Contenders Line Up for JCA: There’s been a flurry of activity on the Joint Cargo Aircraft program, with three separate teams offering their respective platforms for the competition. Lockheed Martin formally said it would offer a short-fuselage variant of its combat-tested C-130J Hercules. The team of Raytheon and EADS CASA North America is sticking with two intratheater airlifters, the C-295 and CN-235—to be constructed in Mobile, Ala. And, the Boeing –L3 Communications-Alenia North America team does plan to offer the C-27J Spartan. Now, all the program needs is Army money for 2007.
NASA, SpaceX, and United Launch Alliance are all preparing to launch their next-gen rockets from Florida’s Space Coast, two of them before the year is out. One is expected to liberate the U.S. launch enterprise from its reliance on Russian-made RD-180 engines, while all three rockets could eventually carry astronaut crews.