NASA’s Armstrong (formerly Dryden) Flight Research Center will continue to build additional science and technology research work into its portfolio as it looks to host additional “X-Planes,” possibly including a supersonic commercial demonstrator, later this decade. Despite a continuing budget shortfall for aeronautics work, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden says Armstrong will play a central role in the agency’s narrowed strategic focus on six research areas.
The U.S. and China may be able to participate in military exercises, create rules for dealing with one-off conflicts and improve relations and communications via a new secure teleconferencing channel. But the underlying tensions that strain relations between the world’s two largest economic powers remain apparent. Gen. Fang Fenghui, the Chinese chief of defense, visited the U.S. last week, touring an aircraft carrier and attending meetings with Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at the Pentagon.
Amid renewed calls from Congress and academics to save an airborne telescope from being grounded under proposed budget cuts, NASA Administrator Charles Bolden is preparing for meetings with his counterpart at Germany’s DLR, NASA’s partner on the project, over what amounts to a rescue mission.
Next month, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) will try for a third time in four years to achieve an intercept in what was billed six years ago as one of the most challenging trials of the troubled Boeing Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system. The trial, designed to simulate a North Korean ballistic missile attack, will aim for head-on intercept between an upgraded Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (called the CE-2). The Kill Vehicle was originally tested in January 2010 and then again in December of that year, says Roger Krone, president of Boeing Network and Space Systems.
I was admiring the views of Earth taken from the International Space Station ( AW&ST April 7/14, pp. 86-87) when I spotted a possible error. Having sailed in French Polynesia, I recognize the twin islands of Raiatea and Tahaa and the smaller island (inset below) as Bora Bora. The attached map of Nukuavake is an entirely different shape with a much smaller lagoon. I believe NASA has it wrong.
I have a totally different slant on Delta Air Lines’ leaders than does reader Nazim Zaman ( AW&ST May 5, p. 8) and know of many others who share my less-than-laudatory view. Former CEO Gerald Grinstein may have done a good job for Delta and for Northwest Airlines at some point, but his stewardship was abysmal after he stepped down to become a member of Delta’s board of directors. He gave the CEOs that followed him—Ron Allen and Leo Mullin—free rein, with disastrous effects.
Jack Langelaan, Aerospace Engineering Department, Pennsylvania State University
“Thinking Big” ( AW&ST May 5, p. 40) states that Airbus’s E-Fan airplane is the first to be designed from the ground up as an electric-powered aircraft. This may be true in the strictest sense, but there have been many other battery-powered aircraft that have been so extensively modified from their original form that they are, to all intents and purposes, “designed from the ground up” as electric-powered aircraft.
T he first-quarter reports of Northern Europe’s three leading airlines—Finnair, Norwegian Air Shuttle and SAS—make for some disconcerting reading. The first three months of the year are typically the weakest for airlines in Europe, but this year the period was particularly difficult for low-cost carrier Norwegian and its full-service competitors, Finnair and SAS.
T he first-quarter reports of Northern Europe’s three leading airlines—Finnair, Norwegian Air Shuttle and SAS—make for some disconcerting reading. The first three months of the year are typically the weakest for airlines in Europe, but this year the period was particularly difficult for low-cost carrier Norwegian and its full-service competitors, Finnair and SAS.
Marco Tulio Pellegrini, President/CEO Embraer Executive Jets
I take issue with Brad Perrett’s statement in “China Dream” that the Legacy 650 is not a high-performance aircraft ( AW&ST April 21, p. 37). It certainly ranks as one from multiple standpoints. Based on the Legacy 600, the 650 offers an extended range of 3,900 nm, flying even more nonstop flights and performing at the top of its class, with the largest cabin, lowest maintenance burden per flight hour and the lowest life-cycle cost, preserving a high residual value.
L. Kim Smith, former Washington editor of Rotor & Wing magazine and co-editor of Helicopter News, has been selected to receive the 2014 AHS International Honorary Fellow Award. Deputy director of AHS International from 1993-2011, Smith will be honored at the AHS International Annual Forum in Montreal on May 21 for “outstanding contributions to the vertical flight community throughout her 38-year career.
Capt. Sean Cassidy, first vice president and national safety coordinator of the Washington-based Air Line Pilots Association, has been appointed to the U.S. Transportation Security Administration’s Aviation Security Advisory Committee.
