Sabine Minarsky-Bstandig (see photo) has been appointed vice president/manager of the Human Resources Div. of the Austrian Airlines Group, effective Nov. 1. She succeeds Michael Ruplitsch, who has left the company. She has been head of human resources for Erste Bank.
Long before the sequester blew in from the north like Smaug the dragon and stole their gold, the Pentagon's bosses had put themselves in a place where they steadily needed more money year-by-year to do business as usual.
Deputy NASA Administrator Lori Garver, who has been a policy lightning rod at agency headquarters as the Obama administration worked to shift U.S. human spaceflight from a government-run operation to a commercial venture, has resigned to become general manager of the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA). A former aerospace consultant, Garver joined President Barack Obama's 2008 campaign after initially supporting Hillary Clinton.
NASA says it will spend $55 million in fiscal 2014 to fund new milestone payments to the three companies developing commercial crew vehicles under the Commercial Crew Integrated Capability (CCiCap) phase of the seed-money effort. The companies will also add unspecified investments to meet the additional milestones, which were listed as optional under their 2012 Space Act agreements, and will extend the CCiCap phase from May to August 2014.
Michael Foale, long NASA's most senior active astronaut, has retired from the space agency after three decades and a half-dozen spaceflights. One of them—a 145-day mission to Russia's Mir space station in 1997—was interrupted by a collision with an out-of-control Progress cargo capsule. During his 2003-04 command of the eighth expedition to the International Space Station, Foale became the first American to accumulate a year in space on his way to logging a pre-retirement total of 375 days.
Christine Kelly Singley has become managing director of corporate communications for US Airways. She was head of executive, international, operational and internal communications for Delta Air Lines.
Phillip Spector has joined the satellite/space practice at law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in its Washington office. He was general counsel and head of business development at Intelsat.
USAF Maj. Gen. Margaret H. Woodward has been appointed director of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office in the Office of the Vice Chief of Staff at USAF Headquarters at the Pentagon. She has been Air Force chief of safety/commander of the Air Force Safety Center, Kirtland AFB, N.M. Brig. Gen. Lee K. Levy, 2nd, has been selected for promotion to major general and appointment as vice director of logistics for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon. He has been director of logistics at Headquarters Air Mobility Command, Scott AFB, Ill. Levy will be succeeded by Brig.
Spacecraft manufacturers in Europe and the U.S. are finding new business in Brazil's emerging satellite market, with Thales Alenia Space of France and Italy, and Palo Alto, Calif.-based Space Systems/Loral (SSL) tapped in recent weeks to build new commercial spacecraft. Brazil, the world's seventh-largest economy, is expected to spend roughly $2 billion between 2012-15 on new civil and military space initiatives.
Aug. 29-Sept. 1—Asian/Australian Rotorcraft Forum. Tianjin, China. See www.arf2013.nuaa.edu.cn/ Sept. 3-6—39th European Rotorcraft Forum. Moscow. See erf2013.org/ Sept. 5-8—China Helicopter Exposition. See www.helicopter-china-expo.com/ Sept. 9-12—Fifth Boeing/Northrop Grumman/Elysium Joint Global Product Data Interoperability Summit. Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort, Chandler, Ariz. See www.gpdisonline.com Sept. 10-12—AIAA Space 2013 Conference and Exposition. San Diego. See www.aiaa.org/SPACE2013
It seems everybody is all “Fired Up” and moving in opposite directions: the UAE's GCAA urges installation of cockpit video recorders (CVR) in its final report on the 2010 crash of UPS Flight 6, and for 13 years the NTSB has pushed the FAA to require just that. But the FAA has declined to act, and pilot unions “are firmly against the idea.” So what else is new?
20% - The amount of federal information technology spending that goes to cyber-security related projects, according to the Office of Management and Budget. $100 Billion - The estimated annual cost of malicious cyberactivity, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. $165 Billion - The potential size of the market for cybersecurity solutions by 2023, according to Strategic Defense Intelligence. 30,000+ - The number of users spear-phished in the March 20 Operation Troy attack in South Korea.
The U.S. Navy has issued separate, $15 million contracts to Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman and General Atomics to conduct preliminary design reviews of their bids for the Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike System (Uclass) program. Nearly $5 million of the awards has been obligated to each of the companies, based on the Pentagon's Aug. 14 announcement. In parallel with this work, slated to wrap up next June, each of these contractors is working to mature its air vehicle concepts.
It was a scientist's nightmare: an expensive test meant to study an exotic virus ruined by contamination because someone had forgotten to sterilize the equipment. And it didn't just happen once, but several times. Except the setting wasn't a medical laboratory, it was a military cyber range in Texas. And the tests weren't from leaving old samples of Ebola in the petri dish, but a failure to cleanse and reboot infected computers used in prior tests.
ATK plans to develop and build the largest composite case solid-fuel rocket motors ever flown, for the planned Stratolaunch Systems Air-Launch Vehicle (ALV), which will drop from the largest aircraft ever built to orbit payloads as heavy as 15,000 lb. Scott Lehr, vice president of ATK's Defense and Commercial Div., says the first- and second-stage motors that ATK will build for Orbital Sciences Corp. will be larger than the 92-in.-dia. cases it currently makes for its GEM 30 line of commercial solid-rocket motors, and larger than the 10.5-ft.
Frequent fliers have long decried the poor service and uncomfortable cabins to be found on most U.S. airlines. But many carriers are now planning major improvements—particularly on key transcontinental routes. Over the next few years, passengers will be seeing drastic changes to the inflight experience. Some airlines are purchasing entirely new sub-fleets and others are completely overhauling their interiors and products.
