At the opening ceremony of this year’s CeBit trade show, Tom Enders, CEO, EADS, presented a futuristic Mars Rover, which EADS subsidiary Astrium is working on with the European Space Agency (ESA).
However, the main point he made was that we need to close the innovation gap between aerospace and IT.
A high-tech Mars Rover vehicle is operated by processors from the last century, meaning that games consoles are head and shoulders above the current models, Enders said.
The new Mars Rover, named Bridget, he said, could not only climb over boulders and drill holes on the surface of Mars, but it could also independently find its own way across the planet. Despite this, its core processors were made in the 1990s.
“When Bridget sets off for Mars in 2018, computer performance will have tripled in comparison to today,” Enders said. “By that point, her computer will be 30 years old.”
He said that the IT industry has enabled aviation today to become safer and greener. But if the processing industry had set the pace in the area of microcontrollers and software at the start, the roles would have been reversed. The IT industry, he said, is now setting the standards.
“From the initial research work to its decommissioning, an aircraft’s entire service life can amount up to 90 years,” Enders explained. He added that developing a new aircraft programme costs more than 10 billion euros. From the first day up until the last day, up to three million parts need to work perfectly, because the lives of over three billion people a year depend on compliance with safety standards. This is what differentiates the aviation industry from sectors that see frequent model changes.
Today, when supervisory authorities certify a new type of aircraft, all the software components are frozen at the respective level of technology, Enders said. This makes the software outdated by the time airlines can put the aircraft into operation.
“In addition to the approximately 200 million euros in investments for the IT systems of a new type of aircraft, further high costs are incurred due to maintenance, as we are dealing with outdated systems from the very start,” he said.
The CEO called for “the innovation process to be revolutionized, without causing damage to the industry. We need to increase the speed of innovation, without compromising on safety.
“The motto of CeBit 2013 is ‘shareconomy’, which is something we can bring to life by sitting round a table and working together to close the gap.”
Enders said that this would not only benefit the aerospace industry, but profits would be seen across all processing industries.
