As its newly tapped oil and gas wells overflow, Kazakhstan is piling up national wealth and providing the business climate for Air Astana to achieve a 20% annual growth rate.
Obituary: Robert C. Seamans, Jr., a former U.S. Air Force secretary and deputy NASA administrator who managed development of cutting-edge aerospace systems during the 1960s and 1970s, died June 28 at home in Beverly Farms, Mass. He was 89. Educated in engineering at Harvard and MIT, where he joined the faculty in 1941, Seamans served on the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics and the U.S. Air Force Scientific Advisory Board. After a stint at RCA, he was named associate NASA administrator in 1960 and was deputy administrator from 1965-68.
The first of three Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) communications satellites has entered thermal vacuum testing at Lockheed Martin’s Dual-Entry Large Thermal Altitude chamber in Sunnyvale, Calif. The tests are to verify the spacecraft’s functionality for a 14-year design life. Lockheed Martin will then do an environmental test data analysis with Northrop Grumman Space Technology, which is building the payload in Redondo Beach, Calif. By its design, a single AEHF will be able to provide more capacity than the entire Milstar constellation.
A Saab proposal to co-develop a stealth fighter with South Korea is raising the prospect of an Asian-European aircraft emerging to compete with the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning. The South Korean project to build an advanced combat aircraft alternatively offers to fund developments of the Eurofighter Typhoon or to help sustain Boeing’s waning fighter business—but there is also a strong chance that the ambitious program will collapse into yet another F-35 order.
July 14-20—Farnborough (England) air show. Call +44 (125) 253-2800, fax +44 (125) 237-6015 or see www.farnborough.com July 16-17—SAE International’s International Open Forum: Time-Triggered Technologies Symposium. Holiday Inn, Farnborough, England. Call +1 (724) 776-4841 or see www.sae.org
Engineers at NASA’s Langley (Va.) Research Center are scheduled to deliver a full-scale test article of the Composite Crew Module (CCM), designed and sized for the agency’s Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), this summer. Remaining test articles will be delivered in the autumn for testing upon receipt of hardware, says Michael T. Kirsch, principal engineer at the NASA Engineering and Safety Center. The CCM is intended to give the agency in-house experience with composites as an alternate material for future spacecraft, such as the Orion CEV.
Richard Simmons has been promoted to operations manager from quality manager for Texas Pneumatic Systems Inc. in Arlington. He has been succeeded by Darrell Irby.
TWC Aviation of Burbank, Calif., has ordered two Cessna Citation Columbus business jets for its charter operations. Cessna has more than 36 orders for the Model 850, which is scheduled to receive FAA certification in 2013 followed by entry into service in 2014. The Citation Columbus will feature a 36.3-ft.-long cabin and will be capable of carrying up to 10 passengers. The cockpit will be equipped with Rockwell Collins Pro Line Fusion avionics. Powered by two Pratt & Whitney Canada PW810 engines, the airplane is projected to have a nonstop range of 4,000 naut. mi.
Florida-based fractional ownership operator Avantair has sold 18 of its 20 orders for Embraer Phenom 100 very light jets to Executive AirShare (EAS), a fractional provider operating Beechjets and King Airs. Avantair operates 49 Piaggio Avanti turboprops, with 60 more on order for delivery by 2013, and has decided not to diversify. Kansas City-based EAS already has orders for 10 Phenom 100s, plus options for 10 more, and orders and options for eight Phenom 300 light jets. EAS has the option to buy Avantair’s two remaining Phenoms in 2010.
Alliant Techsystems (ATK) will continue to provide the U.S. Air Force with suborbital ballistic launches, under its third Sounding Rocket Program (SRP-3) contract. The seven-year indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract, which is worth a potential $250 million, calls for the company to use its lineup of solid-fuel rocket motors for experiments, payloads and missile-defense targets for the Air Force and other U.S. government agencies.
The 2-ton primary mirror for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (Sofia) has received a shiny protective aluminum coating as preparations continue for the 747SP’s service entry next year. It took just 20 sec. to apply a 1/300th-in.-thick coating to the 60-sq.-ft. mirror in a 16 x 10-ft. stainless steel vacuum chamber at the project headquarters, NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. Flight tests with the IR telescope and other science instruments in place are to begin in February. Sofia is to enter service next May.
Hardware for the upcoming space shuttle mission to service the Hubble Space Telescope will be ready to ship from Goddard Space Flight Center on July 14, in plenty of time for the scheduled Oct. 8 launch date. Despite improvements in the Michoud Assembly Facility’s efforts to fix production problems with the redesigned shuttle external tanks—which delayed the mission’s original planned August launch (AW&ST May 5, p. 27)—managers doubt the mission may be advanced. “I wouldn’t put a whole lot of money on us going a whole lot earlier than Oct.
This year’s rankings of publicly traded aerospace and defense contractors are the result of a composite scoring of four equally weighted performance categories that place significant emphasis on operating excellence. The four categories are:
The fatal crash of an Iluyshin IL-76TD on takeoff from Khartoum-Civil Airport June 30 has forced Sudan’s investigators to mobilize a scant 20 days following a Sudan Airways accident that killed more than 100 people. Preliminary reports indicate the Ababeel Aviation IL-76 was a cargo flight from Khartoum to Juba Airport, also in Sudan. Witnesses said they saw one of the four engines on fire. The aircraft crashed about 1 km. (0.6 mi.) south of the airport, killing all four occupants.
NASA expects to release a request for information later this month for a university-based, student-led satellite development initiative, the American Student Moon Orbiter (ASMO) “to begin passing the space exploration torch to a new generation.” But getting good feedback from universities on how the project should work is essential. The orbiter is conceived as a 180-kg. (400-lb.) spacecraft to be placed in a highly elliptical Frozen Lunar Orbit carrying instruments “by which students will perform lunar exploration activities of their choosing,” the space agency says.
The U.S. government has placed us into a multi-headed quandary with regional, domestic and international implications, thanks to its tanker competition missteps and the subsequent protests.
Could the Top-Performing Companies list of 2033 be led by firms from China, India or Japan? Some aerospace leaders say that notion isn’t far-fetched. They worry that a looming shortage of engineers, poor science and math skills among U.S. students and companies’ emphasis on short-term payoffs is putting the nation in jeopardy of losing its enviable technological edge during the next quarter century.
The CFM56-7B engines were hung July 1 on the U.S. Navy’s initial P-8A Poseidon patrol aircraft on the third assembly line dedicated to the effort at Boeing’s narrow-body headquarters at Renton, Wash. Boeing reports assembly is on schedule for delivery of the first aircraft next year. Recent milestones include the power-on electrical test of all aircraft systems. Engine runs will follow final functional checks. The Navy has ordered 108 of the P-8A, which is a derivative of the 737-800, and expects an initial operating capability in 2013.
BAE Systems has completed its purchase of the defense business of Australia’s Tenix at an estimated price of A$775 million ($744 million). The sale more than doubles BAE’s business in Australia and makes it the country’s largest defense supplier.
USAF Brig. Gen. Frank J. Kisner is one of 11 of his rank who have been nominated for promotion to major general. He has been director of the Center for Force Structure, Requirements, Resources and Strategic Assessments at Headquarters of U.S. Special Operations Command, MacDill AFB, Fla. The others are: Jay H. Lindell, deputy commanding general of the Combined Air Power Transition Force of the Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan; Darren W. McDew, director of public affairs in the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force at the Pentagon; Christopher D.
The early success of Russia’s KD avia airline will be tested by its ability to transfer traffic through Kaliningrad as Aeroflot tries to improve its operations. KD avia has been trying to exploit the fact that, for passengers flying between Europe and Russian cities outside Moscow, transferring in the capital city can be inconvenient. In addition, a large number of airports with badly connected domestic and international terminals slows travel.
The FAA has approved the Eclipse 500 very light jet for flight into known icing. Since August 2007 Eclipse Aviation has conducted more than 300 hr. of flight tests, of which more than 60 hr. were logged in natural icing conditions. In other general aviation news, Dassault is developing all-electric flight control systems (FCS) for its future aircraft, but its next business jet, designated SMS, will feature technologies similar to those on the Falcon 7X. Dassault says more development is required to reduce weight and increase power of all-electric FCS designs.
Correction: An article on the Single European Sky initiative misstated the value of annual savings the European Commission believes the measure will yield (AW&ST June 30, p. 28). The figure should have been €2-3 billion ($3.1-4.7 billion).
