With so much being written about who should be responsible for approving unleaded aviation gasoline, ASTM International is front and center in the debate. With a mandate to establish standards for diverse products and materials ranging from pesticides to baby carriages, Conshohocken, Pennsylvania-based ASTM International recently released a Standardization Impact Report, designed to provide a strategic overview of global innovation trends and how standards can and do play a part in supporting such trends in technology development.
The report will be released in sections, with the segment devoted to Emerging Airspace available now. Follow-on segments will be released in the coming months covering Health and Safety (July 2024), Advanced Manufacturing (September 2024), Built Environment and Infrastructure Systems (November 2024), and Clean Energy and Decarbonization Technology (First Quarter 2025).
In describing the report on Emerging Airspace, the ASTM summary says: “New sustainable transportation modes for travel and commerce are currently under development, such as electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles, which are anticipated to allow rapid, zero-emission transport of passengers and goods. These developments are being complemented by the expansion of infrastructure to ensure the safe use of drones and passenger aircraft.”
ASTM describes its role in setting standards as “helping our world work better.” It aims to organize collaborative initiatives and technical committees to develop its recommended standards. The process consists of four pillars, ASTM writes, starting with early engagement to help ASTM serve as a participatory interface between science, technology research, and the market. “Robust participation of all the stakeholders [is] needed to allow alignment of technology and process goals.”
Next, ASTM works to leverage speed, collaborative expertise and ability among stakeholders, followed by global workforce development to prepare for interactions with the emerging technologies “and to champion the use of standards.”
Finally, ASTM reaches out to stakeholders to encourage participation. “By joining a technical committee or providing your input on standards, you can advance standards that make a meaningful impact on the future and help transform markets in support of a more sustainable world.”
Zero emissions? Could someone please come up with a new, shiny buzzword to describe things that don’t create more emissions when being used because the emissions were created at a different time and/or place?
How about shifted emissions?!?! (:-0
Right On, Eric.
OR, better yet, we could figure out a way to STOP THE LIE of zero-emissions completely. It is simply amazing the number of cognitively-impaired believers of that lie are roaming about.
Ignoring the emissions from mining the coal and transporting it to the generation plant – OR – drilling and pumping the oil or gas and transporting it to the generation plant – because that applies to combustion-powered vehicles as well, in addition, we have (a) the energy losses that occur from the low thermal efficiency of the combustion process at the electrical generating plant, (b) the emissions therefrom, (c) the energy losses from the generator inefficiency, (d) the energy losses that occur in the power transmission process over long distance wires and through various transformers, (e) the energy losses from charging the batteries, (f) the emissions and energy losses from mining the poisonous elements needed to construct the batteries, (g) the (unsolved) problem of disposing ot the toxic battery contents when their relatively-short life is over……….yeah, zero emissions indeed.
Braly and G100UL don’t stand a chance now that the FAA and alphabet soups bought in:
“ASTM describes its role in setting standards as “helping our world work better.” It aims to organize collaborative initiatives and technical committees to develop its recommended standards. The process consists of four pillars, ASTM writes, starting with early engagement to help ASTM serve as a participatory interface between science, technology research, and the market. “Robust participation of all the stakeholders [is] needed to allow alignment of technology and process goals.”
Um, that’s not what ASTM stands for. It’s American Society for Testing Materials.
This all sounds a little bit self-serving. Perhaps they are feeling competition from the ISO committees in Europe that are setting standards for all sorts of things? I wonder if they have anything in all this literature that addresses how they control the conflicts of interest that occur in matters like developing unleaded aviation gasoline? One of the reasons why George Braley is reluctant to pursue an ASTM certification for G100UL (other than the high cost) is that the committee involved includes some major oil companies that currently produce 100LL. He is understandably concerned about divulging confidential information on his formulation to his direct competitors.