TOO CLOSE TO CALL: Former three-term House Armed Services Committee member Jane Harman, a Democrat, is locked in a truly close race as she seeks to reclaim her seat in the West Los Angeles district, site of several aerospace companies. Her opponent is the incumbent, Republican freshman Steve Kuykendall. A former Marine Corps pilot, he is a member of the Armed Services Committee's research and development subcommittee and the House Science space subcommittee.
NEAR-TERM PAYLOAD: Boeing's next Delta III is ready to fly, but the company is still faced with the prospect of flying it with an instrumented dummy payload as an $85 million confidence-building measure (DAILY, Feb. 22). Because both Delta III flights to date have ended in failure, for unrelated reasons, customers have been leery of using the new rocket even though the company says it has fixed both problems (DAILY, April 27).
Patricia Kesling has joined the firm as vice president, marketing strategy. Gary Hahn also joins the firm as vice president of advertising and creative services.
Neil A. Schilke has been nominated as president of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) International for 2001. Schilke is currently the general director of engineering and product planning for GM Canada, Ltd.
NASA managers Friday set May 18 as the date for another attempt to launch the Space Shuttle Atlantis on the second logistics mission to the International Space Station, foregoing an option to bump the planned May 3 Atlas launch of the next Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES-L) weather satellite to clear time on the crowded Eastern Test Range.
The U.K. Ministry of Defense said that some loss of operational capability by Royal Navy Lynx helicopters because of fatigue-life limitations on the rotor-heads of early production examples is expected to be short-lived. The crash of a Dutch naval Lynx in 1998 was eventually attributed to monobloc rotor-head fatigue, resulting in recalculations by prime contractor GKN Westland and the MOD to check the safe lives of these components.
DUAL LAUNCH? If the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) succeeds in taking Airbus Industrie public in 2000, it might be the stage from which to launch Airbus' A3XX superjumbo airliner project. Ian Massey, financial controller of Airbus, thinks an offering might be the right time to spring the project, noting it would be virtually impossible to keep details of the program hidden from investors' scrutiny anyway. And, it would be splashy for Airbus to launch the A3XX in conjunction with an offering.
Eric Novotny has been selected as the new vice president of marketing and sales. Michelle Lyle has been named vice president of corporate affairs. Phil Slack has been appointed vice president and chief financial officer, finance and risk management. James Youdale will serve as vice president of commercial launch programs.
U.S. TRADE and Development Agency awarded a $110,000 grant to Kazakhstan for a feasibly study on upgrading the nation's air traffic control system. Kazakhstan covers three time zones and has a number of major airports.
The House and Senate Armed Services subcommittees will begin their markups of the fiscal 2001 Defense Dept. authorization this week. In appropriations, the House military construction appropriations subcommittee will mark up the milcon funding portion of the defense budget Tuesday and the Senate milcon appropriations subcommittee will act next week. The House defense appropriations subcommittee will mark up the big Pentagon money bill next week; the schedule for the parallel Senate subcommittee has not been set.
Dan Janka has been promoted to vice president and general manager of the company's newly formed Advanced Systems and Services Business. John Judge has been appointed senior vice president, sales of the company's newly formed Advanced Systems and Services Business. Rich Curless has been appointed vice president, product and technology for its new Advanced Systems and Services Business. Dwaine Isenberg has been promoted to vice president, quality and engineering for newly formed Advanced Systems and Services Business.
FALLBACK: NASA moves ahead with plans to procure "alternate access" to the International Space Station, issuing a request for information on heavy and light lift capability to the orbiting facility and suggesting it may formally order a study on the topic later this month. The U.S. space agency wants the launch industry to tell it how it would launch payloads comparable to those carried by Russia's Progress capsules, and lightweight payloads "within a few days" in case of emergency.
John Young has been appointed vice president and integrated product team leader-Electronic Warfare Programs for its Airborne Early warning and Electronic Warfare Systems business area.
The General Accounting Office, in its second report on the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle, finds the aircraft is still over Dept. of Defense cost objectives -- now by more than 50% -- and is far behind a planned flight test schedule. The unit cost of the vehicle is now projected at $15.3 million in fiscal year 1994 dollars, or $5.3 million more than the $10 million average unit flyway cost predicted in 1994. Furthermore, as of January 2000, only about 260 flight test hours of the 1,200 planned for user demonstration were completed.
Steven R. Muench has joined the firm as senior aviation planner. Muench has more than two decades of aviation experience, most recently as the executive director of a state aviation agency.
Randal E. Morger has been named director of communications and administrative services for Sanders, a Lockheed Martin company. Morger joined Sanders in 1999 as public information manager following a career as a U.S. Air Force officer.
Jeff Bland, an engineer and 17 year veteran of NASA's Space Shuttle program, has joined the NASA X-33 program office in Palmdale, Calif., as deputy manager.
Ken Buckley has been promoted to vice president and general manager. Buckley will be in charge of the entire Austin factory, reporting directly to Don Ludwig, president.
Boeing Co.'s goal during the next 3-5 years is to move into the top 25% of the Standard&Poor's 500, CEO Phil Condit told the Aviation Week Aerospace Finance Executive Symposium here yesterday.
Raytheon Co. will provide information technology services to NASA's Ames Research Center, Calif., under a $65 million contract. The contract calls for the company to provide IT services to support the development, testing, implementation, operation, management and maintenance of new and enhanced information, imaging and communication systems, networks and facilities, Raytheon said.
Defense Secretary William Cohen said he would recommend building a national missile defense site in Alaska only if the next test is successful. After the test in late June or early July, Cohen will go over the test data and make a recommendation to President Clinton, which will be "separate and distinct from Russia's ratification [of the START II treaty] in my mind." He made the statement during testimony Wednesday to the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee.
The U.S. Air Force's Airborne Laser (ABL) program completed critical design review on its program definition and risk reduction (PDRR) phase with "no show-stoppers," according to the program's director, but budget hurdles remain in the wake of the service's decision to trim funding beginning next year.
