In a move to replace older fuel hogs, American Airlines has ordered 26 737-800s by exercising 20 options and adding six airplanes to its 2009-10 fleet plan. The order was anticipated and brings the carrier’s total 737 orders for the year to 36 as American replaces older 737s and MD-80s. Boeing now has 117 orders for the 737 in 2008.
I found your article “Ghost Flight” (AW&ST Aug. 4, p. 50) intriguing as it illustrates how NASA has never fully solved the issue of lost foam insulation from the external tank. A return to basics might yield some benefits. Although the tank has undergone major redesigns for weight loss, perhaps Lockheed Martin should explore the reapplication of paint, as occurred for the first two STS missions. A new paint formulation might offer cohesive properties that will provide a protective shell for the foam and safety for the crew.
Qinetiq, with Aberystwyth University, has completed the first flight of an autonomous UAV for agricultural monitoring. This marked the end of phase one of the U-MAP (UAVs for Managing Agricultural Practice) program, a Welsh government initiative. Farmers need timely information on their land, and UAVs could serve as an alternative to satellites for remote-sensing images.
Ball Aerospace & Technology says it’s on track to complete final integration and testing this month of the Ozone Mapping and Profiler Suite (OMPS) Protoflight Model for the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (Npoess) Preparatory Project spacecraft it’s building. Ball says the instrument will be delivered by Sept. 30 to support a 2010 launch.
In 1961, as U.S. involvement in Vietnam escalated, ARPA began Project Agile to develop and test technologies for counter-insurgency warfare. This included field tests of the AR-15 rifle, which became the U.S. Army’s M16 assault rifle. ARPA also developed the Camp Sentinel foliage-penetration radar and funded Lockheed to convert two Schweizer sailplanes to QT-2 quiet night surveillance aircraft.
Beginning in 1965, under a joint effort with the Army to extend the range and endurance of the Bell Rocket Belt, the agency funded development of the WR19 small turbofan by Williams Research. This engine was further developed to power the AGM-86 Air Launched Cruise Missile and BGM-109 Tomahawk.
The U.S. Marine Corps is rapidly designing an armament package for its KC-130J refuelers aimed to help fill a gap in close air support in Afghanistan, as the U.S. Air Force’s AC-130 fleet continues its high operating tempo abroad. Service officials plan to conduct the maiden flight of an armed KC-130J in mid-December. Marine Corps officials call this the Armed KC-130J Phase 1 system, and they do have plans to eventually deploy precision-guided standoff munitions from the aircraft in the future.
Magellan Aerospace and Safran subsidiary Aircelle are in a dispute over Airbus A340 engine component work, with the Canadian company trying to renegotiate elements of the award. Costs are at the heart of the wrangle. The situation is likely being exacerbated by the lackluster market performance of the A340-500 and -600 models.
Damascus Sulcus, one of the “Tiger Stripes” on Saturn’s moon Enceladus that spews water vapor and other gases into space, is seen at a range of about 4,742 km. (2,947 mi.) in the last of seven “skeet shoot” images collected by the narrow-angle camera on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Resolution in this image is about 30 megapixels.
Air Canada reported solid operating results for the second quarter, with a C$122-million ($114-million) net income, compared to C$155 million for the same period last year. The carrier achieved a C$7-million operating income despite a C$212-million increase in fuel costs over the C$88 million reported in the second quarter of 2007.
USN Rear Adm. Allen G. Myers, 4th, has been appointed director of the Warfare Integration and Assessment Div. of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations in Washington. He has been director of the office’s Air Warfare Div. He has been succeeded by Rear Adm. (lower half) David L. Philman, who has been selected for promotion to rear admiral. He has been commander of Strike Force Training Pacific in San Diego.
The British Defense Ministry was to begin the finals of its “Grand Challenge” Aug. 16 to select a winner from the 11 teams competing to develop unmanned systems for use in urban warfare environments.
David Davenport (see photos) has been promoted to regional operations manager for New York-based FlightSafety International , while continuing as manager of FSI’s Learning Center in Savannah, Ga. Stephen Thompson has been promoted to assistant manager from director of training at the Dallas-Fort Worth Learning Center. And, Joseph (Andy) Johnson has been named assistant manager of the company’s Cessna Learning Center in Wichita, Kan. He was senior U.S. Navy liaison at the U.S. Embassy in Sana’a, Yemen.
Jennifer Wapenski is a 24-year-old aerospace engineer with Boeing, working on the Commercial Airplanes 747 production line. And her story may serve as a helpful case study for aerospace and defense companies seeking to attract young talent. “If you ask my parents, they knew I was going to be an engineer from the day I was born,” laughs Wapenski. “I was [my dad’s] first copilot. He built an airplane in our garage, so I bucked a lot of rivets. I just had a lot of exposure to building things.”
The Phoenix Mars lander will begin the second half of August ready for a new series of samples for its wet-chemistry and organic-detection instruments from recently groomed or newly dug trenches. Over the week of Aug. 11, controllers here have used the robotic arm to enlarge the Cupboard Trench along the right side of the lander, and also to deepen a trench designated Burn Alive. All trenches and samples are named, and mission managers are stressing the importance of keeping these straight.
The fact that it has taken the FAA 12 years to figure out its new rule about center wing fuel tanks is one indication of its priority and the danger of the situation being addressed (AW&ST July 21, p. 47). Said another way, the FAA is either incompetent or dealing with a very minor issue. It cannot even seem to get it own data correctly massaged.
Because of the time and money required to develop satellites, and the costs and risks in launching them, Darpa is trying to change the way we think about space. The agency is focusing on demonstrating technology for quicker, cheaper launches of smaller satellites that can cooperate in orbit.
Concerned that executive pensions may be funneled through regular employee plans, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (Speea) has asked Boeing to disclose the extent and funding source of the company’s executive pension plans. Funneling executive pensions through regular employees’ plans weakens those plans, Speea says.
Supersonic flying wings with variable sweep, rotors that slow or stop in flight, aircraft that maneuver by changing shape, vehicles that cruise hypersonically or loiter indefinitely—all are taking shape as Darpa pushes the edge of the envelope in aeronautics.
The fate of a joint transatlantic business agreement among American Airlines, British Airways and Iberia is now in the hands of the regulators. The carriers announced their deal on Aug. 14, so now U.S. and European officials will decide how many slots—if any—the airlines will have to give up at London Heathrow Airport.
The Bush administration hopes to push through some permanent export control reforms before leaving Washington in January, says John Rood, acting undersecretary of State for arms control and international security. The Senate could vote on whether to adopt agreements designed to ease technology transfer with the U.K. and Australia as soon as September, he says. The treaties will allow contractors to sell products to those two nations and bypass the traditional export control process. The U.K.
Italy plans to procure a small batch of Predator B medium-altitude endurance UAVs, but is struggling to define how to meet its longer-term unmanned reconnaissance needs.
Intense radiation from clusters of newborn stars shapes the nebula walls in this Hubble Space Telescope image collected Aug. 10 to commemorate the observatory’s 100,000th orbit. Astronomers believe a nearby supernova sparked this hotbed of star birth near the Tarantula nebula, some 170,000 light-years from Earth, at the star cluster NGC 2074 (upper left). The image takes in a region some 100 light-years wide, 20 times the distance between Earth and Alpha Centauri, the nearest star.
