The Timken Co. is planning to invest as much as $40 million to launch two new factories in Asia.

One, in the High Technology Development Zone in Chengdu, China, will produce high-precision aerospace bearings; the other, in a new Special Economic Zone at Chennai in India, will make a variety of bearing products. Both plants are expected to begin operations late in 2007.

According to a Timken spokesman, the plant in China will comprise 70,000 square feet and will cost about $15 million. The factory will employ about 200 and initially turn out ball and cylindrical roller bearings for aerospace customers in China and elsewhere. The company eventually plans to make additional aerospace products at the plant. It is Timken's sixth factory in China.

Chengdu, in the province of Sichuan, is a center of aerospace activity in China. The plant will be Timken's first in China devoted to high-precision aerospace products.

The company plans to put as much as $25 million into the plant in India, where approximately 400 workers will produce bearings for global markets, Timken said. The factory will be in Mahindra World City at Chennai, the city formerly known as Madras in the state of Tamil Nadu.

Timken has one other plant in India, in Jamshedpur, and a test lab, the Global Innovation Center, in Bangalore.

Stanford University is reaching for the moon and, what's more, says it may get there in less than 10 years.

The university's students have studied in Kyoto, Moscow, Oxford, Paris, and elsewhere around the globe during their semesters overseas. So perhaps it was natural that at his 35th class reunion in 2000, alumnus Steve Durst asked himself: Why couldn't students study on the moon? Figuratively speaking, of course.

Durst, the founder of Space Age Publishing Co. in Palo Alto, Calif., wants Stanford students to have a close-up view of the moon. To that end, he helped organize an October 2006 conference at the university called Stanford on the Moon. There, conference-goers pledged their dedication to achieving an unmanned Stanford University presence on the moon by 2015.

Attendees included Lois Aldrin, a Stanford grad, and her astronaut husband, Buzz Aldrin, as well as Peter Worden, director of the NASA Ames Research Center.

If properly funded, university researchers could send student-made satellites to the moon by 2010, said Robert Twiggs, a consulting professor in the Stanford department of aeronautics and astronautics. He spoke at the conference.

Twiggs's students have already launched into space several small, self-sufficient satellites the size of tissue boxes. The four-inch, cube-shaped satellites are powered by solar panels, and include sensors to measure radiation, magnetic fields, and gravity.

Twiggs said the CubeSats could conduct a lunar fly-by, sending back signals that could be picked up by a Stanford radio telescope.

Uman Inan, an electrical engineering professor, volunteered to equip the satellites with devices capable of measuring radiation belts between Earth and the moon.

Worden told the conference that the cost of unmanned space missions typically range from $100 million to $700 million. He praised Twiggs's inexpensive proposal.

For his part, Durst has no doubts that Stanford students will get to the moon within the next decade or so.

"A moon mission could provide hands-on learning and give students, faculty, and alumni an opportunity for real-world problem solving—a skill which certainly any educational institution aims to instill in its students," Durst said.

Durst manages the Stanford on the Moon Web site at www. spaceagepub.com/SOM. By day, he publishes space industry newsletters through his Space Age Publishing Co.

Electric motor manufacturer Baldor Electric Co. of Fort Smith, Ark., has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the Power Systems business of Rockwell Automation Inc. for $1.8 billion. The deal includes Reliance Electric industrial motors and Dodge power transmission products.

A Dodge shaft reducer. Baldor will acquire Dodge and Reliance from Rockwell for $1.8 billion.

When the deal closes in early 2007, Baldor will more than double in size, find itself in the power transmission business, and own a manufacturing base in China. It has agreed to pay $1.75 billion in cash and approximately 1.6 million shares of Baldor common stock, with a market value of $50 million.

Baldor is best known for the small industrial motors that make up nearly 80 percent of its sales. It also makes drives and, since 2000, generators. Roughly 40 percent of its products are custom and about 15 percent of its income comes from international sales.

The company employs 3,900 people worldwide. It operates 13 manufacturing plants in the United States and one in Bristol, England. In 2005, Baldor had operating income of $78 million on revenues of $722 million. Through the first nine months of 2006, operating income was 24 percent ahead of last year's pace on a 13 percent increase in sales.

The acquisition will more than double Baldor's size. For the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2006, Rockwell's Power Systems group's operating income was $163 million on sales of $1.0 billion. It employs 4,300 people and operates 14 factories, including plants in Canada, Mexico, and China.

This acquisition takes Baldor onto new ground. Reliance is best known for its larger motors, an area where Baldor is weak. Dodge, which makes mounted bearings and enclosed gearing, will put Baldor in the power transmission business for the first time. Baldor expects power transmission to account for 28 percent of total sales after the acquisition.

In a conference call, Baldor's chairman and CEO, John McFarland, seemed happy to acquire Dodge's low-cost manufacturing plant in China. "We've struggled with the issue of how to get into China," he said. Baldor also gets a low-cost plant in Mexico. They complement Baldor's own pricing strategy, which uses a non-unionized workforce to make motors for value-conscious customers.

Reliance also operates a small motor repair business that Baldor might sell.

Baldor expects to take on $1.5 billion in debt to finance the deal, but says that the deal will be profitable the first year and produce $30 million in pretax savings within three years.

The move shifts Rockwell away from commodity-type products and into more specialized factory automation solutions that combine Rockwell hardware and higher-margined consulting services. Rockwell's Control Systems segment had operating earnings of $873 million on sales of $4.6 billion in fiscal 2006.

Northrop Grumman Corp. has received a $1.45 billion U.S. Navy shipbuilding contract for the construction and further development of a new San Antonio-class ship.

The contract is for the construction of one new amphibious transport dock ship, Arlington, and for long lead material procurement for another, the Somerset.

Current Navy plans call for Northrop Grumman to build at least nine ships in the class. Northrop Grumman delivered the first ship, USS San Antonio, in 2005. The ship was commissioned in January 2006.

Global warming may be a bit like the weather—something everyone talks about but never does anything about. But two companies are betting that the state of affairs is about to change. Blue Source, a Salt Lake City-based company specializing in selling greenhouse gas emission offsets, and the private equity firm First Reserve Corp. announced in October that they had committed to investing up to $500 million in projects designed to create carbon-reducing infrastructure.

According to the companies, this represents the first large investment commitment to focus on reducing net greenhouse gas emissions in the energy, transportation, and manufacturing sectors.

With states such as California working individually to cap carbon emissions, the plan is that individual emitters will buy carbon offsets from Blue Source, reducing their net emissions.

The kinds of projects that Blue Source and First Reserve have their eyes on include capture of methane from coal mines (methane is 21 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide), reducing losses from natural gas production, injection of CO₂ into oil wells, and energy conservation technology.

This isn't the first involvement between the two companies. Earlier this year, First Reserve purchased a large stake in Blue Source.

A company that calls itself an innovator in energy and information technologies has been awarded a contract by the U.S. Department of Energy to convert small gasoline internal combustion engines to run on hydrogen. The total cost of the project is approximately $1.7 million, with the DOE providing $1.2 million.

Under the contract, the company, Energy Conversion Devices Inc. in Rochester Hills, Mich., will develop a low-cost method to convert small gasoline internal combustion engines (under 25 hp) to run on hydrogen fuel, while maintaining the performance and durability of the original engines.

"This is a great opportunity for us to advance the work done to date on hydrogen-ICE fueled scooters and three-wheeled taxis, both of which use our proprietary solid-state metal hydride storage systems onboard," said Stanford R. Ovshinsky, president and chief scientist and technologist of the company, which also calls itself ECD Ovonics.

Energy Conversion Devices developed a three-wheel taxi under a project partly funded by the United States Agency for International Development. The vehicle has been demonstrated in the U.S. and in India. According to the company, there is a significant potential market for reliable, low-cost engines with near-zero emissions in stationary and mobile applications, which include two- and three-wheel vehicles, lawn and garden care equipment, and small backup generator sets.

Alliance Safety Management Services Sdn Bhd in Malaysia and Abar Solutions Petroleum Consultancy Ltd. in Kuwait will administer ASME's Global Management for Engineering and Technology courses to trainees, using the delivery format, method of instruction, and course materials developed by ASME.

CEI of Apex, N.C., has opened a Houston office to increase its efforts to market to the energy and aerospace industries. The company sells software for CFD mesh generation and for visualizing complex information, including a product for oil and gas reservoir data.

Fluent Inc., owned by Ansys Inc. of Southpointe, Pa., will release version two of Fluent for Catia Version 5. The software is for fluid-flow simulation within the CAD package.

The government of Turkey has ordered 17 Seahawk Helicopters from Sikorsky Aircraft of Stratford, Conn. First deliveries of the new S-70B Seahawks are scheduled to begin in 2009. Sikorsky Aircraft is a subsidiary of United Technologies Corp.

Quantum Fuel Systems Technologies Worldwide Inc. of Irvine, Calif., has received a multimillion dollar purchase order from General Motors for hydrogen fuel storage systems to be used in GM's recently announced Chevrolet Equinox Fuel Cell vehicle program. GM will begin building hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles in 2007.

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© 2006 by The American Society of Mechanical Engineers