I agree with James C. McLane, 3rd, on the “astonishing lack of discussion on the option to continue flying the space shuttle past 2010 in an unmanned or minimally crewed configuration” (AW&ST Aug. 18/25, p. 12). The idea of abandoning the shuttle concept for a more risky launch and recovery system seems to be a step backward. As McLane also states: “No machine being planned has the capabilities of the shuttle, and there seems little reason to believe any replacement vehicle will be significantly more reliable.”
Israel Aerospace Industries says its third-quarter financial figures are up compared to the same period in 2007. Net profit is $16 million. Sales increased 10% to $877 million. Sales for the first three quarters are up 17% to $2.8 billion. A two-year sales backlog has reached $7.4 billion.
An Air New Zealand Boeing 747-400 is scheduled to take off from Auckland on Dec. 3 on the first flight to use a sustainably produced biofuel replacement for petroleum-based jet fuel. The flight is being touted as a high-profile demonstration of the rapid progress in developing biofuels that meet or exceed the specifications for aviation kerosene.
Michael Stradiot has become sales manager for motor technology for the Circor Aerospace Products Group , Dayton, Ohio. He was director of sales for Barrington Automation.
Italy’s special operations forces will be equipped with a mini-unmanned aircraft, called the Strix, following evaluations using only a small number of early production units. The vehicle relies on an electric motor powered by lithium batteries, giving it a low noise footprint. The batteries currently allow 1.5-hr. endurance, with work underway to stretch that to 2 hr. 15 min., according to Alpi Aviation.
The Pentagon may be moving toward using more fixed-price incentive contracts for development programs. This is part of an effort to boost performance and keep costs down for programs, says James Finley, principal deputy Defense undersecretary for acquisition and technology. In recent years, the Defense Dept. has used fixed-price and cost-plus contracts, but has seen neither as terribly effective in controlling cost. Finley made his comments last week at the Aerospace & Defense (A&D) Finance Conference hosted by Credit Suisse and AVIATION WEEK in New York.
Airlines are reviewing their fuel hedging policies and being driven to use more sophisticated financial instruments after huge fluctuations in oil prices during the past two years exposed the weaknesses of earlier approaches.
An easing of jet fuel prices has prompted Japan Airlines to reduce its fuel surcharges beginning Jan. 1. Japanese fares are regulated, so JAL must receive approval from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. The carrier took action because the average for Singapore kerosene from August through October was $115.92 per barrel, well down from the $163.54 per barrel average of the previous three-month period.
First flight of the Orion crew exploration vehicle atop an Ares I launcher could advance by as much as a year with an additional flight test, extra shifts at the new J-2X rocket engine factory, faster work on life-support systems and other steps, NASA managers say. Accelerating Ares/Orion to shorten the gap in U.S. human space access after the shuttle retires will cost money, of course. But NASA is starting to zero in on just how it would spend any money the incoming Obama administration and the new Congress might allocate to the job.
The U.S. Navy is hoping to reprogram about $40 million in its Fiscal 2009 budget to provide advance procurement funding for three F-35 carrier variant aircraft, according to a senior defense official. The funding was stripped from the budget by Congress earlier this year.
A United Airlines Boeing 777 saved 1,564 gal. of fuel and cut its carbon dioxide emissions by 32,656 lb. on a single flight over the Pacific from Sydney to San Francisco on Nov. 14. The aircraft was participating in a program called the Asia and South Pacific Initiative to Reduce Emissions (Aspire), and it employed 11 fuel-saving techniques. The demonstration spotlighted what might be possible when new procedures allow improvements from gate to gate (during taxi, takeoff, climb, cruise and descent).
The Planetary Society’s call for the U.S. to consider skipping a return to the Moon in favor of manned asteroid missions, as the prelude to manned exploration of Mars, is drawing criticism in some quarters, but not from NASA Administrator Michael Griffin (AW&ST Nov. 17, p. 29). “The architecture we are building is explicitly designed to allow missions not only to the Moon, but also the near-Earth, the Lagrange Points, the moons of Mars and, later, Mars itself. The Moon is hardly our sole focus; it is properly our next step, but not our last,” Griffin says.
Sea Launch and Intelsat have signed an umbrella launch contract covering five missions from Sea Launch’s mobile equatorial launch platform that will be conducted from late 2010 through 2012. The move continues a trend set by SES, which last year signed separate five-launch agreements with International Launch Services and Arianespace. Sea Launch has performed eight successful missions for Intelsat, including Galaxy 18 and Galaxy 19 this year.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has revealed vast Martian glaciers of water ice under protective blankets of rocky debris at much lower latitudes than any ice previously identified on the red planet. Scientists analyzed data from the spacecraft’s ground-penetrating radar and report in the Nov. 21 issue of the journal Science that buried glaciers extend for dozens of miles from edges of mountains or cliffs.
NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory has arrived at Vandenberg AFB, Calif., for final preparations prior to its scheduled January launch on board an Orbital Sciences Taurus rocket. Built by OSC and dedicated to the study of carbon dioxide and the carbon cycle in Earth’s atmosphere, OCO will be launched into a 438-mi.-high near-polar Sun-synchronous orbit inclined 98.2 deg. to the equator. From there it will map the globe once every 16 days, flying in formation with five other spacecraft in the NASA-led A-Train constellation.
The Italian government has approved the takeover of Alitalia by a consortium of Italian investors (CAI). Both the economic development minister, Claudio Scajola, and Augusto Fantozzi, the state-appointed commissar running Alitalia, backed the deal that should see Alitalia merged with Air One, reborn as a smaller company.
Sales in the maintenance, repair and overhaul industry will decline 5-10% in 2009 as airlines defer maintenance and reduce parts inventories to save cash, predicts AeroStrategy principal Kevin Michaels. But he ultimately sees a strong rebound in the market. The global airline industry won’t start growing again until the fourth quarter of 2009, predicts Goodrich CEO Marshall Larsen. Next year “is going to be a correction year before we start stabilizing and moving upward,” he says. Both spoke at the A&D conference.
It appears that not all air travelers are created equal—or have equal flying experiences. During the rollout last week at the Transportation Dept. of initiatives on airport slot auctions, passenger rights and air traffic control modernization (see p. 36), President George W. Bush said as far as he’s concerned, the department has already done a great job. After all, he quipped, for the last eight years he hasn’t seen a single traffic jam, been on a delayed flight or had his baggage lost.
I am too young to remember the Yuri Gagarin flight in 1961, but I do recollect marveling over Aleksei Leonov’s extra-vehicular activity in 1965 and also my deep regret that the U.S. was not first. In the 1960s, spaceflight was trying to help us realize our dreams about star travel, and was the center of a serious competition between the free world and its enemies. This was one important reason why we cheered at Apollo 11 and the first shuttle flight.
India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter sent a 34-kg. (75-lb.) probe to the lunar surface Nov. 14 in a test of technology the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) hopes to use later to soft-land rovers there. The Moon Impact Probe (MIP) hit the surface at 8:31 p.m. Indian Standard Time (10:01 a.m. EST), 25 min. after separating from Chandrayaan-1 in its operational orbit 100 km. (62 mi.) above the lunar surface.
Helene Moreau-Leroy (see photo) has been appointed vice president of the Airbus and European programs unit of Messier-Dowty International , Velizy, France. She was international supply chain development manager.
NASA has named Arthur (Gene) Goldman the new director of Stennis Space Center in Mississippi. He had been deputy director since October 2006. Goldman succeeds Bob Cabana, who left last month to take the reins at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Goldman previously was manager of the space shuttle main engine project at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.
The aerospace and defense industry is losing some longtime champions in the Senate due to retirement and election upsets. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), a supporter of general aviation and unmanned aerial vehicle research, lost his reelection bid, although many of his colleagues were planning to seek his expulsion for a felony corruption conviction if he did win. Until his indictment, Stevens was senior Republican on panels that oversaw air transportation, space exploration and defense spending. The increasingly frail Sen.
Dassault Aviation’s move to take a controlling stake in Thales would not just breathe new life into its military business, but also fundamentally realign the French defense industrial base.
As its engineers vote on a four-year contract, Boeing’s leadership is looking for an end to the recurrent strife that idled its factories for nearly two months and pushed back deliveries 10 weeks or more.
