XCOR Aerospace is placing orders for long-lead structural parts for the airframe of the Lynx suborbital spacecraft, and expects to finalize the aerodynamic design following a final wind tunnel campaign starting next week. The company also plans to start a final set of tests beginning Aug. 8 at Marshall Space Flight Center's trisonic wind tunnel complex. Lynx is a two-seat, single-stage, reusable, liquid rocket-powered vehicle that will take off and land horizontally.
The U.K. Parliament's Defense Committee has effectively given the government's Strategic Defense & Security Review (SDSR) a failing grade, warning that it could leave the military unable to meet national demands after 2015 as a result of cuts made in the last year. The committee members raise a host of concerns about the long-term implications of the SDSR. For one, they are questioning whether the so-called Future Force 2020 can be realized.
Russia, the world's second-largest arms exporter, may seal three new orders worth more than $3 billion for fighter aircraft over the next year, the top Russian defense think tank CAST said Aug. 4. India is looking to sign a new $2 billion contract for 40 Sukhoi Su-30MKIs, according to CAST data, and the Russian defense ministry may soon sign a deal for 24 Mikoyan MiG-29Ks to renew the aging fleet on its sole aircraft carrier, Reuters reports.
Boeing has recorded the 100 737 Next Generation orders American Airlines placed in the deal that theoretically launched Boeing's 737 New Engine aircraft program. Boeing's board of directors must still approve the 737NE program, which is expected to be formally launched in the fall. The American order was one of 113 recorded on the Aug. 2 website listing, along with 10 from GE Capital Aviation Services—two 747-8 Freighters and eight 777-300ERs—and two from Korean Air for 737NGs. A single 777 in a VIP configuration was also ordered.
The Teamsters want a court to nullify a cost-cutting agreement between Republic Airways and the former bargaining unit for Frontier Airlines' pilots, which Republic considers critical for the restructuring and survival of its low-cost subsidiary. The Teamsters, which already represented pilots at Republic's three regional carrier subsidiaries, became the sole union for pilots at Frontier and the regional subsidiaries after a representation vote that concluded on June 27.
General Electric has delivered the first GE38 turboshaft engine for ground tests. The engine, which will power Sikorsky's CH-53K for the U.S. Marine Corps, is 57% more powerful and has 18% lower specific fuel consumption than the T64 engine powering the current CH-53E. The delivery marks the completion of more than a year of tests on the GE38 including 300 hr. of cyclic durability tests to validate hot-section durability, high-pressure turbine aeromechanics, heat transfer survey tests, lube vehicle qualification testing and sea level performance assessments.
Deliveries of general aviation and business aircraft declined 15.5% in the first half of the year, compared with the first six months of 2010, led by a 26.5% drop in business-jet shipments. Manufacturers delivered only 261 jets in the first half, says the General Aviation Manufacturers Association. Bombardier and Cessna tied with 69 deliveries each. Gulfstream underlined the relative strength of the high-end business jet market by delivering 40 large-cabin aircraft.
Boeing subsidiary Insitu has introduced an unmanned helicopter that will fit into a police car trunk and is aimed at the law enforcement market. The police will be the first group of commercial remotely piloted aircraft users that is allowed limited access to civil airspace. The Inceptor is a 3.5-lb. electrically powered rotorcraft developed by Marietta, Ga.-based Adaptive Flight Inc. The aircraft carries an electro-optical or infrared camera and is operated from a tablet-sized touchscreen control station.
The final landings of two Boeing 747-8 Freighter flight-test aircraft last week move the company a step closer to a first delivery date of the four-engine jet to launch customer Cargolux in late September. Chief 747 pilot Capt. Mark Feuerstein said late last week the congressional fight over FAA funding had not affected Boeing's flight certification efforts.
Flight and ground tests of the 20-strong Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter force could be suspended “for a few weeks,” according to a source close to the program, after the secondary power system of F-35A AF-4, a U.S. Air Force-variant test aircraft, failed on Aug. 2 at Edwards AFB, Calif., during a ground maintenance engine run. A clearer picture is expected to emerge this week.
Once beryllium was selected over glass as the material to be used for the primary mirrors for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), selecting the best industrial team to make the mirrors was pretty easy, says Scott Texter of Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, the JWST's prime contractor.
It has been 33 years since the U.S. Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act, which unleashed free market forces for the U.S. airline industry and eventually inspired other countries to start doing the same. So it might seem odd that two U.S. low-cost carriers are in court, challenging the U.S. Transportation Department on exactly what “deregulation” means.
U.S. airlines have every right to raise their fares in the absence of temporarily suspended federal taxes. It is not fair that politicians and some consumer advocates are attacking them for doing so while many taxes are suspended because of the congressional impasse on extending the FAA's authorization.
A search of data generated by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft has revealed a small asteroid sharing Earth's orbit and preceding it around the Sun.
NASA's Merritt Island Launch Annex (MILA) in Florida has been decommissioned, marking another casualty of the end of the space shuttle program. Located on 61 acres of land just west of the Kennedy Space Center Visitors Complex, MILA provided communications between the orbiters and Mission Control in Houston during launches and landings. The tracking station was established in 1966 by Goddard Space Flight Center as part of a global, ground-based network of 17 tracking stations to support orbital operations of the Apollo program and Earth-orbiting science satellites.
Orbital Technologies Corp. (Orbitech), a Madison, Wis.-based subsystem house, will provide environmental control and life-support system (ECLSS) and thermal control system hardware for the planned Dream Chaser commercial crew launch vehicle under a deal with Hamilton Sundstrand.
International Launch Services (ILS) will orbit three Inmarsat-5 satellites aboard Proton vehicles launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in 2013-14. Based on Boeing's 702HP bus, the three Ka-band satellites will support Inmarsat's Global Xpress mobile broadband service. Inmarsat is investing $1.2 billion in the Global Xpress program, including launch costs. ILS also launched Inmarsat's most recent satellite, the third Inmarsat-4, from Baikonur in August 2008.
Main Street and Wall Street may see nothing but dysfunction in the nation's capital, but the aviation sector can cheer one potential breakthrough. After 12 days of a partial shutdown of the FAA, the White House on Aug. 4 trumpeted a bipartisan deal that ostensibly puts thousands back to work on construction projects around the U.S. With mounting bad publicity that kicked into high gear once lawmakers approved a deal on the debt ceiling and left Washington for August, Sen.
Before leaving for an August recess, several senators got out their pens and wrote letters about their favorite and least-favorite weapons systems. Texas Republican Sens. John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchison teamed up with four others to defend Lockheed Martin's F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, built largely in Fort Worth, by pressing the Pentagon to lower its headline-grabbing $1 trillion estimate of the jet's sustainment costs. “We are concerned that the department's F-35 operating and support cost models make overly conservative assumptions,” they say.
Meanwhile, lobbyists for the National Guard are building support in the Senate for legislation to boost the quasi-federal military force's representation inside the Pentagon, including a provision to give the Guard's senior officer a seat on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The House approved similar language in May. President Barack Obama promised to give the Guard a “seat at the table” in a 2008 campaign booklet. “We're getting close,” says Army Maj. Gen. (ret.) Gus Hargett, Jr., president of the National Guard Association of the United States.
Finally, the Republican representatives of Florida's Space Coast are seeking a so-called HUBZone designation for the traditional home of U.S. civil spaceflight. The designation as a “historically underutilized business zone” under the Small Business Reauthorization Act of 1997 would “help promote economic development and growth by providing access to more federal contracting opportunities,” according to Rep. Sandy Adams (R-Fla.). Neighboring Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) also supports the proposed legislation.
NASA's budget woes are having an impact on the other side of the Atlantic, where the European Space Agency (ESA) has returned to the drawing board in recent months to scale back plans for joint robotic missions that the U.S. agency says it is unable to help fund. Last summer, the Obama administration unveiled a revised U.S. national space policy that, among other edicts, extended NASA's participation in the International Space Station and called for enhanced U.S. cooperation with Europe and other partners on national-security and civil space programs.
While many beleaguered U.S. aerospace manufacturers are trimming back amid continuing uncertainty over the nation's long-term goals, California-based SpaceX is ramping up plans to become the world's largest producer of rocket engines in less than five years, manufacturing more units per year than any other single country.
Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (PWR) is laying off more workers amid continuing uncertainty over the future of the U.S. national space policy and NASA's proposed Space Launch System (SLS).
In the U.S., debate over the federal deficit has put the military-industrial complex on high alert. The White House refers to the debt ceiling deal signed into law last week as the “trigger,” and Republican senators deride it as a politically driven “gun to [our] heads.” There is no mistaking the fact that in order to extract concessions on tax matters, Democrats are taking the Pentagon prisoner.
