Following a summer that was dominated by furlough and compulsory holiday, the last quarter of 2020 is proving extremely busy. After a brief time back in the actual office in September it’s been back to working from home and with the current national lockdown in force that’s unlikely to change until next year – and realistically next Spring.

This hasn’t given a lot of time for posting. However, there have been a few interesting developments in the aerospace world in the last weeks. One of these was the roll out of the Boom XB1 flying test demonstrator aircraft. Unveiled in a livestream on October 7th, this single seater aircraft is intended to provide validation data for Boom that will be used the development of their intended commercial product, the Overture supersonic aircraft. No doubt it will also prove a useful means of attracting further investment by demonstrating that the company have been able to convert the first phase of their plans into a real aeroplane.

It’s difficult to stress how much of an achievement the XB1 is. In an environment where we are regularly seeing updates about the success of SpaceX with the Falcon 9 and the Dragon capsules, XB1 could be presented as limited or even pedestrian in its scope. Yet this would be the wrong conclusion to draw. For a small private company to produce a flyable aircraft from scratch – and a supersonic one no less – is outstanding. Yes, they bought an engine for it – but that’s what airframe manufacturers do.

I first learnt about Boom whilst attending the AIAA Aviation 2017 conference. The founder and CEO, Blake Scholl, gave a talk at one of the plenary sessions. I was impressed by the compelling human story he put at the heart of his pitch – contrasting his experience of growing up close to his grandparents with that of his children whose grandparents live in Hong Kong. I was also impressed at the plausibility of the Boom Overture use case. There are a number of supersonic transport aircraft start-ups around – and several of them focus on development of minimal sonic boom signatures to challenge the regulation of overland supersonic cruise. Boom takes the more pragmatic approach of pitching their product at similar trans ocean routes to those used by Concorde, for a 50 seater aircraft with ticket prices aimed to compete with the first class market.

The recent roll out presentation for XB1 was slick and comprehensive, including a backing track of high energy dance music and a light show. There were also brief segments with company staff representing engineering, testing, the flight test team, manufacturing and the environment. In 2017, decarbonisation of aviation was recognised as a growing need for future products – now it’s become the primary focus of much research and technological development. To embrace this, Boom has entered into a partnership with a company working on production of synthetic fuel via carbon capture. More on that later…

The presentation argued that the time was right for a new generation supersonic transport due to advances in three main areas: aerodynamics, propulsion technology and composites for aircraft structures. However, it raised more questions than it answered about why this specifically enables a supersonic aircraft – and why existing manufacturers aren’t pursuing this area of the market with any sort of enthusiasm.

In terms of composites – it’s certainly true that the aluminium alloys used in the manufacture of Concorde, the U2 and the SR-71 Blackbird expanded significantly during the immense heating of supersonic flight. This known and predictable expansion was so great that the aircraft tended to leak fuel when on the ground. Composites already played a part in the supersonic transport story – the fuel tanks of the Concorde fleet were retrofitted with kevlar linings to protect from foreign object debris as a condition of the aircraft’s return to service following the tragic crash in 2000.

They are used for the wings of the Eurofighter Typhoon. They have also been used for key structural components – the wings and fuselage – in 21st century commercial aircraft such as the Airbus A350 XWB family and the Boeing 787. Use on a supersonic transport would be more an application of the current state of the art than a new development.

In the segment of the roll out video on aerodynamics – it’s argued that Boom can take advantage of modern advanced aerodynamics methods by replacing the hundreds of hours that were spent wind tunnel testing design concepts for Concorde with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations that run overnight – allowing the design to be iterated much faster and more cheaply. There’s nothing wrong with this argument – it’s entirely reasonable. However it’s also incomplete.

The use of CFD to iterate aerodynamic design of aircraft has been routine in the aerospace industry for decades. It’s true that at the time of Concorde’s development, it was typical to test multiple design iterations in the wind tunnel. The history of Concorde’s development is charted in some detail, including examples of these wind tunnel models, at the wonderful Aerospace Bristol museum.

Yet a comparison of the amount of wind tunnel testing done for the A380 (first flight 2005) and the A350-900 (first flight 2013) would show a significant decrease versus the A320 (first flight 1987). It’s accepted across the industry that CFD is excellent at quantifying and comparing flow behaviour for design iterations in transonic cruise with attached flow. As a consequence, wind tunnel testing is typically used for validation of final concepts and characterisation of areas where CFD is less reliable – particularly regions where the flow is separated (stall at high speed) or complex (low speed aerodynamics). For supersonic attached flow, CFD is also reliable and routinely used.

Ironically, supersonic flow can sometimes be easier to validate models for. Supersonic wind tunnel testing is costly and the facilities are complex – however once the flow is established, the position and angle of the resulting strong shocks can be clearly determined with traditional Schlieren or Background Oriented Schlieren – both of which rely on changes in density leading to visual evidence of the shock. The vast majority of commercial aircraft cruise in the transonic regime (Mach 0.78 is typical for A320, B737 single aisle aircraft, Mach 0.85 is cruise speed for B787, A380 and A350) where the weaker shocks are much harder to visualise and measure. Typically their position is assessed either with pressure tappings (which give an incomplete view and smear the shock dependent on sampling frequency and stability of the shock topology) and pressure sensitive paint.

This isn’t to say that there haven’t been advances in aerodynamic understanding of supersonic flow – in fact the NASA / Lockheed Martin X-59 QUiet SuperSonic Transport demonstrator is intended to progress the field of low boom supersonic aircraft. Yet Boom explicitly don’t mention low boom as one of their targets – and Overture’s concept art looks much closer to the Ogive delta planform used by Concorde. Their blog states that they’ve used area ruling to improve the efficiency and that this is easier to achieve using composite structures – but again area ruling is not a new concept.

Their fix for low speed aerodynamics also seems less related to aerodynamics than systems – they will rely on vortical lift as Concorde did – and will mitigate the need for the drooped nose on XB1 by using a nose-gear mounted camera to give the pilot a view of the runway during high angle of attack final approaches.

Propulsion technology is also an interesting point. The biggest single improvement to fuel efficiency for the new generation of commercial aircraft has come from improvements to turbofan engines. The A320NEO is 20% more fuel efficient than older engine variants, predominantly due to the new engines along with some aerodynamic performance improvements. However, for efficiency at cruise, supersonic aircraft require engines with much lower bypass ratios – either turbojets or low to medium bypass ratio turbofans.

Accelerating small volumes of air to high jet velocities is much less fuel efficient than accelerating large volumes of air a small amount – so the propulsive efficiency of medium bypass engines is lower than that of the latest turbofan engines. Although the intention to use synthetic fuels to combat CO2 emissions is laudable – these fuels will be more expensive than today’s Jet A1 for the foreseeable future, so fuel costs for the airlines will be high.

Whilst the Boom Overture will not require afterburners and will have a significantly lower noise profile than Concorde, the regulations have become stricter than they were in 2003 when Concorde retired and so certifying a new supersonic transport aircraft to compete with transonic vehicles will be challenging, to say the least.

All in all, Boom’s achievements with XB1 are extremely impressive – and their product seems better thought out and presented than many of their competitors.

However, the glaring question remains – if supersonic travel is really an untapped growth area in the market – why are none of the existing players pursuing it?

In the past they certainly did – during the 80s there were collaborative research projects on next generation supersonic transports and also on hypersonic concepts and spaceplanes such as HOTOL. At the beginning of the 21st century, Boeing released study concepts for a Sonic Cruiser and actively promoted it for some time before presenting the far more conventional 787 as its new product. However, after the retirement of Concorde, most studies within the commercial aerospace industry have lost interest in large supersonic transport. The emphasis has predominantly been on improving fuel efficiency through configuration changes or technology – with growing emphasis on decarbonisation through alternate fuel sources.

Some enthusiasm for the idea of a supersonic business jet still exists – but it seems likely that if there was a market for such a product, Dassault Aviation who successfully manufacture business jets and supersonic military aircraft would have been likely to develop it. Thus far, they haven’t.

It’s part of our collective consciousness to imagine supersonic transport as being visionary and futuristic. However, it’s entrenched in a 60s futurist perspective – Concorde, Gerry Anderson’s Thunderbirds and the Fireflash. There is nothing wrong with this. Concorde inspired vast numbers of engineers and scientists, developed stepping stones in technological development and international co-operation. From the outside it still looks completely jawdropping.

However, the real 21st century is a very different place. It may be that there is room in the market for a small sector of supersonic transports for those who can pay first class prices to cross oceans quickly. If there is, it would be fantastic for Boom to fill it. I wish them every success.

Yet ultimately, predictions for aerospace pre-Covid indicated that the largest areas of growth in the next 20 years will be in the Asia-Pacific region, followed by South America and Africa. The North American and European markets are largely saturated. In these growth areas – there is a rapidly expanding middle class who will want to access the world and who won’t be able to afford first class prices. In the same way that the North American and European middle classes flocked to use the A320s, B737s and B747s – it’s likely that the new middle classes will demand a cheap, fuel-efficient and ultimately decarbonised product to transport them.

I was reading an article in a national newspaper recently on provision of pain relief during childbirth. The comments on the article quickly became polarised – and unpleasant. When one woman commented that she and her child would have died without medical intervention, one responder claimed that this would have been “Darwinism in action”. In a similar way, during the Covid-19 lockdown there were certain commentators who argued that since the virus was principally a risk for the elderly and people with underlying health conditions that there was no need to impose full lockdowns. In fairness, the bulk of them didn’t imply that the virus should simply be left to work its way through the population – “Darwinism in action” style – but many were happy to suggest that rather than using national lockdowns governments should simply have imposed restrictions on the elderly and vulnerable and left everyone else free to mingle.

However, I’m not convinced this is a good understanding of evolution. On a simple level, it’s true that success as a species is based upon there being a sufficiently large and healthy population to pass their genes on to the next generation. Yet when people talk of “survival of the fittest” – it often seems to be focused on strength and physical prowess. In fact, long term survival of a species is more a question of adaptability. A good example of this is given by the Burgess shale fossils. A landslide in the Rocky mountains in Canada revealed fossils of around 500 million years old from the time when multicellular organisms had first developed upon Earth. The creatures found in the Burgess shale are beautiful and spectacularly strange – including highly specialised beings with five eyes, some with long snouts and multiple pairs of legs. Ultimately most of the creatures died out and as far as can be ascertained, the one whose descendants survived was a pretty boring, mundane, slug like creature. Some people see this as a kind of scientific Memento Mori. These creatures died – either as a result of a major cataclysm or over a period of time – and there is no reason why species living on Earth today, humans included, won’t ultimately succumb to extinction in a similar way.

I prefer to think of the boring primordial slug creature. Ultimately, being the best predator means nothing if you have no prey. Being an ultra-efficient ruminator is useless if there is no grass. Being able to adapt to changing circumstances and environments – even if you might seem small, weak, unremarkable on the surface – is the way to survive.

When it comes to humans – we don’t have amazing strength, or speed – we’re far less agile than our nearest relations in the primate family. Yet our intelligence and ingenuity has allowed us to live successfully in every environment on Earth. We often focus on the negative aspects of our success – our capability for violence, our tendency to consume to excess – the damage we’ve done to our world. Whilst we console ourselves with the fact that we can act altruistically to help others and to live equitably – we see that this isn’t uniquely human.

Yet what is uniquely human, is using our intelligence and compassion to develop technology and medicine to solve our problems and to compensate for our limitations. Hence dying in childbirth or of Covid-19 isn’t Darwinism in action.

Using our knowledge and medical technology to intervene and save the lives in danger is us demonstrating our evolutionary adaptation – and our humanity.

Summer 2020 has been, to be blunt, unproductive and deeply frustrating. A combination of rolling furlough, the necessity to use 80% of holiday before the end of September (which realistically for parents of school age children means before the end of August) and short periods of working from home in temperatures over 30 degrees inside the house in thundery humidity have taken their toll.

That’s before even mentioning the uncertainty of redundancies, cuts to budgets and the realisation that it’s likely the commercial aerospace industry won’t recover to its 2019 levels until 2023-2024.

However, there have been some glimmers of hope in the last few weeks of August. On a personal level this was due to finally going on holiday for a week. We stayed in the Highlands of Scotland and experienced astonishingly good weather for most of it!

Within the aerospace industry there have also been some interesting developments. Some weeks ago I wrote about the rescue packages the French and German governments had announced and the lack of a concrete response from the British government. This has been at least partially addressed by FlyZero – an ATI project announced by the Business Secretary during FIA Connect on the 20th July. On the 13th August, a webinar giving an overview of the project took place which can be accessed via YouTube.

The intention of the project is to gather a team of around 100 people drawn from across the industry to study zero emission aircraft concepts. The study will explore the technical and commercial challenges such concepts will encounter and propose means to address them. In particular, emphasis will be on:

• Developing business cases for zero emission aircraft
• Determining policy and investment needs to support the growth and repositioning of the industry
• Creating roadmaps for development and maintenance of critical capabilities for design, development and production of these new aircraft and associated infrastructure.

At the heart of this exercise will be an exercise to develop zero emission aircraft, from conceptual studies through to preliminary design. Alongside the main project, a parallel activity will take place focused on academia to identify where fundamental research is needed and to look at how university courses and facilities will need to evolve to develop the engineers needed for the future.

Judging from the audience questions, the webinar drew participants from a wide range of backgrounds, from large industrial manufacturers, to small and medium enterprises, to freelancers. A number of the questions were concerned with the logistics and management of the project itself. In particular, it is unusual for ATI to be running the project as they typically oversee the funding and administration but hand the leadership to large industrial partners. The explanation given made some sense – projects led by large industrial partners can tend to be biased towards the strategic visions of companies rather than seeing that there might be disruptive innovation from smaller players that could change the market. However, the reality is that delivering a concept – and even taking it to technical demonstration, is not the same as delivering a product. By involving industrial partner secondees as a key part of the project ATI have recognised that the learning and the ecosystem developed through the project needs to be integrated back into industry to be of real benefit.

Other questions raised the topic of what type of zero emission concept will be the main area of focus. During the webinar both the expressions “net zero” and “zero emissions” were used. There were also mentions in the Q & A of Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), hybrid-electric / electric propulsion and hydrogen propulsion. However, there was not a conclusive answer. The question is an important one for a variety of reasons. First of all, the technical challenges of each type of aircraft are different.

Today, aircraft can already use a blend of 50/50 conventional Jet A1 and SAF without any conversion or modification needed. Use of larger proportions of SAF implies infrastructure challenges to scale up production of the fuel – but requires no change in distribution systems or storage. For the aircraft themselves, higher prices of fuel would drive the need to continue enhancing performance and reducing weight – yet not necessitate changes in operation or certification to the same degree as the other solutions. Technological solutions would be evolution of today’s aircraft – higher aspect ratio wings, laminar flow, advanced load control, ultra high bypass engines The biggest drawback of this solution is that at best it could be carbon neutral if synthetic fuel is made via carbon capture, as it would still release CO2 and NOx.

Hybrid electric and electric aircraft have seen some impressive early demonstration. The Airbus Group Innovations E-Fan flew at airshows as early as 2014 and more recently there have been demonstrations of small aircraft in the USA and at Cranfield. The ambitious E-Fan X demonstrator project from Airbus, Rolls-Royce and Siemens was brought to a close earlier this year before converting the Avro RJ100 for flight test demonstration. However, ground based demonstrations of the electrical systems and wind tunnel testing have brought considerable knowledge and better understanding of the longer term challenges. The main blocking point at present is the gap between the power demand of a short range commercial aircraft and the power density from existing battery technologies. However, as a solution for smaller aircraft it is already appealing and the solution for larger aircraft may be in use of batteries or fuel cells as a means of providing power for supplementary systems e.g. entertainment. The Flight Physics challenges of these aircraft are often seen as secondary to the systems challenges – yet the massive cooling requirements for batteries lead to the need for large heat exchangers that require significant air intake and exhaust. Integration of these intakes and exhausts was one of the challenges for retrofitting an Avro RJ100. For a new product – it would be necessary to find a way to integrate these elements to the configuration in a way that was neutral.

For electric aircraft – there are also implications for operational flight and loads cases. An aircraft that doesn’t consume fuel, or consumes proportionally less fuel, will not change mass or require trim changes for centre of gravity. This leads to landing loads equal to take-off loads. It also means the conventional flight path of aircraft increasing in altitude as they reduce in weight is no longer necessary – which could change how designs for longer routes are optimised aerodynamically.

In the last few months there has been a particular surge in enthusiasm for hydrogen as the future solution for commercial aircraft. Cranfield is actively engaged in a lot of research for hydrogen as a solution for aviation. Start-ups like ZeroAvia are targetting a powertrain solution for small regional aircraft. Earlier this week, former Airbus and UTC Chief Technology Officer Paul Eremenko announced his latest venture, Universal Hydrogen which focuses on a simple, universal pod system for supplying hydrogen to aircraft initially for use in fuel cells on regional aircraft but with the potential to supply hydrogen burning larger aircraft.

The flight physics challenges for a hydrogen powered aircraft are predominantly linked to storage constraints for large volumes and regulatory implications. This could lead to consideration of novel configurations such as blended wing bodies to manage the volume in an aerodynamically efficient way. The challenge becomes significantly greater the more distance is needed between the passengers and the fuel volume. Potentially there could also be some niche cryogenic implications for icing protection, transition behaviour on laminar flow aircraft.

Beyond the technical challenges – there are also geopolitical and economic questions to consider. Making the UK a centre of excellence for hybrid electric small aircraft development will make little sense if the commercial aerospace industry universally adopts hydrogen for anything larger than twenty seats. Today there doesn’t seem to be a definitive answer to the question of the long term solution. In the meantime, it seems sensible to develop technology that can serve a variety of aircraft designs – and capabilities and tools that can incorporate the characterisation of those technologies equally well.

Finally, there was a question asked about co-operating with neighbouring countries that have announced research into zero emissions aircraft, namely France and Germany. Currently, FlyZero is focused solely on UK aerospace industry development. This is not unusual or exceptional in these times – yet it would be a mistake if it is seen as a moment to restore the landscape of the past where multiple UK based companies manufactured entire aircraft. Whilst this past is often fondly remembered – the reality is that many of the products were never commercial successes and even the more prolific aircraft were limited in number to hundreds. Variants of the same narrative are seen in the experiences of France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the Netherlands. Even whilst Boeing retains large production facilities in Seattle, it subcontracts large components to be manufactured in the Far East. The aspiration of FlyZero should be:

• To consolidate and grow the areas where the UK already is a centre of excellence for new zero emissions products
• To identify where new opportunities from new technology or energy supply and infrastructure can be developed into future centres of excellence

Acting as a strong player in an international industry with confidence in its expertise and capability is the goal. Making limited production runs of aircraft so that we can stick “Made in Britain” labels on them is not. Thus far the ATI seems to be going in the right direction.

When I think about the past few months and whether I’ve noticed any improvements in my quality of life as a result of the lockdown and Covid-19 – I can’t say that my answer is all that positive. It was undoubtedly pleasant cycling on roads that were virtually free of traffic and it was convenient no longer having to make the triangular commute between work and my younger son’s school. However, these didn’t seem like great compensation for not being able to do a lot of the things that made my life enjoyable outside work and the almost overnight collapse of the commercial aerospace industry.

Also, I found some of the articles in newspapers celebrating working from home and enjoying the garden tone deaf when there were many families who were attending their loved ones funerals via live streaming.

However, one area where I have noticed a distinct improvement is in the opportunities for joining webinars, livestreams of events and virtual conferences.

During the last few weeks, I’ve joined a number of webinars hosted by the Royal Aeronautical Society and have been able to register for FIAConnect – the virtual Farnborough International Airshow. This has been useful for keeping abreast of news and ongoing developments in aerospace even whilst on furlough. It also struck me, that being able to join these sessions remotely has enabled me to listen to lectures that in normal times I wouldn’t have attended.

There are many reasons why attending lectures and conferences are useful. Continuing professional development is important for engineers at all stages in their careers and is a requirement for anyone seeking to be chartered. If, like me, your daily job involves research – then it is important to be aware of evolving themes and areas of focus in the wider industry and to see where there are breakthroughs in technology and capability. Conference participation in particular can offer a range of positive benefits. Speaking at a conference can allow you to develop your skills at writing and delivering papers and presentations to a large audience. For industrial participants, it can provide an opportunity to indicate areas and themes that are of interest for industry to academic partners.

Equally, attending presentations by PhD students and post-docs can give an insight into the areas that universities are concentrating on both in terms of research and in course content and syllabus. It can also be an opportunity to spot potential future talents.

However, for engineers who work in industry – and particularly in large companies – it is not that easy to attend conferences – and even more difficult to present at them. Intellectual property is correctly of paramount importance, so finding a topic that you can present and give an interesting talk is not straightforward. Whilst academic participants and conference organisers sometimes seem to have the impression that large industrial companies will be awash with cash – the reality is that extracurricular activities like conference attendance can be prohibitively expensive when sending more than a couple of delegates. Reductions for speakers are not that much of an incentive if the fee for attending is several hundred pounds. If the conference isn’t local, there are travel budget constraints.

Also, if you work in a large department – decisions have to be made about who should attend conferences. A revolving door policy might be fair – but will prevent people from building a relationship with other regular participants and make it difficult to join regular panels or workshops. Equally, if there is only a small clique that always attend, then it isn’t guaranteed that the knowledge and insight they gain will be shared around the wider domain and this can become a source of resentment. Balancing the need to develop future experts and project co-ordinators and to maintain the profile of existing people is not easy.

Another point to consider is overall value for money. If you’ve been to more than one big conference – you’ve probably had the experience of reaching a lull in the programme where none of the sessions really jump out at you, or noticed a drop in quality of the presentations for some sessions. Yet since your company has paid a lot for you to attend – you feel obliged to find something even if it’s of marginal benefit.

Outside of conferences – there is also the question of standalone talks, usually arranged by industrial societies or bodies like the RAeS or AIAA. Most people acknowledge that these are theoretically useful for continuous learning and widening your knowledge of topics outside of your day-to-day work. However, committing time from your evening to physically attend a talk is not so easy when you’re already juggling commitments to work, family, hobbies and exercise.

With the option to join webinars – and to replay pre-recorded sessions – a new world has been opened up. Instead of becoming another item to struggle to fit in – I’ve been able to listen to talks at times and in a location that have been convenient for me. Participation at virtual conferences for no or minimal fees means that you can dip in and out to attend the sessions that are relevant and interesting.

Also, outside of my own experiences – I’ve noticed that webinars have opened up a whole lot of experiences for children too. My younger son has enjoyed watching the TimTalksSpace series on YouTube with Major Tim Peake. He has also listened to talks on astronomy and participated in a webinar on impressionist paintings. All of this has been excellent at supplementing activities through school and homeschool – and provided experiences that probably would not have been so readily available if they’d involved physical attendance.

I’m not advocating doing away with physical conferences and lectures altogether. A major benefit of attending conferences in person is that they allow you the opportunity to meet with people from the wider industry to build relationships and discuss questions raised in presentations. Also, one of the more enjoyable elements of conference participation is when you accidentally stumble on an unexpectedly brilliant talk – often on a topic that isn’t directly related to your own field of knowledge. There is also the intangible benefit of being in the same room as keynote speakers – getting a sense of their body language and the way that they handle question and answer sessions – seeing them in person is undoubtedly more interesting and inspiring than simply watching them over a livestream.

However, I do think that it’s time to review the model of how conferences are arranged. Having smaller, shorter physical conferences would reduce the costs and hence the fees for people attending in person. Equally, by streaming the programme and introducing modest fees for access to the webinars, far more people could participate in total and could benefit from the content of the sessions. One positive of the last few months is that people have become far more proficient at developing online content and operating remote platforms for meetings and conferences. Maintaining that will democratise participation and spread knowledge – and that can only be a good thing.

Today is my younger son’s last day at primary school. In ordinary times this would be a major moment – a milestone in his life. In the current, peculiar times we are in it is still a major milestone – yet many of the ways it would normally be marked have had to be changed. The SATs were cancelled. The Year 6 adventure trip was cancelled. Enterprise week – where the Year 6s wash cars, sell bric-a-brac and come up with other activities to earn money for a day out to Weston couldn’t take place – nor could the day to Weston.

Despite this, the school staff worked hard to make the last few weeks special for the children. They have had socially distanced picnics and parties. They held a talent contest and quizzes. They are making pizza today.

In addition, one of the Mums from the class kindly arranged an order of Year 6 Leavers hoodies for them during the lockdown and another Mum created a video montage for them. Their class teachers and classroom assistant asked them to write entries both for a yearbook and for a time capsule to record this particularly unusual and historic period.

My son has greatly enjoyed his time at primary school – and was devastated when the schools closed in March and he realised it was possible that they might not return in person to school that academic year.

At the time, I speculated that since it was expected the pandemic would take around 12 weeks, that it was possible he would get back to school after the May half term. Fortuitously, this prediction turned out to be correct for him in Year 6 – and he has been a lot happier being back at school for the last few weeks then he was at the height of the lockdown.

Parenting your youngest child is a different experience to your oldest – but it is equally special. With each milestone your child reaches, you are aware that this is a special moment for them, doing something for the first time – and you are also aware that this the last time you will experience this particular moment as a parent. Whilst poignant, this is often a very positive realisation. I didn’t have any conflicted nostalgia or sentimental reaction to reaching the end of nappies, teething or night time feeds. However, it’s also fair to say that some of those challenges felt less all-consuming with my second child. This was partly because I’d already experienced them and knew what to expect – and partly because with a second child you know that the difficult phases do eventually end.

Then again, there are many moments that are individual for each child as they are all unique. Our two sons are not polar opposites – but they do have different interests and strengths – and they have both had moments where they needed particular support and found different things difficult to deal with at school or with socialising.

Ultimately, I’m happy that my sons both survived and thrived in their time at primary school – and I’m happy that my husband and I have survived and thrived as parents of primary school aged children! Despite the difficult circumstances of lockdown and the knowledge that this is the end of an era – it is a happy moment for us. Having two children at secondary school will be a new challenge – but it’s one I think we are all ready for.

The human experience of the passage of time is something that we all grapple with.

We have access to the past through our own memories and our collective and individual records whether in the form of writing, art, drama, music, buildings or artefacts. We are living in the present. Yet we have no way of seeing into the future. We can never truly predict or anticipate the consequences of decisions we take. We have no way of knowing when something outside of our control will change the direction of our lives irrevocably.

This is something that we, as a species, have always found difficult. Every major religion and philosophical school has considered free will, predetermination and randomness and how these align or conflict with our existence. In ancient times, people visited oracles, soothsayers and sages in an attempt to gain knowledge of their future. Even today, there are still people who visit astrologers or who read books on the claims of Nostradamus.

Literature and drama have also continually grappled with free will, predetermination and the uncertainty of the future. The Greek myths of Oedipus and Jason have as central themes the attempts of people to avoid destiny – yet in the prevailing belief of the time fate was something set and inescapable, so attempts to outmanoeuvre it often ended with characters unwittingly enabling it.

In the last two centuries, science fiction and fantasy have explored the dilemma via time travel. Stories about time travel usually revolve around characters either travelling to a future that they subsequently try to avert, or travelling to the past and having to undo or correct an error that impacts their present. Sometimes, the conflict between predetermination and free will is never resolved. The Terminator films frequently feature main characters stating that “there is no fate except that which we make ourselves” – yet over the course of six films and despite multiple attempts they’ve not managed to avert the cataclysmic nuclear holocaust and rise of malevolent machines at the heart of the story’s dystopian future. On the other hand, the Back to the Future series does show material differences in future timelines caused by the action of the characters. In the first film, Marty McFly has to restore his own future after accidentally intervening in the meeting of his parents. Yet the changes made to their first meeting and his father’s bravery in finally standing up to the school bully Biff not only ensure Marty’s conception – but are shown to have had lasting impacts in improving his parents’ marriage and satisfaction with their lives when he returns to his present. This potential for change was reinforced by the plots of the two subsequent sequels.

In our ordinary lives, we have no access to time travel and no way of seeing into the future. We don’t truly know whether Covid-19 will be successfully dealt with by a single vaccine like diptheria, tetanus and polio, or whether it will become something like the flu that requires an annual vaccine. Alternatively it could be something that we simply learn to live with and develop treatments and behavioural changes for, like HIV.

We don’t know whether in thirty years time, our children will tell their children “Oh yes, I remember that, we all wore masks in the shops and we didn’t go to school for six months” or whether mask wearing and some social distancing will be so normal that the idea of shaking hands or greeting kisses will seem alien.

We can’t yet tell whether the changes that we’ve seen during the lockdown with reduced travel and industrial activity will herald a new era focussed on decarbonisation, pedestrianisation of urban areas and improved air quality – or whether we’ll actually see urban pollution get temporarily worse post-lockdown as people eschew public transport for their cars.

We don’t know whether people who lose jobs due to Covid-19 will find their way back to the same businesses and industries in a few years following a recovery, or whether they will take different paths altogether and find new careers and businesses.

Whilst many beliefs and philosophies take different positions on predetermination, chance and free will – one thing that virtually all of them agree on is that we must be guided by our conscience and be true to ourselves. We have no way of predicting the future, yet we can all control whether we meet it as the best version of ourselves or as the worst.

Today I went back to work for the first time in five weeks. Except that, I didn’t really “go” anywhere, other than the dining room. I didn’t see any of my colleagues except over cameras and I didn’t speak to anyone face-to-face, it was all phone calls, Google Meets and emails or instant messages.

Whilst I’m used to working with people remotely and not seeing them on a day-to-day basis – for the last few years I’ve usually been able to see colleagues based in other countries every 6-8 weeks at a minimum and often more regularly than that. On top of that, I’m normally working in an open plan office surrounded by the local team I’m part of. I’ve never worked in an individual office.

I know that many people see the open plan office as something akin to a battery farm or a Borg cube – a hive of workers with their individuality stamped out, sitting in identical cubicles, attempting to defy the social order by having more than the regulation number of personal items on their desks…

Yet I have to confess I miss it. I miss my morning and evening cycle, that separates the day between times spent at work and time spent at home. I miss buying my morning coffee from the lady that works in the second floor coffee shop who always has The Breeze FM radio station playing. I miss chatting to people from the other teams in the office kitchen. I miss the fire alarm getting tested every Monday morning for a variable length of time, so that there’s always a split second of uncertainty where you think maybe this time, you’ll actually have to leave the building….

I miss eating cakes to celebrate people’s birthdays and engagements and weddings and new babies. I miss signing the big cards and struggling to think of something more inventive than “Best wishes” or “Congratulations”. I miss having to write down in a little book in the stationery cupboard that I’ve taken a blue biro and a packet of post-it notes. I miss the guy who complains about the temperature all the time, the competitive cyclists and runners, the model aircraft enthusiasts, the people who wander around in their socks.

I miss the grumpy internal bus drivers and the bored security guards. I miss the cleaners and the maintenance people. I miss the smell of machine coolant near the Integrated Machine Facility. I miss the sound of the wind tunnel running when you walk past it. I miss seeing the rabbits that live on site, hopping off into the bushes. I miss seeing lorries manoeuvring on site, picking up new aircraft components to be delivered to Broughton.

I miss going to Toulouse and seeing the flight test aircraft huddled like roosting birds on the aprons and the engineering offices in M01 – a mad concrete beehive that everyone gets lost in and walks in circles around the first time they visit.

Yet most of all I miss my colleagues and friends.

Yesterday, Airbus announced 15000 job cuts from its Commercial Aerospace business as part of the ongoing battle to survive the Covid-19 crisis.

The announcement was not unexpected although seeing the numbers in print was always going to be bleak.

When I originally joined the aerospace industry in 1997, I recall the consensus view at the time was that aerospace was cyclical. There were seven fat years and seven lean years, like in Old Testament times in Egypt. When I was applying to universities I made a visit to Southampton. A professor there told me that since the airlines would soon be refleeting and the industry was in a good place, he thought it was a good time for me to join. However after seeing in my UCAS personal statement that I was interested in history as well as engineering he openly told me that he thought I would be better off going into marketing!

At the time I went for my interview for the undergraduate apprentice scheme at British Aerospace Airbus division, the first major coverage of the A3XX had appeared in the press and Airbus had won a major order for single aisle aircraft with British Airways. It seemed like an exciting time to be joining. During 2000, I was around half way through my studies at Cambridge when A3XX became A380.

In 2001, I was in the control room of the wind tunnel in Filton on a summer placement when one of my colleagues told me that the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane. The devastation of the terror attacks that day was the first major crisis I’d seen in aerospace. I was fortunate that with another year left of my degree and as I was already on the undergraduate apprentice scheme I didn’t feel a direct impact. For some of my colleagues who graduated in 2001 it was a different experience – one of my peers had gained a licence for driving HGVs through being in the OTC at university and spent a year driving lorries until the aerospace industry started recruiting again!

In my early career, there were frequent reminders that the industry had its ups and downs. Older colleagues had arrived in Filton from working at sites in Hatfield and Weybridge that were now closed. A retirement presentation for one engineer covered the time in the early 80s when he’d worked as a house painter for several years during an aviation downturn.

Ironically, the worst period I can recall was not an aviation industry downturn but the difficult phase during the delayed entry into service of the A380. There were major changes in senior management and the sale of the manufacturing operations at Filton to GKN.

Yet in spite of this, the industry and its engineers always seemed to bounce back. The consistent trend has been for aviation passengers to double every 15 years. This model worked despite blips after the first Gulf War, 9/11, SARS and the 2008 financial crisis.

In the case of Covid-19, the situation is undoubtedly worse. 90% of the world’s aircraft were not flying at the height of the lockdown – and this has had a knock on effect throughout the whole industry. The outlook is that this time it will take several years to recover to 2019 levels and the reality is that most businesses, whether they are airlines, airframe or engine manufacturers or SME suppliers will not survive unless they can keep enough cashflow to operate.

The industry also has existential threats beyond the immediate threat of Covid-19. The twenty year forecasts of both Boeing and Airbus foresaw the largest growth in aerospace will be in the Asia Pacific region. This is dominated by island based civilisations and areas where the geography and environment do not lend themselves to high speed rail. (Rainforest, swamps, volcanoes). To meet this demand and the ACARE 2050 agreement for cutting CO2 and NOx, decarbonisation and zero emission aircraft have to be developed. This will have to happen even if air travel in Western Europe eventually turns out to have peaked in 2019.

In the near 23 years I’ve been in the industry, I’ve worked on research into laminar flow. I’ve participated in transonic wind tunnel tests at ETW. I’ve designed aerodynamic surfaces for the A350-1000. I’ve supported flight tests for the A350-900 ULR, A350-1000 and BLADE. Whatever happens next, it’s been a great adventure so far.

Some years ago, I watched an interview with former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. She was asked how she dealt with the challenges of interacting with leaders and government ministers in parts of the world where women were not routinely in positions of authority or expected to be talking on equal terms with men. Smiling wryly, she replied “Well, it helped that I usually arrived on a very large aeroplane with United States of America painted on the side.”

I was reminded of this during the course of the past week, when a row broke out about the rebranding of the RAF Voyager that is jointly used as a tanker and as a transport for the government and Royal family members on visits abroad from military grey to a livery with the Union flag. As it turns out, the argument was more or less after the fact, as the aircraft was pictured this morning in its new livery.

Part of the argument stemmed from the purported cost of the repaint – reported as being £900K. This seemed excessively steep, as the reported cost of repainting a long range aircraft is normally of the order of £150K – however it seems that the £900K is actually for a scheduled D check for the aircraft which would have included a repaint following structural inspection in any case.

Then as the first pictures of the resprayed aircraft emerged, memes began to circulate about whether the Union flag (or Jack? I know it’s a jack on a ship and a flag on buildings but not so sure on the etiquette regarding aeroplanes….) was in fact backwards, signalling distress – which seemed about right for the current situation in the UK. Disappointingly for satirists, a somewhat exasperated article from the UK Defence Journal explained that it’s a correct rendering based upon a convention to display the flag as if it were being flown from a pole at the nose of the aircraft. Whilst it might be the established rendering, the question around flag sign convention does come up from time to time, with the Bloodhound SSC fin paint scheme sparking a similar debate on Twitter last year.

In aesthetic terms, the problem the designers had was that British Airways have already established a beautiful and iconic livery using a stylised version of the Union flag – which looks good on every aircraft from the majestic A380, to the elegant A350-1000, to the honestly pretty weird Dornier 328 Jet. To be honest, to me the Voyager livery looks more like the old British Aerospace arrow logo or one of those fictional airlines that appear in Hollywood movies (remember Windsor Airlines from Die Hard 2?).

Ultimately, the question at heart is whether it’s a reasonable expense for the British government to keep a dedicated aircraft for government and Royal travel. The debate has been ongoing for many years in the UK. It was first raised whilst Tony Blair was prime minister and widely criticised as being evidence of his attempts to make the office of prime minister seem more presiedential. However before any purchases were completed the idea was then abandoned under Gordon Brown in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. It was then raised again by David Cameron. Eventually, the compromise agreed was that an A330 MRTT would be fitted with a passenger cabin that could be used by government ministers and the Royal family, with it’s primary role still being air-to-air refuelling for the RAF. This is managed by a PFI. By the time the refitted aircraft entered service, Cameron only used it once to fly to a NATO summit before stepping down as prime minister. Ironically, Theresa May then flew it on many occasions without attracting much comment – possibly because she never had a reputation for being ostentatious or having presidential aspirations.

In terms of whether its a reasonable expense – it probably makes sense to compare the UK to nations of a similar size and type.

Some commentators were quick to share images of the Dassault 7X that Emmanuel Macron used to visit London the same week as the Voyager argument was taking place. However, for longer trips with a larger entourage, the French president uses an A330-200

The German chancellor and ministers for many years used an A310 and two A340-300s. One named Konrad Adenauer hit the headlines in 2018 when a radio failure forced it to land at Cologne whilst enroute to the G20 in Buenos Aires. Angela Merkel subsequently ended up having to take a commercial flight and arrived late to the summit and after the official photograph for the leaders.

The same aircraft had previously suffered from rodents in the avionics bay. This, alongwith the fleet’s age, led to the German government ordering three A350-900s.

The Buenos Aires incident shows what advantage there can be to having a reliable, dedicated aircraft. Whilst there might be some solidarity in world leaders having to experience the treadmill of commercial flights for business travel the way the rest of us do – it probably isn’t the ideal way for them to arrive at major summits. Also, by the time you’ve factored in security details, assistants, media representatives and advisers, you’re up to a hefty airfare bill.

Essentially there are two elements to the current row. Part of it is an argument between government departments which has gone public. Number 10 has essentially commandeered the aircraft away from its official job by rebranding it without footing the bill for operating the aircraft. The MOD have a tanker that’s far too conspicuous but are paying for it nonetheless. That’s an argument for them to sort out amongst themselves.

On balance, I think having a dedicated aircraft for official travel is a reasonable expense for the UK government and isn’t disproportional compared to similar nations. The timing and the communication makes the rebranding tone deaf – it appears a big and unnecessary expense at a time of national crisis. Also, the quite literal flag waving is divisive. Maybe the Royal Coat of Arms, already a symbol of the UK travelling abroad from its presence on British passports – might have worked better to mark out the aircraft as being a symbol of the UK government rather than the current prime minister.

Perhaps a good way to decide on it’s cost effectiveness would be to follow it on Flight Radar – the aircraft is registered as ZZ336 and known as Vespina.

Yesterday evening, I attended the Royal Aeronautical Society’s Sopwith Lecture (virtually of course!). This year’s lecture was delivered by Dirk Hoke, CEO of Airbus Defence & Space, the title was “European defence and security in a post-Brexit and post-Covid-19 world”.

Broadly the lecture went through several topics. First, it covered the potential for reduced defence spending in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic and associated economic crisis using the 2008 financial crisis as a template. Interestingly, whilst there had been cuts by European countries including the UK in the wake of 2008 – by far the biggest changes shown were in US defence spending – which went from 5% of national budget to 3% in around 2014 and has stayed at that reduced level ever since.

There was also some coverage of the potential ten year impact on defence imports and exports of various forms of Brexit – unsurprisingly, a no deal scenario trading on WTO terms was particularly adverse.

There was a section devoted to how Airbus – and in particular Defence & Space – had actively supported relief efforts through the pandemic.

Then, there was some discussion around the future for defence and space in Europe and the continuing need for co-operation. Several specific areas were covered – but in particular, Dirk Hoke’s belief is that developing both the FCAS and Tempest programmes in competition will ultimately be detrimental to the European (including UK) market and that ultimately there will need to be some type of consolidation or combination of the two. In particular, he talked about learning the lessons of the past – where the Typhoon, Rafale and Gripen were all competing for similar markets.

Defence procurement and development is a difficult arena. During the Cold War – the decision was effectively made for a lot of countries. If you supported the West, you bought US aircraft, if you were communist or an enemy of the US, you bought Soviet aircraft. There were of course, countries who worked hard to try and maintain domestic military aircraft production – sometimes enduring a lot of pain when innovative products were cancelled due to spiralling development costs and political pressure. The Canadian Avro Arrow and the British TSR2 both were ahead of their time and ultimately failed to get beyond initial prototypes. The Harrier was more successful – the Sea variant used by the Royal Navy proved itself in the Falklands War and the MkII version has been used by the US Marine Corps for decades.

In France, Dassault has arguably punched above its weight, owing predominantly to support by the French Air Force but also having successfully exported to a range of other air forces.

For different missions, there were different aircraft – a visit to the RAF Museum at Hendon includes giant V-bombers for carrying the nuclear deterrent prior to the switch to SSBN class submarines, sleek interceptors like the Lightning and weird and wonderful early jet fighters like the Vampire.

However, an additional theme that Dirk Hoke referred to repeatedly was that of value for money. The enormous development costs of innovative combat aircraft have become prohibitive for individual countries to bear and joint programmes have become commonplace. There are inevitably difficulties with this approach. Each country’s armed forces will have it’s own requirements which lead to a plethora of different aircraft versions and add cost and complexity to certification. In addition, joint programmes usually include conditions about percentage of workshare aligning to number of aircraft purchased – which can lead to uneasy partnerships between different parts of the supply chain.

Having always worked on commercial aircraft – I admire the impressive handling qualities and severe beauty of combat aircraft – and I enjoy watching them perform at airshows. Yet I’m struck by the fact that value for money is a difficult metric to assess for combat aircraft.

Ultimately, it could be judged by their longevity in service – the Tornado entered service with the RAF in the late 1970s and has only been retired recently, its final missions carrying out airstrikes to combat ISIS using Paveway IV bombs in 2018, having operated in the first Gulf War 1990-1991, Afghanistan in the 2000s and the Iraq War of 2003.

The F-16 was similarly developed in the 1970s and is the most successful combat aircraft, with more than 3000 still in operation in 25 countries. That may be due to the USA’s power in procurement negotiations and influence – but also indicates the versatility of the aircraft.

The question might be how much of a need there will be for combat aircraft with human pilots in the future. Drones are increasingly used for airstrikes and are far cheaper to replace and operate. An aircraft without a human pilot can also open up areas of the flight envelope that can’t be covered today in terms of manoeuvrability and handling qualities. The conflicts of the last thirty years have not tended to be the dogfights of the Second World War or the potential dogfights of the Cold War between largely evenly matched forces. Instead, they’ve been dominated by peacekeeping missions (the former Yugoslavia, Somalia), limiting the power of dangerous but militarily inferior aggressors (the first Gulf War) or prolonged operations against enemies whose armament consists mainly of AK-47s, Toyota Land Cruisers, the occasional rocket propelled grenade launcher and some expertise in IEDs. These missions have been effectively served by a combination of older aircraft to carry heavy armament or provide aerial support to ground troops and drones to perform many other activities.

Inevitably, there is a need to continue innovating and to develop new aircraft – both to keep developing the skills of the existing workforce and in the knowledge that the current technology will become obsolete. However, value for money may be about making decisions that give you an aircraft suitable for changing roles over time without excessive customisation.