Last Sunday I had the pleasure of recording a podcast with some amazing aerospace buffs at www.airplanegeeks.com. One of their viewers was interested in learning more about http://www.aeroscholar.com, the University of Michigan Aerospace Engineering department, and AIAA. I was extremely happy to oblige them
I highly recommend the show to those of you interested in aviation, especially if you have a long commute to work where you’ll have plenty of time to listen.
Aeroscholar talks about the state of education in the aerospace industry, aeroscholar.com, advice for people interested in aerospace engineering and aviation, and the cool tours that the AIAA at Michigan have been on.
David Vanderhoof gives us a report on the Space Shuttle swap-out at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s Udvar-Hazy Center at Dulles Airport. He spoke with NASA Director Charles F. “Charlie” Bolden, NASM Curator Dr. Helen Morill, and Senator John Glenn.
Dan spoke with Virgin Galactic’s CEO and President George Whitesides aboard Virgin America’s inaugural flight from Los Angeles to Philadelphia.
Warbirds Facing Doom?
American Airlines unions, US Airways announce deal to support merger
Merged airline would be called American Airlines, headquartered in Fort Worth
Bates: US Airways has a good plan, American Airlines doesn’t
A JET FLIGHT PASSENGER’S NIGHTMARE: Delta flight forced to emergency land after bird strike takes out a 757 jet engine
Business Expert Videos Delta 1063 Mid Air Bird Strike
This weekend I got the chance to do something that I’ve always dreamed of. I piloted my first aircraft! Like most aerospace fanatics, ever since I was a child all I wanted to do was be a pilot. Having family all over Europe, I was constantly traveling and I loved it. I got to fly on planes all the time.
When the time came to choose my career path I tried to make the best decision between becoming a pilot or being an aerospace engineer. Eventually the decision was made to follow engineering and I’m extremely happy that I did! Being able to help design and build beautiful flying machines gives a level of satisfaction that I wouldn’t give up for anything. I did however make myself a promise that I would one day become a pilot, even if only as a hobby. This post outlines the beginning of a dream that will hopefully consume endless beautiful weekends for the rest of my life.
The Michigan Flyers did a phenomenal job of hosting the AIAA event for us this year! Thanks again!!
Discovery flights for the AIAA University of Michigan. I'm flying in the Cessna 172, but we also had a 162 and 152 at our disposal.
Shortly after takeoff you can see the Ann Arbor Airport
Flying over the Big House and Crisler Arena
Whitmore Lake from the sky
Flaps deployed for landing at Ann Arbor Municipal Airport
With a little help from the flight instructor we made it safely back on the ground
Above is our group photo in front of the shuttle main engine that was finally approved from Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne. You can read all about this tour here! Still wish we were back in California having the time of our lives!
This weekend March 30 – 31, 2012 the University of Michigan is hosting the AIAA Region III Student Conference. We started working on this project last summer and it’s finally almost here. Here’s a quick video we threw together (extra emphasis on the quick and threw part) showcasing some of the cool pictures we’ve taken as a group in the past year.
Sorry for the terrible music. The first song is something I recorded very quickly as well Enjoy!
If you’re interested in learning more about the conference we’re hosting, please visit the conference site here.
During spring break a group of 16 aerospace engineers took a grand tour of Southern California (SoCal), visiting 8 of the top aerospace research and production facilities. Known as the “Aerospace Dream Tour,” this event was organized by Michigan’s AIAA chapter, which leveraged its network to arrange tours at JPL, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, SpaceX, Lockheed-Martin “Skunk Works,” Scaled Composites, Pratt & Whitney Rockedyne, and Edwards Air Force Base. Details of this trip were documented on a blog the AIAA president Steve Harris kept throughout the trip. A day-by-day breakdown summarizing our trip is given below:
Monday: On Monday we toured NASA’s Jet Population Laboratory (JPL) and Boeing’s C-17 production facility. JPL is responsible for almost all of the deep space probes NASA sends to the other planets. Among other things, we saw where the new Mars rover known as Curiosity (the Mars Science Laboratory, currently on its way to Mars) was made. We noticed an engineer in a clean suit was using the iHandy app on his iPhone to find the inclination of the MSL engineering model. Later that day we saw C-17 Globemasters in various stages of their construction. It was humbling standing next such a large aircraft in its infancy. Some of the construction techniques were very unique, and we learned some surprising facts on the type of damage this military aircraft can take and still stay in the air.
Tuesday: On Tuesday we toured Northrop Grumman and SpaceX. At Northrope we toured the composites facility and walked down the F-18 Super Hornet production line. Looking at fighter jets never gets old for an aerospace engineer, and seeing their half build structure and
Iron Man thinks rockets are cool.
internal guts gave us all goose bumps. We then toured SpaceX, which pretty much blew the socks off the space geeks in the group (myself included). Everywhere you looked there was space hardware, including a new rocket engine the tour guide told us we should probably not be looking at. We stuck our head into that Dragon capsule mock up, watched their mission control room in action during a test run for the upcoming launch, and ate some of the free frozen yogurt the employees enjoy every day at the expense of a bet lost to Elon Musk. Did I mention the Iron Man movie was filmed here?
Wednesday: The mind-blowing tours continued on Wednesday when we took a very exclusive tour of Lockheed’s Advanced Development Programs facility, commonly known as the Skunk
Walt and an F-1 Engine
Works. This is where a lot of the top secret aircraft are developed and built. Most of us never thought we would have a chance to step foot in this facility without working for them. There we had a chance to get down and dirty with the P-791, an experimental aerostatic/aerodynamic hybrid airship. The day kept getting better with a trip to the Mohave Spaceport and a tour of Scaled Composites. One of the most interesting aircraft they developed and built is the Space Ship One spaceplane, a suborbital vehicle which won them the X Prize. There TBP members (Dan Becker and myself) piloted the suborbital flight simulator, launching the spaceplane to the edge of space.
Thursday: On Thursday AIAA members took a tour of two of Rocketdyne’s production facilities. Rocketdyne is responsible for building the F-1 rocket engine; the enormous monster that combined with four other engines put a man on the moon. They also built the Space Shuttle Main Engines, among others. If you want to see their handy work head over to the FXB.
Friday: Our grant tour concluded on Friday with a bang, literally. We were sitting in a conference room on the secure military base eating lunch and a loud noise, which sounded like someone dropping something on the roof, shook the room. It was a sonic boom! We had a
F-22 Raptor on the Flight Line
chance to shake the wing of a Global Hawk (a surveillance UAV) to view the vibrational modes, and saw plenty of jets in the air, including tow F-22 raptors. We saw the F-35 (the new Joint Strike Fighter) with our own eyes, and got up close to an F-16 and it various tools of destruction.
There is no question that this trip is basically the best possible way an aerospace engineer can spend a week short of flying in a fighter jet or traveling into space. However, not everything was official business. There were a lot of conventional fun activities we did as well. For instance, on
AIAA For Life!
Thursday, after our tour of Rocketdyne, we piled into our inconspicuous 12 passenger white van headed to Santa Monica for some beach time. There we took a short walk to Venice Beach to do some people watching, check out the set of American Ninja Warrior, and get some tattoos. Needless to say, it’s a pretty crazy place! Once the Sun set we drove to Hollywood Blvd for dinner and some live
The Doctor is In
music at the Hard Rock Café. We also spent some time hanging out with employees from SpaceX and Scaled Composites and made use of the hotel hot tub. All in all, a perfect spring break trip. We are all extremely grateful to everyone that made this trip possible.
If you are interested in joining Michigan’s AIAA chapter (and you should because AIAA regularly does awesome field trips and flies planes around AA at almost no cost to their members) please contact umichaiaa@gmail.com and ask how you can be a member. All majors welcome!
Written by: Nathan Mckay
UofM AIAA at the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne facility.
I thought it would be fitting to make a post with all of the group photos we took at each of the companies that the University of Michigan AIAA Student Chapter took while in Southern California.
University of Michigan group picture in front of JPL
We had a great tour of the C-17 production line. What an amazing airplane and impressive facility.
The University of Michigan group in front of Northrop Grumman's facility in El Segundo, CA.
The group inside the SpaceX lobby.
Group shot in the Scaled Composites Lobby
UofM AIAA at the Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne facility.
UM Students in front of the Global Hawk at Edwards AFB
University of Michigan with Cal Poly Students at Edwards Air Force Base.
AIAA at Edwards Air Force Base
I’m still waiting on some official photos from Edwards and Rocketdyne. Once they’ve cleared security, I’ll post the update here.
Today was the last day of tours for our trip and we ended it with a BANG! Quite literally! Since our hotel was close to Edwards Air Force base the group was able to wake up a little later then normal. This week has been filled with early mornings and late nights. Due to LA traffic most of our journeys started at 7am and usually didn’t wind down until after 9pm.
Journey Through the Desert
Being stuck in a 12-person van for the entire week has most of the group on edge at this point. All I can say is image having 11 back-seat drivers critiquing your every move, music choice, and volume level. It really wears down on a person (but I’d still do it over again in a heart beat).
Once we got off the express way and towards the final few miles before the entrance of Edwards, all one can see is the brown and very dry scenery. We turn on the dramatic sounds of, “Flight of the Valkyries,” to set the mood. Large dry lakebeds and a few cacti are all one can see in the distance towards the mountains. Out of nowhere we spot some looping contrails in the clear blue sky. We weren’t sure if we were seeing top-secret technology or not. One moment there would be twirls and loops of contrails and then one moment later, the contrail would disappear. Now the mood was really set! With out theme music still blasting at full volume we passed the Edwards AFB sign and finally met our escort at the front gate.
We shared this tour with Cal Poly students and all in all I think it was a healthy group. We all boarded an eerie-looking beige bus and started heading to our first leg of the tour. Everyone was very excited and due to the poor weather the last few days, it was evident that flight time was trying to be made up today. Planes were out in full forth. We immediately started seeing T-38s (the air forces main trainer aircraft and the same trainer used in the awesome movie, Top Gun) as soon as we departed from the front gate. Unlike the passed days of our tour we were getting to see airplanes fly!!
Instrumentation
Our first scheduled tour was in instrumentation. We got to see how the instrumentation folk built equipment and displays for testing purposes. The building was littered with orange painted metal boxes with cool displays and wires. We learned that this orange signified that the pieces were testing equipment. Good old-fashioned metal fabrication was used for these displays so that the equipment can handle the high-G environment of a fighter jet.
Electronics is great, but we had a large group of aerospace engineers and we wanted to see planes! We finally got our wish and entered a HUGE hangar. Inside we found a few KC-130 tankers, some T-38s, and a beautiful B-1 supersonic bomber. We’ve all seen these aircraft before, but what made this so cool was that many of the plane’s panels were taken off, displaying to us their complex insides. A frenzy of wires and orange boxes could be seen inside each of the planes.
We ended this segment of the tour by drooling over the exposed B-1 for a healthy amount of time. At this point we are loving the tour, but we keep hearing fighter jets roaring passed the hangar. Every time one flies by our suspicions increase that top jets like the F-35 and F-22 are flying around us and our strategically timed tours are keeping our eager eyes from seeing them.
JSF (F-35) Introduction
At this point we were introduced to the F-35 via PowerPoint presentation. We would like to thank Edwards for the great Subway sandwiches we were served for the JSF presentation. We thoroughly enjoyed the pictures and bullet points about the JSF, but we could tell some of the students were starting to get sleepy from the food (none of course were Michigan students, GO BLUE!) and then it happened. BOOM!!! The conference room we were in shook violently. We had experienced our first sonic boom!!! Everyone immediately pepped up. What a cool experience. If only we could have been outside for it, but I’ll take what I can get!
Global Hawk
Most of us have seen a Global Hawk hanging above us in the National Air Force Museum, but to be able to touch and explore this baby up close was a million times better!! The tour guides gave us as much info as they were able, but the repeating hymn of, “That’s classified,” is what we heard most. I really don’t care though, it was great just to be in the large UAV’s presence. We took our group photo in front of the Global Hawk as well (waiting on Edwards to clear it and send it my way). After a little over an hour with the Block20 and Block30 Global Hawks, we were off to the flight line!!!
UM Students in front of the Global Hawk at Edwards AFB
Flight Line
As we made our way to the flight line from the Global Hawk hangar we were pleasantly surprised to see two F22 Raptors taxing extremely close to us on their way to take-off!!! It looked like we were finally going to get our wish of seeing some advanced planes in the air. After a few f16 escorts were in the air and the final clearances were given, we witnessed the two beautiful F22s take off into the distance. It was great to hear how much louder the Raptor was than the Falcon. So awesome!
F16 Armaments
One of our last stops was at the F16 armaments hangar. He we were able to explore quite a few F16s as we were given a tour of the different bombs that are used on the F16 as well as some future bombs that are currently being integrated for use into the F16.
One of the most interesting weapons we saw was the CBU-97 sensor fuzed cluster bomb. This weapon rains fury onto the battlefield as it spits out molten metel, which melts through tank armor. Check out the video for a demonstration.
This marked the final location of our tour. As we rode the bus back to our vehicles we took a leisurely route passed the F35 and F22 hangars to see if just maybe there were any out. With a little luck we witnessed two F35s out and although they were from a distance, it was still breathtaking! It’s feels great to be one of the few people who have every laid eyes on one of these beauties.
Blackhawk Museum
Before heading back to our hotel for the night, we made a quick excursion to the Blackhawk museum located in Palmdale. I got a great shot of the A-12 and SR-71 side-by-side. Lots more pictures to come on my flickr account: Aeroscholar
This was one of the most exciting and truly unique days of the tour. It was great being able to see the JSF and being present for a sonic boom. I don’t know how we made it through the day without a change in underwear.
The SR-71 (left) and A-12 (right) side-by-side at the Blackhawk museum.
Our first tour of the day starts with Rocketdyne. We started with a tour of their Canoga Park facility and learned about all of Rocketdyne's heritage and previous projects. Next we traveled a few miles down the road to Rocketdyne's de Soto facility. Here we got a first hand look of the shop floor, where all the magic happens.
Beach Time!
Eventually I’ll have some time and these posts will get the proper attention they deserve, but I must keep trucking with the tours. Today is our final tour. We will be at Edwards AFB all day. Keep checking out the twitter feed for updates!
After a fun evening out with some SpaceX alumni last night, we were extremely excited to start the day. Todays tours involved Northrop Grumman & SpaceX.
Northrop Grumman
The tour of Northrop was very informative. We got a great tour of their composites facility. Composites are the future of aerospace, so we were extremely happy to learn about their fabrication process.
Below you can see the business end of the Super Hornet. Being partial to propulsion, I was in pure heaven seeing the production line for the aft section of the F/A-18E. Loved seeing the inlets and nozzle for this aircraft!
We ended our tour at the final assembly location of the F/A-18 aft-section. Here's a picture of the final assembly that we were able to see today. Once they're finished, these babies get put on a flat-bed truck and shipped to the Boeing facility in St. Louis.
The University of Michigan group in front of Northrop Grumman's facility in El Segundo, CA.
SpaceX
This tour was simply AMAZING!! We got a great tour of the factory floor. Lots of capsules and rocket engines!
Some of the pieces inside the shop.
A look inside the SpaceX production line.
The group inside the SpaceX lobby. What a phenomenal tour! Thanks for the awesome Vanilla/Cappuccino swirl frozen yogurt. It was AMAZING!
Tomorrow’s tours are the best yet!! We will be starting early at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works. We will follow this up in the afternoon with a lengthy tour of Scaled Composites. Stay tuned and please comment if you have any questions regarding the tours we’ve done so far!
The drive from Ann Arbor to Chicago’s O’Hare airport wasn’t without its trials. Our four-car motorcade started the journey at 12PM EST. After about an hour we indulged in some Culver’s Butter Burgers! Great choice for sure!! Smooth so far…
Parking in Downtown Chicago??
We proceeded to program our GPS units to “The Parking Spot” by the airport. Somehow the address we selected led us to downtown Chicago! So maybe we took a slight detour, but for the many Chicago first-timers, the experience was well worth our miscalculations. Did I mention we gave ourselves eight hours to get from Ann Arbor to Chicago (usually a 4.5 hour drive)? We arrived with plenty of time to spare, but I sure am glad we took the precaution.
The Parking Spot
After some searching, we finally stumbled across our parking destination. Of course this was no easy task. “The Parking Spot” isn’t really called the parking spot, but instead went by some other name, which was completely unrelated. We scrambled to type in the mystery parking company into our cell phones to find “The Parking Spot” logo at the bottom of the webpage. So we handed our keys to the nice gentleman and took our ticket. Let me add that it’s kind of scary knowing that we literally gave them our vehicles and in return we have a piece of paper in our possession. No other information taken… I’m sure we’re all praying that our cars will be there when we get back.
The Terminal
Due to the nature of the trip and size of the airplanes we split up our group between American Airlines & United Airlines. My group flying American, made it past security with the usual hassle. Only one of our bags got the extra search. Luckily none of us got the “extra” search, so we can’t complain too much. After a brief dinner at the terminal‘s “Chilis,” we were all set to wait for our flight to board.
This is where we are so far in our journey. I write this to you from over 31,000ft in the air. Should be arriving at LAX by 10:20pm PST. Check our flight route here.
JPL and Boeing tours are on the agenda for tomorrow. Keep checking back for more updates!
As we made our way to the flight line from the Global Hawk hangar we were pleasantly surprised to see two F22 Raptors taxing extremely close to us on their way to take-off!!! It looked like we were finally going to get our wish of seeing some advanced planes in the air. After a few f16 escorts were in the air and the final clearances were given, we witnessed the two beautiful F22s take off into the distance. It was great to hear how much louder the Raptor was than the Falcon. So awesome!
