Boeing Mentoring Brings Protege Into Ares 1 Project + Moving On Up…

The Boeing Company [NYSE: BA] and Orion Propulsion Inc. (OPI) have signed a government-sponsored Mentor-Protege agreement to work together on NASA’s Ares I rocket. The Ares 1 will transport astronauts into space after the retirement of the space shuttle. The one-year agreement marks the first Mentor-Protege agreement in 2008 in support of a major NASA contract. The NASA-sponsored Mentor-Protege Program pairs large companies with eligible small businesses to enhance the proteges’ capabilities and enable them to successfully compete for larger, more complex prime contract and subcontract awards. Boeing subcontracted more than 5B/USD of work to small and diverse businesses in 2007. Boeing is under contract to NASA to produce the Ares I upper stage and instrument unit avionics. It will build the upper stage at NASA‘s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans in late 2009. OPI is a small, woman-owned aerospace company located near Marshall Space Flight Center in northern Alabama. The company provides propulsion engineering, test, verification, qualification, and production expertise to NASA as well as to several civil, defense, and commercial partners. OPI currently supports Boeing on Ares I reaction control system (RCS) development. Potential future activities include integration of flight hardware, production of test equipment, tooling and provision of technical-support services. The RCS includes multiple small rocket engines and their supporting subsystems to provide control over the orientation of the Ares I (first stage and upper stage) during its ascent to orbit. The Boeing Company has also appointed David Dohnalek as its Corporate Treasurer, succeeding Paul Kinscherff, who has been named President of Boeing Middle East. Dohnalek, 49, will lead the company’s activities in corporate finance and banking, pension and savings investments, global treasury operations, financial analysis, and enterprise risk management and insurance. He will be an elected company officer and continue reporting to Chief Financial Officer James Bell. Dohnalek has been serving as Boeing’s Vice President of Financial Planning and Analysis. A successor for that position will be named later. Prior to his financial planning post, Dohnalek spent four years as Boeing’s Vice President of Investor Relations, where he was responsible for working with institutional investors and securities analysts to promote understanding of Boeing’s strategy, performance, and outlook—Chicago, Illinois