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Paris (AFP) July 25, 2017 US aerospace giant Boeing has signed a billion-dollarcontract with French industrial software company Dassault Systemes to modernise its production system, French media said Tuesday. "Boeing has signed a 30-year contract worth a billion dollars, renewable every 10 years," said Le Figaro newspaper, which is owned by the Dassault group. The partnership will focus on the use of 3D software "to design future products, to modernise the entire production system and to deploy new services". The software allows all stages of production, from the design to the management of subcontractors, to be organised across a single interface. "From start to finish, Boeing will drive all levels of subcontracting, from the largest to the smallest, and will be able to control exchanges between its divisions and its partners," Bernard Charles, Dassault Systemes CEO, was quoted as saying by Le Figaro. The contract, won after two years of competiti...

NASA, SpaceX and Boeing expect test flights of their Crew Dragon and CST-100 Starliner vehicles to take place next year after extensive delays. Credit: SpaceX artist's concept and Boeing WASHINGTON — Both NASA and the two companies developing commercial crew vehicles say those efforts remain on schedule for test flights that are in some cases less than a year away. NASA published July 20 what it called “the most recent publicly-releasable dates” of the test flights of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner and SpaceX’s Crew Dragon vehicles. Each company, under terms of Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts awarded in September 2014, are required to first fly an uncrewed test flight of their spacecraft, followed by one with astronauts on board. The latest SpaceX schedule calls for an uncrewed test flight in February 2018, followed by a crewed test flight in June 2018. Boeing’s schedule anticipates an uncrewed test flight in June 2018 and a crewed test flight in August ...

I can imagine quite a few horror scenarios onboard an airplane. Looking outside your window and seeing fighter jets is definitely at the very top of that list. That was the reality this week for passengers aboard an Indian Jet Airways flight bound for London that lost contact with air traffic controllers in Cologne, Germany, leading German Air Force  Eurofighter Typhoons  to scramble and intercept the plane. Video of the incident was captured by a trailing British Airways plane, which comes to us from the Facebook page of  CirrusPilot : That’s something you don’t see every day. The  Times of India  reports the plane, a Boeing 777-300ER flying from Mumbai to London, did not respond to air traffic control in Cologne due to some kind of communications failure. Luckily, Typhoons scrambled to intercept the plane were able to reestablish communications between it and air traffic control, and once that happened it safely continued its flight to London, the newspape...

Boeing Co has hired a small company to make about 600 3D-printed parts for its Starliner space taxis, meaning key components in the United States manned space program are being built with additive manufacturing. The company, privately held Oxford Performance Materials, will announce a $10 million strategic investment from advanced materials company Hexcel Corp as early as Friday, adding to $15 million Hexcel invested in May and lifting Hexcel's equity stake to 16.1 percent, Oxford and Hexcel said. Boeing's award of the parts for its flagship space program and Hexcel's funding are strategic bets that printed plastics can perform flawlessly even under the extreme stress of a rocket launch and sub-zero temperatures of space. They offer further evidence of a shift in 3D printing from making prototypes to commercial production of high-grade parts for space ships, aircraft engines and other critical equipment. Oxford's parts will help Boeing lower costs and save weight on...