USAF Capt. Cheronda V. Spann, project manager for SBIRS GEO-1 Space Vehicle at the Space and Missile Systems Center, is one of the winners of the Society of Satellite Professionals International ’s 2010 Promise Award. Other winners are: Angela Wheeler, a radio-frequency operations engineer at Intelsat; and Shlomi Izkovitz, deputy vice president-sales and marketing at RRsat Global Communications Network. The award recognizes the potential of young satellite professionals.
Phil Chermin has been appointed to the board of Solairus Aviation . He has been chief executive and chief financial officer of several technology companies and has his own investment banking firm in Lafayette, Calif. Honors and Elections
To date, astronauts and cosmonauts have conducted 150 spacewalks to build the International Space Station, spending more than 944 hr. on extravehicular activities (EVAs). Most of these, and certainly the most difficult, were staged from the space shuttle. The “wall of EVA” that seemed so daunting as the station was being planned has often been as exciting as watching a couple of painters paint a very large house. The spacewalking skills that made it possible to build the station with such deceptive ease were honed on the space shuttle.
Chinese space officials won’t be coming to the U.S. in December, as they had hoped, but there may be a visit in the New Year. Nor is Anatoly Permanov, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, likely to get very far anytime soon with a list of possible cooperative projects he discussed with NASA Administrator Charles Bolden in Washington on Nov. 18. Like Wang Wenbao, director general of the China Manned Space Engineering Office, Permanov will have to wait until the U.S. political climate becomes a little more stable.
Dennis Kaney (see photo) is the new regional engine manager for Honeywell products at BBA Aviation Engine Repair and Overhaul company Dallas Airmotive . He has worked as an airframe and powerplant technician, account manager and in sales and support functions for maintenance service providers.
A year ago, investing in airline stocks seemed like a surefire way to destroy money, but a lot can change in a year. Who would have guessed that Wall Street analysts would recommend their long-term investors buy airline shares? That’s precisely what they’re doing, however, as airline share prices surge past market benchmarks. “Long-term investors should begin to add to their positions now and then aggressively buy by mid-winter,” advises Ray Neidl, aerospace specialist for the Maxim Group.
Building a spaceplane to fly back and forth to orbit like an airliner proved a lot more difficult than even the most hard-nosed engineers expected, and the result was a lot less capable than their bosses had hoped. It’s probably too early to know whether that lesson from development of the space shuttle applies today, when NASA’s leaders hope the private sector will be able to devise simpler routes to orbit and to help pay for them. But the hurdles that went into getting the shuttle to fly are a cautionary tale for today’s policy-makers.
The loss of two shuttle orbiters and 14 brave astronauts gave NASA and the nation several textbooks worth of painful lessons about launching humans into space, including how easy it is to forget those lessons. The Challenger accident scuttled forever the notion that the space shuttle was an operational vehicle that could take humans to orbit as a matter of “routine.” Columbia’s loss underscored that schooling, and killed the shuttle program.
Dmitry Mirgorodsky has been appointed chief operations officer of Russian carrier Avianova . He was general manager and head of the branch of SuperJet International.
Senators who hammered out the three-year NASA authorization bill signed by President Barack Obama Oct. 11 will be watching the space agency and mid-level White House aides closely as the lame-duck Congress works on legislation to fund the program.
The Italian air force is readying its C-27J Spartan tactical airlifter for war duty with upgrades aimed at protecting ground troops from improvised explosive devices (IEDs). The expansion into the counter-IED role is initially intended to aid Italian forces in western Afghanistan, but other regions eventually will be included, Italian military officials say.
Engineers at NASA already were thinking seriously about a reusable human spacecraft when Neil Armstrong made his small step for mankind on July 20, 1969. The Cold War race to the Moon had been won even before Armstrong and Aldrin opened Tranquility Base, when the Soviets’ N1 Moon rocket fell victim to mechanical complexity and political squabbling. It was time for the U.S. space agency to look ahead.
Michael A. Taverna (Paris), Frank Morring, Jr. (Washington)
Conceived as a way to reach a U.S. space station that was never built, the space shuttle wound up enabling construction of the International Space Station that is just coming on line as the shuttle era ends. The seeds of the ISS were planted at the very beginning of shuttle development, when NASA gave Europe a role in its new reusable launch system as a way both to defray its cost and to keep European ambitions in the space-launch arena in check.
With enough fresh shots of Orion for a couple of months of processing, the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (Sofia) is proving to be as stable a platform for deep-space imaging in the infrared range as NASA hoped when it converted a Boeing 747SP into a flying telescope.
European space ministers say an improved governance setup will be needed if the European Union is to assume a lead role in space policy-making. At a Nov. 25 meeting of the EU-ESA Space Council, which sets Europe’s space policy, ministers said shortcomings with the two bodies’ Galileo satellite navigation system and Global Monitoring for Environment and Security network—combined with provisions in the 2009 Lisbon Treaty making space a formal EU activity—require the makeup of the council to be reevaluated.
“For the [price of] the alternate engine on the Joint Strike Fighter, I could have 100 more Predators easily,” says Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, alluding to the General Atomics’ UAS in high demand in combat. “Which would you buy?” the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff asked last week at the Credit Suisse/Aviation Week Aerospace & Defense Finance conference in New York. The No.
USN Capt. (ret). R. L. (Bud) Keeler, Jr. (Eustis, Fla.)
I read with great interest the articles in the “Future Cockpits” feature concerning all the new auto-systems—PBN, EVS, SVS, 4D-TBO—that await us (AW&ST Oct. 25, pp. 44-55). However, I noted a lack of discussion of failure modes of these systems or of crew training requirements to handle these failures. Flying, like every physical activity, requires practice. When the Navy trained me in the early 1950s, we practiced for multiple failures.
After decades of promises, directed-energy weapons appear headed for near-term operational use and may be led there by electronic attack programs under development for the military.
For the past seven years, Aviation Week has gathered senior aerospace and defense executives in early November for roundtable discussions of common issues and problems. It is a good time to reflect on a year about to close and the budget cycle that is just beginning. Those who sit in often bear scar tissue from being program managers and are happy to trade their thoughts in a not-for-attribution exchange.
The cordial nature of Latin American aviation may be sorely tested in the coming months as the effects of consolidation heighten competition and alliances battle for dominance. Executives across the region hold each other in high regard, and this was evident during the recent Latin American and Caribbean Air Transport Association (ALTA) forum in Panama. Avianca/TACA CEO and ALTA President Roberto Kriete praised his peers at LAN Airlines and TAM Airlines for their merger, which he lauded as a boon for the entire region.
Australian safety regulators say operators of Airbus A380s powered by Rolls-Royce Trent 900 engines should conduct a fresh round of powerplant inspections due to the discovery of a potential flaw in an oil feed pipe. The latest recommendation was prompted by new findings during the examination of the Trent 900 that suffered an uncontained failure during a Qantas flight from Singapore on Nov. 4. The discovery of the oil pipe problem “appears to provide a more definitive explanation for the [Nov. 4] engine failure,” Qantas says.
European Union emissions allowance (EUA) prices continued October’s losses during the first few days of November, but regained some ground later in the month as prices climbed in line with higher natural gas and power prices. EUAs for delivery in December 2010 closed at €14.20 ($18.60) per metric ton on Nov. 8, the lowest since July 30. The losses were in line with falling U.K. natural gas and German power prices.
With more than 43,000 delivered since production began in 1955, Cessna’s Model 172 Skyhawk is by far the world’ best-selling civil airplane. And if George Bye has his way, it will become the most ecologically advanced one as well.
Todd Ernst has been tapped by Raytheon Co. as vice president-investor relations. He was a senior research analyst at Neuberger Berman, a division of Lehman Brothers Co. He succeeds Marc Kaplan, who has moved to Raytheon Integrated Defense Systems as head of strategic planning and assessment.
