Qinetiq Share Discussion Threads

[zeppo] 28/5/2008 09:18

16% raise in divi.

Final divi 2.92p to be paid on 5th Sept.

Price firming.

z

[wad collector] 23/5/2008 13:02

QQ , although disappointing, isn't one I worry about. Hard to imagine that this is not going to be rising over the years.Too many others in my portfolio to lose sleep over.

[zeppo] 16/5/2008 17:56

2nd Full Year results since float due on 28th May?

I remain ever the optimist - with many burned fingers.

z

[wad collector] 16/5/2008 12:42

Looks far too stable to me.

[zeppo] 24/4/2008 23:30

A lift today but when will it stabilise?

z

[wad collector] 23/4/2008 21:27

Yes ,this one has been impressively unimpressive.
At least it hasn't got the SFO breaathing down its neck.Yet.

[zeppo] 21/4/2008 14:44

wad collector

Any income that gives a divi increase next month will be welcome.

It is time the share got back to, and above, its float price.

Here's hoping!

z

[wad collector] 21/4/2008 13:32

Interesting science , but might not generate a lot of income for quarter of a century's work!

[waldron] 19/4/2008 08:13

Ion engine enters space race
By Helen Briggs
Science reporter, BBC News



Engineer Neil Wallace peers into a huge vacuum chamber designed to replicate - as far as possible - the conditions of space.

Cryogenic pumps can be heard in the background, whistling away like tiny steam engines.

Using helium gas as a coolant, they can bring down the temperature in the vacuum chamber to an incredibly chilly 20 Kelvin (-253C). The pressure, meanwhile, can drop to a millionth of an atmosphere.

This laboratory in a leafy part of Hampshire is where defence and security firm Qinetiq develops and tests its ion engines - a technology that will take spacecraft to the planets, powered by the Sun.

Ion engines are an "electric propulsion system". They make use of the fact that a current flowing across a magnetic field creates an electric field directed sideways to the current.

This is used to accelerate a beam of ions (charged atoms) of xenon away from the spacecraft, thereby providing thrust.

Neil Wallace, technical lead of the electrical propulsion team at Qinetiq, winds open the door of the testing chamber.


The most exciting time for us will be when that space craft comes over the horizon
Neil Wallace, Qinetiq

He points to some large metal blocks at the bottom of the chamber.

"These are the xenon pumps and these are cooled down by the helium compressors to approximately 20 degrees Kelvin," he explains.

"So any gas atoms that strike those panels, they freeze. After you've been running the engines for a number of hours you can see a frost - it looks like snow - which is actually frozen air and xenon."

During testing, the engine fires ions towards the opposite end of the chamber, which has a protective coating of graphite.

"The ions are travelling very fast, at approximately 50km a second," he says.

"When they strike the other end of the chamber, they actually knock atoms off the surfaces they strike; it's analogous to sand-blasting on an atomic level."

Cruise control

The ion engine developed by Qinetiq, the T5, will be flown for the first time on the European Space Agency's Goce spacecraft. The mission will fly just 200-300km above the Earth, mapping the tiny variations in its gravity field.


GOCE - EUROPE'S GRAVITY EXPLORER
1. The 1,100kg Goce is built from rigid materials and carries fixed solar wings. The gravity data must be clear of spacecraft 'noise'
2. Solar cells produce 1,300W and cover the Sun-facing side of Goce; the near side (as shown) radiates heat to keep it cool
3. The 5m-by-1m frame incorporates fins to stabilise the spacecraft as it flies through the residual air in the thermosphere
4. Goce's accelerometers measure accelerations that are as small as 1 part in 10,000,000,000,000 of the gravity experienced on Earth
5. The UK-built engine ejects xenon ions at velocities exceeding 40,000m/s; Goce's mission will end when the 40kg fuel tank empties
6. S Band antenna: Data downloads to the Kiruna (Sweden) ground station. Processing, archiving is done at Esa's centre in Frascati, Italy
7. GPS antennas: Precise positioning of Goce is required, but GPS data in itself can also provide some gravity field information



A replica of the T5 engine sits in the test facility at Qinetiq. It is tiny - weighing 3kg, and looks rather like the oil filter of a car.

Yet despite this humble appearance, it took 20 to 30 years to develop, at a cost of tens of millions of pounds.

In space, ion engines will draw electric power from solar panels, generating a thrust equivalent to the weight of a postcard.

This incredibly gentle thrust could, in theory, take a spacecraft beyond our Solar System, if sustained for long enough.

Goce is staying very close to Earth, flying in an ultra-low orbit, where it will encounter wisps of air.

The benefit of an ion engine on this mission is to provide drag compensation, or cruise control.

"This spacecraft is [travelling] at a speed of about eight and a half kilometres per second," says Neil Wallace.

"As it travels around the Earth, it's going through the upper atmosphere and it experiences a buffeting.

"They need to compensate that buffeting very accurately and that's what we're doing, so we're actually providing cruise control for that spacecraft."

Real flight

Various types of ion engine have been used before on only a handful of space missions, including Smart-1, the European mission to the Moon, and Nasa's Deep Space 1, which flew by a comet.

Future Esa missions such as BepiColombo, bound for the innermost planet, Mercury, will also use the technology.

Qinetiq gets to test its T5 engine for real this summer, when Goce is launched from the Russian space port of Plesetsk. It will go up on the same type of rocket that failed three years ago, destroying Europe's Cryosat ice mission.

Neil Wallace says the nature of the space business makes watching any launch a dramatic event.

"You spend 10 years working on a mission, treating the components and equipment like a newborn baby. You never take it out of the clean room, and then you put in on the top of 100 tonnes of high explosive and set light to it," he says, laughing nervously.

"But no, the most exciting time for us will be when that spacecraft comes over the horizon and the ground station picks it up, and you can see the engines are doing what we've always said they will do."

Hear more about Goce and its ion engines in Science In Action on the BBC World Service this Friday, 18 April, at 0930 GMT. (Check World Service schedules for alternative broadcast times)

Story from BBC NEWS:


Published: 2008/04/17 12:09:30 GMT

[zeppo] 17/4/2008 16:20

Dr DarkStar

Where was the article?

z

[cover] 17/4/2008 09:19

hi guys, why is this down at 180p level?

[dr darkstar] 25/3/2008 12:27

Interesting weekend article to the effect that the company's largest shareholder, and largest customer , |Ministry of Defense, is holding back the share price!! They must be happy with the CEO .. not!

[gunter guil] 19/3/2008 18:54

one would expect so.

[wad collector] 19/3/2008 17:57

Would it not put in Clauses preventing a takeover in case of unwelcome foreign interest?

[ccnp] 19/3/2008 12:54

remembering Greedy Gordon's nigh on immacualte timing on gold, perhaps we should welcome such a move

[ccnp] 19/3/2008 12:54

remembering Greedy Gordon's nigh on immacualte timing on gold, perhaps we should welcome such a move

[gunter guil] 18/3/2008 21:54

it would if it paved the way for a takeover. or at least the speculation of one.

[wad collector] 18/3/2008 16:47

That wouldn't do the share price much good either presumably.

[corrientes] 16/3/2008 18:45

A sigh of relief that Carlyle Group have no interest in Qinetiq, so at least they won't be forced sellers here. The Government will be so desparate for cash, maybe they'll have to sell their shareholding ?

[wad collector] 29/2/2008 16:25

So presumably they are eligible for the 75 % Taper Relief under this Tax year.

[mw] 29/2/2008 14:04

WC,
Directors invested in company in about April 2003, I think, but only got to know their share allocation in February 2006, when company floated.

[wad collector] 29/2/2008 12:48

Mr Darlings enterpreneurs allowance is a typical governmental half truth.The loss of the indexation and the taper relief means that for medium size gains we will pay substantially more CGT as the Annual Allowance applies to the whole gain not the post -indexation and taper relief figure.
As Call -logger observes , there is a substantial benefit to disposals , especially as the £1million Lifetime Allowance will hit the big players evem more.However the QQ directors won't be beneficiaries of the Indexation Allowance as they can't have held the shares long enough.In fact , they probably won't qualify for Taper Relief either as they haven't held for 2 yrs.Or did they get to buy at the outrageous price before Mar 06?
It seems that there hasn't been a deluge of directors sells in the last few weeks in most companies.Perhaps it is the depressed market ; they are gambling on greater capital gains in the future.

[mw] 28/2/2008 18:28

Doug Webb is leaving soon. There are also about 10.5M unvested options that presumably management will be eligible to buy at 195p over the next 2 years or so (if performance targets are met). I'm not sure how the CGT implications bear on all of this.

[barnesian] 28/2/2008 14:50

Call-logger Good point.

[call-logger] 27/2/2008 20:28

Aren't we going to see a lot of directors' dispoals everywhere in the run-up to the change in CGT?