COCOON-CLASS Qantas will upgrade the front cabin services of its long-haul international flights with cocoon-style sleeper seats as part of a "Skybeds" business-class promotion that includes self-service bar and noise-canceling headsets. The A$300-million ($200-million) upgrade includes new inflight entertainment system offerings. The Australian carrier says the improvements affect 30 Boeing 747-400s and seven Airbus A330-300s. Retrofits on the 400s begin in September, while the A330s will be delivered with the seats when they start arriving next June.
SHADE SELECTION Titanium sunshade developer Flexial Corp. of Cookeville, Tenn., has been contracted by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) to develop a deployable, titanium-welded bellows sunshade for an element of the Standard Missile-3. The SM-3 missile contains a kinetic warhead designed to destroy incoming ballistic missiles and is in development by Raytheon Missile Systems as part of the MDA's Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system.
Martin Leidemer has become vice president-supply chain management for the Computer Sciences Corp., El Segundo, Calif. He was vice president-finance for CSC's Global Infrastructure Services. Leidemer has been succeeded by Frank Sossi.
NASTY SURPRISE The U.S. Air Force has been forced to add $78.5 million to the Advanced EHF satcom program or risk delays in delivery and launch of the first spacecraft. Changes related to the KI-54 encryption device are forcing a redesign of the Host Accessory Logic (HAL) application specific integrated circuit (ASIC). The HAL ASIC connects the encryption system with the communications payload. The program development review for the item took four months and could have resulted in the launch delay.
Peter Jensen's comment, "The customer can only get two. If you want the work done cheap and quick, it will not be of quality" (AW&ST June 16, p. 24), reminded me why U.S. businesses struggle to stay afloat and the U.S. has amounted to nothing more than a two-bit player in the world economy.
TRAINER TALK South Korea is ready for an initial production authorization for the Korea Aerospace Industries/ Lockheed Martin T-50 after the supersonic advanced jet trainer completed a series of 26 test flights in its initial operational assessment. The IOA is similar to the initial operational test-and-evaluation flying performed in the U.S. It was the last of three prerequisites for production authorization. Other prerequisites were: 105 flights of developmental flight testing, and initial integrated logistics assessment, both of which were completed earlier this year.
Analysts are expressing high hopes that the improved revenue performance of U.S. major airlines turned a corner of sorts and continued through August. The analysts' confidence was bolstered in recent weeks as the Air Transport Assn. (ATA) reported system-wide July RASM (revenue per available seat mile) for member carriers grew 8.1% year over year. UBS' Samuel Buttrick noted that the gain represented the best monthly showing since 2000, with the exception of the five months of 2002 when comparisons were made with sharply reduced revenues following the Sept.
USAF Col. Craig Olson has been named V-22 Osprey program manager at Navair headquarters at NAS Patuxent River, Md. He has been the deputy program manager and succeeds USMC Col. Dan Schultz.
STILL AT ODDS Guns in the cockpit were authorized by Congress in 2001 and mandated a year later, but the issue is no less a flash point between pilot-activists and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The current complaint is that the TSA is dragging its feet, failing to train "federal flight deck officers" fast enough and imposing needless, intimidating psychological tests and background checks on applicants.
In response to Stanley J. Glinka's letter "Osprey Needs Design Change" (AW&ST June23, p. 7), the rotors are connected by a driveshaft, causing them to rotate in perfect sync, even with only one engine running. As for tilting the nacelles in sync with each other, there hasn't been a tilt mechanism failure in the nearly 40 years of tiltrotor flight. The tilting provides more of an extra degree of freedom than of failure. It allows the aircraft to escape a hostile area or operate in a tight space with much greater effectiveness.
If approved as planned, Japan will become the first export recipient of Standard 3 (SM-3) and Patriot PAC-3 hit-to-kill missile defense systems. Japan's Defense Agency was expected to request 144 billion yen ($1.23 billion) in fiscal 2004 to launch the missile defense program, which will include the first SM-3 defensive systems for its Aegis cruisers and PAC-3 air force missile batteries. Since 1999, the JDA has spent 15.6 billion yen in joint research with the U.S. on upgrades to its land and sea systems.
The Space Activities Commission, Japan's cabinet-level space policy body, has approved development of a heavier-lift version of the Mitsubishi H-IIA launch vehicle that will feature a twin-engine cryogenic first stage to double the lift capacity of the standard vehicle. The second major improvement in the H-II since its debut a decade ago, the heavier-lift rocket is expected to carry a 4,000-kg. (8,800-lb.) payload to a geostationary transfer orbit. The standard H-IIA-202 vehicle lifts 2,000-2,500 kg. to GTO.
As the dust settles following release of the long-awaited--and blistering--report of the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, it's time for a little perspective.
Jason Totah has been promoted to CEO of the International Services Div. of Philadelphia-based Stonepath Logistics from president/chief operating officer of U.S. operations.
The flight crew of Northwest Airlines Flight 85 on Oct. 9, 2002--Capts. John Hanson and Frank Geib and First Officers W. Michael Fagan and David V. Smith--has won an Air Line Pilots Assn. Superior Airmanship Award for helping to prevent a catastrophe. Their Boeing 747-400 was at 35,000ft. and approaching Russian airspace while en route from Detroit to Narita, when an uncommanded bank of 35 deg. occurred. The crew hand-flew for more than 1.5 hr. to counter the bank, devising best procedures to execute a safe approach to diversion airport Anchorage, Alaska.
After years of development, the Pentagon is about to learn whether its investment of time and millions of dollars in the Airborne Laser missile defense system has paid off.
The U.S. Justice Dept. and Lockheed Martin last week entered into a $37.9-million settlement concerning charges that the defense company overcharged USAF on the Lantirn targeting system to offset losses on other efforts. The whistleblower who alerted the government netted $8.75 million.
PEER PRESSURE Members of the Columbia investigation team spent a month hammering out their differences to produce a report they could all accept, but one member wanted to go further. Air Force Brig. Gen. Duane W. Deal, commander of the 21st Space Wing, will issue a 10-page "augmentation" to the main report in one of the five volumes of appendices still to be published. It will stress the need for more and better-trained civil service inspectors to oversee contractor work at Kennedy Space Center.
FADE FROM BLUE Analysis of some 40,000 galaxies in the vicinity of the Milky Way confirms suspicions the Universe is gradually going dark, as the rate of star birth is outstripped by stars' deaths. Astronomers at Edinburgh University's Institute for Astronomy and the University of Pennsylvania used the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and some special software to speed analysis of the ocean of data it contains to study galactic color spreads.
FRENCH GAINS In the first quarter of fiscal year 2003-04, despite a 5.7% traffic drop, Air France could maintain profitability, in contrast with British Airways' and Lufthansa German Airlines' losses. Air France's position is a great achievement in the post-Iraq, post-severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) market, according to French officials, although the carrier's net profit is no more than 4 million euros ($4.4 million) on 3 billion euros in revenues. "The business climate further deteriorated," Air France executives stressed, but the weak U.S.
The final USAF/Lockheed Martin DSCS (Defense Satellite Communi-cations System) military communications spacecraft was to be launched from Cape Canaveral Aug. 29 on board a Boeing Delta IV Medium Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle after a one-day delay due to weather. The $200-million DSCS-3-B6 spacecraft was built about 20 years ago and has undergone upgrades to greatly expand its multiservice communications capabilities beyond the technology available when it was first built. The $75-million Delta IV represents the second military EELV mission.
Former astronaut Donald A. Thomas has been appointed NASA's International Space Station program scientist, based at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. He succeeds Neal Pellis, who is now associate director of the Biological Sciences and Applications Office at JSC. Thomas worked in the Safety, Operations Development and Payloads branches of the NASA Astronaut Office, and was NASA's director of operations at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia.
TOPO MAPS U.S. government mapmakers have used data generated by a synthetic aperture radar mounted on the space shuttle Endeavour over a 10-day period in February 2000 to produce the highest quality topographic map of the world yet, at least beneath the 60-deg. inclination orbit the shuttle followed. The image on the left represents the previous state of the art, a U.S. Geological Survey product compiled from several different map sources of different qualities that has a resolution of about 928 meters (3,000 ft.).
