The National Aeronautic Association continued its recent tradition of awarding its Collier Trophy, which once upon a time was the most prestigious award in aviation, by announcing that this year’s recipient is the Boeing X-37B, a space drone that made its first voyage 10 years ago.
Not that the X-37B isn’t cool, it kind of is. Okay, it really is. But is it aviation? Not really. The idea behind it was to create an unpiloted, up-peopled scale version of the Space Shuttle. And the government/industry teaming did just that. It gets launched into orbit on a rocket and then once in orbit, it conducts experiments, most of which are top secret, and we don’t think the Collier selection committee got let in on those secrets. The Air Force has said that the X-37B’s missions include “!testing avionics, flight systems, guidance and navigation, thermal protection, insulation, propulsion, and re-entry systems,” though that’s all the detail it will go into. So, yeah, spy stuff.
What did the X-37B beat out for the shiny medal? It’s an interesting mix of hardware that includes the Airborne Collision Avoidance System Team, the Bombardier Global 7500 (a very cool, very expensive bizjet), the Gulfstream G500 and G600 (ditto that last thing), the Hubble Space Telescope Team (if you have to make it space prize, we’d vote for this one), the magni500 Electric Propulsion System (which SHOULD HAVE WON), the Stratolaunch Carrier Aircraft, and the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic Management Team, which is a team with a lot of hard work ahead of it! but come on.
The problem with the Collier, which I’ve said before, is that it should be multiple awards, one for civil aviation, another one for military hardware, and yet another for space work. All of these things fall under the heading of “aerospace,” which itself is a mash-up of concepts that are almost entirely separate.
To its credit, the X-37B is an airplane, as it glides back to landing just like the Shuttle did, except with no one aboard doing the flying. Robot planes are fine, I guess, but in my opinion they miss out of the whole point of aviation. If you fly a drone, that’s cool. But it does NOT make you a pilot. And if you think it does, you need to go flying a real airplane.
So, congrats to the Boeing team that was awarded the Collier Trophy for 2019 (this award is so last year) for the X-37B. But next year, could we please make it an aviation award? There are still a lot of pilots down here on earth who care a lot about actual airplanes and, even more, about flying them.
