Kistler Aerospace Corp., a privately financed startup company that is trying to leapfrog NASA's reusable launch vehicle effort by adapting rocket engines originally built for the Soviet moon program, has filed the first application for a license to operate a commercial RLV, the FAA associate administrator for commercial space transportation said yesterday.
House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) said yesterday that the use of B- 52 bombers against Iraq on Sept. 3 illustrated a need to look again at the ability of the U.S. to carry out deep attack missions, and that he would press for production of more B-2 bombers.
U.S. ARMY LT. GEN. JAY M. GARNER has been nominated for assignment as assistant vice chief of staff of the Army. Since September 1994, Garner has served as commander of the Army Space and Strategic Defense Command.
The U.S. Special Operations Command has canceled an effort to provide 105mm guided munitions to its AC-130 gunships and asked that the requirement be deferred beyond the future years defense plan.
NASA's Space Shuttle Atlantis launched for its fourth rendezvous and docking with Russia's Mir space station yesterday, hitting a narrow launch window after six weeks of technical and weather delays, but a problem that developed during ascent may force controllers to truncate the flight.
An across-the-board cut of about $550 million was made in all Pentagon research and development programs in the fiscal 1997 defense appropriations compromise package as one of the last steps in holding funding to the $244.8 billion level, congressional sources said yesterday. They said the House-Senate conferees at the end of the conference imposed a 1.5% cut in all R&D programs to reach the targeted level. The cuts had the effect of trimming some of the add-ons, but still left R&D funding above the requested level.
Human exploration may ultimately be the only way to determine whether life took root on Mars, but there's still a lot that can be learned from robotic spaceflight to the Red Planet and from studying Martian meteorites picked up on Earth, NASA officials and other experts told Congress. Scientists testifying before the House Science space and aeronautics subcommittee on Thursday said they have found no new data since the electrifying announcement last month that the oldest Martian meteorite contains what may be fossil evidence of ancient life on Mars.
Stanford University's Richard N. Zare, a member of the team that found evidence of possible ancient life on Mars in a Martian meteorite plucked from the ice of Antarctica, tells the House panel that meteorite study is a way to learn about the chemistry of celestial bodies without going to the expense of mounting sample-return space missions, either with robots or with human crews. "We get sample returns already at the rate of about two tons a year coming to the Earth," Zare says.
U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Ronald Fogleman says the AF has been able to obtain the Conventional Air Launched Cruise Missile (CALCM) for a unit cost of only about $175,000 - the cost to modify the original nuclear Air Launched Cruise Missile (ALCM) to the conventional role. Fogleman and some other AF officials say that because ALCMs were headed for the scrap heap under strategic arms limitation agreements, the price of CALCM shouldn't include the roughly $1.2 million it cost to buy each ALCM in the first place.
The Pentagon is playing good politics, having now deferred all major source selection decisions until after the November elections. The Joint Strike Fighter decision was slipped earlier this year, and now the Navy has slipped a similar decision for the LPD-17 Amphibious Transport Dock ship.
The Navy is confident it will buy at least 1,000 McDonnell Douglas F/A-18E/F strike fighters, says Rear Adm. Dennis McGinn, the service's air warfare director. "We need the E/F now and in the very near term" to replace aging F/A-18s and all F-14s, McGinn says. He notes that the distant IOC date of the Joint Strike Fighter - around 2008 - is driving the F/A-18E/F buy.
There's no U.S. Space Force in any of Dickman's space architectures, and Dickman disagrees with his former boss Gen. Charles Horner that one is needed. Although "the time may come when that's the right answer," in today's environment Dickman sees no justification for a separate military force to handle space operations. Space spending is a relatively small fraction of the overall U.S. defense budget, he says, and there is no space weapon or other asset that could start or stop a war by itself.
German manufacturer Grob may build more G520 Egret high-altitude, long-endurance research and surveillance aircraft following interest from a number of military and commercial organizations around the world, the company said. Originally ordered in quantity by the German Air Force under a contract that was cancelled after reunification, four of the five existing Egrets have been returned to service on various research programs.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) and ranking Democrat Sam Nunn (Ga.) make it clear in colloquy during Senate consideration of the fiscal 1997 defense authorization conference report that a $32 million boost for the EA-6B is to initiate a reactive jamming program. Nunn says the intent of the conference is to obligate no procurement funds for EA-6B upgrades until R&D funds are obligated for a reactive jammer project.
The Defense Dept. has begun its search for a lead systems integration contractor who could assure deployment of a national missile defense system in about six years, meeting requirements of the Pentagon's NMD plan. The newly established NMD joint program office is looking for a contractor to execute the so called "3+3" program in which an NMD capability must be developed and demonstrated by fiscal '99 and a system fielded, if necessary, three years later, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization said in a Sept. 11 Commerce Business Daily notice.
Raytheon Aircraft Co. chose FlightSafety Services Corp. and Hughes Training Inc. to proceed to the final phase of competition for the Ground Based Training System program, which will support the Joint Primary Aircraft Training System (JPATS) program. The two companies, each receiving about $1.5 million, will now work with the U.S. Navy and Air Force for about seven months to refine training system requirements for the GBTS and conduct limited prototyping, Raytheon said Friday. One of the competitors will be selected to produce the GBTS in the spring of 1997.
Tom Stafford, who headed the Bush Administration's "Synthesis Group" study of long-term U.S. space exploration strategy, says "senior members" of that panel still believe that human exploration of Mars will require development of a Saturn V-class heavy lift launch capacity and a nuclear thermal rocket. Stafford, a retired Air Force three-star and Apollo astronaut, tells a House Science space and aeronautics subcommittee that the "incremental" architectures his group formulated in 1990-91 are still valid as a way to fund pay-as-you-go Mars exploration.
NASA managers hope they can squeeze through a near-term budget crunch on the Space Station by bartering for hardware with international partners who must use the U.S. Space Shuttle to get to the Station, and work in U.S. modules once they get there. Japan is due to decide by the end of the month whether it will build the Centrifuge Accommodation Module and its internal equipment in exchange for the Shuttle flights necessary to orbit its Japanese Experiment Module (JEM) and related gear.
The jetliner recovery is picking up steam, and may be enough to reverse a three-year slide in the U.S. aerospace trade surplus if third- and fourth-quarter performance matches the results from the first part of the year, newly available U.S. aerospace trade balance data show. Halfway through 1996, the U.S. trade surplus in aerospace widened - albeit modestly - to $11.67 billion, outpacing results through the same period last year by some $374 million.
The General Accounting Office characterized as "overstated" a U.S. intelligence estimate that no new ballistic missile threats to the 48 contiguous states will emerge in the next 15 years - a position that pleased Republicans.
Work on a hit-to-kill anti-satellite weapon continues at the Army Space and Strategic Defense Command, which could deploy an ASAT in 18- 24 months, according to the Pentagon's space architect. Air Force Maj. Gen. Robert S. Dickman says the Army is trying to tackle the space debris problem with extremely precise targeting that would disable an enemy satellite without shattering it, or with a Mylar shield that would both kill the satellite and contain its debris.
The Pentagon's decision to redeploy the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise to the Persian Gulf from the Mediterranean brings the Navy's only LANTIRN-equipped squadron, VF-103, into the Middle East theater. The squadron, which flies F-14s, became operational with LANTIRN this summer.
The U.S. Air Force expects to buy up to 2,027 AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles for domestic and international use over the next two years, depending on the outcome of congressional defense bills for fiscal years 1997 and '98, according to a Sept. 10 Commerce Business Daily notice.
The $244.8 billion fiscal 1997 defense appropriations compromise bill would tighten the formula for writing off defense merger restructuring costs, trim tactical air add-ons, and save the MEADS theater missile defense system. House and Senate conferees reached agreement late Thursday on the conference report, which was $10.2 billion over President Clinton's $234.6 billion request. The conference total was almost identical to the Senate's $244.7 billion bill. The House had funded $245.2 billion.
Ranking Senate Armed Services Committee Democrat Sam Nunn (D- Ga.) says the fiscal 1997 defense authorization conference decision to reject Senate language on increased privatization of depot-level maintenance is "unfortunate." He notes that the conference stuck with current law, which requires that at least 60% of the Defense Dept.'s depot maintenance be performed in government facilities.
