Astronomers evaluating data from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft will have a new tool for estimating the size of extra-solar planets after discovering the mission’s first two planets orbiting the same star. Ultimately, they hope to use the transit timing variations technique to help find Earthlike planets in the habitable zone. Designated Kepler 9b and 9c, the two Saturn-size gas giants are orbiting the Kepler 9 star at a distance closer than the planet Mercury orbits Earth’s Sun.
Decisions in several European fighter competitions are expected to shift to the right as countries delay modernization to deal with budget pressures in the weak global economic environment. Switzerland’s recent abandonment of a partial F-5 replacement program is only the first of several procurement deferrals, industry officials believe. In East Central Europe, where a slew of smaller fighter campaigns had been expected to heat up, governments are looking into getting a bit more life out of their aging Soviet-era fighters, notes a senior industry official.
New details of last month’s Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 uncontained failure are emerging and appear to point to a fault with the oil system which led to a fire developing inside the engine.
Two of general aviation’s most familiar faces were about to appear, errantly, in mug photos after Santa Barbara, Calif., police ordered John and Martha King at gunpoint to exit their aircraft. The police said they had been notified by the El Paso Intelligence Center (EPIC), a federal multiagency operation, that a stolen aircraft on an IFR flight plan was destined for their airport. When the Kings, well known for their aviation instructional videos, arrived from San Diego on Aug. 28 to join friends for lunch, ground control directed them to a remote area of the airport.
Sept. 28-30—MRO Europe. London. Sept. 29-30—MRO Military Europe. London. Nov. 1-3—A&D Programs Conference. Phoenix. Nov. 2-3—A&D Supply Chain Conference. Phoenix. Nov. 2-4—MRO Asia Conference and Exhibition. Singapore. You can now register ONLINEfor Aviation Week Events. Go to www.aviationweek.com/events or call Lydia Janow at+1 (212) 904-3225/+1 (800) 240-7645 ext. 5 (U.S. and Canada Only)
Portland (Ore.) International Airport (PDX) could be a poster child for “people power” when it comes to air service development. The story of how an airport in such a small market was able to win and keep nonstop international flights to Europe and Asia underscores how an energized business community can partner with airport leaders to create growth for everyone involved.
Southwest Airlines’ leasing of 18 slot pairs at Newark Liberty International Airport would have been considered a dramatic departure for the carrier a few years ago. Now it is notable merely as a continuance of an opportunistic strategy in which the low-cost carrier does not shy away from more costly, congested, capacity-constrained airports in pursuit of more business travelers. Southwest even is considering acquiring larger aircraft—Boeing 737-800s—to help it add capacity in high-demand, slot-controlled or gate-restricted markets.
Can you please go back to putting real airplanes on the cover? I’m tired of seeing so many unmanned aerial vehicles, and suspect you are only trying to “condition” me to seeing them in similar numbers through my cockpit windows eventually. There is no way I will ever be comfortable sharing airspace with UAV’s operated by people and organizations sitting on the ground that cannot possibly share the same personal vested interest in collision avoidance as me, my passengers or crew.
Joel Hirsch has been appointed vice president-strategic operations for AeroVironment , Monrovia, Calif. He was president of Teac Aerospace Technologies.
Randy Brown has been promoted to vice president/general manager of Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. ’s Mexicali, Mexico, site, from senior manager of production operations at the company’s home base of Savannah, Ga. Honors and Elections
Lockheed Martin CEO Robert Stevens expects a “rephasing” of flight testing for the F-35B short-takeoff, vertical-landing variant of the Joint Strike Fighter to emerge from a comprehensive review of the program’s execution that wraps up with a report in November (see p. 31). Action has already been taken to fix niggling reliability problems that have held back the progress of testing in powered-lift modes since the first vertical landing on March 18, and those “early corrective actions . . . are showing some beneficial outcomes,” Stevens said in a Sept. 1 investor call.
Aaron Lorson (see photo) has been promoted to executive vice president from vice president-flight operations for Dynamic Aviation , Bridgewater, Va. Lisa Rhodes has been appointed contracts and export compliance specialist and James Driver financial analyst.
The Italian and Libyan defense ministers, Ignazio La Russa and Yunis Jaber, this month are due to sign a memorandum of understanding covering defense and security cooperation, which Italians hope will unlockan up to $25.6-billion market in the North African country.
Graham Bannister has been appointed safety manager at Grantley Adams International Airport , Bridgetown, Barbados. He was manager of aviation services for G4S Security Services.
Carl Caltrider has been appointed director of military sales for PlaneTechs , Oak Brook, Ill. He was senior director of business development for Elbit Systems.
American Airlines plans to appeal the largest civil penalty in FAA history—a $24.2-million fine issued Aug. 26 for alleged maintenance lapses in 2008. The agency took issue with wheel-well wiring bundles on American’s MD-80 fleet, and subsequent groundings resulted in more than 2,400 American flight cancellations in early April 2008. The carrier says the fine is “unwarranted,” but FAA spokesman Lynn Lundsford notes the agency could have charged the airline as much as $25,000 for each of the 14,000 individual violations, for a total of more than $350 million.
Space Systems/Loral has turned to the makers of a real-time video camera system employed on the space shuttle and other government spacecraft to monitor deployment activities of the company’s giant 1300-series satellites as they settle into geostationary parking orbits.
Prof. Thomas Zurbuchen’s viewpoint “How to Win the Battle for Aerospace Talent” is a typical academia recycled revelation (AW&ST Aug. 16, p. 58). All aerospace companies were started by entrepreneurs—Wright, Douglas, Loughhead (Lockheed), Martin, Boeing, Cessna, Piper, Beech, Cirrus, to name a few. To suggest that somehow SpaceX is an innovative entrepreneurial shining light on the horizon and that the mature aerospace industry needs to replicate it is rather naive.
The $450-million fixed-price contract won last month by Raytheon to develop and build the Small Diameter Bomb (SDB) II will likely be a model for future deals, including the contentious KC-135 replacement, in a fiscally constrained Pentagon. And it is giving the service confidence as it proceeds through arguably its thorniest procurement decision to date between Boeing and EADS designs for a KC-X refueler.
In a sobering Labor Day message to employees of Boeing Defense, Space and Security, CEO Dennis Muilenburg said there will be “overhead job reduction as part of our effort to drive competitiveness and future growth.” The coming layoffs are expected to begin this fall and carry on into early next year.
Armadillo Aerospace and Masten Space Systems together will get about $475,000 in NASA funding to flight test advanced vehicles for the agency’s Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) program, intended to use private vehicles to take agency-backed experiments to the edge of space. With its award money Mastenplans to send its Xaero vehicle as high as 18 mi. above Mojave, Calif., in four test flights this winter. Armadillo will test its Super-Mod vehicle from SpacePort America in New Mexico to an altitude as high as 25 mi. in three flights beginning this fall.
Japan’s defense ministry proposes to develop a sixth-generation manned fighter with strong counter-stealth capability and a directed-energy weapon. While a program description issued by the ministry is ambiguous, full-scale development of the sixth-generation i3 fighter would evidently begin in 2021 after at least a decade of predevelopment of a batch of technologies. The aircraft would go into service in the 2030s. A second batch of technologies would be ready in the 2040s, suggesting that an improved version would then be fielded.
Jim Periard (see photo), assistant vice president of business development for electronic warfare/communications for the Syracuse (N.Y.) Research Corp., has received the Stanley R. Hall Business Development Award from the Association of Old Crows . The award recognizes accomplishments in fostering a positive position for electronic warfare/information operations and enhancing the business base of the recipient’s organization. Periard invented the Countermeasure Protection System, winner of the U.S. Army’s Top 10 Greatest Inventions of 2005.
A challenge for proponents of laser weapons is that there always seems to be a better technology just around the corner. When requirements are not pressing, but budget pressures are, potential customers can be inclined to wait. High-power chemical lasers are being flight tested, but already attention has shifted to electric lasers. And even as the first generation of solid-state weapons move out of the laboratory and into field testing, more efficient systems beckon.
