August 20 News Items

From One, Many (Source: Space Review)
Small satellites have recently found new acceptance as a complement to larger spacecraft. Jeff Foust reports on a couple of new initiatives that use clusters of smallsats to replace big satellites. Visit http://www.thespacereview.com/article/937/1 to view the article.

Arianespace: Super Rockets or Super Sales Force? (Source: Space Review)
Arianespace has achieved considerable success in the commercial launch market in recent years. Taylor Dinerman credits this success as much to its sales and marketing as to the company's launch vehicles themselves. Visit http://www.thespacereview.com/article/936/1 to view the article.

Caution Over Shuttle Shows Shift at NASA (Source: New York Times)
Confronted with the same kind of problem that doomed the space shuttle Columbia, NASA officials, chastened by years of criticism and upheaval in the agency, took a markedly different approach during the current mission of the Endeavour, calling on an array of new tools and procedures to analyze and respond to the problem. While the Columbia faced much more serious damage — a 6- to 10-inch hole punched in a wing that let in hot gases during re-entry — outside officials said that with the Endeavour, NASA had taken steps far more elaborate and methodical in concluding that the craft was still safe.

“The comparison is night and day,” said John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, who served on the investigation board that looked into the Columbia disaster. He said he thought NASA had handled the Endeavour situation perfectly. Engineers and officials with NASA will not know how accurate their analysis was or whether their decision to forgo a repair of a gouge in the Endeavour’s underside was the correct one until the shuttle is back on Earth. The landing is scheduled for tomorrow.

U.S. Air Force Seeks Future ORS Partners (Source: Defense News)
As the U.S. Air Force moves forward with the development and acquisition of small satellites and rockets under its operationally responsive space (ORS) effort, Pentagon leaders have given the service a mandate to find a variety of partners for cooperation. The mandate came from the report “Plan for Operationally Responsive Space,” which instructs the Air Force to find ways to work with its reserve components, the intelligence community and civil organizations like NASA. Such cooperation could provide significant benefit to the Air Force as well as its potential partners. However, in each case explored so far, the discussions have not gone beyond a preliminary stage.

Pratt & Whitney Machinists Reject Contract (Source: WFSB)
Machinists at Pratt & Whitney overwhelmingly rejected a new three-year contract proposal by the company. The machinist union's chief negotiator said the main sticking points were the company's lack of commitment to add jobs in Connecticut and a proposed 60 percent increase in health insurance premiums for workers. Pratt last month announced it won two U.S. Air Force engine contracts valued at more than $2 billion. Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne Inc., a subsidiary, announced in June a $1.2 billion NASA contract to design and develop rocket engines for the next generation spacecraft that would eventually send astronauts back to the moon.