Shuichiro Yamanouchi, president of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), has resigned, citing health reasons. He will be succeeded by Keiji Tachikawa, senior vice president and corporate adviser of NTT Docomo and a member of Japan's Space Activities Commission. Yamanouchi was named president of the National Space Development Agency of Japan in July 2000, and stayed on as head of JAXA when the agency was created in an October 2003 reorganization.
Real estate agents tout "location, location, location" as the top three selling points for property. The same applies to the establishment of cargo hubs, international gateways and logistics centers, which are pivotal to today's global delivery system.
Acting Pentagon acquisition chief Michael Wynne has approved the criteria the F/A-22 must meet to move into low-rate production of 24 Lot 5 aircraft and to start advanced procurement for the 26 fighters in Lot 6. Officials close to the program say these include the results of the operational test program, demonstration of production stability and cost estimates.
Mitsuo Toshimitsu, who joined Japan Airlines as a passenger sales agent when the airline was formed in August 1951 and rose to become its president from June 1990 to June 1995, died of heart failure in Tokyo on Nov. 9. He was 80. Toshimitsu's career was focused on marketing. He was credited with JAL's successful introduction of Japanese overseas group tours in the early 1970s. In 1978, Toshimitsu became head of the new cargo division. A member of the JAL board by then, he retired from the airline to become president of JAL Trading Co. But that career move was short-lived.
Prof. A.U. Krishnamurthy (Vaughn College, New York, N.Y.)
The warning by former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (AW&ST Oct. 18, p. 42) about the disruption of communications through an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack requires consideration by the space community. When GPS was in full use by NATO during the Cold War, attempts were made to disrupt GPS through jamming and other methods including EMP. With new terrorist tactics and intimidations, it may not be long before terrorists make EMP attacks. Also, with new space ventures by entrepreneurs, Gingrich's questions add a dimension.
Russia launched its first Soyuz 2-1a rocket Nov. 8, sending an instrumented dummy payload into space on a mission the Starsem Soyuz launch services consortium termed "nominal." Liftoff from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in arctic Russia came at 1:30 p.m. EST. The test rocket carried a digital control system that will be needed when Soyuz upgrades to the 4-meter fairing on the Soyuz/ST set to begin operations next year. Next up is the introduction of the larger fairing, followed by the Soyuz 2-1b, with a more powerful third stage to support additional payload mass, in mid-2006.
Producing turbine airfoils for its jet engines used to be a complicated affair at Rolls-Royce plc. The company had to keep track of four tiers of suppliers, monitoring a jumble of contracts, production schedules and quality standards.
Multi-phase mission systems aperture testing using a full-scale model of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter has begun at the Air Force Research Laboratory facility in Newport, N.Y. The model, which weighs 8,500 lb. and features interchangeable wings and tail surfaces to simulate three versions of the F-35, is being used to measure installed antenna pattern, gain and phase measurements for the airplane's CNI and EW systems.
Dynamold Inc.'s approach to epoxy shim manufacturing combines the concept of hard epoxy shims with precatalyzed epoxy shim technology. The DMS-4-828 moldable shim material is a dimensionally accurate, millable epoxy, according to the company. Injected from a meter-mix machine, compressed to order, then cured and shaped, it can be used as a hard shim, or precoated with a mixed shim material, frozen and shipped in dry ice for later application. Dynamold Inc., P.O. Box 9617, Fort Worth, Tex., 76147. 111 on www.AviationNow.com/oic
Japan Airlines says total operating revenues were up 13.9% for the first half of fiscal 2004 (through Sept. 30), while operating costs were down 0.4%, resulting in operating income of 86.8 billion yen ($81 million). International passenger traffic rose 46% year-on-year, while revenue passenger-kilometers were up 32%. Revenues rose 95 billion yen to 346 billion yen. But as more Japanese traveled overseas, JAL carried 7% fewer domestic passengers. International cargo revenues grew 17%.
Ultimately, each airplane accident builds safety--and one positive outcome of the Nov. 12, 2001, crash of American Airlines Flight 587 is that the accident is spurring regulatory, aircraft systems and pilot training improvements.
The FAA and the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn. have asked RTCA to initiate a new effort to address the use of unmanned aerial systems. UAS is a new term that characterizes UAVs with an emphasis on the attendance of aircraft systems necessary to fly within the National Airspace System. The initial focus will be on how the new class of vehicles will operate, with a priority on the necessary concepts and avionics for "sense and avoid" and command, control and communications. The first meeting of the special committee is scheduled to be held at RTCA in Washington on Nov.
James V. Zimmerman has been elected president of the Paris-based International Astronautical Federation. He is president of International Space Services Inc., McLean, Va. Zimmerman succeeds Marcio Barbosa, deputy general director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Six new vice presidents have been elected: Anatoly Grigoriev, director of the Institute of Biomedical Problems in Moscow; Virendra K.
The distinguished panel includes aerospace experts from the civil, military, academic and research sectors. Michael Griffen, Space Dept. Head at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, has served as both chief engineer and associate administrator for exploration at NASA. Dan Griffith, senior certification test pilot for the U.K. CAA, has logged more than 5,200 hr. in nearly 300 aircraft types and has participated in JAA certification for Boeing and Airbus aircraft.
Boeing's Air Traffic Management organization believes it's feasible to triple U.S. air transportation system capacity by 2025, but it would require innovative moves, such as adding runways between existing parallel ones. "Pave down the middle" may sound like a radical departure, but ATC specialists at an Air Traffic Control Assn. (ATCA) conference here say they agree with Boeing that it will be possible to have much closer parallel runways operating in all nonhazardous weather by 2025.
Russia's TsAGI and Onera of France are co-sponsoring an aerospace science symposium to highlight worldwide developments in R&D, modeling, simulation and testing. The symposium, to be known as the European Conference for Aerospace Sciences (Eucass), is set for July 4-7, 2005, in Moscow.
India is seeking to improve its long-range reconnaissance capability by acquiring two Russian-built Ilyushin Il-38 aircraft to replace two destroyed in a 2002 mid-air collision. The country is continuing discussions with the U.S. about buying eight Navy P-3Cs. Pakistan already flies the P-3B.
Eurocopter has delivered two Dauphin AS365 N3 helicopters to Pawan Hans, a government-owned operator in India that flies 22 AS365-series aircraft. Nagar Sridar, chairman and managing director, says India's demand for helicopters has risen for offshore oil drilling and corporate transportation. In related news, Eurocopter and archrival Bell Helicopter Textron are competing to replace 197 aging Lama and Alouette III reconnaissance and surveillance helicopters for the Indian army.
The solar sail is scheduled for another try on Mar. 1 with a Russian-built and -launched satellite project managed by The Planetary Society and funded primarily by Cosmos Studios, which is operated by Carl Sagan's widow Ann Druyan. The $4-million private mission aims to demonstrate that the inflatable ultra-lightweight sail is a viable propulsion technique by using it to change the 800-km. (500-mi.) orbit of the Cosmos 1 spacecraft over a several-day period.
Christopher Fotos and Frances Fiorino (Washington), Michael Mecham (San Francisco)
With network carriers facing bankruptcy and others struggling to keep aloft, it's hard to think of the U.S. airline industry optimistically. But the FAA does: Its current forecast predicts passenger demand reaching pre-Sept. 11, 2001, levels by next year and growing 4.3% annually through 2015.
Pilots at Northwest Airlines are offering the carrier more than a half-billion dollars in cost reductions, largely through a 15% pay reduction, under a ratified, two-year bridge contract. The agreement provides significant relief to management in its effort to restructure the airline's costs and yet holds management to account as negotiations get underway with the other six union groups.
Aeroflot, Russia's largest and best-known carrier, expects to join SkyTeam by the end of next year, but how well it will be able to exploit the alliance's global passenger connections depends on how successful its home base at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport remains. To meet SkyTeam's expectations, Aeroflot is renovating its fleet, improving service quality, optimizing its route structure and reinforcing its information technologies.
