Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.) will continue as ranking Democrat on the House Science Committee's space panel, a position he held last year, the full committee said Wednesday in announcing leadership posts for the new 107th Congress. The committee announced earlier that Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) will remain chairman of the space subcommittee (DAILY, Feb. 9).
Aerospace industry employment began to rebound last fall after beginning a decline in the spring of 1998, the Aerospace Industries Association said Wednesday. In the fourth quarter of 2000, industry employment increased by 7,000 to end the year at 791,000, according to the AIA. The group said further gains are expected in 2001, given the record new orders placed in 2000 and the high number of hours worked, plus overtime.
Aerospace and defense companies won't get the full benefit of an increased Pentagon budget unless they can get better profit margins, a Wall Street analyst said yesterday. Pierre Chao, managing director of Credit Suisse First Boston, said at a conference in Washington that while the cost of capital is 9.5-10%, profit margins dictated by acquisition rules are 8%.
Finmeccanica and GKN have unified their Agusta and Westland subsidiaries as of Feb. 12, following an agreement they reached last July and European regulatory approvals. Kevin Smith, an executive director of GKN and managing director of its aerospace business, is chairman of the board of the new AgustaWestland group, in which the original companies have equal shareholdings. From Agusta, Amedeo Caporaletti is chief executive of AgustaWestland, and Richard Case is its managing director.
A senior member of the House International Relations Committee said yesterday he's drafting legislation to return licensing jurisdiction for commercial satellite exports back to the Commerce Dept.
Lockheed Martin's Joint Strike Fighter team has selected its preferred wind tunnel test facilities for the program's engineering and manufacturing development phase (EMD), the company announced Wednesday. The facilities chosen include those of Arnold Engineering Development Center, Aircraft Research Association and BAE Systems in the U.K., Bihrle Applied Research, DNW in the Netherlands, and NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia, Ames Research Center in California, Glenn Research Center in Ohio and Veridian Engineering in Buffalo, N.Y.
Loral Space and Communications' decision to write down its losses in the Globalstar low-Earth orbit satellite constellation added an estimated $1.3 billion to the New York-based company's losses last year, bringing the total loss in 2000 to $1.4 billion, or $4.86 per share, the company reported yesterday.
Alenia Marconi has selected Evans&Sutherland Computer Corp., of Salt Lake City, to provide its PC-based simFUSION image generators for flight simulators at the Royal Air Force base at Linton-on-Ouse, Yorkshire. The simFUSION systems will provide out-the-window visuals for four Tuscano aircraft dynamic flight simulators based at the training school there, the company announced yesterday.
Frustrated that President George W. Bush won't immediately request a supplemental defense spending bill for fiscal 2001, House Democrats are proposing legislation of their own.
Members of Congress are looking for creative ways to finance weapons programs because there won't be enough money to pay for all of them, Capitol Hill staffers said during a panel discussion yesterday at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics' Defense Reform 2001 Conference.
Cost overruns on International Space Station Alpha are approaching $4 billion and the White House Office of Management and Budget has directed NASA managers to find a way to pay for it before the agency's fiscal 2002 budget is set. Sources said yesterday the Station program office at Johnson Space Center is developing options for cutting back the scope of the Station to cover the shortfall, while managers across the agency will be told Friday to find funds in their programs to pay the bill.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) announced the formation yesterday of a working group on terrorism that will be chaired by Rep. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) and operate within the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Hastert appointed Chambliss to the Intelligence committee so he can chair the terrorism panel. "I expect that, by working out of the Intelligence Committee and with its members, we will be better able to look at the threat and its effect on our preparedness," Hastert said.
A day after President Bush announced a broad but sketchy plan to invest in new technologies for U.S. weapon systems, chief executives of four aerospace companies suggested one way to fill in the blanks - forming central design teams to build and test experimental aircraft to help maintain industry expertise.
CORRECTION: An article in The DAILY of Feb. 14 incorrectly designated the Shuttle flight on which French Space Agency astronaut Philippe Perrin will fly. It is STS-111/Utilization Flight 2.
House Armed Services Committee member Mac Thornberry (R-Texas) said Wednesday he is drafting legislation to implement some of the recommendations made last month by the congressionally chartered Space Commission. The legislation will include some of the changes the commission recommended to strengthen national security space management (DAILY, Jan. 12), Thornberry said.
The current U.S. export control system is too adversarial and should be converted from transaction-based licensing to process-based licensing, former Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre told the Senate Banking Committee Wednesday. Under a process-based system, the government would license export control procedures of a company instead of requiring companies to apply for licenses for each sale, Hamre testified. A company with acceptable internal controls would be free to export controlled items without individual licenses.
Singapore Airlines (SIA) has selected Rolls-Royce Trent 800 engines to power up to 20 additional Boeing 777 airliners, Rolls-Royce announced yesterday. The value of the order to the company is around $560 million. SIA had previously placed firm and option orders to up to 61 Trent engine powered Boeing 777 twinjets, of which 18 are already in service. Twelve more are to be delivered this year, according to the company.
As NASA has struggled to accommodate cuts to its civil service roles over recent years by employing support service contractors, it has often let contractors perform tasks that civil servants are required to do, or to work under the direct supervision of NASA employees in violation of federal personnel regulations.
With the U.S. Laboratory module Destiny in place on the International Space Station Alpha, Station crews have a new eye on the world - an optical-quality window that is better than anything ever flown in nearly 40 years of human space flight. "It's a very cool window," said Karen Scott, a senior engineering specialist at The Aerospace Corp., in El Segundo, Calif., who designed it.
The U.S. and its allies should create a NATO-based program to ward off ballistic missile threats or attacks, a British Parliament member said yesterday at the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank. "I think and believe it is absolutely vital that the nations of Europe recognize the threat and admit that the threat exists ... and join with the U.S. in the development of the relevant defenses," said Iain Duncan Smith, a Conservative Party member and opposition spokesman for defense and foreign affairs.
Planetary scientists hope the unexpected survival of the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) on the surface of the asteroid Eros will give them a chance to peg that body's chemical composition in the next 10 days, but they expect to spend "years" answering questions raised by images returned during the probe's descent.
Atlantis astronauts Tom Jones and Bob Curbeam on Wednesday finished their third and last space walk of the STS-98 mission - a 5-hour, 25-minute task that marked the 100th Extra Vehicular Activity of the U.S. space program. Jones and Curbeam left the shuttle airlock a half hour ahead of schedule, at 9:48 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. They breezed through their chores on the outside of the International Space Station Alpha, wrapping up at 3:13 p.m. EST.
Former Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre has been appointed by Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) to the congressionally mandated Commission on the Future of the U.S. Aerospace Industry.
MARY SIMMERMAN has been appointed vice president of supplier management for the Boeing Corp.'s Space and Communications Group, the company has announced. She will define the future group supplier management strategy, the company said. Simmerman came to the new post from Boeing's Aircraft&Missiles division.
PHILLIPE PERRIN of the French Space Agency has been named to the crew of STS-11/utilization flight 2 to the International Space Station Alpha, NASA announced yesterday. That flight is scheduled to go to the ISS in early 2002 and will carry experiment and resupply equipment and install final hardware for the Canadian robotic arm. Perrin is the first to be named to the crew.
