Among them was the Boeing 737 Max 8 grounding after two accidents which killed 189 and 157 respectively. Boeing tried to blame pilot error until it was revealed that the redesign of the 737 airframe to accommodate larger, more fuel-efficient engines changed the airplane’s aerodynamics requiring compensating automatic pilot software called MCAS, for which human pilots were never trained.

Then there was environmental activist pressure on the aviation industry to accelerate decarbonization.

Among new technologies being introduced was the first electric-powered commercial aircraft.

While passenger volumes continued to increase with more commercial aircraft in the air than at any time in the past, accountability and sustainability concerns became part of the conversation in the boardrooms of avionics and airline companies.

Aerial taxis and in and intercity autonomous air vehicles appeared in trials of an entirely new type of air passenger service.

Drones continued to make aviators nervous as these tiny airborne robots grew in numbers explosively.

Commercial supersonic air travel was once again in the headlines with NASA promising a silent successor to the ill-fated Concorde sometime in 2021. No more sonic booms meant these aircraft could fly over land without restriction.

Scramjet hypersonic transport was in the planning stages with companies like Airbus working on prototypes.

Sabre, Reaction Engines hybrid hydrogen-air rocket plane moved one step closer to becoming the first powered space plane to fly both in the atmosphere and space using a combination air-breathing jet and rocket engine.

And in the regulatory environment, significant problems emerged in light of the two Max 8 crashes and what rot was exposed subsequently in the fallout at the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). In what in hindsight is seen as a mistake, the FAA had given Boeing a larger role in overseeing the safety of its aircraft, passing along its own engineering reports to the regulatory body which then provided a rubber stamp. Many countries’ aviation authorities took FAA recommendations in good faith. A big mistake!

On the military side of avionics, the rise in autonomous aircraft represented the early evolution of robotics replacing human fighter pilots.

Rather than confined to speculation and science fiction, weaponized drone swarms came closer to becoming a reality in 2019.

New fighter jet models revealed and in planning stages from the United States, Europe, Japan, and China featured more autonomy, more firepower, and more stealth.

Russia introduced a hypersonic weapon designed to evade any existing anti-ballistic missile system, potentially ushering in a new space arms race.

The United States launched its new military arm, the Space Force, increasing the likelihood that the United Nations’ conventions agreed to by most nations on the planet about the peaceful use of outer space would soon end.

And in the world of commercial rockets and satellites, a burgeoning industry continued to reveal that national space programs were overpriced and under deliverers when it came to getting satellites aloft.

The NASA commercial space crew program continued to lag behind the timetable originally established to put Americans into low-Earth orbit and on the International Space Station. Instead, NASA continued to purchase seats on Soyuz rockets and capsules, a technology some 5o-years old and showing signs of aging with a near disaster in one launch.

And junk continued to fill near-Earth space with no solution to begin the cleanup available until the mid-2020s. How bad has the space junk problem become? Several times in 2019, the International Space Station needed to move its orbit to avoid collision with pieces of debris from past missions and moribund satellites still circling the planet.

Agriculture Update: Netafim Irrigation Technology – A Scarce Water Solution

A leaky water pipe and a flourishing tree revolutionized irrigation over 50 years ago and what was discovered by accident has led to the development of  micro-irrigation products by a company in Israel called  Netafim. Its micro-drip technology adapts to operational and environmental conditions maintaining directed water flow to field or greenhouse crops. Today the company is providing training and assistance to farmers in 110 countries developing micro-irrigation solutions that increase water use efficiency to 95%. In April Netafim opened a new facility in India to assist more than 50,000 farms in the country. India, a country with 1.2 billion people , 17% of the world’s population, contains only 4% of its fresh water. With 77% of that water designated for agriculture, maximizing water use is critical to increasing crop yields. Crops under micro-drip irrigation include cotton, sugarcane, potatoes and bananas grown in open fields as well as green houses.

Biomedicine Updates

Hey Doc – You May Soon Be Replaced by a Machine

At the Health Innovation Summit in late August in San Francisco, Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and a partner in a health venture capital firm, described a future in which applications on smartphones would replace 80% of physicians. Khosla demonstrated AliveCor’s ECG Heart Monitor, a low-cost mobile device that enables a patient to monitor his or her heart health anywhere, anytime and that attaches to an iPhone. The monitor is one of a number of consumer-oriented medical products that Khosla’s firm is funding that allow consumers to measure and assess their own wellness. And with Watson (see last week’s headlines) learning to become a medical whiz on behalf of WellPoint Inc., machine learning systems may soon prove to be better at diagnosis than most doctors.

Using Computers to Stave off Dementia

Today dementia affects 13.3 per 1,000 population. But here is a prescription you can take if you are getting to your senior years like me. “Take one personal computer, laptop, tablet or smartphone session a day and call me in the morning because you’ll remember my number. According to a research study done by the University of Western Australia, regular computer use is a formula for lowering incidents of dementia in older males.  The study followed 5,506 men between the ages of 69 and 87 for a period of up to 8 1/2 years. The results, a decrease in dementia rates of 40%. Computer usage was measured by frequency and type of activity.  Follow up showed a correlation between frequency of computer use and cognitive abilities.

Environmental Technology Update: New Filter Separates Oil From Water

Imagine a filter that cleans up oil spills in the ocean or separates oil from water in fresh water treatment plants.  In the past membranes separating water and oil have fouled up after a few hours. But not this technology created by engineers at University of Pittsburgh. The filtering agent consists of two compounds: POSS (fluorodecyl polyhedral oligomeric silsesquioxane) and PEGDA (polyethylene glycol diacrylate). When applied to surfaces such as wire screening, filter paper or fabric, water passed through while oil was blocked. Tests in the lab on canola oil and diesel fuel produced optimal results. Next in the plans, a field test in the ocean. Where are you BP?

Transportation Update: Is There a Supersonic Flying Wing in Your Travel Future?

NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts Program has awarded engineers at University of Miami $100,000 in funding to turn their bi-directional flying wing idea into a reality. The wing looks like a Ninja warrior’s star with four wings at 90 degrees to each other. When in subsonic flight the aircraft uses one set of wings. When in supersonic flight it rotates and uses its other set. The jet engines atop the aircraft re-align for the type of desired flight. For passengers on board, a 5-second rotation would create g-forces less than those experienced during commercial jet flights today.

Not to be outdone, engineers at Tohoku University in Japan have come up with a supersonic biplane concept that produces no sonic boom. Supersonic commercial air travel ended with the Concorde. Will we see it revive? Most experts believe concepts like these will take 20 years to go from the drawing board to commercial use. My bet is we will see sub-orbital commercial rocket service between New York and Tokyo before either of these two interesting airplanes ever fly.

A Postscript

Readership continues to climb every month. Thank you. You can find Techso Mogro on Facebook  as well. If you go that route please “Like” the page. I’m 10 short of 30 readers. Once I reach that number I can begin to analyze reader traffic on that site. To the more than 4,000 of you who visited last month, thanks for dropping by and keep on coming back. I promise to keep you interested and intrigued about 21st century technology and our future. – Len Rosen