Recent TV Coverage

Watch recent television clips covering the important issues driving the Second to None campaign.

Most recently, AIA members Aurora Flight Sciences and RTI International Metals opened their manufacturing lines to TV crews to get a first-hand look at the U.S. manufacturing that would be hurt by sequestration.

For more information about arranging an aerospace site visit, please contact info@secondtonone.org.

November 21, 2011
Support for Defense Industry
WHP-TV covers the Second to None Rally at BAE Systems in York, PA.

November 20, 2011
If the Supercommittee Fails, What’s Next?
CNN visits Aurora Flight Sciences in Manassas, Va.

 

November 16, 2011
Defense Cuts Coming?
CNBC visits RTI International Metals in Niles, Ohio.

Weather Forecasting Ability: Cloudy with a chance of becoming Blind

New York – 2011 has the record for disasters in the U.S. and it is a only September.  First, Snowmageddon, followed by deadly tornadoes, fires, drought, heat waves, flooding on the Mississippi, a record Earthquake on the East Coast and just last week a Hurricane slammed into New York City and Vermont. With a second storm taking aim at the Gulf Coast and another is developing south of Florida.  All for all the total costs for this odd weather has exceeded $35 billion.

David Biello, associate editor at Scientific American, spoke with Ira Flatow, host of Science Friday on NPR about the dangers of the United States not reinvesting in its Earth monitoring capabilities. “Fourteen out of the 15 [weather satellites] are past their design life and will shutdown shortly, and they will not be replaced,” Biello explained.  “We have a satellite gap,” and the issue is only going to worsen as more systems pass their lifecycle and stop functioning Biello detailed.  NASA is also legislatively barred from seeking joint partnerships with the Russians or Chinese, though the E.U. and U.S. military are filling in the gaps now. However, the rate of failing systems and the lack of U.S. satellite launches will cause the gap to expand.

“It’s back to 1850 again,” Biello referenced, as explaining that due to budget cuts NASA is turning to “weather balloons” and “airplanes” as an attempt to replace the missing data due to satellite failures.

The shrinking access to weather data is also placing lives at risk Biello noted.  He continued, “We [had] 36 hours to prepare [for Hurricane Irene] … and [spent] a relatively small amount of money on satellites [to achieve that warning level].” Flatow closed out the interview asking what he thought the causes were and Biello carefully defined the issue as “politically sensitive.”

HOLMES: Taking defense hostage

By Kim R. Holmes

Amid the fog surrounding the recently enacted Budget Control Act and the new Joint Select “super” Committee on Deficit Reduction, one thing is clear: National defense spending has been taken hostage. Policymakers from both parties think threatening draconian defense cuts can protect their positions on taxes and entitlement spending.

Read the full Opinion Article in the Washington Times.

Shuttle Dream Jobs Fading

By: Dan Thisdell

 

When the Space Shuttle Atlantis touched down today some 3,200 workers at NASA contractors waved goodbye to an icon of American technology, and to their jobs.

Another 12,000 jobs had already gone in the run-up to the end of the 30-year programme, which at its peak in 1992 employed about 30,000 people, inside and outside NASA.

All that will be left are about 3,500 civil service jobs that have depended on the Shuttle.

Especially hard-hit are people at Houston-headquartered United Space Alliance, NASA’s prime human spaceflight contractor, which needed 750,000 man hours to prepare an orbiter, external fuel tank and two solid boosters for each flight. USA is to lay off 2,600-2,800 people in Florida, Texas and Alabama – more than half its 5,600 headcount.

Boeing‘s Space Exploration division is laying-off 510 people, mostly owing to the end of the Shuttle programme. Hitting hard in Florida, an estimated 2,000 Kennedy Space Center workers will go with Shuttle.

Read the rest at: http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2011/07/21/359768/shuttle-dream-jobs-fading.html