Members of the Aeronautical Repair Station Association (ARSA) voted overregulation as their number one long-term concern in the association’s annual member’s survey, but uneasiness about skilled worker shortages was close behind at the number two spot, said Christian Klein, EVP, ARSA, at the association’s symposium last week in Arlington, Va. The workforce issue came in as the second most important long-term threat to the aviation maintenance industry, tied with high fuel prices and grievances with the FAA.

It's no secret that Boeing's space systems unit is aggressively pricing bids in an effort to grow its commercial business segment as government spending flags. But even the most bullish observers were taken aback by an estimated $400 million deal just signed with Asia Broadcast Satellite (ABS) and Satellites Mexicanos (SatMex) to build the first all-electric commercial telecom spacecraft intended for launch to geostationary orbit.

Robert J. Stevens, the CEO of Lockheed Martin, went to Capitol Hill on March 14 with a message for lawmakers: You're making my life hell. At issue are automatic cuts to U.S. defense spending scheduled to take effect next January. If Congress and the Obama administration cannot reach a budget compromise by then, military budgets will be hit with a $53 billion cut in 2013 and another $450 billion in reductions during the next nine years.

Jilted by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) has decided to press ahead with its ExoMars program in partnership with the Russian space agency Roscosmos, which plans to contribute Proton launch vehicles and a new entry, descent and landing system to the ambitious two-pronged Mars mission in 2016 and 2018. Russia's arrival as the savior of ExoMars is not without cost, however, as ESA will now have to fund development of a rover for the 2018 mission that NASA had previously planned to share.

Government payloads riding piggyback on commercial spacecraft are likely to win only 1% of the worldwide satellite-market revenue in the next few years, as bureaucratic inertia and a “not-invented-here” mentality work against the potential cost savings.

Better sensors and more demand for the data they provide to troops on the ground will increase bandwidth needed.

Power-saving integrated circuits that extend battery life in portable electronics, and are being applied to military radios and investigated for avionics, are the overall winner of Aviation Week's 2012 Innovation Challenge, organized to bring new technologies and processes to the attention of aerospace and defense leaders.

In the uncertain funded world of human spaceflight, the habit of die-hard propulsion engineers to never throw anything away is becoming increasingly useful as NASA looks for crew transports.