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    The Aviation Advocacy Blog

    A cornucopia of news, opinion, views, facts and quirky bits that need to be talked about. Join our community and join in the conversation on all matters aviation. The blog includes our weekly round-up of the bits of European aviation you may otherwise have missed – That Was The Week That Was

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Archive for August, 2014

Towers – Watch this space, or some other remote one…

The European Space Agency’s Rosetta space probe is now in close orbit with comet 67P, perhaps better known as the Churyumov–Gerasimenko comet.  Other probes have done fly-pasts.  Rosetta has taken that one step closer – it is now moving at the same speed as the comet itself and all going well, it will land on the comet.  That is a remarkable piece of space engineering, more than likely involving rocket scientists, but it raises one very simple question:  If we can land a probe on a comet in deep space, what about aircraft on runways? The answer, of course, is that we can, and we are starting to do so.  By definition, en-route ATM is remote from the area being controlled so it was only natural that we can do it for remote airports too. Perhaps the real question is why do we continue to think that we need towers at all?

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