China and the European Space Agency are about to sign a new space cooperation pact. Luan Enjie, director of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), says the new agreement will broaden science and industrial ties between China and the European nations that are part of ESA. The agreement will put additional pressure on the U.S. to expand its own space cooperation with China, which Luan has long sought (AW&ST Nov. 12, 2001, p. 52).
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries is considering a $460-million plant expansion at Nagoya to produce the wing box for Boeing's 7E7. The new plant would be built at MHI's Oye complex in the southern part of Nagoya, where the company assembles fuselage panels for Boeing 767s and 777s and carbon fiber reinforced plastic (CFRP) wings for the Japanese air force's F-2 close-air support fighter.
A third mid-level manager in Boeing's Delta IV launcher program has been charged with helping to secure proprietary documents from Lockheed Martin for use in the U.S. Air Force's Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) competition. Larry Satchell is charged with conspiracy, theft of trade secrets and obstruction of justice. He was leader of a Boeing "Black Hat Team" created to gather information about Lockheed Martin's Atlas V, the competitor to Boeing's Delta IV in the EELV competition.
Air France began trading on the New York Stock Exchange on May 5 under the ticker symbol AKR.WI. Of the approximately 2,800 companies listed on the NYSE, about 470 are non-U.S. The airline joined the exchange as a merger with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines. There are a variety of reasons companies outside America desire a NYSE listing, but the primary one is typically to expand the shareholder base and attract (primarily) institutional investors by raising their profile among financial analysts in New York.
Avio has a preliminary agreement with Pratt & Whitney for maintenance and support of F100 engines powering F-16 fighters based in Europe and the Mediterranean area. There is a potential market of 800 PW-powered F-16s in the region, including the 33 F-16s Italy has leased from the U.S. Avio estimates a 20-25% stake could generate up to 500 million euros ($596 million) in revenues over 20 years.
Perry Solmonson, Manager, Flight Operations-Technical (Horizon Air, Portland, Ore.)
As the airline industry begins another upswing in traffic, the finger-pointing between the majors and regionals has returned. We are all trying to do our business with shared resources of airspace and concrete. It seems when the going gets tough, the rule is to look around and note who is different and blame them.
John Enticknap (see photo) has been named president/CEO of Atlanta-based Mercury Air Centers Inc. He was vice president/chief operating officer. Karel Van Der Linden (see photo) has become vice president-finance; Bob Wernersbach (see photo) vice president-operations; David Moore (see photo) corporate general counsel/general manager of the Birmingham, Ala., facility; Kevin Richardson director of human resources; Dan Maddox director of safety and risk management; and Steve Bowlin director of marketing and sales.
Roughly half the scientific experiments NASA had planned for the microgravity environment on the International Space Station won't be completed there, if at all, as the agency shifts its research focus to deep-space human exploration.
NASA Ames Research Center has named a new supercomputer in honor of Kalpana Chawla, one of the seven astronauts who died on board space shuttle Columbia on Feb. 1, 2003. Known as "KC," she was an aerospace engineer and software specialist at Ames before she joined the astronaut corps, where she became the first Indian-born woman to fly in space. The supercomputer, an SGI Altix 3000, is being used to develop simulation models of the Earth's climate in joint studies with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Goddard Space Flight Center.
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Germany, the U.S. and Italy are poised to sign off on an agreement to develop the Meads transatlantic theater missile defense program in a move that would significantly bolster flagging transatlantic cooperation, industry sources said here.
Alan Wilhite has been appointed Langley professor in advanced aerospace systems architecture at the Georgia Institute of Technology and principal Georgia Tech faculty member in residence at the National Institute of Aerospace, which is affiliated with NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va. Wilhite was eminent scholar in systems engineering and simulation at the University of Alabama, Huntsville.
Pratt & Whitney Space Propulsion notified the 600 workers at its solid-fuel rocket production facility in San Jose, Calif., that it will close the plant in the coming year and exit the solid-rocket business. Aerojet and ATK will take over work on components for U.S. government systems produced at the plant, including the Minuteman, Standard and Thaad missiles. The plant was rocked by back-to-back explosions in August and September 2003, with one fatality in the second blast.
Arianespace has landed an initial customer for the new Soyuz launch pad to be built at its spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, as engineers prepare to begin construction on the facility. The European launch company last week signed up Australian telecom operator Optus to orbit the Optus D2 on the Soyuz from Kourou in early 2007. It will be the first mission for the launch pad, and the first awarded to date, following marketing activity that began two months ago.
At a time when optimists once believed the big U.S. network airlines would be edging back toward profitability, the carriers are making plain in this spring's Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings that they still are wandering in the financial wilderness.
Russia may get its wish for longer expeditions to the ISS, but only after the space shuttle starts flying again. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe says he found Anatoly Perminov, his new Russian counterpart, willing to wait for year-long expeditions, which would free a second Soyuz "taxi seat" for a paying space tourist (AW&ST Apr. 5, p. 25). "It's only a question of when," O'Keefe says, noting that NASA itself wants to concentrate on long-duration spaceflight research to prepare for deep-space missions.
Dave Davis has been appointed chief financial officer of US Airways. He was senior vice president-finance and succeeds Neal S. Cohen, who has resigned.
Wayne Hosking, Jr., has been appointed vice president-corporate strategic development for the Allied Defense Group Inc., Vienna, Va. He was vice president-sales for Horne Engineering Services Inc.
"I have some good news and some bad news. The bad news is: I have to grade this sortie unsatisfactory overall. The good news is: I think with a couple of extra rides, you'll do fine." I had just busted a vital check ride. My life's plan was falling apart.
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Regarding John Lynch's belief that a zero point energy system is an oxymoron violating the First Law of Thermodynamics (AW&ST Apr. 19, p. 8), in certain commanding financial levels this point of view is part of an economic strategy. Legitimate over-unity devices are already operational and extracting electromagnetic (EM) energy from the active vacuum--without violation of any known laws of physics.
Robert Wall and Douglas Barrie (Eglin AFB, Fla., and Nas Patuxent River, Md.)
The drive to build weapons to autonomously attack moving vehicles has stalled at the Pentagon. Instead, developers are embarking on a wide-reaching effort to equip bombs and missiles with data links to guide them to their targets. The interest in data links springs from a desire to exploit information collected by other systems to avoid having to fit munitions with expensive sensors. Fighters or surveillance aircraft that are tracking a vehicle would transfer updated coordinates to a munition in flight.
Soaring crude oil prices--which reached $40 per barrel last week--led British Airways as well as Australian carriers Qantas and Virgin Blue to introduce fuel surcharges
A DHL Worldwide integration team is weighing pros and cons of selecting a North American hub from the two it operates in the Ohio Valley or to continue operating both facilities. DHL has completed the integration of ground operations with merger partner Airborne Express, and the hub decision is a high priority. ABX Air, Airborne's former air arm, operates 100 aircraft into the DHL-owned sorting and logistics facility at Wilmington, Ohio. About 50 mi.
