Last year was crowned by our double visit to the NATO AWACS base and Eurocontrol, and this year, we aim even higher. Second Thursday after Easter holiday, we go to Paris! We'll visit Dassault Aviation's plant in Argenteuil, where there are several production and assembly lines for Dassault's Rafale fighter and Falcon business jet.
Before that, we stop at the het Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace, right next to Paris' Charles De Gaulle airport. All top pieces from French aerospace history are on display, including a Concorde prototype. You can find more about the museum at http://www.mae.org.
Practical:
We plan on leaving Leuven at about 7h. Fuel costs will be shared.
We visit the museum first, and then are expected at Dassault around 14h30.
For the Dassault visit, we'll need your name, nationality, birth date and place, but also a scan of your ID card. We need to have everything Sunday evening April 4th at the latest!
The number of participants is limited, so if you'd like to join the visit, send an email quickly to simonvdb [at] gmail [dot] com.
At the beginning of April, a crew of 6 students from UCL university are going to man the Mars Desert Research Station, in the desert of Utah. They are going to perform several experiments there. For these, the students would like to cooperate with K.U.Leuven and EUROAVIA. A joint KUL/UCL mission is in the pipeline for next year, but for this year's mission, there are also a lot of opportunities. JUMP is looking for geologists, architects, psychologists, engineers, biologists, physicists, etc. This call is aimed at all students, from 1st bachelor up to PhD level.
At an information session (with free reception afterwards) on Thursday March 4th, the JUMP students will tell us everything about their mission. The session is held at 20h00 in 200S 01.03. The presentation will be in English.
On Tuesday March 2nd at 14h00 EUROAVIA visits Sabena Flight Academy at Brussels Airport. Sabena Flight Academy is a leader in training of airline pilots and owns an impressive range of infrastructure to make that happen, such as five Full Flight Simulators (A320, A340, B737,...).
The programme of our visit:
- A general introduction to Sabena Flight Academy and its activities.
- 'Basic Flying Course': a fully stripped cockpit in which you can study each component separately.
- 'Theory': how to prepare for a flight, common but fatal mistakes... Get to understand the complex task of an airline pilot.
If there is one available, we'll also have a session on a simulator.
Confirm your participation by email ( leuven@euroavia.net ) . Please mention your name and the number of your ID-card (590-...). Deadline is Thursday 25 februari at 23h00 .
UAV's are a hot topic in the media, because they are used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The unmaned airplanes exists in many forms and mesures, form bomber to micro-espionage-plane. They just are part of modern warfare. On top of that, the systems can do much more, UAV's are also very handy in civil tasks.
Prof. em. Roland Decuypere will give (for EUROAVIA) an overview of varied families of Unmanned Aerial Systems en there applications. Hi will talk about the many challenges that designers, builders and users of UAS are confronted with.
The presentator can lean on 15 years of experience as expert in this matter. Under his command an UAV research group was founded that mainly focuses on the development of a mini- and micro UAS. His effort and his publications about UAS were awarded with the prestigious “RTO Scientific Achievement Award”.
The lecture takes place on Wednesday evening 24 February at 20h in classroom 03.22 of the department bouwkunde on the Arenbergcampus in Heverlee. Everybody is welcome, even non-members of EUROAVIA. Afterwards there will be a free little reception to talk on.
17 February EUROAVIA goes to ESTEC, the technical heart of ESA. Satellites and other spacecraft are being tested at true scale. In the clean rooms the spacecrafts are being fine tuned before they leave for the launch site in Kourou.
ESTEC
Program:
10.00 hrs Arrival at Space Expo, Welcome by Robert Willemson, ESTEC Communications, coffee/tea service
10.15 hrs Introduction to ESA and its technical centre ESTEC, R. Willemson
10.45 hrs Ariane 5 presentation by Johan Steelant
11.15 hrs Transfer to ESTEC Test Centre
11.30 hrs Tour of Test Centre
12.15 hrs Transfer to Space Expo
12.30 hrs Tour of Space Expo
13.30 hrs End of visit and departure INTERGRAL ATV
The first EUROAVIA visit will eventually take place this semester!
Wednesday 25 November will we get a tour of the 15W at Melsbroek.
The 15th Wing of the Belgian air force , together with the Seakings of Koksijde are the only air components which are always, also in peacetime, on duty.
Then C-130 Hercules transport airplanes, an Airbus A310, Falcon 900 and more deliver as they say "anything, anytime, anywhere".
An elevator to space, it sounds far out, like a science fiction story. But in the late 90s, NASA has sponsored a couple of studies which concluded the idea is feasible, provided some key technological breakthroughs. The main obstacle is the strength of the cable connecting Earth to a counterweight more than 60 000 km above the surface. A strong and light enough material seemed the stuff of dreams, until the discovery of carbon nanotubes. In theory, these are more than strong enough, and they're truly a hot topic. The advantages of a space elevator are numerous, the main argument being lowering launch costs by several orders of magnitude. To raise attention for the Space Elevator concept, Spaceward has been organising the Space Elevator Games for a couple of years, with a total of two million dollars in prize money, provided by NASA. On November 7th, team LaserMotive has won 900 000 dollars for their achievement of climbing up to 1 km at an average speed of 4 m/s.
On November 18, Markus Klettner, executive director of Eurospaceward, pays us a visit to explain everything about the Space Elevator concept and why we need it. Don't miss this unique lecture!
The lecture starts at 19h30, is in English, and takes place in room BOKU 03.22 (Civil Engineering). Everyone is welcome, and drinks are for free after the lecture.
This lecture will take place in 200S - 01.03
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It' s about the Blended Wing Body (BWB), a potential new airplane type.
Is it a dream for later, or will it become reality very soon?
Find it out, by coming to this lecture.
Little side-note: the language: dutch.
We're also there at the student welcoming info market. Come and have a look at the Grote Markt between 16 and 19h. More info on studentenwelkom.be. See you there!
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