NASA’s Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel (ASAP) continues to worry that the agency isn’t adequately funded for all of the work it has, particularly as it tries to develop the Orion and Ares I crew exploration and launch vehicles to take over after the space shuttle is retired in 2010. One possible area for economizing the ASAP is the 10 field centers NASA operates around the country.
Boeing has finished its first 737-900ER business jet and has shipped it to DeCrane Aircraft in Georgetown, Del., for installation of a long-range auxiliary fuel system and head-up display. Still to come is installation of a custom interior for the unnamed owner.
As the U.S. moves ahead with robust cooperation on missile defense projects with Israel, joint efforts in Europe are encountering stumbling blocks. The Pentagon and European partners seem to disagree on how to alter the complex multinational management structure for the Medium Extended Air Defense System (Meads), which will integrate the PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement interceptor into European sensor and fire control systems. The $3.4-billion Meads development contract covers 110 months of work.
The U.S. Navy is moving ahead with work for Northrop Grumman to develop a modified Global Hawk UAV after the Government Accountability Office (GAO) denied a protest of the design selection earlier this year. The $1.6-billion development contract with Northrop was restarted Aug. 11, says Capt. Rob Dishman, program manager for the Navy’s Broad Area Maritime Surveillance (BAMS) program. The Navy plans to buy 68 aircraft for the maritime surveillance mission that will replace the aging P-3 fleet.
Amber designer Abe Karem approached Darpa in 1998 with a concept for a long-endurance unmanned rotorcraft with a rigid optimum-speed rotor able to vary its speed to minimize fuel consumption. The A160 Hummingbird first flew in January 2002. Boeing acquired its developer, Frontier Systems, in 2004 and in May 2008 the turbine-powered A160T demonstrated an 18.7-hr. endurance with a 300-lb. payload.
Lawrence R. Davis (see photo) has become director of flight operations at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center , Edwards AFB, Calif. He was director of safety and mission assurance. Davis succeeds David A. Wright, who has been promoted to associate director for operations.
Britain and Ireland held the inaugural meeting of their Functional Airspace Block (FAB) supervisory committee this month. The committee will oversee the airspace block covering the national boundaries of both countries as part of the Single European Skies initiative. So far the U.K./Ireland FAB is the only one actually in existence, according to the U.K. Civil Aviation Authority, with other European Union member states at various stages in the negotiating process. The FAB approach is intended to improve air traffic management in Europe.
Business is booming and will continue to do so for the sale of missile defenses abroad, says U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Gino Dellarocco, program executive officer for missiles and space. Foreign military sales are expected to nearly double in Fiscal 2009 with an expected sale of $12.8 billion through the foreign military sales program. There is going to be an “economic boost in this sector,” Dellarocco predicts. A heavy contributor to this trend is the United Arab Emirates. The country has already bought a smattering of missile defenses.
U.S. Strategic Command wants the Air Force’s 2018 bomber to be nuclear-capable, says Vice Adm. Carl Mauney, deputy commander of U.S. Strategic Command. USAF hasn’t firmed up requirements for the system, but is likely to receive funding in the 2010 budget, which will go to Congress in February. However, some advocates of the program argue that adding the communications redundancies and hardening needed to carry out the nuclear mission will increase cost.
I have noted in recent photos of fully complete Airbus Military A400Ms (AW&ST July 21, p. 27) that the inner and outer propellers rotate in opposite directions. If nothing else, this feature adds to logistics burdens since two types of quick engine change assemblies, propeller assemblies, propeller gearboxes and blades will have to be stocked at provisioning centers, and main and forward operating bases (FOB). Presumably, the inner and outer propellers rotate in opposite directions for aerodynamic reasons.
Swing gear tests began Aug. 9 as part of the pre-flight verification process for the first Boeing 787. As the name implies, the tests involve swinging the gear from a stowed to fully extended position and back again. They are initiated from the flight deck and, to be successful, require the integration of the gear and aircraft’s structure with its avionics, electrical, hydraulics and common core computing systems. As such, they provide a further vetting of those systems, too. The nose and each of the main landing gears were first tested separately, then jointly.
Nordam says it will add its third foreign manufacturing facility in January 2009 in Chihuahua, Mexico, joining Hawker Beechcraft, Cessna and Honeywell Aerospace there, all of which are Nordam customers. The facility will provide “additional and backup capacity” for current manufacturing work Nordam does at its other facilities. Recent contracts for work on the Gulfstream G650, Dassault F7X, Cessna CJ4 and Hawker 400 prompted the expansion drive.
You are correct concerning the Dyna-Soar Project time frame and the X-40 (AW&ST Aug. 4, p. 24). It is 50 years since the S-464L cum RS-620 Dyna-Soar project that culminated in a final competition between the Martin-Bell BOMI Div. and Boeing PARD Div. for the Dyna-Soar that the U.S. Air Force initiated in January 1958. That project generated tremendous wind-tunnel and engineering research, which was wasted due to politics, funding and human emotion factors.
Cathay Pacific Airways is reshuffling services in response to fuel prices but isn’t altering its planned system-wide capacity. The Hong Kong-based carrier will shift capacity away from North America and toward Australia, which will get more flights, and Europe, which will see bigger aircraft.
South Korea will launch its first rocket in the second quarter of next year, slipping the schedule from December after officials decided that preflight checks should be more comprehensive. Delayed delivery of parts for the launch pad, 80% of which are being supplied by Russia, also contributed to the decision to delay the first flight of the KSLV-1 rocket. Russia also is helping to build the launch pad at the Naro Space Center in Goheung, in South Jeolla Province. Officials say the delay will allow them to do more checks on the ground support equipment at the pad.
Under the Teal Rain program, Darpa funded flight tests of Boeing’s Condor high-altitude endurance (HAE) UAV beginning in October 1988. Despite exceeding 67,000 ft. altitude and flying for 58.2 hr., Condor did not proceed, but it proved the concept. In 1995, Teledyne Ryan won the Tier II+ HAE UAV contract to develop the single-turbofan RQ-4 Global Hawk. First flight was in February 1998, and the demonstrators were rushed to Afghanistan in late 2001. The Lockheed Martin/Boeing RQ-3 DarkStar, selected as the Tier III- low-observable HAE UAV, flew in March 1996, but crashed.
Darpa awarded Orbital Sciences a contract for up to six Pegasus launches in 1988, and the air-launched booster made its first flight in 1990, becoming the first privately developed launch vehicle. Darpa subsequently sponsored development of a ground-launched variant, the Taurus, as a small satellite launcher, with its first flight in 1994.
Peru has reportedly signed a contract with Russia covering the maintenance and upgrade of 19 MiG-29 Fulcrum aircraft. Peru purchased the used MiG-29s from Belarus in the late 1990s.
Kawasaki Heavy Industries hopes to offer an airliner of 93-150 seats next decade that would compete with the Bombardier CSeries and probably enter service just as Airbus and Boeing were fielding their next-generation narrowbodies. The aircraft, called YPX, would slot in just above the seating range of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ MRJ regional jet, thus forming the beginnings of a Japanese family of commercial jet aircraft.
Neil Mackay has been named executive vice president/chief operating officer of EMS Technologies Inc. of Atlanta. He was executive vice president-strategy.
Engineers intent on solving a troublesome thrust oscillation problem besetting the next U.S. human launch system are set to brief bosses on ways to fix it, although tight funding and a better understanding of overall technical hurdles already has forced NASA to slide the target date of the vehicle’s first flight back a year.
It will take another year or two for Elbit to nudge profitability at its Elisra unit to where it should be, says CEO Joseph Ackerman. Elisra profitability has been a drag on Elbit for some time, and Ackerman concedes that improving the unit’s financial performance has taken longer than planned. Overall, though, the Israeli aerospace and defense contractor reported strong first-half earnings, with backlog topping $5 billion at mid-year, a high for the business.
Having played a pivotal role in the development of smart weapons, Darpa is now targeting high-energy lasers for their ability to deliver ultra-precise lethal and non-lethal effects in both defensive and offensive operations. The challenge the research agency has set is to demonstrate a complete laser weapon system packaged to fit in the bomb bay of a B-1 bomber and have it ready to fly by 2012. This will be the first demonstration of a compact, robust solid-state laser weapon outside the laboratory.
Campbell says his experts are studying whether various lighter-than-air systems and airships can provide a niche capability for soldiers, which is likely with intelligence collection or communications relays. With a 312-mi. line of sight, one of these systems could cover virtually all of the Iraq landmass, he notes. “I don’t know if there is a contagion . . . of enthusiasm” for these systems, he says, adding that these airship concepts lack a champion in the Defense Dept.
The cost of recruiting a new college graduate goes far beyond making the student an offer. Companies must have the resources to maintain an on-campus presence, manage intern and cooperative experiences, be properly represented on advisory boards and foster ongoing communication with students.
