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Geostationary and geosynchronous satellites have a wide area of application in present day technology. The main drawback for the wider usage of such satellites is their high cost of launching into their orbit. As alternatives to conventional rocket launching, launching by high muzzle speed guns or by electric railguns have been proposed. However, it is hereby advocated that aerostats, stratospheric or mesospheric balloons tethered to a fixed point on the earth can also be used to fulfil the same tasks within a limited area of coverage. However, it is possible to widen the area of coverage by using a constellation of such balloons, presumably at a fraction of the cost of satellite launching. Presently, aerostats at about a few kilometers height are being used for a number of purposes, including border monitoring. The idea of tethered balloons reaching the lower parts of the stratosphere has been studied in 1960's for atmospheric research and successful results from prototype balloons have been obtained. The main problem related to high altitude aerostats has been found that extreme drifting loads are being induced by high altitude winds during the ascent (launching) and descent (recovery) phases. In the light of development of new high performance materials, as well as the development of superpressure balloons, it is now proposed to reconsider the same concept as a platform for high altitude devices used for communications, media broadcasting, environmental monitoring via optical or SAR imagery, monitoring for border security and illegal trafficking. Also, the possibility of two stage launching, ie, launching an aerostat from a high altitude airship shall be addressed. It is considered that the most convenient altitude for such aerostats is the stratopause region, with pressures at the order of 1 hPa pressure or 48 000-50 000 meters above the sea level.

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Crises can be regarded as the nursery of leadership in a way. They have both created new leaders and have also proved to be a testing ground for the existing leaders, as well as a filter where the inefficient have been eliminated. Man-made crises have been classified as social, economical, and political crises up to recent times. With the development of modern markets, new financial tools have emerged. Those financial tools have the function of regulating the modern economy, but also they have the handicap of propagating their own crises from the economic field to social and political areas. In this context, crises give way to radical changes in the management paradigm. In such an environment, the leadership virtues of the previous paradigm period turn out to be insufficient. Institutions used to survive during the crisis periods by employing their crisis management plans. However, crises gain a permanent nature during the modern times and tactical crisis management becomes insufficient in the new environment. The phenomenon of permanent crisis forces leadership to have some special virtues. Therefore, it becomes necessary to define a new type of leadership, namely “strategic crisis leadership.” The aim of this chapter is to examine the impact of crises on leadership virtues and express reflections on the new type of leadership in the new paradigmal period.

This study is aimed to find the fatigue behavior of Glass Reinforced Plastics, a material which is a widely preferred material for small marine crafts, as well as several other applications. The type of composite tested is hand‐laid E‐glass non‐crimp reinforcements with an polyester resin matrix. The specimens were produced in two standard thicknesses and with these material directions and were tested both under atmospheric and simulated seawater environments for fatigue. It was seen that the results of fatigue lifetime obtained by testing the material in seawater is much lower than the results obtained from testing similar specimens under atmospheric conditions. However, the stress curves indicate the same slope, suggesting that the fatigue failure mechanism of both testing conditions is the same and the fiber‐related factors dominate. It was found that the thickness and material direction did not have a significant effect on the fatigue behavior of the material.