Michael Mecham

At jet engine maker GE Aviation's Hooksett factory near Manchester, N.H., thinking global means adapting someone else's idea to create a winning combination of reduced tooling and production costs for hard-to-machine superalloys.

The story started in 2001 at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, N.Y., which passed on some intel from GE Global Research-Shanghai to Mike Lamphere about the way the Chinese were using electric discharge to speed up drilling of machined parts.

MTU Maintenance Zhuhai incorporated the tools and test cell for overhauling the CFMI CFM56 engine series and International Aero Engines V2500, which accommodates Chinese operators of Boeing 737s and Airbus A320s. China Southern's initial orders for A320s were powered by V2500-A1 engines, but with the new A319/A320 order, it switched to CFM56-5Bs. That will give it a common engine type with its 737-700/800 fleet. When it opened two years ago, the overhaul center worked on V2500s, a natural choice because MTU is an International Aero Engines partner.

In what is likely to be the last spacecraft built under a name that dates to the early days of the U.S. space program, TRW has been selected to build the Next-Generation Space Telescope. As it announced the $824.8-million contract, NASA continued its practice of naming such large instruments for distinguished space pioneers. Its choice this time was the agency's second administrator, James Webb.

A contract worth a potential $4.5 billion over the next 16 years has given TRW Inc. the lead in producing U.S. civil and military polar-orbiting weather satellites. Called the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), the spacecraft are to satisfy the daily operational needs now filled by NOAA's Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite (POES) Program and the Defense Dept.'s Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP). But they also are to serve NASA's long-term commitment to build a continuous stream of climate data.

An aggressive push by Victorville to keep the former George AFB facility occupied has prompted GE Aircraft Engines to relocate its 747 flying testbed activities from its home at Mojave, another of Southern California's desert airport cities. GE began construction Aug. 9 on a 161,700-sq.-ft. aircraft maintenance hangar at what is now known as the Southern California Logistics Airport (see artist's rendering). The airport's offer of a 13.1-acre site and favorable tax incentives prompted the switch from Mojave, where the test-bed aircraft did not have a hangar.

With 13 of the world's biggest airlines as its backers, the Aeroxchange electronic marketplace might seem like a shoo-in for on-line parts deals. But there aren't any shoo-ins in the airline business. Born two years ago as the world's biggest aerospace manufacturers were announcing their own electronic collaboration plans, Aeroxchange was formed with the perspective that airlines are airplane-driven and need their own Internet home.

The T-50 trainer offers supersonic performance, fly-by-wire controls and an integrated avionics/cockpit design. Can it find a market?

When the T-50 Golden Eagle was rolled out here at Korea Aerospace Industries on a sunny October afternoon, the event was more than the debut of an advanced, supersonic trainer. It marked South Korea's bid to be counted among the world's leading aerospace producing nations, just as it is in electronics, shipbuilding and chemicals.