COMET, THE COMMERCIAL Experiment Transporter, has been brought back from its near-death experience. NASA has agreed to provide $14 million in a firm fixed-price contract to EER Systems, Vienna, Va., to fly experiments on a Space Industries International recoverable capsule and a Westinghouse Electric Corp. service module this summer. The space agency had withdrawn support for the Comet program when it developed major cost overruns and schedule slips under management of the University of Tennessee's Center for Space Transportation and Applied Research.
The U.S. Army will gain fleet experience on the engine intended for the RAH-66 Comanche attack helicopter by letting the Border Patrol use it in converted Bell UH-1H Huey helicopters. The early version of the Comanche's LHTEC T800 turboshaft is a 1,400-shp. class engine like the UH-1H's standard Lycoming T53-L-13. However, the T800 uses about 40% less fuel, and the installation weighs about 100 lb. less. The T800 has a 6,000-hr. design life with on-condition maintenance, compared with the T53's roughly 1,500-hr. overhaul interval.
THE U.S. AIR FORCE and Northrop Grumman are discussing the possibility of sending the B-2 to this year's Paris air show in June. If approved for the trip, the stealth bomber would most likely be a test aircraft bailed from Air Combat Command to Northrop Grumman.
T. Keith Glennan, an electrical engineer and university administrator who became NASA's first administrator, died Apr. 11 in Mitchellville, Md., of complications from a stroke. He was 89. In 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower selected Glennan, then president of Case Institute of Technology in Cleveland, to lead the new agency formed by the National Aeronautics and Space Act. It was Glennan who brought the German rocket engineer Wernher von Braun, then working on missiles for the Army, to the budding space program.
SOUTH AFRICAN AIRWAYS IS BEGINNING TO WIN a payoff from a 1994 pledge to recruit a new corps of pilots that will reflect a racially mixed society. The first 12 cadets, chosen from 2,000 applicants, includes three whites (two male, one female), seven black men, an Indian man and one man of mixed-race. The new training effort includes seeking foreign tenders to provide a flight training academy. From 18 offers, SAA named Australian Aviation College in Adelaide. The recruits will head there next month for an 18-month course.
One of AsiaSat-2's customers that has been following the Telstar 402 accident closely is Germany's international broadcasting service, Deutsche Welle, because without the new satellite it cannot launch its 24-hr. multilingual programming.
LOOK FOR ESCALATION OF DISAGREEMENT between the European Union and the Belgian government, which is offering to slash Sabena Belgian World Airlines' taxes on salaries. The government's goal is to support the flag carrier's wide-ranging cost-saving plan and make Sabena financially more appealing to potential partners. The lowering of taxes would save an estimated $20 million per year--certainly not a dramatic gain, but one that is expected to be viewed by the EU's competition directorate as state aid, albeit indirect.
Paul Behnke has been named director of economics and security by the Airports Council International. He succeeds Peter Wilkins, who is retiring. Behnke is a former U.S. foreign service officer.
American Mobile Satellite Co. got a leap on competitors in the market for North American mobile telephone, position locating and messaging services with the launch of its first communications satellite on a Martin Marietta Atlas 2A booster. If checkout of the satellite proceeds smoothly, AMSAT next fall will expand the services it offers to individuals and businesses throughout the U.S. who have no access to existing cellular telephone networks or are without regular, reliable telephone service.
Officials of Westland Helicopters and Agusta, partners in EH Industries, are assessing the potential impact of the crash of an EH101 naval prototype during a flight test on Apr. 7. The four-man crew parachuted to safety before the Anglo/Italian helicopter crashed in the English countryside, about 30 mi. from Westland's Yeovil facilities.
U.S. regional airlines reported record enplanements and departures in 1994, and growth is projected to accelerate this year as demand for larger, faster aircraft increases. The nation's regional airlines enplaned 57.1 million passengers last year, compared with 52.7 million in 1993, according to preliminary data provided by Washington-based AvStat Associates. Average load factor also increased to 50.7%--up nearly 2% from 49% the previous year.
AIR SHOWS ARE BIG BUSINESS and during 1995 will attract audiences totaling nearly 27 million throughout North America. Last year, air shows were the second most popular spectator event in North America, following only baseball. Continuing a 2% per year growth rate documented since 1987, air show attendance in 1994 was almost twice that of NFL football and auto racing. Air shows generate approximately $2 billion in revenues annually in North America, according to the International Council of Air Shows, Jackson, Mich.
BOSTON UNIVERSITY researchers are flying high after winning funding for the school's first satellite. Daniel Cotton of the university's Center for Space Physics had one of the six winners selected from 66 proposals submitted to the University Space Research Assn. for small satellites under the Student Explorer Demonstration Initiative (Stedi). NASA is providing $24 million for Stedi. Boston's $4.1-million spacecraft, called Terriers, to be built by AeroAstro Corp., will use radio tomography to study the ionosphere and upper atmosphere. Launch is scheduled for 1997.
SEN. SAM NUNN (D.-GA.) AND OTHER B-2 ADVOCATES on Capitol Hill ``aren't going to like'' the results of the independent study of bomber requirements they requested last year, a defense analyst says. The Institute for Defense Analyses study, to have been briefed to Defense Secretary William Perry last weekend, has not been released. But AVIATION WEEK&SPACE TECHNOLOGY has learned that the institute concluded it is ``just not prudent to increase the size of the bomber force'' at a time of constrained budgets, as an industry official put it.
Photograph: Mir 18 commander Vladimir Dezhurov (center) and crewmate Gennady Strekalov (right) have found U.S. astronaut Norman E. Thagard to be a ``hard-working astronaut'' who ``does everything well.'' WIDE WORLD PHOTO U.S. astronaut Norman E. Thagard will bring home many suggestions for refining plans for the international space station when he returns from a planned three-month visit on Russia's Mir space station this summer. One month into his visit, Thagard said he has found waste management and stowage control to be critical problems on Mir.
SIRA, LTD., of Chislehurst, England, hopes its experience on Eureca, the European Retrievable Carrier, will give it an edge in an ESA competition to provide an experiment to fly on the international space station in 2001. Engineers, (right) examine the Exobiology Radiation Assembly that carries 2,400 tiny biological samples and radiation dosimeters on the Eureca satellite. After nearly a year in orbit, the unit showed little evidence of wear. The European Space Agency expects to fly a similar experiment it calls the Space Exposure Biological Assembly on the station.
The U.S. Air Force is pressing for a national debate on buying additional B-2 bombers which will begin in earnest later this month when the Pentagon releases an independent study of U.S. heavy bomber requirements.
THE PENTAGON IS SHORT OF BOMBS. Purchases are not keeping up with needs, officials say, even though the nation's ability to fight two major regional conflicts at about the same time depends partly on having enough precision-guided munitions. For about a three-year period, for example, B-2 aircraft will have only enough precision bombs--128--for a single mission. By one estimate, the total number of sensor-fuzed weapons available through 2000 would be used up in just two days of combat.
The Pentagon's demand for smaller aerial weapons, particularly to beef-up the firepower of stealth aircraft, has triggered fast-paced research into miniaturized precision guidance both for existing, lower-weight dumb bombs and for a new family of reduced-diameter weapons.
Following the lead of airframe companies, the Advanced Research Projects Agency will explore how missile manufacturers can cut costs by building a variety of weapons on a single assembly line. ARPA will spend $130 million on the Affordable Multi-Missile Manufacturing Program (AM3), with an initial $32 million going to four aerospace industry teams headed by Loral Vought Systems, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Texas Instruments.
The International Civil Aviation Organization has moved to rescind its mandate that all international airports be outfitted with Microwave Landing Systems (MLS) by Jan. 1, 1998, to replace current instrument landing systems. The new flexible policy, widely endorsed here at ICAO's Special Communications/Operations Divisional Meeting, recognizes the prospect of shifting to use of global navigation satellite systems, such as the U.S. Navstar Global Positioning System and Russia's Glonass, as soon as the year 2000 for Category 1 service.
Gerald W. Tobey (see photo) has been named managing director of Texas Instruments, Ltd. U.K. He remains director of defense systems and Electronics Group international business development.
EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the third section of the English translation of the French Commission of Investigation preliminary report of the June 30, 1994, crash of an Airbus A330 at Toulouse-Blagnac airport. The aircraft, as part of Category 3 certification testing, was performing an engine-out go-around with autopilot when lateral control was lost. The A330 was at too low an altitude at the time the crew regained recovery. The aircraft impacted the ground, killing the test crew of three and four observers. Other sections of the report will be published in coming weeks.
Following are excerpts from a report of the U.S.-Japan Study Group on creation of an East Asia security forum (AW&ST Feb. 28, 1994, p. 24). The report was cosponsored by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and International House of Japan. It focused on preempting tensions between Japan and China, and Japan and Russia.
