ITHACA, N.Y. -- The future of aircraft, satellite technology and space missions all will be discussed down on Earth when prominent figures in the aerospace industry and government convene at Cornell University on Saturday, Oct. 12, for the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering's symposium commemorating the 50th anniversary of the founding of Cornell's Graduate School of Aeronautical Engineering.

The all-day symposium, "Looking Ahead: The Next 50 Years of Aerospace Engineering," will be held at the Statler Hotel on the Cornell campus. Talks are free and open to the public, but a registration fee is required for lunch and dinner.

Several speakers, including Cornell faculty, will describe what the next half-century holds for aerospace engineering. Among them: Bernard L. Koff, executive vice-president for engineering and technology, Pratt and Whitney Aircraft Division, United Technologies Corp.; William F. Ballhaus Jr., corporate vice-president for science and engineering, Lockheed Martin Corp.; James M. Sinnett, senior vice-president for advanced technology and development, McDonnell Douglas Corp.; and Charles Elachi, director of space and Earth science programs, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA. Their presentations will be complemented by presentations of faculty from the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

NASA's chief engineer, Daniel R. Mulville, will describe the future of space missions at a banquet address at 7 p.m. Saturday in the Statler Hotel Ballroom.

In addition to the symposium, Franklin K. Moore, the Joseph C. Ford Professor of Mechanical Engineering Emeritus at Cornell, will deliver two presentations as the 1996 William R. Sears Lecturer. This annual lecture series is named in honor of Sears, the founding director of the Graduate School of Aeronautical Engineering.

Moore will lecture on Thursday, Oct. 10, at 4:30 p.m. on the topic "Theory of Stall Processes in Compression Systems," and will deliver the Sears Lecture, with the title "Thoughts on Modeling and Gas-Turbine Transients," on Friday, Oct. 11, also at 4:30 p.m. Both talks will be in 111 Upson Hall.

"In 1946, as the Graduate School of Aeronautical Engineering was being formed at Cornell, it would have been difficult to imagine where the advances of the next 50 years in this field would lead. As the turbojet engine was in its infancy, it would have been hard to predict that today we would think nothing of stepping on an airplane for a five-hour flight from New York to Los Angeles, or that 'overnight mail' to virtually anywhere in the world would be taken for granted," said David A. Caughey, professor and director of the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

Caughey gave an inventory of technologies such as stealth aircraft, arrays of artificial satellites orbiting Earth for global navigation systems, telephone and television communications by satellite, weather forecasting, orbiting telescopes, planetary orbiters and landers with full complements of instruments.

"All these advances that affect our everyday lives have occurred within the lifetime of the program in aerospace engineering at Cornell, which accepted its first students in the fall semester of 1946," Caughey said, "and Cornell faculty and graduates of the program contributed to most, if not all, of these advances."

They also have contributed to the development of atmospheric re-entry vehicles, research on turbomachinery and magnetohydrodynamic propulsion, research in aeroacoustics, including the sonic boom caused by supersonic flight, the development of high-powered lasers and the development of the theoretical basis for understanding much of the chemistry associated with atmospheric entry and the basic fluid mechanics of unsteady boundary layer separation.

In 1972 the Aerospace School was merged with mechanical engineering at Cornell to form the Sibley School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Much of the current research in the Sibley School is relevant to aerospace systems and includes work on drag reduction and the control of turbulent flows; the interaction between turbulence and combustion processes; vortex flows associated with lifting wings; aeroacoustics and helicopter noise; the prediction of highly-rarefied flows; including rocket nozzle exhaust plumes from orbiting satellites;

Also, the development of advanced cryogenic cooling systems for satellite systems, the development of numerical (computer-based) techniques to predict high-speed fluid flows, the behavior of fluids, granular flows and combustion in micro-gravity environments, and control of aircraft and satellites and the dynamics and control of large-scale structures in space. In addition, faculty from the school were instrumental in the establishment of the Laboratory for Plasma Studies and the Center for Applied Mathematics at Cornell.

To register for the symposium, including $25 for lunch and $40 for dinner, contact the Sibley School, (607) 255-3623.

Here is the symposium program:

• Looking Ahead: The Next 50 Years of Aerospace Engineering
• 50 Years of Aerospace Engineering at Cornell
• Saturday, Oct. 12
• Amphitheater, Statler Hotel
• Cornell University
• 8:45 a.m. Welcome: John E. Hopcroft,
• Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering
• 9 a.m. "The Future of Aircraft Propulsion"
• Bernard Koff, executive vice president for engineering and technology, Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Division, United Technologies Corp.
• "Turbulent Flow and Combustion Chemistry in Propulsion Systems"
• S. B. Pope, Cornell
• "Wave-Enhanced Propulsion"
• E. L. Resler, Cornell
• 10:40 a.m. -- "Getting Down to Business in Space,"
• William F. Ballhaus, corporate vice president, science and engineering, Lockheed Martin Corp.
• "Performance and Integration of Spacecraft Electric Propulsion Systems"
• I. D. Boyd, Cornell
• "Small Satellites and Applications of Estimation Theory"
• M. L. Psiaki, Cornell
• Noon -- Lunch (Upson Hall Lounge)
• 2 p.m. -- "The Future of Commercial and Transport Aircraft"
• James M. Sinnett, Senior Vice-President for Advanced Technology and Development, McDonnell Douglas Corp.
• J. L. Lumley, Cornell, "Control of Turbulent Flows"
• C. H. K. Williamson, Cornell, "Understanding and Controlling Vortex Wakes"
• 3:40 p.m. -- "Advanced Technology Needs For Future Space Science Missions"
• Charles Elachi, Director for Space and Earth Science Programs, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA
• "Transport Processes in a Low Gravity Environment"
• C. T. Avedisian, Cornell
• "Can Subsurface Mixing Of The Ocean Be Inferred By Satellite Observation?"
• S. Leibovich, Cornell
• 7 p.m. -- Banquet, Carrier Grand Ballroom, Statler Hotel
• "Missions In Space," Daniel R. Mulville, chief engineer, NASA