Bradley R. Thayer has been appointed vice president-corporate development in the Boeing Co. Treasury Div. in Seattle. He was assistant treasurer for international corporate financial analysis for the Lockheed Martin Corp.
NASA is investigating two serious malfunctions during the launch of space shuttle Columbia, a hydrogen leak that could have forced a risky return-to-launch-site abort and an electrical short circuit that greatly increased the risk to the orbiter and crew if other critical failures had occurred. Columbia's crew ultimately reached orbit safely, deployed the $1.5-billion Chandra X-ray Observatory without a hitch, and landed safely back at the Kennedy Space Center on July 27.
The U.S. Air Force has raised the maximum allowable age for personnel to begin pilot and navigator training from 27.5 to 30 years. The age change, the first of its type since 1953, becomes effective with the Fiscal 2000 year Flying Training Boards, which meet Oct. 27. Applicants also must have less than five years of commissioned service. The move is being made to expand career opportunities for on-duty Air Force personnel as well as to aid recruiting, according to USAF Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Ryan. It is not due to a shortage of qualified applicants, he said.
One of Japan's richest men, Eitaro Itoyama, has launched a hostile takeover of Japan Airlines, and the airline isn't quite sure what to make of it. Itoyama is worth some $2.6 billion. He holds 70 million shares, or 4%, of JAL's stock and is its largest individual stockholder. He says he is assembling investors to buy 30% of the stock to install his own management team. A JAL official said the carrier is unsure what Itoyama is up to, since he has threatened to launch hostile takeovers in the past and also has made other claims.
The Hughes Orion 3 spacecraft, an HS 601HP model owned by Loral, is making an important contribution to propulsion research, in spite of being stranded in a useless orbit by the failure of a Delta III upper stage (AW&ST May 10, p. 30). The spacecraft is making the first commercial satcom firings of an iridium-coated ``renium'' liquid apogee engine developed by Ultramet with assistance by NASA's Glenn and Johnson centers.
After repeated disappointments in its attempts to invest abroad, Singapore Airlines has decided to reinvest its huge cash reserve in itself, by re-purchasing its own shares.
The Seattle Museum of Flight recently raised $2 million in a fund-raising auction to provide children's interactive exhibits and educational programs. The highest amount bid was $250,000 for a U.S. flag carried by Pete Conrad on Apollo 12 to the Moon and back. An anonymous donor gave the flag to the museum, where it will be displayed as part of an exhibit dedicated to Conrad.
A privately held company since 1907, employee-owned United Parcel Service of America Inc. is proposing to offer stock to the public, but not for the usual reason of raising capital.
The Liberty Bell 7 capsule in which Virgil I. (Gus) Grissom flew in NASA's Mercury 4 suborbital mission has been recovered from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, but it is not likely to shed any light on the enduring controversy about whether the astronaut prematurely fired the explosive bolts on the spacecraft's hatch. An expedition financed by the Discovery Channel recovered the capsule from its resting spot some 145 mi. east-northeast of the Bahamas on July 21--38 years to the day after Grissom's flight.
A recent article misstated the amount of a contract for the Egnos wide-area augmentation system, which will form part of Europe's new Galileo satellite navigation system (AW&ST July 5, p. 25). The contract, awarded to a team led by Alcatel Space, is for 165 million euros ($168 million).
Rep. George E. Brown, Jr., a longtime supporter of space exploration and basic scientific research who chaired the U.S. House of Representatives' Science Committee from 1991-94, died July 15 at Bethesda (Md.) Naval Hospital. He was 79. In his 18th two-year term, Brown, whose home was in San Bernardino, was the longest-serving member of California's congressional delegation and the oldest current member of the House. He had continued on the Science panel as its ranking Democrat after the Republicans won the House majority.
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Tom Fisher has become facility director in Nashua, N.H., for Alpha Flying Inc. He was commanding officer of the U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Clearwater, Fla.
Seizure of the North Korean ship Ku-Wol San by the Indian Coast Guard and Customs late last month is being described as confirmation that North Korea has been aiding Pakistan's ballistic missile program. Impounded at Kandla Port in Saurashtra, the 180-metric-ton ship was found to be carrying hardware for use in the assembly of surface-to-surface missiles and supporting technical documents that were listed on its cargo manifest as ``water treatment plant spares'' destined for a nonexistent company in Malta, according to Indian authorities.
Gulfstream is producing all of its technical manuals with Xyvision Parlance Document Manager and Production Publisher software. The company previously used a mainframe-based program but was hampered by difficulty in sharing information among manuals, by the lack of a structured environment to enforce composition standards, and by lack of on-screen feedback on page appearance, said Larry Way, Gulfstream's director of Internet and project support.
Researchers at Ohio State University in Columbus have melded three sensing techniques to form a system that quickly, reliably and inexpensively inspects the quality of high-power laser welds used in some aerospace manufacturing operations. The noncontact technique combines optical, acoustic and charged-particle sensors to inspect for welding flaws that are otherwise difficult to catch after the complex laser welding process, according to Dave Farson, assistant professor of industrial, welding and systems engineering.
Galen Ho has been named president of the Lockheed Martin Electronics Sector's Aerospace Electronics Systems unit. Fred P. Moosally has become vice president of the sector's Washington operations. Ho has been CEO of Lockheed Martin Tactical Systems U.K. Ltd., president of Lockhed Martin Aerospace Systems Integration Corp. and president of Electronic Systems in the U.K. as part of Lockheed Martin Federal Systems-Owego (N.Y.). He succeeds Albert E. Smith, who is at Lockheed Martin Missiles&Space, Sunnyvale, Calif.
Boeing's Machinists union local voted overwhelmingly last week to authorize a strike, should ongoing talks fail to provide an acceptable new contract. The current International Assn. of Machinists contract, which covers 46,000 workers, expires Sept. 2. IAM has struck Boeing during two of the past three negotiations.
Just as the Philippines' government ponders restricting overseas airline access, to prop up ailing Philippine Airlines, Jacinto Ortega, vice chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, has banned Taiwan's China Airlines for 30 days. Its offense was substituting larger aircraft on Hong Kong-Manila flights that originated in Taipei.
Larry Foreman, a scientist in the Polymers and Coatings Group at the Energy Dept.'s Los Alamos (N.M.) National Laboratory, has won the 1999 Edward Teller Medal, sponsored by the American Nuclear Society. Foreman was called ``a leader and scientist in the U.S. program to develop extremely high-quality cryogenic targets for Inertial Confinement Fusion, including targets for the billion-dollar-scale National Ignition Facility now under construction.''
Dave Good has become division general manager for engineering systems for Aeroquip, Maumee, Ohio. He was head of marketing and sales and succeeds Steve Schwab, who has joined Eaton's Aerospace Fluid Power Div.
The NASA study of Continental 757 pilot training makes a variety of recommendations on how automated cockpit training can be improved including: -- Training should be considered in the design of an aircraft, and automated systems should be documented so pilots are able to understand how they operate as well as how to operate them. Manuals do not always fully explain how the computer systems work in all modes of operation.
Keith Ainsworth, president/CEO of COM DEV International, Cambridge, Ontario, has become president of its Space Group. He succeeds Alan Winter, who has resigned to return to his consulting practice in Vancouver, but will remain a consultant to COM DEV.
The massive and unprecedented search for the cause of John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s aircraft crash comes as industry officials--even some in the National Transportation Safety Board--question whether the agency can afford to investigate general aviation accidents.
