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When companies merge--a common occurrence lately in the aerospace and defense business--it’s not just workers who suddenly become redundant. There’s also the stationery, coffee mugs, T-shirts and baseball caps.
At least that’s what Nissen Davis, vice president at Hughes International Corp., figures. Last year, El Segundo-based Hughes Electronics sold its defense operations to Raytheon Co. of Lexington, Mass., in a $9.5-billion deal. Davis has responded by attempting to collect surplus items emblazoned with the now-defunct Hughes Aircraft Co. moniker.
Shirts, hats and other accessories were snapped up by nostalgic employees, and so far Davis has been able to locate only a box of leftover pencils. Eventually, though, he plans to gather enough items to donate to local schools.
Davis has also enlisted the help of employees at other post-merger companies, such as McDonnell Douglas and the space and missile units of Rockwell International, both of which were acquired by Boeing Co.
Flight Demo: Kelly Space & Technology successfully completed its first series of flight tests last week for its Eclipse program, which aims to build reusable launch vehicles that can loft satellites into space at less than half the cost of traditional rockets.
The Eclipse vehicles are to be towed glider-style 20,000 feet into the air behind a 747. They would then detach from a 1,000-foot, super-strong cable and rocket up to 600,000 feet--or 115 miles--above Earth to deploy their payloads. Then they would return for another mission.
For the initial tests, performed at NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, the Air Force supplied a C-141A and a QF-106A to stand in for the 747 and the Eclipse vehicle. In a series of six flights that began Dec. 20 and ended Friday, KST’s engineers tested the 1,000-foot cable that connects the two vehicles and practiced releasing the glider from the tow plane, said Michael Kelly, president and chief executive of the 5-year-old San Bernardino company.
KST plans to begin construction of the first Eclipse vehicle, the Sprint, on March 1, with flight tests by the end of the year. Full-scale engineering development of a larger vehicle, the Astroliner, is to begin in July, with test flights scheduled for the end of 2000. Although that puts the company behind its original schedule, Kelly said the Eclipse program has stayed within budget.
KST has won an $89-million contract to launch up to 20 replacement satellites for Iridium.
Improving Flight Safety: The Federal Aviation Administration has enlisted NASA Ames Research Center at Moffett Field in Mountain View, Calif., to develop systems to improve the safety of commercial air travel.
The systems will record a broad range of data to measure an aircraft’s performance, including air speed, altitude and engine feedback. New software will churn through data and look for patterns that could indicate shortcomings in standard operating procedures and training practices, said Irving Statler, NASA’s project manager for the Aviation Performance Measuring System.
As the processing power of commercial off-the-shelf chips improves, such systems will eventually be able to process the flight data in real time to produce safety warnings during flight and alert pilots to potential problems, Statler said.
Not only will the data provide vital information on the mechanical functions of airplanes, “it also gives us the opportunity of exploring things like human performance problems and human interaction” with flight controls, he said.
Later this year, Statler’s group will test parts of the system in planes operated by Alaska Airlines and United Airlines. He also plans to demonstrate a prototype database search program by mid-1998.
Executive Suite: Michael T. Smith, chairman and chief executive of Hughes Electronics, was elected chairman of the board of governors of the Aerospace Industries Assn., which is based in Washington. . . . Kistler Aerospace founders Walter Kistler and Bob Citron have resigned from the Los Angeles company’s board but will continue to serve the company in an advisory role. . . . Allen Puckett, who served as chairman of Hughes Aircraft Co. for a decade, won the Howard Hughes Memorial Award from the Aero Club of Southern California.
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Karen Kaplan can be reached at karen.kaplan@latimes.com
