The planned merger of the defense and space portions of ATK with Orbital Sciences will create a $4.5 billion company. Orbital and ATK's managements maintain that they are creating a much stronger company that will benefit from accelerated growth. In space, Orbital will bring its systems integration capabilities and ATK will provide its techologies. The result will be a much larger space company. Orbital's space work is about $1.5 billion annually, with ATK's space work totaling $1.2 billion.

I don't want to make a documentary. I want to make a documentary about the making of a documentary. This meta concept seems appropriate after watching Al Jazeera's Broken Dreams. You can find it at www.aljazeera.com/investigations/boeing787. I make a few appearances, but that's why DVRs have fast-forward buttons. The documentary does not make a persuasive case against the 787 and is somewhat sensationalist. But it also tells us a lot about the state of things at Boeing. Boeing management's actions have produced a deeply angry work force. This documentary depicts some of the damage from that anger, and there's likely more blowback to come.

Deliveries from just Airbus and Boeing last year reached $92 billion in value, another record after two other record years. In 2012, they rose 29.4% in value over 2011, capping a remarkable 55.5% growth spurt in 2008-2012.

If you look at the number of satellites being launched to earth orbit over the past decade, there has been consistent growth. In 2004, a total of 76 satellites were launched (or attempted). In 2013, there were 215. That is almost a tripling of the market. But these numbers are deceptive. Here's why. In 2004, only 17% of the satellites that went up had a mass of 100 kilograms or less. In 2005, it was 11%. Last year, about half of the satellites weighed 100 kg or less.