In January, President Bush proposed a revitalized action plan for NASA centered on renewed human exploration of the Moon and, later, the first voyages to Mars. This proposal has been saddled with a widely reported but unfounded and unsubstantiated trillion-dollar cost estimate. Fortunately, analysis of the cost is easy to do, easy to follow and results in a substantially more favorable assessment than has been asserted.
Michel Dechelotte has been appointed chairman/CEO of Paris-based PowerJet, a joint venture of Snecma Moteurs of France and NPO Saturn of Russia. He was development director in Russia for Snecma and had been corporate vice president.
U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Roger A. Nadeau has been appointed commanding general of the Army Research, Development and Engineering Command, Aberdeen Proving Ground, Md. He was deputy commanding general of the command at Ft. Belvoir, Va.
The South African police have ordered a seventh Eurocopter AS 350 B3 single-engine helicopter. The sale, announced at the Africa Aerospace and Defense show, brings the number of Eurocopter aircraft operated by the police force to 25.
"I have such faith in the private sector that I've dreamed of the day that government monopoly would be replaced by commercialization or at least some form of partnership." Those words, on the prospects of private manned spacecraft and industrial space stations, were penned by President Ronald Reagan in a letter to Aviation Week & Space Technology's publisher in March 1985.
Susan K. Barnes has been named to the board of directors of RAE Systems Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif. She is senior vice president/chief financial officer of Intuitive Surgical.
Robert W. Klein (see photo), who is vice president-engineering, logistics and technology for the Bethpage, N.Y.-based Airborne Early Warning and Electronic Warfare Systems division of the Northrop Grumman Corp., has been elected chairman of the Technical Operations Council of the Washington-based Aerospace Industries Assn.
While some avionics software development is being outsourced by U.S. aerospace companies to India, one small American company maintains that dozens of firms like it are handling a large portion of the more specialized contracts.
Leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and Belarus have decided to establish a joint company to help boost their share of the global space market. Meeting at the Common Economic Area summit on Sept. 15, the leaders called for proposals to be submitted by mid-December. Though no specific project was mentioned, the initial target is believed to be the six-seat Clipper reusable space vehicle proposed by Russia's RSC Energia. The 14.5-metric-ton vehicle could be launched by a Russian Onega (an upgraded Soyuz) or Angara booster, or a Ukrainian Zenith-2.
There has been a collective holding of breath as Pentagon officials await reaction to a U.S. Air Force announcement that it wants to buy hundreds of short-takeoff F-35B joint strike fighters modified to provide close air support for Army and Marine Corps ground forces.
The typical seatback display takes on a dynamic new look with the introduction of 3D imagery for the familiar moving map that tracks a flight's progress in the Rockwell Collins Airshow 4200/ 4200i systems.
Boeing Chairman/CEO Harry Stonecipher says the company will add at least two French suppliers within the next few weeks to those already picked for the 7E7 program. Among suppliers already selected are Dassault Systemes, Thales and Snecma affiliates Messier-Dowty and Labinal.
Michael A. Williams (see photo) has been appointed vice president-engineering for Kollsman Inc., Merrimack, N.H. He was an engineering director at the Lockheed Martin Corp.
The inflight entertainment establishment isn't sitting still. It's regrouping, pumping up the "wow" factor in seatback imagery and pushing hard to let Internet-savvy passengers do at 30,000 ft. what they're accustomed to doing on the street.
AeroVironment's Helios solar-powered drone came apart last year because of a change in weight distribution along the wing that reduced safety margins, and a lack of adequate analysis methods to detect the risk of this change, according to a list of root causes in NASA's recent investigation report. Helios virtually exploded inflight on June 26, 2003, after a few divergent pitch oscillations caused the airspeed to become too high for the structure (AW&ST June 30, 2003, p. 18). Besides sending back telemetry, it was being filmed by a chase aircraft.
W. Humphrey Bogart, Brenda A. Cline and Richard A. Massman have been named to the board of trustees of the Fort Worth-based American AAdvantage Funds. Bogart is retired president of Fidelity Investments Southwest. Cline is vice president/chief financial officer/treasurer/secretary of the Kimbell Art Foundation in Fort Worth, while Massman is senior vice president/general counsel of Hunt Consolidated Inc.
U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman, not failing to note that Sikorsky is headquartered in his home state of Connecticut, says it would be a "terrible signal [to the world] in terms of the health of our defense industry" to buy a foreign helicopter for transporting the U.S. President. "This is a very important decision.
Frank Morring, Jr., and Neelam Mathews (Bangalore, India)
Indian space managers hope progress in strategic trade talks with the U.S. will make it easier for them to obtain foreign hardware for their burgeoning program, but the first operational flight of India's Geostationary Space Launch Vehicle (GSLV) last week shows they don't necessarily need U.S. backing to achieve their goals.
Delta Air Lines last week applied to the U.S. Transportation Dept. for authority to operate daily nonstop service between Atlanta and Beijing beginning in 2006. Under the U.S.-China air services agreement, twice the number of U.S. airlines will serve China, and weekly flights between the two countries will quadruple, according to Delta CEO Jerry Grinstein. The route would also enhance the airline's strategic goal to increase network profitability, particularly to key international destinations, he added.
Airline leaders at an FAA safety conference near Washington last week say safety continues to be a top priority, but one executive notes that plans for new equipment are being examined more closely in an era of tight finances and greater spending on security. John C. Marshall, vice president for corporate safety and compliance at Delta Air Lines, says if his airline has a critical safety need it is met, but if there is a "nice-to-have" technology, the purchase will be debated carefully.
The U.S. Navy and Raytheon have completed operational test firings of the penetrator version of the Joint Standoff Weapon. The missile scored a 90% success rate in the 10 tests at the Navy's China Lake, Calif., facility.
BE Aerospace Inc., whose commercial cabin interior business went into a free-fall following the 9/11 attacks, is planning a public offering of 13.5 million shares of common stock--plus an over-allotment option for the underwriters totaling 2 million shares. The estimated $140 million in proceeds that the company stands to collect would be used to reduce its mountain of debt by year-end. Most of it is contained within four notes carrying interest rates of 8.5-9.5%.
Alitalia has gained some breathing room, having reached an accord with the airline's unions for lower cost work contracts as well as a reduction in the number of planned job eliminations to 3,700 from 5,000, still the largest number of job cuts ever undertaken by the airline. The ailing carrier is seeking an 830-million-euro ($1-billion) total cost savings by 2006. With the job cuts and work agreements, the government has approved a 400-million-euro state-guaranteed loan that would allow Alitalia to survive the winter.
Craig Covault (El Segundo, Calif., and Las Vegas, Nev.)
The Scaled Composites SpaceShipOne suborbital vehicle that will attempt this week and next to twice rocket above 100 km. to claim the $10-million Ansari X-Prize highlights a major new wave of commercial space activity taking stride into early October. The initiatives include the planned announcement this week of a new, much larger $50-million "America's Space Prize" to spur private development of an orbital space transport that by 2010 could carry 5-7 astronauts to an orbiting station.
