Aerospace Industry

Special Devices Inc., a longtime maker of components that trigger the Patriot and Cruise missiles, now wants to put the boom in automobile air bags. Switching fields could give the Newhall-based company a much-needed boost. With defense budget cuts trimming its market, Special Devices has seen its aerospace sales skid 13% from fiscal 1989, to $17.5 million last year. Its earnings are lagging, and so is its stock, which closed Friday at $10 a share, about where it was two years ago.

After seven years in which everything went wrong for the California aerospace industry, some very important things are finally going right. The decision this week by Lockheed Martin Corp. to move two major manufacturing operations from the East Coast to a once-threatened plant in Sunnyvale marks the first time that a consolidation by a defense contractor has actually benefited California.

When 7-foot-1, 325-pound Shaquille O'Neal couldn't fit into his new ground-hugging, $200,000 Lamborghini Gallardo, the former Laker center turned to an Orange County family to do a little magic. The Gaffoglios of Fountain Valley meticulously extended the doors, roof and side windows so the towering O'Neal could drive in comfort in what is now one of the longest Lamborghinis in the world. Bending and twisting cars into all kinds of shapes is nothing new to the Gaffoglio family.

In another blow to Southern California's defense industry, aerospace giant Northrop Grumman Corp. said it is cutting 500 jobs in its aerospace division in anticipation of a slowdown in Pentagon spending. The company began offering a voluntary buyout program Thursday but said layoffs would ensue if fewer than 500 people agree to leave before Oct. 28. This is the second time in less than a year that Northrop's operations in Southern California — home to the vast majority of the 23,000 employees in its aerospace division — has experienced job losses.

The aerospace industry remains a vital economic force in the San Fernando Valley, despite defense-industry cutbacks that shrank many firms in the 1990s. While prominent companies have reduced the size of their operations and many former aerospace properties have been converted to other uses, aerospace concerns are still some of the largest employers in the San Fernando and Antelope valleys.

The defense operations of Hughes Electronics Corp., long a symbol of Southern California's dominance of the U.S. aerospace industry, will be acquired by East Coast rival Raytheon Corp. in a proposed $9.5-billion deal announced Thursday that may cap a half-decade-long spree of defense mergers. General Motors Corp., which owns Hughes, chose Raytheon's offer over a rival proposal from Northrop Grumman Corp.

In an estimated $1-billion boost to the Southland aerospace industry, satellite maker Boeing Co. and rocket firm Space Exploration Technologies Corp., better known as SpaceX, announced plans to build and launch four satellites for telecommunications firms in Mexico and Hong Kong. The companies' joint satellite order will help preserve high-paying engineering jobs in the South Bay and throws a lifeline to hundreds of smaller aerospace suppliers feeling an economic pinch with Pentagon and NASA budget cuts on the horizon.

William Graham recalled with awe the 1957 flight of Sputnik, the Soviet satellite that prompted the United States to leap wholeheartedly into the space race. A Caltech student at the time, he went to a professor's lab to tune in Sputnik's signal. "We could hear this whistle come across the sky from horizon to horizon. It was a very, very impressive experience.

The lathes, grinders and drill presses at Norman Modglin's small aerospace machine shop in North Hollywood are silent now, awaiting the pounding today of the auctioneer's gavel that will liquidate a business handed down through three generations in his family. Such scenes, the inevitable consequence of the Cold War's demise, are being repeated across Southern California and the nation's other aerospace centers every week. On Wednesday, Eaton Corp.