While governments have been building and launching military and intelligence satellites for more than 50 years, a growing reliance on satellite services is heightening the importance of questions about how to better fund and procure these expensive systems.
A sense of inevitability accompanies the latest set of merger talks between United Airlines and US Airways, but some serious questions from previous attempts to consolidate the two carriers remain unanswered. Add new concerns, including US Airways’ slot-swap agreement with Delta Air Lines and recent antitrust immunizations, and prospects for this proposed marriage become very bleak.
After completing an 80-flight test phase that proved a tailless flying-wing aircraft could be controlled safely at low airspeed, NASA expects to fly a modified version of Boeing’s X-48B blended wing-body demonstrator in about a year to test a revised configuration and additional capabilities.
Construction has begun on the 1.2-million-sq.-ft. factory Boeing is building in Charleston, S.C., as a second final assembly line for the 787. The factory is expected to open in July 2011 and see its first airplane roll out in the first quarter of 2012. The manufacturer also has plans to refurbish parts of its Everett, Wash., wide-body aircraft factory to include a surge line for the program, which means that when the South Carolina factory is ready the company will be able to produce from three lines, if necessary.
Airbus order intake in March brought this year’s total to 60 aircraft with no cancellations. It was unusual that all the orders were for widebodies, A330s and A350s. Industry officials had indicated Airbus’s deliberations over a possible A320-family reengining could crimp near-term prospects for single-aisle sales. Airbus also once again saw a shift from smaller narrowbodies to larger ones, with A319 orders declining a net 34 units. The A320 order book increased by 31 aircraft and A321 orders by three.
Commercial airline and air cargo pilots caught in an Age 60 time gap are trying another tactic to recoup back wages after failing in an earlier federal lawsuit. This time, plaintiffs Mickey Oksner, 66, of Midway, Utah, and 50 others are suing in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco saying the FAA’s now-defunct Age 60 retirement rule violated anti-discrimination laws in Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, New York, Tennessee, Texas and Washington state. They want back wages for the time they could have been flying had they not been forced to retire at 60.
Telesat of Canada says it has signed up an anchor customer that will enable it to purchase and launch a new direct-to-home spacecraft. The customer, Shaw Direct, will lease 16 extended Ku-band transponders for the full 15-year life of the new satellite, which will be inserted at the slot at 107.3 W. Long. To be called Anik G1, the spacecraft will be ordered in the second quarter and is expected to be lofted in the second half of 2012. Shaw Direct, already a customer of Telesat’s Anik F1 and E2 satellites, is a Canadian digital TV service provider with 870,000 subscribers.
An internal German debate over selection of a contract to supply Europe’s next meteorological satellite network shows the continuing vulnerability of the European space program to geographic-return disputes.
The ink had barely dried in Prague on the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) last week when attention turned to hopes of further nuclear arms reductions. The April 8 treaty signing—which must be followed by legislative ratification in both Moscow and Washington—was a significant step toward President Barack Obama’s vision of a world without nuclear weapons. But it was also a modest one, and arms control advocates inside the government and without are pushing for more cuts.
A Philadelphia Common Pleas Court on April 7 awarded nearly $89 million in damages against Avco Corp.’s Lycoming Engine Div. as a result of a 1999 takeoff accident involving a Piper PA-32-260, in which four people were killed and one seriously injured. The jury awarded $24.7 million in compensatory damages and $64 million in punitive damages. Avco, a Textron, company, was found liable even though the NTSB had determined the probable cause of the Aug. 1, 1999, accident at North Lima, Ohio, was the pilot’s loss of control.
Somewhere along the way, Congress and the Defense Department have gotten the idea that there is a limitless supply of small, technology-intensive companies critical to the aerospace supply chain, and without which all the large systems integrators could not support the warfighter. How else could anyone explain the onerous contracting regulations that discourage many small companies from doing business with the Pentagon and encourage others to leave the supply chain out of frustration?
The space shuttle Discovery eases toward the forward pressurized mating adapter on the International Space Station’s Harmony node April 7, after a pre-dawn launch from Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A two days earlier.
Madeleine Gray has been named vice president-business technology for US Airways . She was senior director of air merchandising and core services for the Sabre Holdings Corp., Southlake, Texas.
Michael Gallagher’s letter regarding termination of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program is right on target (AW&ST March 29/April 5, p. 8). The current budget overrun is just the beginning; wait until we’re procuring 100-200 aircraft per year. It is unacceptable and a poor use of scarce Defense Department funds. There is no current or emerging threat requiring an immediate rush to production. Yes, there are aging F-16s and F/A-18s, but those platforms have proven to be upgradable at far less expense and risk. They can still provide world-class capabilities.
A 1980 Sabreliner circumnavigated the globe March 19-21 in 57 hr., 54 min., averaging 647 kph. (402 mph.) for the 36,900-km. (23,000-mi.) eastbound course, which began and ended in Geneva. The crew, Riccardo Mortara, his son Gabriel and Flavien Guderzo, claimed a new speed record for the 9,000-12,000 kg. (19,840-26,455-lb.) jet category.
As budget pressures mount in Europe, delays in the Airbus Military A400M are not turning into a windfall for other manufacturers, as the U.K. is signaling it will not buy additional gap-filler airlifters.
China Great Wall Industry Corp. has signed a preliminary agreement to build and launch a telecom satellite for Bolivia. The spacecraft, Tupac Katari, is to be launched in three years. Tupac Katari will be based on China’s new DFH-4 telecom bus, which also served as a basis for Venesat-1, which China Great Wall built for Venezuela. The $300-million project will include two ground stations.
The precision navigation and timing data provided by the U.S. Air Force’s Global Positioning System (GPS) have become much like the electrical grid: The data are woven into the fabric of modern civilization and unfathomable to live without.
President Barack Obama will speak publicly on his new space policy to a hand-picked audience at Kennedy Space Center this week, as workers there and at other NASA field centers digest what work packages devised for the policy might mean for their job prospects. Obama is slated to visit KSC on April 15 for what Administrator Charles Bolden terms “a major space policy speech,” followed by an invitation-only session—including key members of Congress—to discuss the new White House space initiative.
Prof. Daniel N. Baker, director of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder, has won the James A. Van Allen Space Environments Award for excellence and leadership in space research from the Washington-based American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) . He was cited for his study of the magnetosphere and its consequences for radiation effects on earth-orbiting satellites. Joseph J. Lusczek, Jr., has received the 2009 Aircraft Design Award.
Scientists soon will be able to access unprecedented data on sea and land ice, which is expected to be invaluable for the study of seasonal weather and climate change, following the launch of Europe’s CryoSat-2 last week.
American Airlines and JetBlue Airways are considering forging even tighter links in the wake of a new interlining and slot-swap agreement announced March 31. The interline deal covers certain New York and Boston domestic and international routes, allowing the airlines to sell tickets for connecting flights that involve a JetBlue and an American leg. American CEO Gerard Arpey emphasizes that the deal covers interlining on non-overlap routes only—the carriers will “continue to be adversaries” in markets where they compete.
MBDA is flight-testing the new missile warning system (DDM NG) for the Rafale strike fighter, slated to be a direct replacement for the current version. The system consists of two fish-eye sensors to provide full spherical coverage for Rafales. DDM NG is not just supposed to reduce false-alarm rates on missile-launch warnings, but also is accurate enough to cue a directed infrared countermeasures system, even though there are currently no firm plans to outfit Rafale with such a self-protection system.
Even as the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) pushes for greater international cooperation in the exchange of safety data and in providing information to the public, new fault lines are emerging over the European Union’s blacklist.
The fleet of the Afghan National Army Air Corps is slated to increase by another 21 rotorcraft, with three more L-39C jet trainers also likely to be acquired. The U.S. government, through the Naval Air Systems Command, says it plans to award a fixed-price contract for 21 Mi‑17V5s or Mi-171/172s. The helicopters are to be delivered to Kabul International Airport within less than two years of contract award. In parallel, the Pentagon is looking to buy three L-39Cs, to augment the inventory of the Czech-made trainer now in Anaac inventory.
