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Now that Delta IV has successfully flown its first mission, Boeing is hopeful the program's emphasis on advanced manufacturing processes to achieve "lowest sustainable unit cost" will enable it to gain 50% of the global market for commercial communications satellite launches.
Robert Wall (Washington), David A. Fulghum (Washington)
Israeli airlines are racing to protect their aircraft against heat-seeking missiles in the wake of the Nov. 28 attempted shoot-down in Kenya. But electronic warfare executives doubt that, barring a catastrophic incident, U.S. airlines will follow suit.
Arianespace is preparing a second shot at launching a powerful new Ariane rocket intended to orbit a critical European telecom research payload. The launch vehicle, the Ariane 5 EC-A, failed to make it through the countdown on Nov. 28 in a first attempt to lift off with a French Stentor technology spacecraft and Eutelsat's Hot Bird 7 telecom satellite on board. The interruption, 3 sec. prior to ignition, was due to problems with external igniters on the launch table that burn off liquid hydrogen used to prechill the main stage Vulcain cryogenic engine.
Michael A. Taverna (Paris), Michael A. Taverna (Kourou, French Guiana)
SES Global moves to downplay the effect of the loss of Astra 1K and assurances from Snecma minimizing the potential impact of a solar array problem may bring some calm to the reeling space insurance and investor communities. The failure of a Proton K booster on Nov. 26 to properly orbit SES Global's Astra 1K, a huge telecom satellite with 54 Ku- and Ka-band transponders, stands to cost the insurance industry up to $250million (AW&ST Dec. 2, p. 45).
Researchers at NASA's Ames Research Center are developing a technique to manufacture extremely small electronic structures with genetically modified bacteria. A DNA sequence pulled from Sulfolobus shibatae, a single-cell organism that lives in hot springs, produces a protein that assembles into a two-dimensional lattice and can be further modified to stick to gold or semiconductor material. By cloning the DNA into a harmless version of E. coli bacteria, researchers have been able to grow lattice rings about 20 nanometers across.
A recently released Frost & Sullivan World Unmanned Air Vehicles Market report notes that industry revenues were $1.4 billion in 2002 and are projected to reach $1.8 billion by 2007. The war against terrorism has positioned reconnaissance, surveillance and target acquisition UAVs in the forefront of much military planning. Government budgets toward development and procurement of UAVs, based on past successes, have increased, and more opportunities beckon. The industry segment is entering a new phase of development with focus on designs for the end of the decade.
A new company combining the launch vehicle division of EADS with its counterpart at Astrium will be formed sometime next year, once the buyout of BAE Systems' Astrium stake has been completed, according to EADS LV President/CEO Philippe Couillard. The new company, temporarily dubbed LICO, will have aggregate sales of 1.5 billion euros ($1.5 billion) and employ nearly 5,000 after an ongoing streamlining program has been put into effect.
Boeing's engineering and technical staff voted to ratify a three-year contract that specifies a 4% salary increase, with a 6% bonus for acceptance of the offer. Workers, represented by the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, also agreed to a 12% increase in monthly health care costs, beginning in July 2004. The company presented its final offer to the Puget Sound workers last month and won 88% approval from both labor groups.
This year's rising number of fatal crashes attributed to controlled flight into terrain is spurring urgent pleas from safety advocates for increased training and installation of advanced terrain avoidance warning systems.
While the U.S. airline crisis is blamed mostly on terrorism and post-Sept. 11, 2001, conditions, U.S. carriers bear a large responsibility for the flight of high-revenue passengers to foreign carriers, as their premium-class service has all but collapsed.
Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who chairs the Senate aviation subcommittee, is fuming about the Air Transportation Stabilization Board's rejection of loan guarantees for sickly United Airlines and hints broadly he might try to do something about it (see p. 43). "Over the last several weeks, United employees said they were willing to make necessary sacrifices to keep United flying" and looked to the three board members to help make that possible, Rockefeller said. "Yet they failed to do so. Even a simple request to give United a one-week extension was rejected. . . .
Barring a successful, hastily mounted court challenge, the Defense Dept. last week was poised to begin collecting $2.3 billion from General Dynamics Corp. and the Boeing Co. stemming from an 11-year-old dispute over the ill-fated A-12 Navy aircraft program. The Pentagon notified the two companies that it would immediately seek the money to which the government claims it is entitled. General Dynamics was hoping to win a stay of the collection effort through the courts. If it fails, the Defense Dept.
Less than a week after a Russian Block DM upper stage on a Proton K rocket failed, stranding Astra 1K--the world's largest satcom--in a useless orbit, Lockheed Martin shipped the Telesat Canada Nimiq 2 communications satellite to Baikonur Cosmodrome for launch in late December on board a Proton M booster. The Proton M version has a new Khrunichev Breeze M upper stage unrelated to the Energia system that failed. International Launch Services, which markets Protons, has now followed through on plans to abandon the Proton K/Block DM configuration.
Contractors who hope to pick up a piece of NASA's Consolidated Space Operations Contract (CSOC) after it is discontinued at the end of 2003 will get a chance to ask questions at a Dec. 18 briefing in Washington. Agency officials will describe how they plan to divide up the $1.9-billion pie Lockheed Martin lost when the savings it generated didn't meet expectations (AW&ST Sept. 2, p. 23). While the new "Space Mission Communications and Data Services" procurement will cover the whole agency, plans call for one or more work packages to be awarded at each field center.
Excess capacity and national markets limited by homeland regulatory boundaries are limiting factors for communications satellites in the Asia-Pacific region.
United Airlines, the famed "800-lb. gorilla" of U.S. commercial aviation, lurched toward bankruptcy after the federal government last week temporarily closed off an escape route by denying its request for a $1.8-billion loan guarantee. The Air Transportation Stabilization Board (ATSB) described United's business plan, designed to support the loan, as "not financially sound."
About $1 billion in U.S., European and Asian communications satellite hardware will be launched on about $700 million in Lockheed Martin boosters here through early next year. All of the Cape's Atlas and Titan pads were loaded with satcom mission hardware going into early December, ending a lull in satcom launch operations that has dominated 2002. The Boeing Delta IV is also to launch in February a Defense Satellite Communications system payload on a flight worth about $200 million in booster and satcom hardware.
Douglas Barrie (London), Michael A. Taverna (Paris)
Twelve European nations last week approved a feasibility study into a grand plan to collectively address future military fast-jet training needs. The future of one or more nascent European jet trainer projects also hangs on the outcome of the partner nations' Eurotraining efforts. The year-long study will include considering potential airframe options to address what is dubbed the Advanced European Jet Pilot Training, or Eurotraining, for short.
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Robert M. Jones, emeritus professor of engineering science and mechanics at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, has received the 2002 Award in Composites from the American Society for Composites for his contributions to composite materials technology.
The first Boeing Delta IV roars off Launch Complex 37 at Cape Canaveral on more than 1 million lb. thrust from its Rocketdyne RS-68 oxygen/hydrogen engine and two Alliant Techsystems solid rocket motors (see p. 54). The 205-ft.-tall vehicle is flanked by 378-ft.-tall lightning protection towers. The Delta IV's cryogenic upper stage uses Mitsubishi components with a Pratt & Whitney RL10B-2 engine carrying a Snecma nozzle. Boeing photo by Carleton Bailie.
The latest internal drive toward US Airways' Chapter 11 restructuring got underway last week with management attempting to carve out another $200 million in cost reductions as a surety to qualify for a $900-million federal loan guarantee.
