Betty Skelton, a three-time U.S. aerobatics champion, died Aug. 31 at home in Florida. She was 85. Skelton made her first solo flight at the age of 12. She twice set the world's light-plane altitude records, reaching 29,050 ft. in a Piper Cub in 1951, shortly before her retirement from competitive flying. Skelton was also the first woman to drive an Indianapolis race car, and broke numerous records for speed and acceleration at racetracks.
Electric cars using lithium ion batteries tend toward the cute or exotic and—so far—seem best suited for short trips. Hammonds Industries has taken the lithium battery idea into a heavy-weight class for manufacturing with surprising on-the-job staying power.
Newby O. Brantly was a Texas-born engineer and inventor whose broad interests benefited broadly, leading him to design a knitting machine, backhoe loader and athletic brassiere, among other things. A fascination with emerging helicopter technology resulted in his creation of the B-2 in 1953.
At the same time that N.O. Brantly was creating his little helicopter, David Thurston, a Grumman engineer, was developing a single-engine amphibian, which he dubbed the Skimmer. The prototype flew in 1948, but another eight years passed before type-certification and production began.
While Western European carriers such as Lufthansa and Air France-KLM have been complaining about the alleged subsidies enjoyed by their rivals in the Middle East, their competitors in Eastern Europe receive massive government financial support. Most of these ex-flag carriers are state-owned anyway and would not be flying anywhere if private shareholders had to carry the huge losses incurred in the past 20 years.
NASA will need to manage the size of its shrinking astronaut corps carefully in the post-shuttle era to cope with the demands of long-duration missions aboard the International Space Station (ISS). A panel of the National Research Council (NRC) also warned that unanticipated attrition in the ranks and yet-to-be-defined human roles in the development of commercial space transportation services and of spacecraft for deep-space exploration mean the space agency needs to keep training astronauts.
Canada's Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (Dextre), a two-armed robotic handyman, is ready for business on the ISS after completing its first repair job Aug. 30. The big Canadian-built robot changed out a remote power control module, a type of circuit breaker, in two back-to-back nightly sessions managed from NASA's Mission Control in Houston. Total time for the task was 29 hr.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) is trying to forge a coalition opposed to deeper defense cuts than agreed to by Congress in its first stab at major deficit reduction. He was already the senior Republican on the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction and has deep experience in nuclear, missile defense and strategic issues. But he may have scored additional loyalty points by insisting that after the first $350 billion in cuts to the defense budget, there be no more whacks.
Senate appropriators are recommending fiscal 2012 baseline defense spending at about $513 billion, the same as this fiscal year and more than $25 billion below what the Obama administration is requesting for fiscal 2012, which starts Oct. 1. The Senate Appropriations Committee allocation, which was expected, contrasts with a House defense spending bill that trimmed only $9 billion from the request.
The NASA cost estimate that Booz Allen Hamilton found “optimistic” for the Space Launch System (SLS) was $18 billion for a first flight of the congressionally mandated heavy-lift booster in 2017. That includes about $10 billion for the big rocket itself, $6 billion for the Orion-based multi-purpose crew vehicle and $2 billion for infrastructure at Kennedy Space Center. Those previously undisclosed figures, which Booz Allen found adequate for near-term planning but based on unrealistic assumptions further out (AW&ST Aug. 29, p.
The Transportation Department's consumer protection force may be on track for a record-setting year in the number of fines levied against airlines and other air travel sellers, at least for this century. Through August, the office has crafted 44 consent orders for operating without regulatory authority and violating rules on fare advertising, code-share disclosure, disabled traveler services and charter carrier requirements. That compares to 24 for the same time period in 2010 and substantially exceeds any full-year total from 2000-09.
Since FAA spending authority is set to expire once again this week, unions are ratcheting up the pressure on House Republicans to pass a full-blown FAA reauthorization bill. The Air Line Pilots Association and the Association of Flight Attendants rolled their carry-on bags to Reagan Washington National Airport to emphasize that safety and jobs are on the line if Congress fails to come to an agreement by Sept. 16, when the current, 21st short-term extension expires.
Call it a case of being let down by one's older brother: New delays in the certification of the Comac ARJ21 regional jet could force the development of the C919 mainline commercial aircraft to be prolonged. The FAA is insisting its shadow certification effort on the ARJ21 be completed before the agency begins work on the C919. But the C919 is already near the point at which a certification agency needs to be brought in; if the project advances much further without the FAA's involvement, the U.S. regulator may decide it can never become involved.
Boeing is placing its reengined single-aisle transport, the 737 MAX, into a market with a demand that dwarfs anything either it or rival Airbus experienced since they began competing for 100-200-seat jet sales 27 years ago.
Facing tough competition from the Airbus A320NEO, Boeing's design team is treading a fine line between conflicting forces as it homes in on the final configuration for the newly launched 737 MAX.
Finally responding to calls from operators and industry to begin work on replacing its hard-pressed helicopter fleets, the U.S. Army is moving ahead with a program to develop the next generation of rotorcraft. But the service faces a challenge securing sufficient government and industry funding to sustain competition until a development program can begin around the end of the decade.
Forget death and taxes. Probably the surest thing in aerospace these days is that South Korea will want serious technology transfer in any major military equipment order. The country's manufacturers are increasingly confident in their ability to win manufacturing contracts without the compulsion of offsets. More and more, they and the government want the know-how behind the systems that the country buys, with the aim of making the next generation themselves.
Knowing it could never keep up with its potential adversaries in quantity, maintaining a qualitative equipment edge has always been key to Israel's defense planning. Last year's agreement between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia for the sale of 84 F-15SAs and 170 APG-63(v)3 active, electronically scanned array (AESA) radars, therefore, has drawn particular interest and concern. Although some backers of Israel in the U.S. were hoping to scuttle the deal, Israel has opted to pursue a path to assure it maintains a competitive technical edge.
As Britain's defense industry adjusts to a new era of fiscal austerity, it has been looking for guidance from the government on what capabilities to preserve and where it can afford to retrench. However, there is growing concern that a primary document informing these decisions will not provide the expected road map. Moreover, industry is struggling to define its plans in part because of uncertainty caused by the multitude of Defense Ministry reviews under way—even a year after the Strategic Defense and Security Review (SDSR) was concluded.
The inflight failure of Blue Origin's second test vehicle is not necessarily a failure of the secretive company's efforts to begin launching scientists and space tourists on a reusable suborbital rocket. Nor will the aborted launch affect NASA's plans to use private operators to transport cargo and crew to the International Space Station (ISS).
A new strategic partnership between SES S.A. and Russian satellite services company Gazprom Space Systems could give the Luxembourg-based satellite operator a foothold in the Russian market, positioning SES to take on Paris-based Eutelsat and its long-standing partnership with the Russian Satellite Communications Co. (RSCC).
Major airlines across the Continent are looking to reposition their business now that the sky over Europe's network carriers has darkened, with little prospect in sight for economic recovery. Europe's three big airline groups, Air France-KLM, International Airlines Group (IAG) and Lufthansa, are developing different ways to deal with an expected market slowdown. Strategies reach from asset disposals and acquisitions to cost-cutting programs and a focus on new consumer groups.
The relatively low rate of commercial aircraft accidents in recent years has meant that crashes may trigger individual safety recommendations but not shake up the entire aviation system. However, the ripple effects from Air France Flight 447 may defy that axiom. As investigators drill down into the sequence of events that led to the crash of the Airbus A330-200 on June 1, 2009, during a flight from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, they are putting the spotlight on a range of concerns that had not yet received close scrutiny.
Bombardier is hoping its sales push into the Asia-Pacific region will boost aircraft orders to keep its Q400 and CRJ production lines busy. The Canadian aircraft maker's backlog of firm orders for the Q400 and CRJ-series aircraft is 40 and 61 units, respectively, says a spokesman. “The planned Q400 production cut and resulting layoffs are scheduled during this fall. For CRJ, we will continue to assess” the situation, he adds.
