Aerojet will develop a 550,000-lb.-thrust-class main injector and thrust chamber for an oxidizer-rich, staged-combustion, kerosene-fueled rocket engine under a $23.3 million risk-reduction contract. The engine is targeted for NASA's proposed advanced strap-on boosters for the heavy-lift Space Launch System (SLS). Under the contract, the fourth that NASA has awarded to begin bringing the heavy-lift SLS to the 130-metric-ton capability ordered by Congress, Aerojet also will prepare for hot-fire tests designed to demonstrate performance and combustion stability.
Jeffrey Vail has been appointed chief marketing officer for Radnor, Pa.-based Quintig. He was senior VP-global corporate marketing for Siemens Enterprise Communications.
The truth is that the future of air traffic management is already here and it is time to start running to meet it. It may be an uphill run, but to achieve our common vision of a globally harmonized and interoperable air navigation system we need to recognize what needs to be done and set about doing it.
International Launch Services (ILS) says the Dec. 8, 2012, failure of a Proton rocket equipped with a Briz M upper stage has been traced to too-high propellant temperatures at liftoff that caused damage to a bearing in the Briz M main engine turbo pump. ILS says the most probable root cause of the failure was a combination of adverse thermal conditions that caused damage to a bearing on the oxidizer side of the turbo pump. The result was a failure of the bearing that caused the fourth burn of the Briz M to end about 4 min.
Eurocopter Mexico has opened an aerostructures manufacturing plant at Queretaro's Aerotech Park that will provide assemblies for its own Ecureil single-engine helicopter series and the Airbus A320 and A330 airliners. The $100 million facility was built as an offset for the Mexican air force and navy's purchase of 15 EC725 helicopters in 2010.
The arrest of Finmeccanica's chairman and CEO and the prospect that the company could be barred from doing business in India's lucrative defense market is shaking the foundations of the Italian aerospace and defense giant, which already was struggling to restructure in the wake of high debt and declining government spending in Europe.
Hand-launched, electrically powered small unmanned air vehicles (SUAV) are usually attached to small formations and in special operations units. However, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) Ground Forces Command (GFC) has been looking at their use at division level, as sensor performance and networking technology improve.
Steven H. Walker, deputy director of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, has been named a fellow within the Washington-based American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The honor recognizes long-standing contributions to the aerospace community.
The U.S. Missile Defense Agency intercepted a medium-range ballistic missile target using an Aegis-launched SM-3 Block IA made by Raytheon. New for this mission is the use of the Space Tracking and Surveillance System demonstrator satellites to cue the Aegis ship on the target's whereabouts; using such an offboard sensor to launch an interceptor is called “launch on remote” and it allows for longer-range engagements.
Philippe Campenon has been appointed deputy director for space and Earth observation and Deepu Krishnan senior consultant for the satcom business division of Paris-based Euroconsult. Campenon was business development manager for Astrium GEO-Information Services, and Krishnan held the same title at a European satellite provider. New senior affiliate consultants are Jean Paul Carnicer, procurement of satellite programs and launches; Eric Choi, space systems engineering and business development; Dennis Jones, U.S.
Astrium, the space division of EADS, will begin development of Europe's first military high-speed satellite broadband network under a roughly €40 million ($52 million) contract awarded by French defense procurement agency DGA.
My professional life encompassed a career in aerospace that culminated in my heading the Radiocommunication Bureau at the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva. Now that I am retired, I still read Aviation Week avidly and I do have some recommendations, as recently requested in your pages.
Increasing frustration at the lack of progress in reorganizing European airspace has led airlines to call for the effort to be refocused on more ambitious changes.
Hooray and hallelujah! Reader Myron Kayton (AW&ST Jan. 28, p. 8) put into words something I too found lacking in your magazine—an emphasis on how things work. I have subscribed ever since I was very young person interested in all things aeronautical. I continue to subscribe well into my adulthood for much the same reason, despite the current emphasis on various forms of marketing, which I fully understand are subjects of interest to a large segment of your readers in the aerospace industry.
Romain Bausch, Robert Zitter, Susan Irwin, Prof. U.R. Rao and Dick Tauber are scheduled to be inducted into the New York-based Society of Satellite Professionals International (SSPI) Hall of Fame on March 19. Bausch is president and CEO of SES and Zitter is executive VP and chief technology officer of Home Box Office. Irwin is president of Euroconsult U.S. and one of the founders of SSPI; Rao is chairman of the Governing Council of the Physical Research Laboratory at Ahmedabad, India; and Tauber is VP-transmission systems and new technology for the CNN News Group.
The European Commission (EC) has indicated it will object to Ryanair's third attempt to take over rival Aer Lingus, despite the need for airline consolidation in Europe. Ryanair has offered a package to address competition concerns, but Europe's regulators doubt that would effectively mitigate the merged company's dominance on many routes serving Ireland.
Boeing and CFM International are scrutinizing fuel supplies and the Honeywell-built fuel-control system in the CFM56-7B following a series of thrust-instability events on Boeing 737NG aircraft.
Is the merger of American Airlines and US Airways a good idea? It would certainly seem so if you listen to the upbeat reaction from the financial community, labor unions representing the two airlines' employees and assorted pundits (see p. 24). The link-up, which will create the world's largest carrier, is being touted as providing critical mass to compete against Delta Air Lines and United Airlines while promoting capacity discipline that will enhance profitability across the U.S. airline industry.
Shortly after the Obama administration unveiled its so-called pivot to Asia-Pacific in early 2012, top Pentagon leaders began warning everyone that the new defense strategy could not survive further budget cuts. So sure were they that the 2011 Budget Control Act's automatic, across-the-board spending cuts would not be allowed to occur that White House and Pentagon officials had no qualms with pegging the pivot's foundations to the last five-year defense budget plan.
A simple graph explains Australia's declining strategic position. Relative to the two countries that its defense planners must consider most carefully, Australia will by 2017 have just a quarter of the economic clout it enjoyed 25 years before.
As the Boeing 787 enters the second month of its fleet-wide grounding, the manufacturer is poring over data collected on a series of flight and ground tests and says it is making “good progress” toward a solution.
U.S. Army Lt. Gen. (ret.) Joseph M. Cosumano has been named president of Scottsboro, Ala.-based CFDRC. He was the commanding general of the Space and Missile Defense Command at Redstone Arsenal.
