I have had the good fortune to write about spaceflight and aviation, and related technologies like AI, cybersecurity and drones, always with a focus on management, strategy and company financials. Most recently I worked for the European Space Agency as space transportation editor, from home in the UK and their technology centre in the Netherlands.
Until September 2020 I was features editor at Flight International and flightglobal.com. I'm also an old hand at print, so know about stuff like flatplans, production, magazine redesigns, recruiting staff and managing budgets.
Before aerospace, my beats included automotive, cruise and shipping, and cycling...and private banking, which taught me to never underestimate the power of finance.
Independently, I am working on a memoir about the Korean War and my first novel.
Comment/leader, Flight International
If you decide to rename the "James Webb" Space Telescope, I've got an elegant suggestion
Sending a car-sized rover and drone to the Red Planet is technological triumph, but critics doubt value for money. Do they have a point?
Could drones mimic a simple and elegant technique that guides bees to soft landings?
Josef Aschbacher to succeed Jan Woerner; space agency has a history of picking excellent leaders
Edinburgh-based start-up helping launch Scotland's space industry Whoever said space is the final frontier had a great feel for drama and a view to the cosmos, but perhaps didn't see as far out as the 21st Century.
Today’s attempts to fly on battery power rely on the same Lithium-ion technology that powers cell phones. To really get off the ground, aviation needs a new kind of energy storage technology
For Reaction Engines, Rolls-Royce investment is vote of confidence
Government puts cash behind long-trailed push for space access
High Altitude Pseudo Satellite eyes 100 days aloft
Airbus bullish on "High Altitude Pseudo Satellite"
Italy's aerospace champion resets expectations
Chelyabinsk, 15 February 2013 (M. Ahmetvaleev/ESA)
Reusable spacecraft: second coming?
When Jan Woerner took his seat at European Space Agency headquarters in Paris for his first-ever January press conference as director general, the former head of Germany's DLR aerospace agency had plenty of good news to talk about.
Airbus has to re-think its innovation strategy
Europe's light launcher, Vega: Earth observation on target
When Tim Peake blasts off for the International Space Station on 15 December, the first British astronaut since Helen Sharman in 1991 will be flying more flags than just the Union Jack. Aviators of all nations will see, roaring to orbit, affirmation of their very own version of the "Right Stuff".
When Tim Peake dons his spacesuit and climbs aboard a Soyuz rocket in November 2015, it will not be just another expedition to the International Space Station - at least from the perspective of observers in the UK
Europe's Ariane 6 cost plan is as ambitious as the rocket
Slippery aircraft are elusive beasts
For anybody with a longish memory it may seem an odd thing to say, but spaceflight is a high-profile affair in the UK. On the shoulder of astronaut Tim Peake's blue European Space Agency jumpsuit is a Union Jack, prominent as the former Apache helicopter pilot tours the country to talk about his six-month International Space Station mission, which ended with a return to Earth - and a big, smiling thumbs-up - in June.
After a decade lost to false starts and budget wrangling, and a partial launch failure, Europe's bid to have its own satellite navigation system received a huge boost from what appears to be a perfect mission to orbit the seventh and eighth spacecraft in what will eventually be a 30-unit constellation.
Airbus’s 25 March move to offload a second tranche of its shareholding in Dassault Aviation has advanced its strategic plan to pare away non-core assets
While politicians, citizens and business people digest the shock of the UK's 23 June referendum vote to leave the EU, one word crops up repeatedly in any attempt to anticipate the implications: uncertainty. Registration gives you instant access to FlightGlobal's news, in-depth analysis, insight and opinion from our global team of experts.
In the launch business, volume cuts costs
electron beam welding at Avio Aero
Dan Thisdell contributes expert commentary (at 30sec) to this BBC Singapore report
My job on Flight's 2015 Paris air show team was to write and produce a video report; I fronted this segment
When Airbus's e-Fan demonstrator made the first-ever battery-powered crossing of the English Channel from Lydd to Calais on 10 July, the well-trailed 40nm (74km), 37min flight made headlines as far afield as the USA and Australia, not to mention England and France. But the exercise was far more than a barnstorming publicity stunt.
As an aviation record-setting machine, Solar Impulse 2 is off to a good start. Following a relatively short first leg of its round-the-world adventure - 400km (249 miles) from Abu Dhabi to Muscat, Oman in just over 13hr, including a long holding pattern - stage 2 covered 1,468km in 13hr20min across the Arabian Sea to Ahmedabad in India, claiming the solar-powered world straight distance record for manned flight between pre-declared waypoints.
Dan Thisdell's expert commentary for Share Radio UK, from the Paris air show
Imagine boarding your flight, flying to your destination and watching from the arrivals lounge as what was a brand-new aircraft is towed away and pushed into the sea. For the return journey, you board another brand-new aircraft; it, too, is dumped after landing. Now, imagine how much your ticket costs.
Warren Buffet mega-deal: analysis
I edited and fronted Flight's interactive PAS15 report
Got any special plans for Sunday? 12 April might not rank up there with the really big holidays like Christmas, Easter and Black Friday, but all the same you could take a lead from our Russian readers and tip a glass to Yuri Gagarin - on Cosmonautics Day, celebrated since 1962 to mark the first human spaceflight a year earlier.
Europe's bid to retain independent, cost-competitive access to space in a launch market disrupted by US start-up SpaceX has been given solid financial momentum with formal contracts to develop the heavyweight Ariane 6 and light Vega C rockets.
Fragile: ISS solar panel (c Samantha Cristoforetti/ESA/NASA)
NASA got the sternest possible reminder of the hazards of spaceflight when an International Space Station resupply mission ended in spectacular failure on 28 October, just metres above the launch pad at Wallops Island, Virginia.
A sobering week in spaceflight saw the first in-flight fatality in a commercial space programme, as Virgin Galactic lost a test pilot with the breakup of its SpaceShipTwo over the Nevada desert, along with a spectacular but non-fatal launch failure of an uncrewed International Space Station resupply mission.
To get a sense of the challenge in designing the European Space Agency's Solar Orbiter mission, consider that the surface temperature on the planet Mercury gets up to 427°C - nearly twice the melting point of tin.
Atlas V: $380m per flight
A sobering week in spaceflight saw the first in-flight fatality in a commercial space programme, as Virgin Galactic lost a test pilot with the breakup of its SpaceShipTwo over the Nevada desert, along with a spectacular but non-fatal launch failure of an uncrewed International Space Station resupply mission.
Airbus is gearing up to commercialise a light aircraft project with a hybrid-electric propulsion system, as a blueprint for an eventual move into the 90-seat regional transport market. By slashing noise and emissions, Airbus believes a practical electric fan propulsion system will eventually open opportunities for regional routes currently closed owing to night flight bans - and give it a way into a market largely dominated by Bombardier and Embraer.
Atomic clocks are getting more accurate than ever; that should mean better navigation
EADS boss Tom Enders has made a master stroke in renaming the company after its most successful brand
Many things can be said about Elon Musk, but there are a few worth noting: he thinks big, he thinks in a straight line and he's got very rich that way. And, he can really pull a crowd.
British Airways chief transformed UK industry
01 July, 2014 SOURCE: Flight International BY: Dan Thisdell London When Tim Peake dons his spacesuit and climbs aboard a Soyuz rocket in November 2015, it will not be just another expedition to the International Space Station - at least from the perspective of observers in the UK.
When Tim Peake blasts off for the International Space Station on 15 December, the first British astronaut since Helen Sharman in 1991 will be flying more flags than just the Union Jack. Aviators of all nations will see, roaring to orbit, affirmation of their very own version of the "Right Stuff".
For anybody with a longish memory it may seem an odd thing to say, but spaceflight is a high-profile affair in the UK. On the shoulder of astronaut Tim Peake's blue European Space Agency jumpsuit is a Union Jack, prominent as the former Apache helicopter pilot tours the country to talk about his six-month International Space Station mission, which ended with a return to Earth - and a big, smiling thumbs-up - in June.