The GE Brief: July 7, 2021

RISING TO THE TASK
 
Aviation today accounts for about 2% of global emissions of carbon dioxide. As other industries decarbonize, that number is projected to rise to as much as 10% by 2050, unless airlines, regulators and engine makers team up to revolutionize the future of flight. That’s the topic GE Aviation President and CEO John Slattery discussed during a Washington Post Live “Future of Flight” event that GE sponsored last week.
 
Doing its part: GE has been investing $1.8 billion a year in R&D to develop new advanced materials and technologies that can help cut fuel consumption and even enable hybrid electric design, Slattery said. In June, CFM International, a 50-50 joint company between GE Aviation and Safran Aircraft Engines, unveiled the RISE program (short for Revolutionary Innovation for Sustainable Engines), which aims to develop an open-fan design that could help improve fuel efficiency in new engines by 20% by the middle of the next decade (see infographic below). However, Slattery also pointed out that the 20% projection assumes we keep running planes on today’s fuel. “If we consider using sustainable aviation fuels,” he noted, “we could reduce the CO2 emissions by up to 80%.”
 
Find out more about the cross-industry efforts to decarbonize aviation here.
 

SUSTAINING FLIGHT
 
Since the first engines developed by CFM International entered service in the early 1980s, the joint venture between GE and Safran Aircraft Engines has reduced their fuel consumption and CO2 emissions by 40% compared with the engines that were replaced. Now CFM plans to slash those numbers by another 20%, which would represent the greatest decarbonization gain the partners have ever achieved. Their ambitious vision depends on big advancements in engine architecture and technology.
 
Painting the picture: If just 10% of the world’s single-aisle aircraft were replaced in the future by an open-fan engine like the one visualized for the RISE program, it would reduce CO2 emissions by some 8 million metric tons each year. That would be like taking 1.6 million vehicles off the road.
 
This infographic paints a more complete picture.
 

A PICTURE OF GOOD STEALTH
 
Forty years ago this summer, the Lockheed Martin F-117A Nighthawk lifted off for the first time from a dry lakebed in Nevada known today as Area 51. It was the first jet designed with stealth as its primary feature — flying at subsonic speeds to avoid sonic booms, forgoing afterburners to reduce its heat signature and utilizing flat surfaces to help disperse radar waves. And integral to its architecture was the F404 engine, developed in a top-secret assembly line at GE Aviation’s plant in Lynn, Massachusetts.
 
Below the radar: The reliable, lightweight and affordable F404 had originally been built for the McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet about three years earlier. To adapt it for the F-117A, a small group of government-cleared employees at GE removed the afterburners and employed a 12-stage tailpipe that minimized the jet’s heat signature by dispersing heat into a greater area. Bill Formosi, the engine’s program manager from 2000 to 2004, who is still with GE Aviation today, says the F-117, which the Air Force retired in 2008, remains his favorite aircraft. “It wasn’t, and still isn’t, like anything else,” he says.
 
For the full story of the F404’s role in the development of the stealth F-117A, click here.
 

THE CASE OF THE PREGNANT MUMMY
 
Late one night in 2018 at the National Museum in Warsaw, a group of archaeologists was examining X-ray images of a 2,000-year-old mummy from Egypt, thought to be a male priest, when one of them noticed “something light” on the scan. It turned out to be a fetus, indicating that the mummy was an expectant mother — the first such case ever seen.
 
A noninvasive approach: Marzena Ożarek-Szilke, who made the discovery, is the co-director of the Warsaw Mummy Project, and they were using GE Healthcare’s mobile RTG X-ray machine to do the analysis. Though the use of X-rays to examine mummies goes back to the late 19th century, the RTG’s mobility provides a big advantage. “Instead of bringing mummies to the equipment, we could bring the equipment to the mummies,” says Wojciech Ejsmond, another co-director. “It’s very important, because every move is dangerous for the structure of the mummy.” GE Healthcare’s noninvasive equipment — which also includes CT scanners and software that helps turn multiple scans into a single image — can offer the researchers a never-before-seen look at a “time capsule” from the past.
 
Read more about the Warsaw Mummy Project’s work here.
 

THE COOLEST THINGS ON EARTH ?

1. We Were Promised Flying Cars — And Now We Have Them
An R&D firm successfully took a flying car on a 35-minute flight between airports in Slovakia.
 
2. The Coolest Use Of Paper Ever
A Northeastern University engineering professor has developed a “cooling paper” that could be applied to buildings to reduce inside temperatures by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit.
 
3. The Disappearing Pacemaker
Northwestern and George Washington University researchers have created the world’s first transient pacemaker, which dissolves into the body when its work is done.
 
Learn more about this week’s Coolest Things On Earth here.
 

— QUOTE OF THE DAY —

“I was very tired, and I thought it was impossible that I was looking at a pregnant mummy.”
 
— Marzena Ożarek-Szilke, co-director of the Warsaw Mummy Project

Quote: Warsaw Mummy Project/GE Healthcare. Images: GE Aviation, CFM International, Lockheed Martin, Warsaw Mummy Project/GE Healthcare.