PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON last week nominated fellow Arkansas native and Rhodes Scholar Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark as Supreme Allied Commander Europe and commander in chief of U.S. European Command. The former is subject to approval by the North Atlantic Council and the latter will have to be blessed by Congress. Clark leaves the top spot in Southern Command.
The Lockheed Martin Launch Vehicle, grounded since its failed debut in August, 1995, is a month away from its scheduled return to flight. An LMLV 1, the smaller configuration of the new booster, is slated to launch NASA's Lewis satellite from Vandenberg AFB, Calif., in early May. The mission is scheduled to be followed by at least two more LMLV flights this year. ``We think we've got everything hammered out,'' said Laurence A. Price, the LMLV program manager at Lockheed Martin Astronautics in Denver.
Bradley V. Foreman of the Douglas Aircraft Co. for the launch of the MD-10 cockpit conversion program, which Federal Express will use to upgrade its DC-10 transports. The two-phase modification program, based on Honeywell's Versatile Integrated Avionics architecture, includes conversion of each of the trijets to a two-pilot cockpit configuration.
Jacques Veaux, former engineering and quality director of Messier-Dowty, has been made a Chevalier de l'Ordre National du Merite of France for his work on landing gear design. The recently retired Veaux, who played a key role in integrating the engineering capabilities of Messier-Bugatti and Dowty Aerospace, also received the Royal Aeronautical British Silver Medal for contributions to the aerospace industry.
Gene Murphy, president and chief executive officer of General Electric Aircraft Engines, and Karl Krapek, president of Pratt&Whitney, for finding a way to link their companies and jointly offer one powerplant for the stretched Boeing 747. While the GE-P&W Engine Alliance may not survive the apparent demise of the aircraft, the joint company nevertheless represents a bold and positive move to counter the harmful, cutthroat, three-way engine competitions that have become the commercial transport industry standard.
James Thompson has been named president of AMR Distribution Systems of Fort Worth. He was director of logistics for Menlo Logistics. Thompson succeeds George Naftis, who has resigned.
James Purdom and Paul Menzel of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Environmental Satellite, Data and Information Service, have received a special award from the American Meteorological Society for leadership in introducing information from the new series of geostationary weather satellites to forecasters in the Western Hemisphere.
Some airlines are up in arms about Venezuela's plans to close the main runway at Simon Bolivar International Airport outside Caracas. Airport officials this week plan to close Runway 9 from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. local time for 10-15 days for rubber removal and repaving. That schedule will wreck the flight schedules of major operators like American Airlines and United Airlines. Carriers have been advised to plan for landings on Runway 8 and takeoffs on a 6,500-ft.-long taxiway parallel to Runway 9, or to shift their flights to the international airport in Valencia, 100 mi.
COMSAT CORP. HAS ANNOUNCED PLANS to sell Comsat RSI, a wholly owned subsidiary that designs, manufactures and integrates Earth stations, wireless systems and advanced antenna systems. The planned selloff is part of a strategic plan by Comsat to focus on its core satellite services and network services businesses. The company also reaffirmed plans to sell its 80% stake in Ascent Entertainment Group.
Bombardier Business Aircraft has formed a new corporate charter joint venture with Lufthansa CityLine. The new company, European Business Jet Services (EBJS), is scheduled to begin operations this fall. Headquartered at Berlin's Schoenfeld airport, it will offer charter services to North American and European companies to European destinations that have few or no scheduled services. EBJS is to be patterned after Bombardier's Alliance Plus charter program in the U.S., which employs underutilized customer aircraft.
Douglas L. Herrman has been named director of marketing communications and research for the VisionAire Corp., Chesterfield, Mo. He was a senior consultant with the Aragon Consulting Group.
ONE OF THE TWO GROUND SPARE RUSSIAN MIR core modules has been acquired by Tommy's Robot World, an entertainment attraction at the Wisconsin Dells. Three Mir core modules were built, the one now in orbit, a spare used for technical evaluations at Energia, and the third, which is set to arrive in Wisconsin this spring.
Aircraft Owners and Pilots Assn. President Phil Boyer for his ceaseless vigilance and untiring efforts to ensure that the rights of U.S. general aviation are not trampled at the state or federal levels. Boyer consistently has been a lone voice crying against wasteful FAA and congressional spending, the imposition of user fees to fund the FAA and championing the use of advanced technologies such as GPS.
Sharply declining fuel prices, expectations that second-quarter earnings estimates will be increased and very strong traffic growth (9% domestically) are prompting renewed interest in airline stocks, according to Salomon Brothers. Load factors are also impressive--73.5%. On the Standard&Poor's index, the group is up about 7% for the year. And that's noteworthy considering the beating that the broader market has suffered.
The in-flight separation of a wing flap segment from a Delta Air Lines Boeing 767 on Mar. 27 has prompted the FAA to call for special inspections of the aircraft's flap fittings and bolts for corrosion and cracks.
WORK AT CAPE CANAVERAL IS ADVANCING toward the first commercial launch from Florida Spaceport Authority's Launch Complex 46. Engineers from Thiokol Corp., Orbital Sciences and Lockheed Martin have begun practice stacking and handling operations with an inert Castor 120 solid rocket motor. The motor is like that to be used as the first two stages on the Lockheed Martin LMLV-2 booster, set to launch the Lunar Prospector spacecraft to the Moon from the facility in September.
Bruce M. Steinetz and Paul J. Sirocky of the NASA Lewis Research Center in Cleveland have seen the high-temperature seal that they developed for the National Aero-Space Plane project selected as NASA 1996 Government Invention of the Year.
Keith Ferris, artist and son of a career U.S. Air Force officer. For more than 50 years, he has shown people the beauty and artistry of flight in sketches, drawings and paintings, such as the 25-ft.-high, 75-ft.-wide mural ``Fortress Under Fire,'' which covers the entire back wall of the World War 2 Gallery of the National Air and Space Museum in Washington.
LOCKHEED MARTIN, RAYTHEON and TRW are forming a joint venture to bid for all work related to national missile defense. The joint venture will be led by Bill Loomis, who has headed Lockheed Martin's Thaad and predecessor antimissile programs. Announcement of the venture is pending final paperwork. The Ballistic Missile Defense Organization plans to award lead system integrator concept definition contracts in several weeks (AW&ST Mar. 3, p. 44). The other main team is Boeing North American/McDonnell Douglas. c
THE QUICK TURN-AROUND INTERCONNECT (QTAI) software design kit, developed by the Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corp. (MCC), is now available free on the Internet. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funded the kit to cut manufacturing cycle time for multichip modules. The kit allows designers to quickly evaluate different MCM designs before proceeding to detailed layout and fabrication. The QTAI kit can analyze high-density interconnects, including both flip chip and wire bond chip attachments.
Dennis J. Granato has been appointed director of defense programs within the Washington operations of GenCorp Aerojet. He was assistant deputy Defense under secretary for space systems acquisition.
At the recent Dayton Peace Accords held at Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, all of the contesting factions made great use of the Cambridge Research Associates ``Power Scenes'' to help them understand and map out the negotiated boundaries. This system uses Cambridge software on Silicon Graphics workstations to display 4-D moving SPOT 3-D terrain elevation data bases. Used by more than 20,000 ground troops and in 1,000 aircraft sorties, this software helped arrange the albeit-fragile peace.
Trans World Airlines Inc. is hardly a model of airline health, as the carrier's first-quarter financial performance will confirm, but TWA already may be headed for better days. Many industry observers, however, may find it difficult to see beyond just the next few weeks.
