The guidance given by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry to the Civil Aviation Authority begins with a very important sentence—though some might regard it as a truism. It says that civil air transport exists by serving the public. As it happens, it was I who wrote those words and perhaps you will permit me to paraphrase them in everyday language, rather than the language of White Papers.

Civil air transport is about people. It is about the people who fly in aeroplanes as passengers, or who would like to do so if they could afford it. It is about the people who work for airlines, whether they be on the flight deck or in the cabin or on the ground. It is about the people who run airlines, whether they are the chairman of public corporations like Henry Marking or the founders of independent airlines like Adam Thomson or Freddy Laker. And finally it is about the people who regulate airlines; those who lay down the grant strategy like the members of the Edwards Committee and those who say you may or you may not.

In his general review of the Civil Aviation Act 1971 and its implications for the regulation of civil aviation in the 1970s, Mr. Colegate has mentioned the general functions of the Civil Aviation Authority. In my contribution I will describe the safety function in greater detail and the pattern of legislation and direction within which the Authority will work.

In this contribution my chief purposes are to describe the aviation safety organisation of the Authority, and to outline some of the objectives.

I will talk mostly about today and tomorrow, rather than yesterday. But an appreciation of the Authority's safety organisation requires an understanding of its origins, so a brief recapitulation of the past is a proper starting point.

MY views on the Civil Aviation Authority and the “second force” airline cannot ignore the political controversy which has taken place concerning the base from which the airline should be able to operate successfully. This controversy began very shortly after publication of the Report of the Edwards Committee in May 1969, and the recent debate in the House of Commons provided another unedifying example of a misguided preoccupation with political dogma at a time when the new regulatory body should be given every encouragement to get to grips with the many problems which face it.

The debate is over. Now begins the task of strengthening British civil aviation and providing for the legitimate needs of the growing number of people to whom in one way or another air transport is an essential element of everyday life.

Users generally believe that the modern aeroplane can fly on its own wings economically. They see ordinary commercial competition in the European charter market: and in spite of the low prices that have resulted, they see that several of the UK charter operators have made very respectable profits. Sir Sefton Brancker told us that “healthy competition is the only sure preventive to inefficiency, slackness and dishonesty”—and some of us believe he might agree now that air transport is no longer an exception. Within California, by a unique regulatory quirk, the establishment airline fares have been nearly halved by competition; and yet specialist airlines have made profits. Users see also that three of the major American airlines which stood high in your Committee's productivity league, were each able to shed over 5000 employees when financial stress forced management to cut costs. In the present climate here, it may be that the Authority will find that its statutory duty to reward only efficient operators with an economic return may cause some painful problems, notably on the domestic trunk routes, where competition has exposed massive differences in cost levels.

The task attempted in this paper is to exhibit a contemporary perspective of aeronautical research trends, needs and opportunities and to draw from it such pointers to the future as may contribute in a manner both interesting and helpful to the overall theme of the meeting.

The contribution at which I am aiming is a broad presentation, not going deeply into technical detail but standing sufficiently back from the research scene that, while major details are still discernible to give the picture definition, at the same time the scene as a whole can be viewed in some relationship to its environment of project development, market opportunities, social considerations and other factors.

GEOS-C will be the third of a series of spacecraft designed for the National Geodetic Satellite Programme. The two earlier and successful spacecraft were designated GEOS-I and II. In these, geocentric stabilisation was acheived to optimise the usage of the radiated and reflected radio and optical power of the geodetic observations. It was the atmospheric attenuation of the optical beacons, by which the spacecraft could be photographed against a star background, which imposed the accuracy requirement of earth pointing to within 5°. Descriptions as well as performance analyses of these attitude control systems have been published. In each, the proper mass distribution was obtained through an end mass on a de Havilland extendible boom. Since initial misorientation and perturbing torques induce motion about the equilibrium orientation in a gravity-gradient system, a mechanism for energy dissipation is necessary. A Magnetically Anchored Eddy Current Damper was used for this purpose. It consists of a magnet assembly that is free to lock onto the geomagnetic field and rotate freely within a conducting spherical shell. Relative motion of the two produces eddy currents in the conductor which in turn impede the relative motion.

The dynamic behaviour of gas turbines is of great practical importance, but unfortunately it cannot be investigated experimentally until late in the development programme when the mechanical integrity of the engine has been established. In the case of aero engines there is a requirement for fast engine accelerations and all engine transients must be achieved with complete safety. Thrust response rates must be guaranteed by the engine manufacturer at a very early stage and clearly it would be of great value to study engine transient behaviour at the design stage; this should lead to a significant saving in development time and cost by decreasing the amount of test bed running required.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the growing subject of inlet/engine compatibility a discussion of some of the more interesting results of research and development testing of rig compressors and engines carried out at the Bristol Engine Division of Rolls-Royce (1971) Ltd, and to discuss these against a now extensive background literature.

The effects of an inlet system on an axial flow gas turbine are principally on performance, stability and mechanical integrity. In this paper attention is focused on the effects of total pressure distortion on the compressor system's performance and stability.