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TO the guided weapon industry in Britain, a trend in the last few years has regrettably been very apparent—fewer and foreign. Of contemporary weapons we can justifiably be proud of our national products so far as the design and performance is concerned, although certain of them have taken a depressingly long time to reach fully operational service. The quality of UK weapons is certainly on a healthy upward trend; however, the national armoury has undergone a considerable change over the last decade or so, since the first generation was conceived due to the influence of international arming.

MORE than 200 delegates and observers from sixteen countries attended the International Federation of Airline Pilots' Associations (I.F.A.L.P.A.) Symposium on all weather landing, at the Hilton Hotel in Amsterdam from October 17 to 19, 1962. The Symposium, which was opened by Prince Bernhardt of the Netherlands, heard presentations from a considerable proportion of the equipment manufacturers in the automatic landing field, covering the current state of their system development and testing. More than half of the symposium was allotted to discussion and many of the pilots present expressed their opinions. The dominant theme of the discussion, naturally enough, was the proper place of the pilot in the all weather landing operation. This aspect of the operation is probably now the most contentious in the whole field and views expressed at this meeting might have been expected to be of great value to equipment and aircraft manufacturers. In fact, although much of interest was said, it cannot be recorded that there was a large measure of agreement between the pilots present.

The structural analysis and design of the Douglas Aircraft S‐IV second stage of the C‐1 configuration of the Saturn space exploration vehicle arc discussed; the S‐IV employs four Pratt & Whitney LR‐119 engines burning liquid hydrogen. Design criteria, structural analysis, manufacturing considerations and ground handling problems are placed in perspective in relation to design of the system. The solutions of two problems which proved important (free‐standing capability of an unpressurized large thin shell, and separation of two cyrogenic fluids at different temperatures by a common bulkhead) are presented.

Many types of sensing from satellites and aircraft are giving the offshore oil and gas industry increasingly comprehensive information.

TWO announcements of considerable importance to the British aerospace industry came within a few hours of each other at the beginning of last month. The first, on the evening of August 9, proclaimed that Kuwait Airlines had placed orders for six British jet airliners (with options on a further two) at a total cost, including aircraft and equipment, of £8½ million. The other, on August 10, came in the form of an official statement by the Ministry of Defence that the Government had decided to abandon development of the Blue Water tactical surface‐to‐surface missile. Thus, while the outlook for the current range of British jet transports continues to improve, our missile industry receives a further setback.

LAST February, it was announced that eleven British firms had formed a consortium known as the British Space Development Company, with a view to investigating the commercial benefits to be obtained from a British space programme. The principal aims of this consortium were to provide a single national body capable of providing all the diverse skills necessary for a space programme and to give British industry a single negotiating organization. Of the eleven firms which together constitute the British Space Development Company, all are in some way connected with the aircraft industry and the vast majority (Hawker Siddeley Aviation and Rolls‐Royce being the exceptions) are concerned with electronics.

Effect of rocket and launcher design parameters on the maximum height obtainable in vertical flight. Comparison of costs for single‐ and two‐stage rockets. If efficiencies of around 100,000 ft./lb. payload/lb. propellent can be realized in practice, small solid propellent rockets should prove economical for routine meterological use.

Knight's Industrial Law Reports goes into a new style and format as Managerial Law This issue of KILR is restyled Managerial Law and it now appears on a continuous updating basis rather than as a monthly routine affair.

The liability of a master for the acts of his servant or agent is a well‐established principle of many branches of English Law. It is in fact as old as the Common Law itself and is considered to have originated in the responsibility of a master for hired menials who had no legal capacity and were part of the household for which the master had to answer in every way. In the law of tort, especially the tort of negligence, it is still firmly entrenched and the rule is that a master is liable for any tort which the servant commits in the course of his employment (Winfield). The servant is also liable and a servant, for the purpose of vicarious liability, is one whose work is under the control of another and “in the course of employment” includes any act committed as an incident to something the servant is employed to do. Apart from statutory modifications, the rule has been perceptibly changing in its applications through the years, even in both directions. Originally, hospital authorities held no responsibility for acts committed by their medical staff; the responsibility was entirely the doctor's, a legal relationship, however, which was always regarded as something of an anachronism as between employer and employed. Perhaps this conception was an error stemming from an early High Court decision, but gradually the position has changed, quite apart from the National Health Service Act, 1946, towards the hospital authority's responsibility to the injured patient just as much as that borne by the officer whose failure caused the injury.