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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...

An Indian airline has given its youngest customer the ultimate birthday present. Jet Airways on Sunday said it awarded a free lifetime travel pass to a baby boy born during a flight from Dammam, Saudi Arabia, to Kochi in southwest India. The boy is the first baby to be born in-flight for Jet Airways, a spokesperson confirmed by email. Pilots diverted flight 9W 569 to Mumbai on Sunday after a passenger went into premature labor during what would've been a five-hour flight. The airline's crew members, along with a trained paramedic who was traveling that day, provided immediate medical assistance. "The guest delivered a baby boy at 35,000 feet," the spokesperson said. "Upon landing, both mother and the baby were rushed to Holy Spirit Hospital in Mumbai and are doing well." Jet Airways later informed the woman's family, who were en route from Kochi (also known as Cochin) by late Sunday. The Boeing 737 carried 162 guests and six crew members during the ...

By  Kelsey D. Atherton   Screenshot by author, from  YouTube DARPA Tern Concept Video Taking off like a helicopter and flying like a plane, TERN is designed as a versatile armed scout that can operate far from its home ship. Terns are a family of shorebirds that can nest in marginal conditions and thrive everywhere from beaches to wetlands to rivers to inlets. TERN, or the Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node, is a drone developed by Northrop Grumman for both the DARPA and the Office of Naval Research, with the goal of giving the Navy and Marine Corps a versatile flying scout that can support ships and troops almost anywhere they may be. Today, DARPA announced funding for Phase III of the project, which aims to take it from a mere concept to a working, flying, fighting robot by 2018. So what, exactly, does TERN do? It perches on ships, even small ships without runways, and then  takes off vertically like a helicopter , before transitioning to plane-like hor...

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...