyer elements
* Study beam profiling and methods to smooth beam on reflector
* Beam randomization techniques to flatten beam

Reflector
* Study multilayer dielectric coating to minimize loss and maximize reflectivity – trade study
* Study materials designs for minimal mass reflectors – plastics vs glasses
* Shape designs for reflector stability - shaping
* Study designs with varying thicknesses and dielectric layers
* Study designs with low laser line absorption and high thermal IR absorption (emission)
* Study broader band reflectors to deal with relativistic wavelength shift with speed
* Study self stabilizing designs
* Simulations of reflector stability and oscillations during acceleration phase – shape changes
* Study spinning reflector to aid stability and randomization of differential force and heating
* Study techniques for reflector to laser active feedback
* Study techniques to keep beam on reflector

Wafer scale spacecraft
* Study materials for lowest power and high radiation resistance and compatibility with sensors
* Determine power requirements
* Study onboard power options – RTG, beta converter, beamed power
* Design narrow bandgap PV for beamed power phase
* Design on-wafer laser communications
* Design optical and IR imaging sensors
* Star tracker and laser lock modes
* Study swarm modes including intercommunications
* Design watchdog timers and redundant computational and sensor/ power topologies
* Test in beam line to simulate radiation exposure
* Design on-board or thin film “pop up” optics
* Design fiber optic or similar cloaking to mitigate heating during laser exposure
* Simulate thermal management both during laser exposure and during cruise phase
* Simulate radiation exposure during cruise phase
* Study materials for lowest power and high radiation resistance and compatibility with sensors
* Simulate imaging of target objects
* Study use of WaferSat for planetary and terrestrial probes

Communications
* Optimize wafer only laser communications
* Study feasibility of using acceleration reflector as part of laser communications
* Study feasibility of using reflector as thin film optics for laser comm and imaging

System Level
* Detailed design studies including mass tradeoffs and costing vs system size
* Develop cost roadmaps identifying critical elements as impediments to deployment vs size
* Design, build, test ground based structures with metrology feedback system
* Design and simulate orbital structures of various sizes (fixed vs sub element free flyer)
* Study orbital tradeoffs and project launcher feasibility vs time
* Study LEO, GEO, Lagrange points, lunar options
* Simulations of prober orbital trajectories including any Earth blockage effects
* Work with space PV designers to optimize efficiency and minimize mass
* Develop PV roadmap for mass, efficiency, rad resistance and aging
* Develop roadmap to reducing radiator mass by 10x as goal.
* Study target selection of possible exoplanet systems
* Study solar system targets
* Study multi mode use including space debris, beamed power, SPS, planetary defense …
* International space law issues

The following gives a selected set of possible missions. It is assumed that the reflector mass is equal to the base spacecraft mass (ie system mass not including reflector – or total system mass is twice the base spacecraft mass). The reflector is assumed to be 1 micron thick and the reflector density is assumed to be 1.4 g/cc. The laser array is assumed to be 10km on a side and the reflector is assumed to be square. The mass given is the base spacecraft mass and hence the reflector mass. The laser power is assumed to be 70 GW.

1g – wafer scale spacecraft with 0.85m reflector capable of significant relativistic light.
Time to when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size= 186s
Distance when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=4.01 million km
Speed when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=43100 km/s
Beta when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=0.14
Speed with continued illumination=61,000 km/s
Beta with continued illumination=0.20
Acceleration when reflector is fully illuminated=2370 g

10g – multiple wafer scale systems with 2.7m reflector
Time to when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size= 1050s
Distance when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=12.7 million km
Speed when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=24300 km/s
Beta when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=0.081
Speed with continued illumination=34300 km/s
Beta with continued illumination=0.11
Acceleration when reflector is fully illuminated=2.37x103g

100g – multiple wafer and sub class CubeSat systems with 8.5m reflector.
Time to when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size= 5880s
Distance when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=40.1 million km
Speed when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=13600 km/s
Beta when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=0.046
Speed with continued illumination=19300 km/s
Beta with continued illumination=0.064
Acceleration when reflector is fully illuminated=237g

1kg – CubeSat class systems with 27m reflector.
Time to when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size= 33,200 seconds
Distance when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=127 million km
Speed when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=7670 km/s
Beta when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=0.026
Speed with continued illumination=10800 km/s
Beta with continued illumination=0.036
Acceleration when reflector is fully illuminated=23.7g

10kg – significant imaging capability with 85m reflector.
Time to when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size= 186,000 seconds
Distance when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=40 million km
Speed when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=4310 km/s
Beta when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=0.014
Speed with continued illumination=6100 km/s
Beta with continued illumination=0.020
Acceleration when reflector is fully illuminated=2.37g

100kg – significant robotic mission with multi mission capability with 270m reflector.
Time to when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size= 106,000 seconds
Distance when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=1.27 billion km
Speed when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=2430 km/s
Beta when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=0.0081
Speed with continued illumination=3460 km/s
Beta with continued illumination=0.011
Acceleration when reflector is fully illuminated=0.237g

1000kg – smallest sized human “shuttle craft” system with 850m reflector.
Time to when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size= 5.88 million seconds
Distance when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=4 billion km
Speed when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=1360 km/s
Beta when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=0.0046
Speed with continued illumination=1930 km/s
Beta with continued illumination=0.0064
Acceleration when reflector is fully illuminated=0.0237g

10,000kg – medium human capable or cargo craft for interplanetary travel with 2.7km reflector.
Time to when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size= 33.2 million seconds
Distance when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=12.7 billion km
Speed when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=767 km/s
Beta when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=0.0026
Speed with continued illumination=1080 km/s
Beta with continued illumination=0.0036
Acceleration when reflector is fully illuminated=2.37x10^-3g

100,000kg – large human capable or cargo craft for interplanetary travel with 8.5km reflector.
Time to when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size= 186 million seconds
Distance when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=40.1 billion km
Speed when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=431 km/s
Beta when laser diffraction spot equals reflector size=0.0014
Speed with continued illumination=610 km/s
Beta with continued illumination=0.0020
Acceleration when reflector is fully illuminated=2.37x10^-4g