Adapting to New Possibilities

summer, flying a NASA robotic lander mission to the moon.

The company successfully tested flight engines on the company’s Cape Canaveral, Florida launchpad last month.

Tory Bruno, CEO of ULA, indicated in a tweet that the test-firing of the Vulcan’s BE-4 engines appeared to go as planned.

Completing the six-second firing leaves Vulcan 98% cleared to launch on its debut flight, the company said. It’s awaiting the completion of an investigation into a testing mishap with the company’s upper-rocket stage engine before finalizing the date for Vulcan’s maiden launch.

Getting that mission completed is vital to ULA catching up to its growing number of Space Force national security launches.

Military Concern About Warfare In Orbit Reshapes Colorado Aerospace

The U.S. Space Force had to start from scratch when it prepared to teach large numbers of its own personnel how to fly spacecraft in hostile circumstances.

The military’s space branch, carved off from the Air Force in late 2019, lacked a system to train for combat in space because the need had never really existed.

Three years later, the demand to train more guardians in the techniques of flying satellites and evading potential attacks is large enough that Even Rogers launched a startup to do it.

His company, True Anomaly, is investing in the ability to train guardians — what the Space Force calls its space professionals¬ — in Colorado Springs. It’s also building training satellites at the company’s Centennial offices. The first pair is slated to launch in October to serve as practice spacecraft to fly instead of training people on virtual simulators.

“We think this is the future of aerospace talent, and it’s in Colorado. That’s one of the reasons we set up shop here,” Rogers said.

Rogers, like many others at the company, has a military background. He served in the Air Force for a decade and worked in satellite operations, which brought him to Colorado. What he sees in the space industry now is a different military view of space: no longer the peaceful domain where the U.S. is presumed dominant and its satellites fly uncontested. Rival space programs in Russia and China are understood to be building capabilities not just to thwart U.S. satellites but possibly engage and destroy — to fight humanity’s first battles in orbit.

The assumption that the next shooting war between the U.S. and a world power could extend off the planet is common across military planning.

By Greg Avery – Denver Business Journal

Welcome Jenean Goodsell!

The NUNTMA Board is happy to announce Jenean Goodsell has been hired as the next NUNTMA Chapter Executive!

Jenean has been highly involved in the chapter for the past decade and brings her years of manufacturing and organizational expertise. Please join us in giving her a warm welcome! Jenean also wants to thank Maddie Dahl for all her work as past NUNTMA Chapter Executive!

THE NORTHERN UTAH CHAPTER OF THE NATIONAL TOOLING & MACHINING ASSOCIATION

Established in 2010, the NUNTMA is a gathering place for machine shops in Northern Utah.

September 8: Annual Golf Tournament

Where: Stonebridge Golf Course

4415 Links Dr, West Valley City, UT 84120

SURVEY REQUEST:

To ensure that the tournament surpasses your expectations, we kindly request your participation in a brief RSVP survey. Please take a moment to click on the following link to access the RSVP survey: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NJ6PWZD

REGISTRATION REQUIRED FOR ALL EVENTS. VISIT: NUNTMA.ORG/UPCOMING-EVENTS

The Manufacturing Revolution; by: Broc Bryson MSC Industrial Supply; NUNTMA Membership Chair

Let’s spend a moment to thank our beloved Maddie Dahl as she steps away from NUNTMA to more fully dedicate her time to her family more. Maddie on behalf of every single person that has connected with NUNTMA in the last 9 years we are grateful for your efforts. Thank you for your total commitment to the cause. Thank you for helping to direct the orchestra or the chaos that is NUNTMA and our industry. Your contributions are too numerous to count. Know that we so appreciate the impact that you have made in the role of Chapter Executive. Thank you, Maddie!

In a major theme of NUNTMA we are working desperately to recruit and retain a younger workforce that can help our companies thrive in the current and fast-changing marketplace. Who among us thought we’d be asking young people to take these jobs as opposed to having it be the other way around? Look around our industry too. How old are your peers? How old is your workforce? What happens if we don’t get some people moving NOW to be able to take over for those sure to step aside?

Industry 4.0 technologies are here. Many will figure out how to adapt and use these technologies for our betterment – and some will not.

So now “what”? I can with some confidence tell you what I think the machining industry will do. They will adapt, overcome, adjust, and thrive. “Why?” That is who we are and what we do. We work in a very complicated business that is getting more complicated. We moved from manual to CNC. From 3 Axis to 5 and dedication to customer service are number one priorities. This type of expertise and dedication has fostered a reputation of excellence in the tooling and stamping industry.

Axis. From lathes to turn/mill machines. From .250” thick tooling catalogs to 8” thick books to an infinite internet. From Cast Iron to Inconel. Our success is literally based upon our adapting to new technologies.

Specifically to the “How” we each have a choice. We we can band together and spread the load of some of the shared and more complicated things. Together the cast of characters that brought about our most successful Skills USA contest yet - happened because there were a whole bunch of people coming together to make it happen. Can next year’s contest be better? Of course it can and it will be if we all keep working together.

So the time is now and the chance and privilege are ours. Are there other good people already involved? There sure are. Do we need more good people? We sure do. Do we need you to jump in and help row the boat in any way that interests you and that you can shove into your busy life? We so do!

Located in Tempe, Arizona, our 100,000 Sq. Ft. Facility contains state of the art equipment , with production capabilities ranging from simple geometries to complex forms with intricate details. Precision enjoys a world-class reputation supplying a variety of OEMs, managing their inventory levels, and making certain product quality and timely delivery are NEVER compromised.

NASA Awards Blue Origin, Lockheed Martin Team $3.4 Billion

“This is going to be one of the premier facilities in the world, certainly here in the state of Arizona, bringing thousands of good paying jobs that you can actually raise a family on and that do not require a shipped to customers, said Jason Bagley, government affairs director for Intel Corp.’s U.S. Southwest region. excellence as the world’s top space program and maintaining that excellence for decades to come,” Nelson said.

Intel spokeswoman Linda Qian declined to disclose whether the company is on track for meeting its previously announced timeline for opening the fabs in 2024.

NASA awarded a Blue Origin and Lockheed Martin Space team a $3.4 billion contract to build a second, reusable lunar landing system that will ferry astronauts between a waiting spacecraft and the surface of the moon.

She said Intel is making a “tremendous amount of progress” on the fabs, which will be complete within three to five years from the initial groundbreaking date.

The fabs will support growing demand for Intel’s products and be a provider for Intel Foundry Services. The two fabs, when complete, will bring the total to six fabs on Intel’s existing Ocotillo campus.

“I almost can’t stress enough how important these wafers are to our economy,” Kelly said. “Semiconductor chips go in everything from cellphones, vacuum cleaners and cars to the most sophisticated fighter jets in the world.”

The pandemic exacerbated a global shortage of semiconductor chips, most of which are produced in Asia.

The space agency’s selection ends a two-year effort by the National Team, led by Jeff Bezos’ Kent, Washington-based Blue Origin, to have its lander included in NASA’s Artemis moon missions.

The lander will fly astronauts from a NASA-funded outpost in lunar orbit, known as the Gateway, down to the moon’s surface and then back. Blue Origin’s system, dubbed the Blue Moon lander, is being designed to carry four astronauts and 20 tons of cargo to the surface for missions. Developing the lander for the first missions will cost close to $7 billion, possibly more, based on the public-private model NASA is pursuing.

NASA had previously selected SpaceX to build a lander slated to land the first Artemis astronauts — and the first woman — on the lunar surface as soon as 2025.

The fabs will have more than 250,000 square feet of clean room space and will produce wafers, which are thin slices of semiconductor material used for fabrication of integrated circuits. Each wafer can hold hundreds or thousands of chips, depending on size.

Intel will send the wafers to an assembly testing center where they’ll be cut via lasers into individual chips, packaged and

The space agency awarded a second lander system contract to encourage the participation of other aerospace industry partners and spur more innovations to help establish a lasting presence on and around the moon, said Bill Nelson, NASA administrator. “This is about maintaining our

“We’re at a point now where we need to change the balance of the semiconductor industry supply,” Bagley said. “We are actively working on these two new factories here as part of that strategy to shift some of that production capacity back to the U.S. and back to Europe, so we have more of a fifty-fifty division between Asia, the U.S. and E.U. These efforts are critical to the ability of this country to continue to innovate and continue being a global leader in the semiconductor space.” By Amy Edelen – Reporter, Phoenix

Industry partners will invest at least as much of their own money as NASA will pay toward the lander, said John Couluris, head of Blue Origin’s lunar lander program.“Blue Origin is contributing well north of $3.4 billion,” he said.

Business Journal

The National Team’s 52-foot-tall

Blue Moon is scheduled to land astronauts on the fifth Artemis program mission in 2029. Lockheed Martin Space is already the prime contractor building the Orion capsules, deep-space spaceships that NASA will use on all of its missions flying astronauts from Earth to lunar orbit.

The Orion capsules have twice fl own successful test missions without crew, most recently completing a month-long Artemis 1 test flight around the moon last fall.

Companies teamed up to propose landers under earlier bidding. NASA made the surprise decision in April 2021, to award a single, $2.9 billion lunar lander contract to SpaceX.

Elon Musk’s company proposed using the Starship spacecraft it’s developing to serve as the landing craft that astronauts board at the Gateway.

Blue Origin plans to test parts of the Blue Moon lander’s systems in launches in coming years that will use the company’s massive New Glenn rocket, which is under development now.

A series of test missions, some of which will be to the moon, will culminate in 2028 with a test version of the final Blue Moon lander flying to lunar orbit without crew on board, landing on the moon’s surface and returning to lunar orbit, Couluris said.

An identical Blue Moon lander will be built for the following year’s Artemis mission with astronauts.

The Blue Moon landers are being designed to remain in lunar orbit for years and, with refueling, be able to dock with Gateway and fly astronauts or cargo to multiple sites on the lunar surface, he said. Blue Origin is working on technologies that will let it use hydrogen fuel in orbit and enable a long-term, reusable lander presence around the moon, Couluris said. The company has been drawing interest from other users of the landers, not just NASA, and expects there to be commercial uses for them, too, he said.

Nelson noted that President John F. Kennedy promised the first lunar landing mission 61 years ago, famously saying the nation chose to pursue it because it was a hard challenge. The Artemis program is pursuing the moon landings for similar reasons — to master the difficult engineering feats necessary to sustain a human moon presence and do that with an eye on the harder challenge of sending astronauts to Mars.

“The great adventure of humankind pressing out into the cosmos is happening, and this is part of it,” Nelson said. By Greg Avery – Denver Business Journal