PRESIDENT SIGNS PLANE FUNDS BILLS PALMDALE WORKERS TO BENEFIT.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

PALMDALE - President George W. Bush signed a defense appropriations bill last week that funds several Antelope Valley projects and a NASA authorization bill containing language officially endorsing the return to the moon.

The president signed the bills while on a working vacation at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. He did not comment on either bill.

The Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2006 provides $3.2 billion for 25 Lockheed Martin F-22A aircraft and $4.8 billion for the F-35 joint strike fighter, both of which will involve parts production in Palmdale and flight testing work at Edwards Air Force Base.

The bill also includes $332.1 million for production of Northrop Grumman's unmanned Global Hawk reconnaissance aircraft, assembled in Palmdale, and more than $12 million in new equipment and research funding for Edwards.

Although the F-22A fighters are assembled in Georgia, parts of the aircraft are assembled by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co. in Palmdale. About 400 workers in Palmdale manufacture parts for the jets.

The center fuselage sections of the F-35 are being assembled by Northrop Grumman in Palmdale, and flight testing is planned for Edwards Air Force Base. The planes will be put together at a Lockheed Martin plant in Texas.

Northrop Grumman employs several hundred people on the F-35 program in Palmdale, while the Global Hawk aircraft are being built by a small cadre of Northrop Grumman workers also in Palmdale.

The defense bill also included $1 million for computer equipment to support flight test programs at Edwards, $4.3 million for propulsion system technologies, $1 million for research on upper stage rocket engine technologies, $4.3 million to improve engineering modeling and simulation tools, and $1.5 million for solid rocket propulsion technology research.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Act of 2005 formally incorporates the ``Vision for Space Exploration'' announced in January 2004 by the president. The bill's language directs a ``sustained human presence on the moon'' as a means to provide a steppingstone for future missions to Mars.

NASA estimates it will cost $104 billion to return astronauts to the moon by 2018. The first step of that effort is the development of the crew exploration vehicle, a spacecraft that will replace the space shuttle.

NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base will be involved in both the development of the CEV and in its operations.

Anticipated work for the program at Dryden includes flight testing of a launch abort system, drop tests of a subscale model to evaluate approach and landing technologies and procedures, and range safety analyses.

Dryden is also expected to be the site for landings when the spacecraft is ready to fly.

Jim Skeen, [phone]

james.skeen(at)dailynews.com