China is accelerating reform of its military aircraft sector by bringing forward the establishment of a company that will be its national defense champion. Government and industry leaders have dropped plans to initially restrict the new business—a maker of fighters, trainers, drones and missiles—to the status of a division of national aeronautics conglomerate Avic (AW&ST Mar. 30, p. 40).
Southeast Asia’s largest budget airline group, AirAsia, is stepping up its assault on the Singapore home territory of rivals Tiger Airways and Jetstar Asia with plans to operate 50 daily flights from the city-state by 2011. The group, comprised of three affiliates from Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia flying under the same brand, is also seeking to raise its regional profile by getting approval to paint the flag of the Assn. of South East Asian Nations on its aircraft. CEO Tony Fernandes has said AirAsia’s future lies in Southeast Asia, not farther abroad.
A team led by Sierra Nevada Corp. has won a $2-million follow-on Defense Dept. Operationally Responsive Space contract to study a modular tool kit of spacecraft buses and payloads for rapid deployment of low-cost space vehicles. The four-month effort, due for completion in August 2009, follows an initial Phase 2 study which also included General Dynamics and ITT.
British Airways will sell 11 of its Boeing 757s for cargo conversion as the airline eliminates the aircraft type from its fleet between 2010 and 2012 in favor of Airbus single-aisles. BA subsidiary OpenSkies will retain four 757s.
The U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) is poised to issue a request for information to industry seeking technology that could form the basis for a responsive space launch X-plane demonstrator.
Singapore state investment fund Temasek is selling out of Jetstar Asia and Valuair, budget airline partners it has owned in association with Qantas. It will now hold 49% of the airlines, while Singaporean Dennis Choo owns the rest, ensuring that they retain that nationality under international air traffic agreements.
Of all the uncertainties that bewilder astronomers, none is more puzzling than what transpired in the first millionth of a second after the Big Bang. Understanding what occurred then will help unravel some of the best-kept secrets in the universe—including the density and nature of matter, the existence of “dark energy,” and the origins of stars and galaxies. That will be the objective of a €1.3-billion ($1.7-billion) twin-telescope mission due to lift off from the European spaceport at Kourou, French Guiana, at the end of April.
Draft language of a new climate-change bill circulating in the House would require the Environmental Protection Agency to set greenhouse gas emissions standards for aircraft and aircraft engines by the end of 2012. The legislation, sponsored by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), calls for a U.S. cap-and-trade system that critics say would indirectly tax airlines. Oil companies would have to buy credits for any fuel they produce, and those costs are likely to be passed on to airlines. The International Air Transport Assn.
Look for contractors working on NASA’s Orion crew exploration vehicle and its Ares I launcher to get more money this spring to account for schedule and design changes to the human-rated spacecraft developments. About $1.8 billion is expected to go for Lockheed Martin’s work on Orion alone.
Aviation inventor and engineer Seymour (Si) Robin, co-owner of Sensor Systems Inc., Chatsworth, Calif., has received a Living Legends of Aviation Award for his accomplishments as a designer of antennas for commercial, business and military airborne applications that are used on most aircraft types in the world. Living Legends of Aviation is comprised of 70 people—including entrepreneurs, innovators, record-breakers, astronauts, pilots who have become celebrities and celebrities who have become pilots.
The price of European Union emissions allowances (EUAs) under the EU Emissions Trading Scheme climbed during the first half of March but eased back on profit-taking, traders said. EUAs for December 2009 delivery on the over-the-counter market closed at €10.23 ($13.56) per metric ton of CO2 equivalent on Mar. 2, some way above the all-time low of €8.33 seen in mid-February.
I was pleased that the Lcross mission has adopted some of the principles of critical chain management (AW&ST Mar. 9, p. 48). Since leaving the Apollo program in the early 1970s, I have been involved with construction scheduling and cost controls, and have seen how effective this approach can be to managing schedule and cost. Despite transition adjustments for management of space projects, particularly for upper-level project managers, this could be the start of a paradigm shift for the space industry.
Andy Nativi (Long Beach, Calif.), Michael A. Taverna (Washington)
Although its second spacecraft is not yet in orbit, Italy is already laying the groundwork for a pair of follow-on milsatcom systems it plans to launch in partnership with France. After a brief delay due to a satellite-hardware glitch discovered during payload preparation in Long Beach, Calif., Sicral 1B is set to lift off around Apr. 19 on a Zenit-3 SL rocket. The launch platform Odyssey left Long Beach—Sea Launch’s home port—in early April, followed a few days later by the faster Commander control ship.
With a goal of cutting costs and cycle time by an order of magnitude, Lockheed Martin has opened a Space Vehicle Integration Laboratory on its Denver campus to improve the execution and reliability of software development for satellites.
More than 7,500 registrants attended the 25th National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. The final count is expected to be a record, despite the economic downturn. During the event, which took place Mar. 30 through Apr. 2, senior decision makers in the civil and national security space arenas discussed “the next space age,” including challenges in the current financial climate as well as to securing and protecting assets in space.
Finland has OK’d a $280-million foreign military sales contract for the second phase of its air force’s Boeing F/A-18C/D Hornet mid-life update. The award covers software and system upgrades and the acquisition of Raytheon AGM-154C Joint Stand-Off Weapons. Finnish company Patria will install the retrofit kits. The update of its 64 F-18s is to be completed by 2016.
China’s newly established Avic Aircraft intends to become the world’s third force in making large airplanes, setting itself up for rivalry with compatriot commercial aircraft builder Comac. The new company is poised to deeply restructure much of the Chinese aircraft industry, reshaping it in the pattern of Airbus. Old regional entities such as Xi’an and Shaanxi Aircraft are to be swept away, replaced with a framework of units each specializing in its own part of the airframe, such as the wing or nose section.
Bombardier plans to make steeper reductions in business jet production, cutting deliveries by 25% in its fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2010, and laying off an additional 3,000 employees. In February, the Canadian company announced it would cut Learjet and Challenger production by 10% and lay off 1,360 people, but order cancellations and deferrals have worsened. Production rates will be reduced on all business jets, but cuts will be deeper on the smaller Learjets.
Vitaly Savelyev has been appointed CEO of Aeroflot Russian Airlines . He succeeds Valery Okulov, who has been named Russian deputy minister of transport. Savelyev was deputy minister of economic development and trade.
The best that can be said about FAA airline traffic and revenue forecasts for 2009 and 2010 are that U.S. airlines have already adjusted for overcapacity and higher oil prices and are better prepared to withstand the industry downturn than nearly all of their global competitors. In releasing its Aerospace Forecast for Fiscal Years 2009-25, the FAA says airline profits and traffic in 2009 will for the most part fall sharply from last year, start to level off in 2010 and begin to climb again in 2011.
Abu Dhabi-based Adcom Advanced Target Systems is pushing to become an unmanned aerial vehicle manufacturer of choice for the United Arab Emirates with a slew of developments underway. The company is competing in the UAV market against local defense aerospace manufacturer Mubadala, which set up its Abu Dhabi UAV Investments (AD UAVI) business unit at the beginning of 2007.
A project to provide U.S. rural households with access to broadband service via funding from Washington’s economic stimulus package could bolster growth in that satellite sector as well as accelerate the purchase of a new family of more cost-efficient spacecraft—if satellites are given a fair shot.
The Pentagon is considering funding an interim satellite system to avoid a potential gap in overhead non-imaging infrared collection, which is needed for ballistic missile warning. Today’s constellation, the Defense Support Program, is healthy, but there is concern about it long-term. The final DSP failed on orbit shortly after launch, and military officials say there are aging issues with the fleet. The first follow-on, however, the Space-Based Infrared System (Sbirs) geosynchronous satellite, is scheduled to launch no earlier than the summer of 2010.
After years of torment, Raytheon’s Visible Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite (Viirs) is finally preparing for its entry into the thermal vacuum chamber for testing next month. Viirs will fly on the National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (Npoess), a next-generation weather satellite program managed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NASA and USAF. Viirs has long been the pacing item for launch of the Npoess Preparatory Project (NPP), a pathfinder satellite due for launch next year.
The evolution of global airline alliances into even tighter joint ventures is prompting fierce debate about whether transatlantic cooperation is going too far. While the U.S. Congress considers legislation that could unravel joint ventures, airlines argue these links provide crucial benefits denied to them by cross-border merger restrictions.
