Qatar Airways to launch Saudi services early next year

By Praveen Menon

DUBAI Mon Nov 18, 2013 9:36am EST

Qatar Airways Chief Executive Akbar Al Baker (3rd R), Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Nasser bin Khalifa al-Thani (4th R), Qatar's Minister of Energy and Industry Mohammed Saleh al-Sada (2ndR) and other delegates pose in front of a Qatar Airways Boeing 777-300 aircraft during a ceremony to mark the alliance of Qatar Airways with the oneworld grouping at the Hamad International airport in Doha October 29, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Fadi Al-Assaad

DUBAI (Reuters) - Qatar Airways will launch domestic operations in Saudi Arabia in the first half of 2014, the chief executive of the airline said on Monday.

Akbar Al Baker said the Saudi domestic services carrier will be called Al Maha Airways and will start with the main cities of the kingdom including Riyadh and Jeddah, and then move to the second-tier cities.

"We have chosen the name of the Saudi carrier ... Al Maha Airways. We hope to start operations in the first half of next year," Baker told Reuters at the Dubai Airshow.

Qatar Airways and Bahrain's national carrier Gulf Air became the first foreign airlines to obtain carrier licenses in Saudi, following the opening of the country's aviation market last December.

Currently, only national carrier Saudi Arabian Airlines and budget airline National Air Services serve a domestic market of about 27 million people. Foreign carriers can only fly in and out of Saudi Arabia, not within the country.

With Saudi Arabia's price cap on domestic flights, private airlines have struggled with their profit margins.

Saudi Airlines, which is undergoing a slow privatization process, receives fuel at subsidized prices unlike private carriers, allowing it to offset the limits of the ticket cost ceiling.

"There is huge potential but also many challenges in the Saudi market," Baker said.

"We have an undertaking from the Saudi authorities that they will resolve the two contentious issues of price cap and fuel subsidies," Baker said.

NO OVERCAPACITY

Gulf airlines splashed out around $150 billion on the opening day of the airshow, as they ordered hundreds of passenger jets to expand a common ambition to turn the region into a global aviation hub.

Qatar Airways ordered 50 of Boeing's new 777 in an order worth $19 billion.

"We are not overdoing it," said Baker on the spree of plane order announcements. "We are all growing in this region ... and if we are growing, we must be doing something right."

He said the airline would deploy its fleet on new growth markets and would look to expand further. However, he denied media reports that the carrier was close to taking an equity stake in an Indian airline.

"We are talking to Go Air, Indigo, SpiceJet and Air India but we are talking about codeshares," said Baker.

"So we are not getting into bed with somebody. When we want to do it we will say that we are interested."

(Editing by Mark Potter)

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Billionaire rocketeers duke it out for shuttle launch pad

1 of 3. Tesla Motors Inc CEO Elon Musk talks about Tesla's new battery swapping program in Hawthorne, California in this June 20, 2013, file photo.

Credit: Reuters/Lucy Nicholson/Files

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Wed Oct 2, 2013 12:40pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Four decades ago, NASA's Launch Complex 39A was at the center of the Cold War race to the moon.

Now the mothballed launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which dispatched Neil Armstrong and his crew on their historic Apollo 11 mission in 1969, is the focus of a battle of another sort, between two billionaire techies seeking to dominate a new era of private space flight.

NASA had hoped to turn over maintenance of the pad to a private company by October 1, saving itself $100,000 a month in maintenance costs, according to NASA spokeswoman Tracy Young.

Instead, fierce competition for control of the pad by digital entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos has led to a government probe and congressional lobbying, delaying NASA's choice of a partner.

Musk's 11-year-old Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX, already has two U.S. launch sites for its Falcon rockets at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and California's Vandenberg Air Force bases.

Musk, the co-founder of Paypal and chief executive of electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc, also plans to build a site, probably in Texas, for commercial launches and wants Pad 39A for Falcon rocket launches to ferry cargo and possibly astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA.

Blue Origin, the company formed in 2000 by Amazon.com Inc. founder Bezos, is working on a suborbital reusable spaceship called New Shepard. A smaller test vehicle made a debut flight in 2006 from a company-owned site in west Texas. A second test vehicle flew in 2011.

Last October, Blue Origin tested a crew capsule developed in part with NASA funding.

Two weeks ago, Blue Origin, based in Kent, Washington, filed a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office over the NASA solicitation for Pad 39A proposals. The GAO is scheduled to rule on the dispute by December 12.

SpaceX told NASA it had no problem with other companies using the launchpad if SpaceX was awarded a five-year lease. However, Musk says SpaceX is light-years ahead of the competition.

"I think it's kind of moot whether or not SpaceX gets exclusive or non-exclusive rights for the next five years. I don't see anyone else using that pad for the next five years," Musk told Reuters.

"I think it's a bit silly because Blue Origin hasn't even done a suborbital flight to space, let alone an orbital one. If one were to extrapolate their progress, they might reach orbit in five years, but that seems unlikely," he said.

SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets have flown six times, including a test flight on Sunday of an upgraded booster designed to deliver heavier payloads into orbit. They are being developed to fly back to the launch site for re-use.

SpaceX has a backlog of more than 50 customers for Falcon rocket launches, including 10 more cargo runs to the International Space Station for NASA and satellite launches for commercial firms and foreign governments. The company also has two U.S. Air Force launches that are considered trial runs toward potential bigger contracts.

Blue Origin plans to evolve its rockets and spaceships for orbital flight as well and has proposed running Launch Complex 39A for multiple users while it continues to develop its technology.

"Blue Origin has been looking at various sites for our orbital launch operations for a number of years. We started talking to NASA Kennedy Space Center in 2008," company President Rob Meyerson told Reuters.

The company would modify 39A for other users as early as 2015, with plans to fly it own rockets from there in 2018, he said.

Among the firms backing Blue Origin's proposal is United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing whose monopoly on flying U.S. military satellites is threatened by upstart SpaceX.

Each bidder has sought congressional support. Blue Origin's plan has the backing of Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican who chairs the House subcommittee overseeing NASA funding. Wolf and other legislators including Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Blue Origin's home state of Washington, and Representative Robert Aderholt, an Alabama Republican, warned NASA about granting an exclusive use agreement for the launchpad.

Florida's bipartisan congressional delegation countered with a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden encouraging the space agency to ignore outside pressure in selecting a proposal.

Launch Complex 39A is one of two launchpads built by NASA in the 1960s for the Apollo moon program and later modified for the now-retired space shuttles. The U.S. space agency is keeping a sister launchpad, 39B, for a planned heavy-lift rocket known as the Space Launch System.

NASA spokeswoman Young says the agency can't comment on the bids.

(The story corrects to make clear re-use of rockets is still being developed)

(Editing by David Adams and Douglas Royalty)

View the original article here

Billionaire rocketeers duke it out for shuttle launch pad

1 of 3. Tesla Motors Inc CEO Elon Musk talks about Tesla's new battery swapping program in Hawthorne, California in this June 20, 2013, file photo.

Credit: Reuters/Lucy Nicholson/Files

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Wed Oct 2, 2013 12:40pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - Four decades ago, NASA's Launch Complex 39A was at the center of the Cold War race to the moon.

Now the mothballed launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, which dispatched Neil Armstrong and his crew on their historic Apollo 11 mission in 1969, is the focus of a battle of another sort, between two billionaire techies seeking to dominate a new era of private space flight.

NASA had hoped to turn over maintenance of the pad to a private company by October 1, saving itself $100,000 a month in maintenance costs, according to NASA spokeswoman Tracy Young.

Instead, fierce competition for control of the pad by digital entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos has led to a government probe and congressional lobbying, delaying NASA's choice of a partner.

Musk's 11-year-old Space Exploration Technologies, known as SpaceX, already has two U.S. launch sites for its Falcon rockets at Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station and California's Vandenberg Air Force bases.

Musk, the co-founder of Paypal and chief executive of electric car maker Tesla Motors Inc, also plans to build a site, probably in Texas, for commercial launches and wants Pad 39A for Falcon rocket launches to ferry cargo and possibly astronauts to the International Space Station for NASA.

Blue Origin, the company formed in 2000 by Amazon.com Inc. founder Bezos, is working on a suborbital reusable spaceship called New Shepard. A smaller test vehicle made a debut flight in 2006 from a company-owned site in west Texas. A second test vehicle flew in 2011.

Last October, Blue Origin tested a crew capsule developed in part with NASA funding.

Two weeks ago, Blue Origin, based in Kent, Washington, filed a protest with the U.S. Government Accountability Office over the NASA solicitation for Pad 39A proposals. The GAO is scheduled to rule on the dispute by December 12.

SpaceX told NASA it had no problem with other companies using the launchpad if SpaceX was awarded a five-year lease. However, Musk says SpaceX is light-years ahead of the competition.

"I think it's kind of moot whether or not SpaceX gets exclusive or non-exclusive rights for the next five years. I don't see anyone else using that pad for the next five years," Musk told Reuters.

"I think it's a bit silly because Blue Origin hasn't even done a suborbital flight to space, let alone an orbital one. If one were to extrapolate their progress, they might reach orbit in five years, but that seems unlikely," he said.

SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets have flown six times, including a test flight on Sunday of an upgraded booster designed to deliver heavier payloads into orbit. They are being developed to fly back to the launch site for re-use.

SpaceX has a backlog of more than 50 customers for Falcon rocket launches, including 10 more cargo runs to the International Space Station for NASA and satellite launches for commercial firms and foreign governments. The company also has two U.S. Air Force launches that are considered trial runs toward potential bigger contracts.

Blue Origin plans to evolve its rockets and spaceships for orbital flight as well and has proposed running Launch Complex 39A for multiple users while it continues to develop its technology.

"Blue Origin has been looking at various sites for our orbital launch operations for a number of years. We started talking to NASA Kennedy Space Center in 2008," company President Rob Meyerson told Reuters.

The company would modify 39A for other users as early as 2015, with plans to fly it own rockets from there in 2018, he said.

Among the firms backing Blue Origin's proposal is United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing whose monopoly on flying U.S. military satellites is threatened by upstart SpaceX.

Each bidder has sought congressional support. Blue Origin's plan has the backing of Frank Wolf, a Virginia Republican who chairs the House subcommittee overseeing NASA funding. Wolf and other legislators including Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Blue Origin's home state of Washington, and Representative Robert Aderholt, an Alabama Republican, warned NASA about granting an exclusive use agreement for the launchpad.

Florida's bipartisan congressional delegation countered with a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden encouraging the space agency to ignore outside pressure in selecting a proposal.

Launch Complex 39A is one of two launchpads built by NASA in the 1960s for the Apollo moon program and later modified for the now-retired space shuttles. The U.S. space agency is keeping a sister launchpad, 39B, for a planned heavy-lift rocket known as the Space Launch System.

NASA spokeswoman Young says the agency can't comment on the bids.

(The story corrects to make clear re-use of rockets is still being developed)

(Editing by David Adams and Douglas Royalty)

View the original article here

NASA adds more space launch platforms for sale to private firms

By Irene Klotz

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida | Tue Aug 20, 2013 7:11pm EDT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - While NASA considers competing bids to take over a shuttle launch pad at Kennedy Space Center, it added three mobile launch platforms to its list of excess equipment available to private industry, officials said on Tuesday.

Ideally, NASA wants a commercial launch company to take over one or more of the massive steel platforms, which were originally built in 1967 to support the Apollo moon program's Saturn rockets. The 25-foot (7.6-meter) tall platforms were later modified for the space shuttles, which flew from 1981 until 2011.

Recycling the platforms, which measure 160 feet by 135 feet is another option, a solicitation on NASA's procurement website shows.

The U.S. space agency also is interested in other uses for the mobile launch platforms, which served as bases to stack and assemble the shuttle and then transport it to the launch pad. The platforms provided power and umbilical connections and had open sections for flames and rocket exhaust to pass through.

"At this point, NASA is looking to gauge interest for potential use of the (platforms) and concepts for potential use," spokeswoman Tracy Young said.

Proposals are due September 6.

NASA is already assessing bids for the shuttle launch pad from two competing firms backed by Internet billionaires.

NASA is also turning over the shuttle's runway to Space Florida, a state-backed economic development agency. Space Florida, in turn, plans to make the runway and support facilities available to a variety of commercial companies, including privately owned XCOR Aerospace, which is developing a two-person, suborbital spaceship called Lynx that takes off and lands like an airplane.

Another potential customer is Stratolaunch Systems, an orbital space vehicle backed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

The most contentious - and highest profile - piece of shuttle equipment available is a Kennedy Space Center launch pad that has attracted competing bids from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk, co-founder of Paypal and chief executive of electric car company Tesla Motors.

Bezos and Musk, both billionaires, are vying for Launch Complex 39A. NASA intends to keep the second shuttle launch pad, 39B, for a new heavy-lift rocket under development called the Space Launch System.

Musk's Space Exploration Technologies of Hawthorne, California, wants 39A to launch its Falcon 9 and planned Falcon Heavy rockets. The privately owned firm, also known as SpaceX, already flies from a leased launch pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, located just south of the Kennedy Space Center.

The first Falcon 9 rocket flight from a new launch site at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California is scheduled for next month. The company has a backlog of more than 50 launches, including 10 missions to fly cargo for NASA to the International Space Station.

SpaceX also is developing a version of its Dragon cargo ship to fly astronauts.

Startup Blue Origin, a Kent, Washington, firm owned by Bezos, submitted an alternative proposal to NASA to run pad 39A as a multi-user facility.

Both firms say they are ready to take over maintenance and operations of the launch pad on October 1.

United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, did not bid on the shuttle's launch pad, but has publicly endorsed Blue Origin's proposals. The company, which has a lucrative monopoly on launching U.S. military satellites, is facing its first competition for the business from rival launch pad bidder SpaceX.

The main NASA facilities that will remain are the shuttle launch pad 39B, plus various hangars for the Orion deep space capsule to be launched by NASA's heavy lift rocket, due to begin test flights in 2017.

(Editing by Philip Barbara)

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NASA Picks Next Exoplanet Mission for Launch in 2017

NASA plans to launch an exoplanet-hunting satellite and an instrument to study neutron stars in 2017. Both are small missions that could have a big impact.

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) will aim to find terrestrial planets in the habitable zones of nearby stars. It will use an array of wide-field cameras to survey the brightest stars in the sun's neighborhood in hopes of detecting exoplanets such as gas giants and rocky, Earth-sized planets. Some of these planets, researchers hope, will become candidates for follow-up studies of their atmospheres by the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2018.

The other mission chosen by NASA is the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), which will be deployed on the International Space Station. The instrument will observe x-rays flashed by neutron stars, helping researchers understand the nature of matter contained in these dense, spinning objects that result from the collapse of massive stars.

"TESS will carry out the first space-borne all-sky transit survey, covering 400 times as much sky as any previous mission," said George Ricker, a research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and principal investigator of the mission, in a statement. "It will identify thousands of new planets in the solar neighborhood, with a special focus on planets comparable in size to the Earth."

Both TESS and NICER have been selected as part of NASA's Explorer program, out of four concept studies submitted to the agency in the fall last year. TESS will get up to $200 million, and NICER—to be led by Keith Gendreau of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland—will receive up to $55 million.

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