The FAA has issued an airworthiness directive 2003-03-19 for all-model Boeing 747 aircraft requiring structural inspections of certain repair doublers that had been installed on the underside of the aft fuselage as a result of tail strikes. Failure to detect and repair possible fatigue cracking of the skin concealed under the doublers could result in rapid decompression of the aircraft. According to the FAA, the directive affects 1,140 aircraft, including 254 registered in the U.S.
Galaxy XII, a small geostationary satellite built by Orbital Sciences Corp. for PanAmSat, was delivered to the European launch site at Kourou, French Guiana, for a planned Ariane 5 launch in March. With roughly half the transponders of a typical communications platform, Galaxy XII is built around the "Star" satellite bus that Orbital hopes will capture a market niche supplying companies that don't need the big spacecraft typically placed in geostationary orbital slots.
The Columbia post-launch analysis that determined foam insulation debris from the shuttle external tank posed no serious threat to the safety of the orbiter and crew, was performed by NASA and contractor teams under a process with established checks and balances to root out weaknesses. The mathematical and computer methods involved were also biased conservatively to show worst-case ramifications, according to Ronald Dittemore, shuttle program manager.
The Air Force Research Laboratory's Space Vehicles Directorate has proposed a new organizational structure with processes that stimulate technological breakthroughs, extricating scientists from bureaucratic frustrations. Establishing an AFRL Phillips Technology Center, for example, could foster a multidisciplinary problem-solving environment free of the "restrictive burden of past thinking habits," said Scott Tyson, an AFRL engineer. Researchers see technology advancements being blocked more by rigid organizations and bureaucratic hurdles than by scientific challenges.
The son of a career member of the Air Force, Lt. Col. Michael P. Anderson of Spokane, Wash., 43, became a communications maintenance specialist when he joined that service after obtaining a bachelor of science degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Washington. Five years later he was selected for the Air Force's undergraduate pilot training program. He specialized in transport aircraft, taking assignments as an EC-135 pilot with the Strategic Air Command and as a commander of an air refueling wing.
USAF Lt. Col. (ret.) Price T. Bingham (Melbourne, Fla.)
Admiral Cebrowski correctly states: "Network-centric warfare is not about technology. It is an emerging theory of warfare." One major problem is that the emerging theory continues to apply the attrition-oriented perspective used in Cold War models and too many war plans. Applying this perspective leads to treating enemy forces as mindless robots and the belief that success in war can be measured in terms of numbers of targets destroyed.
In a bit of good news for the space community, Europe's experimental Artemis telecommunications/navigation satellite finally arrived on station last week, after a record-setting 18-month journey.
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The Pentagon wants more authority for itself, and less for Congress, over how it spends its money. In the case of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), for example, Congress should approve a single budget total and allow MDA to move funds from one program to another as it sees fit, says Michael Wynne, the Pentagon's principal deputy acquisition chief. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld complains that while the Pentagon spends $42 million an hour, it must seek approval from 4-6 congressional committees to move $15 million from one account to another.
Ronald J. Ray is one of four engineers at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center to be honored by the Washington-based American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics for their paper entitled "Flight Test Techniques Used To Evaluate Performance Benefits During Formation Flight." The other engineers are: Brent R. Cobleigh, M. Jake Vachon and Clinton St. John.
Photographers in California observed Columbia as it flew across the pre-dawn sky, and may have captured the craft in the early phases of breakup. The half-minute time exposures start with the normal white streak painted by the glowing, reentering orbiter, but all of a sudden a pink streak starts and continues for the rest of the frame. It is punctuated early on by a bright yellowish flare that lasted roughly a second.
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John Rahilly has become vice president-national sales and marketing for the Dassault Falcon Jet's aircraft service network organization and Todd McGahey vice president/general manager of the Wilmington, Del., service facility. Rahilly was vice president-operations for Mercury Air Centers and had been president of KC Aviation. McGahey was head of the Garrett Aviation Services facility in Springfield, Ill., and three satellite centers.
Frederick M. Strader has been appointed president/chief operating officer of the AAI Corp., Hunt Valley, Md. He succeeds Richard R. Erkeneff, who will remain CEO. Strader was executive vice president/general manager of AAI's defense systems business.
Dave Daniels (see photo) has been appointed vice president-sales and marketing for Extex Ltd., Mesa, Ariz. He was director of technical services for Honeywell in Phoenix.
FAA Administrator Marion C. Blakey, speaking last week at the North American Safety Conference in Atlanta, noted that while there were no fatalities on U.S. airlines in 2002, the crash last month of Air Midwest Flight 5481 at Charlotte, N.C., demonstrated that "We still have work to do."
David A. Fulghum (Washington), Frank Morring Jr. (Washington)
U.S. intelligence agencies operate ships and aircraft designed to analyze the glowing plasma that surrounds foreign spacecraft as they reenter the atmosphere, and this very specialized technology may help provide clues to the destruction of the Columbia space shuttle.
U.S. Navy Capt. (select) Laurel Blair Salton Clark, 41, of Racine, Wis., was a mission specialist making her first shuttle flight. Holder of a bachelor's degree in zoology and a doctorate in medicine from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she did post-graduate work in pediatrics. During medical school, she was on active duty with the Diving Medicine Dept. of the Naval Experimental Diving Unit and completed training as an undersea medical officer. Besides serving as a submariner medical officer, she made dives with U.S. Navy Seals.
USAF Lt. Col. (ret.) John F. Harvell (Merrimack, N.H. )
was both gratified and perturbed to read the articles on network-centric warfare (AW&ST Jan. 27, p. 50). I was gratified that USN Vice Adm. (ret.) Arthur K. Cebrowski and the operating commands are discovering the concepts that we struggled to enunciate more than 25 years ago, and perturbed that they have failed to pick up on the robust and survivable network concepts that were part of the original Joint Tactical Information Distribution System (JTIDS) "nodeless" architecture.
Philippe Jaquard has become president of the Asecna African flight safety agency. He headed the DGAC French civil aviation authority's air navigation unit.
