On 13th May 1915, the Minister of Education, speaking in the House of Commons, said, “Our successes over our enemy in aviation are largely due to the investigations made into automatic stability by a young man who went through an elementary school.”

That young man was Leonard Bairstow, who began his early education in the elementary and secondary schools of Halifax, Yorkshire, and obtained a scholarship at the Royal College of Science, London, in 1898.

H. E. Wimperis, who became President of the Society in 1937, was a student at the Royal College of Science at the same time as Bairstow and declared in later years, “I remember that, for several decades there, the most brilliant student that had been produced by the College was Professor Bairstow. He had an uncanny faculty of making himself acquainted with and making completely original suggestions on subjects which we did not think he knew anything about.”

It is just three years since the Anglo-French proposals for a European Space Vehicle Launcher Development programme were put before a Conference of Government representatives from 11 countries in the Council of Europe Headquarters, Strasbourg, and slightly more since the Conference of 11 countries at Meyrin in Switzerland where the idea of a European Space Research Organisation was formally introduced. This seems an opportune moment to take stock of the situation in this new field of international co-operation and look ahead to the prospects in the immediate future. At the same time it may be useful to mention briefly the increasing scope of European interests in all aspects of Space and to survey the growth of national space programmes.

Blue Steel is an air-surface missile carrying a thermonuclear warhead and intended to enable the V bombers to operate without going into areas in which they would be exposed to concentrated guided weapon attack. It has a canard configuration with small delta-shaped foreplanes for pitch control, a rear-mounted wing with inboard ailerons and a pair of fins of which the upper carries a yaw damper; the lower fin folds sideways to give sufficient ground clearance when the missile is installed on the aircraft (Fig. 1). Its exact performance cannot yet be stated but it is the largest of the British Missiles to get into Service.

Tests have been made to examine the dynamic response of representative heliport structures to helicopter landing loads. The loads applied by an S.5S helicopter were measured by British European Airways and the corresponding strains, reactions and deflections occurring in the instrumented test platform were recorded by the Building Research Station.

This paper describes the specially designed recording equipment fitted to the helicopter and discusses the data obtained from over 400 heavy landings. It is concluded that:—

• (a)The tyre deflection method used to measure applied load was better than the others considered.

• (b) Overall accuracy achieved was in the order of ± 10 to 15 percent.

• (c) Accuracy could have been improved if more time had been available to eliminate the effects of follower bounce and to establish the exact degree of sideloading present on the mainwheels.

• (d) There was inconsistency in oleo performance which had a marked effect on the time-history of load application.

• (e) The time-history of load application also depended on whether or not the rotor was running and providing lift.

• (f) In very few of the landings from a low hover and in none of the 30 or so run-on landings did all four wheels touch together; this is the most critical loading of the structure.

• (g) Despite the large number of heavy landings earlier in the trial the undercarriage finally failed at 19 fps which was considerably in excess of its design velocity.

I do not think that any report was ever so fortunate in the timing of its publication—although this was quite accidental— as the Robbins Report. An expiring Government and an aspiring Opposition have both welcomed it with open arms; a quite unusual state of affairs. It has received also a very good press, although there have been criticisms by some who were expecting recommendations on special issues such as sandwich courses or the place of liberal studies in technological courses and so on. But anyone making criticism of this kind has clearly not read the terms of reference given to the Committee, which were to review the pattern of full time higher education and in the light of national needs and resources, to advise the Government on what principles its long-term development should take place and to consider whether there should be any changes in the pattern and whether any new types of institution were desirable. Detailed problems lying within the pattern were outside our terms of reference.

Water tunnel flow visualisation experiments on a slender delta wing have revealed some new phenomena connected with vortex breakdown. Vortex breakdown hysteresis has been found, there being two steady flow states at some incidences, one with breakdown on the wing and one without. The formation of vortex breakdown has been studied and found to be a non-axisymmetric instability. It is suggested that pressure gradient plays a more general part in the phenomenon than has been thought hitherto.

Bragg, in ref. 1, gives a theoretical treatment for the variation of the discharge coefficient in compressible flow of any shaped nozzle with applied pressure ratio given one set of values. This shows that the discharge coefficient of any nozzle with a value less than unity at a pressure ratio approaching unity, rises continuously as the pressure ratio increases and reaches the maximum at a pressure ratio of infinity (zero back pressure). This is based on the assumption that the flow conditions at the Vena contracta are uniform and at unity Mach number once the applied pressure ratio is equal to/ or above the critical (sonic) value.