General Electric and Pratt & Whitney are exploring the possibility of using derivatives of commercial and military air-breathing, gas turbine engines to power a reusable ``flyback'' booster for a next-generation launch system. Under 10-month, $300,000 contracts awarded earlier this summer by NASA, GE is studying modified military F118 and F136 engines and civil CFM56 and CF6 powerplants for the booster concept, while Pratt is focusing on military F119s or F135s and commercial PW2040s or PW4098s.
James A. Munda has become FAA-designated alteration station administrator and Joseph Esmerado director of maintenance, overhaul and repair services for the Keystone Helicopter Corp., West Chester, Pa. Munda was manager of engineering, while Esmeraldo held similar positions at Jet Aviation and Butler Aviation.
Airbus is planning a network of aviation service partnerships that will for the first time give it a prime role in freighter conversions, upgrades and maintenance repair and overhaul services--and perhaps relaunch the debate over the place of original equipment manufacturers in the MRO industry.
Jason Chamberlain has been named vice president-mobility and surveillance systems for Pratt & Whitney, East Hartford, Conn. He was director of airlift and mature engine programs.
Kimberly Phillips (see photos) has been appointed general manager at the Addison, Tex., fixed base operation of Atlanta-based Mercury Air Centers Inc. She was supervisor of quality development for Bombardier Aerospace/FlexJets. Brian Swift and Steve Bowlin have been named managers in the headquarters Customer Programs Dept. Swift was an operations manager for Raytheon's Travel Air Program, while Bowlin was manager of facilities in Birmingham, Ala., and Savannah, Ga., for Signature Flight Support.
This cable jacket improves abrasion resistance, enhances flexibility and can be marked with laser techniques. It is designed for use in applications such as aircraft wiring, motion control equipment, and environments where wires and cables are subject to chafing or vibration. The seamless wrap PTFE tape improves handling and mechanical performance of PTFE-insulated wire and jacketed cable by helping to remove the mechanical ``weak points'' of the seams caused by tape overlap in conventional PTFE tape wrapping.
Amateur astronomer Bill Yeung may have discovered Apollo 12's long-lost S-IVB third stage, which entered a barely stable Earth orbit after its Nov. 14, 1969, launch due to a too-long rocket burn. It was largely forgotten and untracked until Yeung found an unknown 16.5-magnitude object in Earth orbit on Sept. 3. Paul W.
NASA's Space Launch Initiative (SLI) will not continue funding the hydrogen-fueled rocket engine it has had under development by Pratt & Whitney and Aerojet, opting instead to push development of kerosene-fueled rockets for a future reusable launch vehicle (RLV). The SLI program office will have spent about $57 million on the Co-optimized Booster for Reusable Applications (Cobra) engine at the end of its first contract option Sept. 30, and does not plan to extend the contract.
THE GENERAL AVIATION MANUFACTURERS ASSN. board of directors has decided to allow foreign aircraft builders into the association. Dassault Falcon Jet, Bombardier Aerospace, Embraer and Piaggio have applied to join. GAMA President Edward Bolen said the policy change is needed because the organization is becoming increasingly involved with international regulatory issues affecting business jet operations through its work with the European Joint Aviation Authorities, International Civil Aviation Organization and European Aviation Safety Agency.
When the X-45A unmanned combat aerial vehicle made its first flight in May, part of the lift was provided by foam technology originally designed for the manufacture of surfboards and modified for use as the structural core material in the UCAV's wings. The company that developed the material, Foam Matrix, was the recipient of Boeing's 2002 Supplier Innovation Award--the first Phantom Works supplier to receive such recognition.
Iraq's oil fields and plants for building or storing weapons of mass destruction (WMD) are off the Pentagon's bombing list and have been transferred to a growing catalog of targets that would be disabled by electronic attacks or information warfare. With worries about world oil markets, the economic future of Iraq, and the specter of releasing plumes of chemical or biological agents into the air from bombed storage sites that could drift into neighboring countries, the U.S. is set to exercise some new ``wrinkles'' in warfare.
A Honeywell Aerospace-led team has launched the Nova Wire Integrity Program that employs ``intelligent telemaintenance'' to electronically test and identify faulty wiring and connections in aging aircraft. The team estimates that manual troubleshooting of wiring for the average narrow-body aircraft costs $87,040 over four years. Through the use of intelligent telemaintenance, they estimate that can be reduced 88% to $10,880.
Transportation Security Administration chief James Loy told the Senate Commerce Committee Sept. 10 the TSA would be ``just fine'' through November or maybe December despite Congress's 45,000 limit on TSA personnel. But on Sept. 25, he imposed an agency-wide hiring freeze. Robert Johnson, Loy's top spokesman, said the TSA would be ``getting close'' to the ceiling once its latest group of new employees, totaling several thousand, came aboard on Sept. 29.
Bringing a new factory onstream is difficult enough because of the many processes that must be ``turned on'' and made to function, but in the case of Alcoa's Howmet castings plant here, the task was especially challenging. Less than a year after the facility opened in 2000, the commercial aircraft business entered a decline--and about 60% of Laval's revenues came from that market. As a result, the sales forecast for the new factory, along with projections of when it would begin to earn money, suddenly became outdated.
In other budget proposals, the French government said it would increase spending for transportation by 3%, to 10.7 billion euros, of which 2.1 billion euros would go for air transport, including 264 million euros for development of the A380 ultrawide-body airliner and other R&D projects.
Alcatel has sold 6.1% of the shares in defense electronics company Thales for 314 million euros ($307 million), after unloading a total of 9.5% in two steps the year before. The telecommunications equipment maker also said it would eliminate 400 jobs at its Alcatel Space subsidiary in 2003, over and above the 450 layoffs announced earlier this year (AW&ST Feb. 18, p. 58 ; May 21, 2001, p. 45). In addition, an avionics facility in Valence, France, with 250 employees is expected to be shifted to non-space activities and eventually sold.
Gail K. Warner has been promoted to director from manager of media relations for the Goodrich Corp., Charlotte, N.C. Brian Costa has been appointed director of new business and strategic analysis. He was a senior financial analyst.
Schweizer Aircraft's history reads like the heart of aviation folklore. Two brothers and a cousin snuck around and learned to fly. They built a glider in a barn. They formed a company in Big Flats, N.Y., to build gliders that were used in World War II as observation aircraft. After the war, when aircraft sales dried up, they turned their company's metal-bending capability to making hand-held crates for milk delivery.
A governmental team that seeks to determine causes for Sabena Belgian World Airlines' bankruptcy and demise is now probing the carrier's final aircraft order, signed in late 1997, which cov- ered 34 Airbus transports. Former Sabena employees claim that the order's magnitude significantly exceeded Sabena's real needs. Jean-Claude Van Espen, the Brussels court's judge who heads the team, this month visited Airbus' corporate headquarters located at Toulouse, in southwest France, to scrutinize the contract's terms.
In 1997, the company developed a radiation-hardened version of the MCS-96-compatible 16-bit microcontroller, the UT80CRH196KD. The UT80CRH196KD was guaranteed to 100 Krads(Si) with an Onset LET threshold of 14.4 MeV-cm2/mg and has been employed for space applications ranging from low-Earth to geosynchronous orbits (LEO/GEO). To meet the requirements of a next-generation sensor system, a customer requested a higher total dose and single-event-upset (SEU) guarantee to allow the microcontroller to operate in a GEO orbit.
NETJETS HAS ORDERED 100 GULFSTREAM 150 business jets for its fractional ownership program. The total value of the order, including options and maintenance services, is about $1.5 billion. Deliveries are scheduled to begin in 2005. In addition, NetJets has placed orders with Cessna Aircraft Co. for 100 Citation CJ3 and 12 Citation X jets worth more than $300 million. Deliveries would begin in 2004 and continue through 2005. In related news, Cessna is collaborating with Max-Viz Inc.
Boeing has won the lead for design and construction of a next-generation family of satellite communication terminals for aircraft and ground sites. The six-year, $273.2-million contract funds a new spiral-development acquisition strategy for the Family of Advanced Beyond-Line-of-Sight Terminal program.
Former astronaut Frank L. Culbertson, Jr., has been named senior vice president/program manager for the Safety, Reliability and Quality Assurance contract at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston for the Science Applications International Corp.'s Space, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Group. His last mision for NASA was last year as commander of the third expedition to the International Space Station.
