HOUSTON — Researchers report success with a forward osmosis demonstration on NASA’s final shuttle flight that could become an effective means of reclaiming drinkable water from urine and perspiration in spacesuits.
Boeing will build two advanced composite cryotanks and test them with liquid hydrogen to see if they can improve the capability and cost of future launch vehicles. Under a $24 million NASA contract, the company will continue an earlier design effort by building a 10-meter-dia. cryotank and testing it at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. NASA’s goals, according to Space Technology Program Director Michael Gazarik, are savings of 30% on weight and 25% on cost compared to aluminum tanks.
September 28, 2011 IFEMA Madrid, Spain Mark your calendar! MRO Military Europe returns to address continued military sustainment in a market that is constantly in flux. Europe represents 23% of the $85 billion global military sustainment market. How will military and defense agencies cope with the current challenges and changes facing maintenance and sustainment, including:
The U.S. Air Force’s top officer is calling upon his service and industry to be more disciplined in crafting requirements for future weapon systems and developing the platforms. “We require straight talk from everybody,” Gen. Norton Schwartz tells an audience gathered outside Washington during a Sept. 20 speech to the annual Air Force Association conference.
NASA’s technology office plans flight tests of two approaches to slowing spacecraft entering a planetary atmosphere, with potential applications in Mars landings and returning payloads from the International Space Station (ISS). Mike Gazarik, space technology program director in the Office of the Chief Technologist, says tests are planned next year with hypersonic and supersonic inflatable decelerators, using a sounding rocket flown from Wallops Flight Facility, Va., and a high-altitude balloon managed by the NASA facility.
MOJAVE, Calif. — Virgin Galactic says the first suborbital test flights of the rocket-powered SpaceShipTwo (SS2) will take place in 2012. George Whitesides, president and CEO of Virgin Galactic and The Spaceship Company (TSC), says recent full-duration firing tests of the Sierra Nevada RM2 rocket motor are encouraging and point the way to integration with the SS2 early next year. Powered flight tests will begin with short-duration 15-sec. burns before building up to a full-duration suborbital flight before the end of 2012.
BEIJING — Avicopter is looking at outsourcing production to low-cost countries, even though most of its rivals would regard the Chinese rotorcraft company as already well placed to avoid high manufacturing outlays.
AIR SUPPLY: Pilot hypoxia was not the cause of an F-22 crash last November in Alaska, and though a root cause has not been identified, the U.S. Air Force is returning the twin-engine stealthy jets to flight, says Gen. Norton Schwartz, the chief of staff. “We do not have a smoking gun here,” Schwartz told a Sept. 20 roundtable with reporters at the Air Force Association conference (Aerospace DAILY, Sept. 20). Though flight operations resume Sept. 20, the Lockheed Martin jets will be methodically phased back into flight, Schwartz says.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) hopes to force the White House to sell F-16 C/D aircraft to Taiwan, even if the Obama administration would rather upgrade the island nation’s existing fleet. Cornyn says his bill that would require the sale of 66 aircraft could come up Tuesday or Wednesday for debate on the Senate floor. It has been filed as an amendment to a larger trade bill. The administration has indicated it will not back the sale, but Cornyn and his staff maintain that it would be a boon to the U.S. economy and the nation’s security.
LAUNCH STRIKE: A strike at Arianespace’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, forced the postponement of the scheduled Sept. 20 launch of the SES-2 and Arabsat 5C communication satellites aboard an Ariane 5 rocket. The strike by Telespazio employees represented by the Trade Union of French Guiana workers has made unavailable “certain means of measurement in the Space Center which are absolutely necessary” for the launch, Arianespace says in a statement.
More U.S. defense program cuts and cancellations are expected under already enacted federal deficit reduction efforts, according to fresh comments Sept. 20 by the top civilian and military officials at the Pentagon. But if Congress or the White House seek or allow additional cuts to future defense budgets beyond those already expected, then the U.S. military will certainly hollow out, they say.
U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley acknowledges that the Air Force will “need to accept greater risk in some areas” of its missions as Washington debates how to rein in the national debt. Today, the U.S. spends about 4.7% of its gross domestic product on defense; this amounts to about 19% of the overall budget. Donley also adds that as the force shrinks, the U.S. must take care to avoid a “hollow force” of undertrained personnel or poor weapon systems. “We have to make some tough choices about the core tenets of our national security strategy.”
Efforts to develop self-protection devices for spacecraft are gaining steam, with at least one classified satellite slated to take on an Air Force-developed payload designed to alert of potential threats.
HOUSTON — The greatest challenge facing NASA’s Johnson Space Center, which marked its 50th anniversary on Sept. 19, is the retention of the installation’s human spaceflight expertise in the face of falling budgets and significant personnel losses, Director Mike Coats says.
NEW RIDE: Despite looming budget cuts, U.S. Air Force Secretary Michael Donley says the service must still address its core requirements, including a replacement for Air Force One, as well as new tankers and trainers. Though the Air Force One replacement is not an immediate need, Donley says planners “need to be mindful” of what is outside the future-years defense plan. A plan for replacing the two Air Force VC-25s is likely to take shape in the “late teens,” he told reporters during a roundtable following his Sept.
The competition for the U.S. Navy’s Air and Missile Defense Radar (AMDR) is zeroing in on the development of the transmit/receive (T/R) modules and related components. This work is key in making the active, electronically scanned array (AESA) AMDR work with the fidelity and effectiveness the Navy wants. Contractors are working now to develop the most powerful, long-lasting and rapidly operating modules possible to protect ships and perform ballistic missile defense (BMD) missions simultaneously.
The U.S. Air Force is putting the F-22 back to work as of Sept. 21 with a new plan for making sure pilots have enough oxygen, Capitol Hill was told early Sept. 19. The Raptor fleet has been grounded since May 3 because pilots were showing symptoms of hypoxia.
A potential rebalancing of the U.S. Air Force’s intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) spending plans could follow in the footsteps of the service’s earlier work to craft a “family of systems” concept for long-range strike, according to Air Force Secretary Michael Donley. “As the overall budget comes down, we will have to get a little bit more discriminating about how we set priorities for ISR development,” he tells Aviation Week.
The Pentagon’s decision to scrap the F-35 alternative engine program is based on out-of-date information, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) tells the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “An up-to-date, comprehensive analysis that takes into consideration both the total costs and benefits during the entire life-cycle of both engines would be an important tool for making investment decisions,” wrote Michael Sullivan, GAO’s director of acquisition and sourcing management.
ARMY The Boeing Co., Mesa, Ariz., was awarded a $60,000,000 firm-fixed-price, cost-plus-fixed-fee contract. The award will provide for the modification of an existing contract to improve reliability, maintainability, and sustainability of the AH-64 aircraft. The work will be performed in Mesa, with an estimated completion date of March 15, 2012. The bid was solicited through the Internet, with one bid received. The Aviation Applied Technology Directorate, Fort Eustis, Va., is the contracting activity (W911W6-07-D-0002). NAVY
