Author: gulley

Planes don’t need pilots. At least not the kind that have to sit inside the plane.

For several years now, any observer of military aviation could see that unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) were going to change combat in the same way that carrier-based aircraft changed naval warfare in the years before World War II. Then as now, the old guard wasn’t looking for drastic change. Air Force generals are pilots, and pilots like to fly. A pilot, like an astronaut, can always be counted on to exaggerate the value of the human in the cockpit. I can’t blame them for wanting to fly, but when it stops making military sense, I’m not so keen to foot the bill. Like an aging photographer praising Kodachrome film, a general may swear that the old ways are the best ways, but only a fool would bet against the UAV.

What’s different this year is that the everybody, including the generals, realizes the change is happening. It often takes a war to force through big changes in doctrine, and between Iraq and Afghanistan we have all the war we need. Here’s US Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz, speaking earlier this year:

This is one of those inflection points, one of those times when the whole path of history shifts … That’s what’s happening, and the question is whether the United States Air Force wants to be on that wave or left behind.

Now that we’re past pushback at the top, things can happen quickly. There will be new career paths, new facilities, and a better path toward operational excellence. Most exciting to me, as an old aerospace engineer, is the rapidly evolving vehicle itself. UAVs used to be either big model airplanes or regular planes with the pilot pulled out. Now we’ve got bird bots like the Raven, and this remarkable hummingbird-sized flapping bot. And there’s the solar-powered Vulture that can stay aloft for five years. BotJunkie ran a nice gallery of new UAVs to give you a sense of the variety.

Finally, watch this video about military insects. It’s a little George Jetson over-the-top, but something like this is coming sooner than you think. Jane! Stop this crazy thing!

http://video.chicagotribune.com/global/video/flash/widgets/WNVideoCanvas.swf

When I was a kid, we subscribed to Scientific American, and it was big fun for me to work through the articles. I didn’t always understand what was going on, but it was clear that the articles were important and written by the people doing the work.

Over the past decade of bookstore browsing, I’ve seen New Scientist magazine becoming more and more prominent on the news rack. New Scientist, a British magazine, is a little bit harder hitting than the soft science journalism you get in something like Discover or Popular Science. But it still has BIG PICTURES, BRIGHT COLORS, and FLASHY HEADLINES (Gaia’s evil twin: Is life its own worst enemy?). In short, it’s sensational hard science. It’s kind of a weird concept, even though the magazine often contains good articles. And it’s clearly selling. From my observations, it looks like New Scientist is winning and Scientific American is going out to meet them. Every year, SciAm gets fluffier and flashier and more like New Scientist. It must suck to be the editor at a magazine that’s losing money fast. As the captain of a sinking ship, you have to make rapid, high-stakes bets on how to attract new readers faster than you alienate your old ones. My guess is that SciAm is sinking fast.

But don’t take it from me. Listen to Brian Hayes. Brian is an excellent science journalist, columnist, and blogger who used to work at SciAm. Here’s what he has to say: bit-player: Sic transit. And where does Hayes work now? At a magazine called American Scientist (I know… these names are all pretty clever, huh?). In my opinion, American Scientist has claimed the mantle that SciAm once had: serious but accessible science, often written by the researchers themselves. Pick it up at the newsstand if you see it and support the old spirit of Scientific American.

With the 40th anniversary of the faked landing on the moon, the exploits of our ancient space mariners are much in the public eye. As it simultaneously fades into the past and the future, the lunar landing becomes ever more unimaginable and mythic in the public imagination. Just as Erich von Däniken once speculated that ancient Egyptians couldn’t possibly have been clever enough to build their own pyramids without extraterrestrial help, it won’t be long before no one believes that the tiny humans who lived in the 1960s (The Kingston Trio! Perry Como!) could possibly have gone to the moon. I even wrote a short script for future TV show based on this premise: Mysteries of the Ancients.

Anyway, when it comes to NASA videos, I always look for the most unedited stuff I can get my hands on. This, for my money, is the best video of the landing: one shot, out-the-window, from 40,000 feet to touchdown.

And since we should remember the new guys who are up there even now, I recommend this Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth. The shots are all pretty amazing, but don’t miss the Weekly Top 10. Look, for example, at this god’s-eye view of a giant thunderstorm. It might be a little overwhelming seeing that endless spectacle out the window hour after hour. That’s the real reason we only send scientists, pilots, and engineers into space. Put a poet up there and their head would come off.