Understan
ding the Peter Principle, leaving your comfort zone and accepting that we don't discover America every day are three important pillars that, in my opinion, can help us to be clear about where we are each day when we get out of bed. It is that early moment of the day, when we wake up from our dreams, put on our action shoes and put on our blizzard glasses, ready to overcome all kinds of obstacles, that today's times, despite our resistance, have in store for us, is what sets the pace of the developments.
But, what is Peter's principle? - Very simple, it is a theory that maintains that we are all good for something, but not for everything. And that we can be excellent gardeners, but terrible cooks. And that nothing happens, as long as we know it, and we are able to assume it. The problem comes when you don't want to see and you have to suffer the devastating effects of this terrible confusion.
And where are we in mid-March 2021? Very simple, here and now. In a place and at a time where the only certainty is yourself, your strengths, your courage and the firmness with which you take the helm, and for which it is necessary to ignore the siren songs. There are, and many! You already know that! ! Nobody gives anything for nothing!
Thus, while some are lost, or focused only on themselves, fortunately, there is an immense silent majority of people who get up every morning and fight with courage and integrity to get ahead with dignity. And this focuses the colors of daily reality and makes the world not stand still.
Business Bridge Barcelona-Seattle
And so in one part of the world, at 7 a.m. on a rainy day in early December some years ago, a senior lawyer from the firm K & L Gates looked at the window located in one of the tall towers of buildings, toward Elliot Bay, in the Puget Sound, in the Pacific Northwest, in the city of Seattle. That working day started earlier than usual.
Mr. Gates, father of millionaire Bill Gates, and founding partner of the law firm K & L, considered one of the best law firms on the west coast of the USA, was headquartered in Seattle, a city in the state of Washington. Mr. Gates Senior, very kindly, did the favor of receiving a business delegation from Barcelona of 30 people, with a notice of just 24 hours. The meeting scheduled at the Seattle City Council, the day before, with the mayors of Barcelona and Seattle, had to be canceled. The then mayor of Barcelona, ​​who was an amateur pilot, canceled his presence at the opening ceremony at the Seattle city hall, and the meeting postponed to the following day, required a suitable framework. With great kindness on the part of the American authorities, a gap was made in the agenda and the imposing offices located in a high tower of the city with impressive views of the Pacific coast, hosted the first official meeting of the Barcelona business delegation. called “Business Bridge”.
The delegation was led by the mayor of Barcelona, ​​the president of the Barcelona Chamber, as well as the US Consul in Barcelona, whose management was decisive in the success of the delegation. Microsoft, Starbucks, Boeing, as well as the Port and the Seattle Airport were some of the large companies that occupied the agenda of those intense and productive days when Spanish subcontractors from Barcelona presented their capabilities in the industrial automation, aeronautical engineering and design sectors to the american companies.
The Boeing Company was created in 1997, the result of the merger between the military McDonnell Douglas and the North American division of Rockwell by Boeing, in a transaction of 13,000 million dollars. Apparently, in the merger, the civil party had prevailed over the military, according to clarifications from one of the lawyers of the North American firm, who acted as host in the first meeting of the business mission.
The Director of the Port of Seattle, an American woman of Asian origin, was also from the Airport, and expressed during the meetings held the great synergy that exists in the joint management of both entities, and from which the community and the territory of Seattle had benefited notably.
The business missions organized by the Chambers of Commerce annually, constitute a vector of international promotion of enormous value for companies and especially for SMEs that want to internationalize and see in these actions the possibility of accessing agendas of meetings with companies in an accessible way and with guarantees.
Still flying, but already in Europe, some time later, the European manufacturer Airbus, made in June 2005 the first presentation at the Le Bourget Air Show in Paris of its A-380 model. It was impressive to see it gliding silently in the sky, and this was stated by the Spanish supplier companies present, some of which were also part of the meetings with buyers organized by the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce and its company GPA and were invited by the management of Airbus Spain to exchange impressions and admire in the sky the result of so much work.
Airbus was founded in 1970 as Airbus Industrie. The consolidation of European defense and aerospace companies in 1999 and 2000 allowed the establishment of a Public Limited Company in 2001, acquired by EADS (European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company) (80%) and by BAE Systems (20%). After an extended period, BAE sold its shareholding to EADS on October 13, 2006.
The company produces in 16 locations in four European Union states: France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom. Final assembly takes place in Toulouse, France; Hamburg, Germany; Sevilla Spain; and, since 2009, and jointly with another company, in Tianjin, China. Airbus has subsidiaries in the USA, Japan and India
Airbus-Boeing
Thus the two major manufacturers of long-range aircraft. Airbus and Boeing, gave lessons in high technology and measured their strength in the field of long-haul aircraft and large transport capacity. Airbus's bet with its A-380 model was clear and that of Boeing with its “Dreamliner” or 787 was diverted towards a medium-capacity haul aircraft. Always putting the focus on new materials and lower consumption, an eternal challenge for the sector.
Faced with this situation, Airbus scheduled the production of the A-350 and A-380 almost in parallel, perhaps walking in its own footsteps and marking a new path that would cover a medium-range segment highly demanded by airlines. The result of this was the definitive A-350 XWB model. In 2018 the company already accumulated 854 orders for various airlines of different versions. The A-380 model has been retired in 2020.
It appears that Airbus in 2021 will have three hydrogen-powered prototypes that are set to become the world's first zero-emission commercial aircraft and that should enter operation in 2035, according to the calculations of its top managers.
In this sense, the design and manufacture of the aircraft are not the only challenges that clean aviation faces: airports will require significant transport and hydrogen refueling infrastructure.
It is important to note that hydrogen constitutes approximately 75% of the material in the Universe, but it is found combined with other elements such as oxygen, forming water molecules, or carbon, forming organic compounds. Therefore, it is not a fuel that can be taken directly from nature, and has to be "manufactured". -According to sources consulted.
Airbus, according to recent statements by its CFO, Grazia Vittadini, ensures that its first aircraft powered by this clean technology will be operational in 2035.
It is important to note that hydrogen is absolutely clean during its combustion: it is reduced to steam. But to be truly green, 100% of the energy required for its production.
It must also come from renewable sources: sun, wind or water. That is the "aspiration" of Airbus. "It is the only technological vector that allows us to do so", underlines the Italian executive, confident that this chemical element contributes "by more than 50%" to the decarbonisation process of aviation. There are, however, a good number of unknowns to solve before it finally crystallizes: “how to store it, how to bring it to the temperature where it remains in a liquid state… Basic questions that still have to be adapted to the case of airplanes, but that have already been surpassed in the automotive or energy industries ”.-According to the last interviews from Mrs Vittadini to the specialized press
With large retreating models like the Boeing 747 and Airbus 380 now off production lines due to their high fuel consumption and shortage of high density routes, hydrogen may be a second life for them.
Perseverance
On the other hand, and while passenger transport is limited by the health crisis, we have witnessed the arrival of “Perseverance.” It will soon be the fifth SUV to roll through its sands;
After seven months of travel and 480 million kilometers, at 9:48 p.m. in Spain -11 minutes and 22 seconds behind on Mars- Perseverance plunged into the Martian atmosphere at 20,000 kilometers per hour. He had 6 minutes and 48 seconds to slow down, and land gently in Jezero crater. And it should do it automatically. Protected by its thermal shield, it withstood temperatures of 1,500 ºC and the thin atmosphere slowed its speed to 1,500 kilometers per hour. Four minutes after the first contact with the Martian atmosphere, its 21-meter parachute opened and it lost its heat shield. It was about 10 kilometers up.
Eight kilometers below, the SUV was falling at 300 kilometers per hour when the parachute was detached and the flying crane's retro rockets fired for the final stop. The ship's radar and its artificial intelligence system scanned the terrain to find the ideal place to land. At 20 meters above the ground, the flying crane lowered the rover by means of cables and left it on the ground before being thrown and crashing.Perseverance will explore the Jezero crater with its seven instruments, with an eye on possible remains of ancient microbial life. and it will study its atmosphere - with the Spanish environmental station MEDA - to better understand, above all, the behavior of dust, which can cause planetary storms and be a threat to future astronauts and their teams. He will take images with the 25 cameras he carries - four that captured the descent, 19 in the SUV and two in the Ingenuity helicopter - and record the sounds of the planet with two microphones.
One of the experiments, Moxie, will try to generate oxygen from Martian CO2, something essential in the future to use it as fuel for ships and for astronauts to breathe. Another, Sherloc, wears five small pieces of the spacesuits that NASA prepares for the return to the Moon and the assault on the red planet to see how they behave on Mars. And, in addition, it will store samples that, in a few years, another rover will collect, put on a rocket and travel to Earth in a spacecraft of the European Space Agency for analysis.
Spanish technology in the Rover Perseverance
It is noteworthy to note the Spanish technology present in the Rover Perseverance, which is led by the following companies, according to the aeronautical and space association TEDAE Spanish Association of Defense, Security, Aeronautical and Space Technology Companies (TEDAE), which is the Association created in order to assume the representation and promotion of its Associates both nationally and internationally. The companies are the following:
Airbus
The Madrid-Barajas Airbus center built the Mars 2020 High Gain Antenna System (HGAS) for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) that includes an X-band steerable transmit and receive antenna that will provide high-speed data communications direct to Earth to and from the Rover Perseverance.
Alter Technology
The activities carried out at Alter Technology were vibration, vacuum, radiation and extreme temperature tests for MEDA. As well as in the design of the encapsulation and the validation of the MEDA ASIC.
Archimea
Arquimea, through its company Ramem acquired in 2020, has been in charge of manufacturing high quality mechanical elements of the ATS sensor (Air Temperature Sensor) of the MEDA environmental station.
Crisa
Crisa (a subsidiary of Airbus Defense and Space) has contributed in a key way to the MEDA instrument (Martian Dynamic Environment Analyzer) with the complete development of the Control Unit and flight software, electronics development, integration and testing of the two Wind Sensors, the development of the Infrared Sensor as well as the systems engineering, the quality assurance of the mission and the integration of the complete instrument, which will take measurements of numerous environmental parameters throughout the mission.
Sener Aerospace
Design, manufacture, verification and integration of the High Gain Antenna Aiming Mechanism (HGAG) that enables direct two-way communication between Perseverance and tracking stations on Earth.
As the TEDAE association points out, the strengths of the aerospace industry are as follows:
1-Innovation in advanced materials and non-polluting fuels
2-Processes and data management where the concept of Industry 4.0 such as Machine Learning, I.A and IIoT
3-Cybersecurity
According to TEDAE:
“The contribution to the Spanish economy of the aeronautical sector, in terms of GDP, is close to 16,000 million euros per year, of which more than half (60%) corresponds to civil aviation. Possibly, civil aeronautics is the global industry most affected by the health crisis in the world, which already in 2020 has seen its activity reduced by over 40%, and where a market recovery to pre-Covid levels is not expected, at least , until 2026 ".
The pandemic has revealed the great dependence of Spain on the service sector, which amounts to almost 70% of our GDP, with industry occupying only 14% of spanish GDP.
It is the service sector that generates wealth through tourism and hotel business in Spain. Spain doesn't have competition in supply and quality, as the president of the hotel group AC, we are number one, Antonio Catalán says, although we lack a large national operator, curiously.
Crises are also opportunities, to do things better and to value what we have, which is a lot and to support it so as not to lose it.