John D. Anderson, Jr., of Silver Spring, Md., is one of the five winners of the Elder Statesman of Aviation Award from the Alexandria, Va.-based National Aeronautic Assn. The others are: Eugene Deatrick of Alexandria, Elmer (Al) Gleske of Annapolis, Md., Alan Gropman of Burke, Va., and Carl Vogt of San Francisco. Anderson was cited for a career at the forefront of aeronautical engineering, beginning at the Aeronautical Research Laboratories at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio. He became a professor and eventually chairman of the Aerospace Engineering Dept.
Swiss International Air Lines and its future owner Lufthansa are being challenged by Swiss pilots about the reduction and repositioning of the fleet, which has a direct effect on crews via route reallocation and anticipated layoffs.
To submit Aerospace Calendar Listings, Call +1 (212) 904-2421 Fax +1 (212) 904-6068 e-mail: [email protected] Oct. 10-13--Fatigue Concepts' Short Course: "Fatigue, Fracture Mechanics and Damage Tolerance." Brentwood Inn (formerly Holiday Inn NASA), Houston. Also Oct. 24-27--Rose State College, Okla. Call +1 (916) 933-5000 or see www.fatcon.com Oct. 11--Royal Aeronautical Society Capital Branch Meeting: Very Light Jets. Embassy of Australia, Washington. E-mail: [email protected]
Capping a decades-long development program, the Pentagon approved Sept. 28 the Bell-Boeing V-22 tiltrotor for full-rate production. Contractors will boost production to 48 from 11 aircraft per year. The Marine Corps plans to buy 360 MV-22s and the Air Force wants 50 CV-22 special operations versions. The contractor team says the V-22 program is worth $19 billion through 2018. The decision follows years of problems, including four crashes, some of which resulted in fatalities that prompted investigators to redesign elements of the aircraft.
Woodrow Whitlow, Jr., who has been deputy director of the Kennedy Space Center, has been named to succeed Julian Earls as director of the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, when Earls retires at the end of the year. Lesa B. Roe has been promoted to director from deputy director of the NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va. She succeeds Roy Bridges, who has retired. N. Wayne Hale, Jr., has been promoted to space shuttle program manager from deputy manager.
The venture capital Carlyle Group is adding another aerospace company to its portfolio. U.K.-based NP Aerospace, a manufacturer of composite molded products such as aircraft seatback frames, is being sold by parent company Reinhold Industries for $53.4 million. Carlyle is making the purchase through its European technology fund. U.S.-based Reinhold plans to use up to $25 million of the proceeds to pay down debt.
No matter how much the industry complains about flight delays and the operational troubles they cause for U.S. airlines, the congestion has only grown worse and there's no consensus on how to fix the problem.
France will acquire a pair of long-range airlifters on long-term lease in a move that may serve as a template for future transport buys. The French armaments agency (DGA) last week detailed an agreement inked in July with Ingepar, a financing arm of the Groupe Caisse d'Epargne bank, and TAP Air Portugal to lease two A340-200s to replace aging DC-8s owned by the French air force.
Shannon A. Brown has been named senior vice president-human resources of Pittsburgh-based FedEx Ground. He was vice president-human resources services/chief diversity officer for FedEx Express in Memphis.
The French government wants to earmark more than $1 billion for a new aircraft carrier, and appears increasingly convinced that the new vessel can be built in close cooperation with the U.K.
China Central Television (CCTV), the Chinese communist party's media outlet, is selling advertising time specifically tied to the upcoming Shenzhou 6 human spaceflight mission. Indications are the 5-7 day flight with two astronauts will be launched about Oct. 13. CCTV is asking 2.56 million yuan ($316,000) for 5 sec. of time and more than $1 million for 30 sec. That is about half the cost of a similar time block on U.S. television during the Super Bowl. Three two-man crews are finalists for the flight.
As always, I was impressed by the good accident/fatality statistics of U.S. airlines (AW&ST Aug. 22/29, p. 78). Although the minuscule rates are impressive, they are hard to grasp as presented, so I'd like to present them in a different way. Based on the fatal accident figures in your article for 2000-04, if you took a flight a day forever, you could expect to be involved in a crash (with fatalities) every 13,200 years. That includes the four on 9/11. If you exclude those crashes, then the rate jumps to a fatal accident every 20,750 years.
Engine Alliance, a General Electric-Pratt & Whitney partnership, has shipped the first four GP7200 compliance/flight test engines for the A380 to Toulouse (AW&ST Aug. 8, p. 38). Airbus is to begin installing the nacelle and airplane system components on the engines this month. The manufacturer hasn't said when ground and flight tests are to begin, but they are expected in first-quarter 2006. Meanwhile, GP7200 tests continue at Pratt and GE facilities in the U.S. Last week, the test program passed the 5,000-cycle milestone.
Malaysia Airlines has added the Jeppesen Terminal Charts application to the Class 3 Boeing Electronic Flight Bags it has on board two 777-200ERs. MAS was the first Asia-Pacific carrier to use the EFB, which provides the flight-deck crew with a digital library of technical and operational manuals. Another option gives pilots access to Jeppesen's library of more than 40,000 charts for airports worldwide.
At the same time the GPS constellation in space is being upgraded, so is its ground control capability. Six National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) ground stations around the world have just been added to the program to update and control all GPS spacecraft.
The winnowing has begun for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's national qualification events at the California Speedway in Fontana, on the road to the "2nd Darpa Grand Challenge" on Oct. 8. The 20 finalists that emerge from the more than 40 entrants in the qualifier will navigate robotic ground vehicles through 150 mi. of rugged terrain starting and ending in Primm, Nev., after looping through treacherous parts of the Mojave Desert. The exact course won't be revealed until 2 hr.
The aerospace industry is finally beginning to acknowledge that advanced sensors packages for the Pentagon's newest combat aircraft--like the F/A-22 and F-35--are capable of electronic attack with high-power bursts of directed radar energy and, with upgrades, invasion of enemy networks using microwave communications.
Christopher Scolese has been appointed chief engineer for NASA, succeeding Rex Geveden, who is now associate administrator. Scolese has been deputy director of the Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
French authorities have placed under formal investigation the first of five former Concorde program officials over the 2000 crash of the supersonic transport that killed 113. Former chief flight test engineer Henri Perrier is being investigated because authorities argue that too little was done to fix known Concorde problems.
The Falcon launcher program took a step closer to reality on Sept. 29 when a USAF/Boeing C-17 dropped a dummy air-launched rocket from 6,000 ft. at Edwards AFB, Calif. The design is by AirLaunch and is a leading contender for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Falcon program to build a responsive, inexpensive rocket to place 1,000 lb. in orbit (AW&ST Sept. 5, p. 65). The 65-ft.-long, 87-in.-dia. full-scale mockup is the largest object ever dropped from a C-17, and close to the prior record of 60,000 lb. for the heaviest.
Northern Command is compiling lessons learned from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and at the top of the list are survivable communications and command and control. Katrina's devastation was "so bad that we couldn't figure out how bad it was," Keating says. "Our ability to get eyes on target is critical." By the time Rita struck, "we had everything from overhead [satellite] systems to people on the ground in Humvees with satellite telephone radio systems ready. . . . We're going to take it on as a significant mission . . .
Although international frustration over the Pentagon's muddled approach to future F-35 buys continues, separate Australian and Turkish firms have received contracts from Northrop Grumman for work on the program.
Eurocontrol is devising a follow-on to its European Strategic Safety Action Plan, says the organization's director-general, Victor M. Aguado. The new agenda will address incident reporting and data-sharing, safety management and culture as well as development of European safety legislation.
EADS is mounting an effort to see if it can parlay military virtual maintenance and procedural training activities into ventures in commercial aerospace. The company, which is building the virtual maintenance system for the Eurofighter Typhoon, has begun making presentations to Airbus to see if its activities can have traction. But the near-term focus, at least for now, remains on winning A400M work. The A400M work will largely be parceled out depending on the multi-national program's intricate workshare requirements.
The Russian air force has unveiled the first in a family of rocket-boosted precision-guided glide bombs. The weapon, designated UPAB-1500, was displayed at the air force's Ahktubinsk test and evaluation center in southern Russia. The basic airframe design is similar to that of the UAB-500, which has, so far, only been shown in model form. The 3,000-lb.-class UPAB-1500 likely uses TV-guidance. The weapon shown at Ahktubinsk is a test round of some form, with possibly a dummy guidance section.
