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.
The Bigelow Aerospace project to privately develop inflatable Earth-orbit space modules is beginning to integrate diverse U.S. and European technologies into subscale and full-scale inflatable test modules and subsystems at the company's heavily guarded facilities here. While much public attention is focused on the massive International Space Station (ISS), Bigelow has quietly become a mini-Skunk Works for the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC).
At the same safety conference, Boeing Commercial Airplanes President and CEO Alan Mulally told 350 government and industry officials that safety and security can't be treated as separate issues in commercial aviation. The industry is starting a long-term journey to make commercial aviation more secure, he says. "I still can't believe a commercial airplane was used as a weapon. It is incomprehensible to me after dedicating my entire life to making capable and safe airplanes," he says.
Arianespace has concluded an agreement to launch a dedicated satellite to serve the growing appetite of airline passengers for inflight broadband and broadcasting services (see p. 38). The satellite, known as AirTV 1, is to be launched in 2007 over the North Atlantic.
The threat to the U.S. from an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) still exists, but the main concern has shifted from megaton weapons to low-yield, duffle-bag-size nuclear arms. To generate an EMP, a nuclear weapon has to explode at high altitude (25-250 mi.) where it interacts with the Earth's atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetic field, creating a pulse of energy that disrupts or destroys electronic systems and electrical infrastructure for ranges of hundreds of miles. The official report from the Commission to Assess the Threat to the U.S.
The Mars Exploration Rovers are back in action after about two weeks of hibernation while the Sun blocked effective communications, and winter conditions on the planet gave little excess energy. NASA last week gave the project more energy by funding another six months of operation through March 2005. On Sept. 22, the rover Opportunity drove to a rock in Endurance Crater and placed its robot arm to take scientific measurements. Spirit was more relaxed, just taking remote sensing data. During hibernation on Sept.
The U.S. Coast Guard does plan to utilize small unmanned aerial vehicles, but has stated no plans for Cyber Aerospace's Air Scouts (AW&ST Sept. 13, p. 78).
Northrop Grumman's $400-million contract from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory as lead company for initial development of the NASA Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) will propel the corporation into major new technology work tied to the most advanced space mission operations of early 21st century. By defeating Boeing and Lockheed Martin in the Prometheus JIMO competition, Northrop Grumman has carved out a leadership role in advanced planetary mission design and propulsion.
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The Singaporean fighter competition is emerging as a significant driver in forcing the British government and BAE Systems to reach an agreement on a contract for Tranche 2 of the Eurofighter Typhoon. The final quarter of 2004 will see Singapore focus on commercial aspects of its fighter selection, including detailed pricing. The cost of the Typhoon offer will need to be predicated on a Tranche 2 aircraft, which in turn requires the government and industry to reach agreement.
RainStorm, a new software package, will pinpoint locations of targets for precision munitions as a tool for command-and-control or air operations centers. It is Northrop Grumman's much higher speed follow-on to the RainDrop program that has been in use for several years. The algorithm combines intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance and precision engagement data from many sources to produce 3D coordinates. Height of the target had long been an element missing from such calculations.
William Bonder has been named vice president-supply chain management for the Eclipse Aviation Corp., Albuquerque, N.M. He was executive director of global sourcing and supply chain for Gerber Scientific.
Paul Graziani, president/CEO of Exton, Pa.-based Analytical Graphics Inc., has been elected to the board of directors of the U.S. Geospatial Intelligence Foundation.
