Editors' Picks
Area 51: Origins
America’s once-secret air base had humble beginnings.
Need for Speed
Airplanes with a mission: Fly faster.
Beyond the Moon
It’s not a place, exactly. But it could be NASA’s next destination.
The Invention of Flight
Inventors, dreamers, daredevils, charlatans: Aviation's early years had them all.
Vietnam Memoir
Stories from the war that shaped a generation.
Page 28 of 51
The Daily Planet Blog
Heavens Above
We've come a long way from Madalyn Murray O'Hair.She was, you'll recall, the activist atheist who campaigned against government sanctioning of religion—including NASA astronauts reading from the Book of Genesis during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968.But times have changed. Even Russians are now carryi...
December 03, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Daily Planet Blog
Life As We Didn't Know It
Score another one for the extremophiles.Biologists had already discovered organisms that can survive everything from high levels of radiation to vacuum to total darkness. Now they've found one that uses arsenic as a substitute for phosphorus, one of the six elements (carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxy...
December 02, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Daily Planet Blog
A Steamy Earthlike Planet?
Having already found more than 500 planets circling distant stars, scientists are getting better at understanding what they're made of. A group led by Jacob Bean at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics reports in this week's Nature that they've analyzed the atmosphere of a planet only sl...
December 01, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
The View from 30,000 Feet Blog
Windsocks and Checklists
When I'm taxiing around airports worldwide, I'm always amused to see that they still have windsocks. It's maybe the only thing from the first days of aviation that you'll still find at modern airports. It's low tech, but it gives a clear indication of wind strength and direction...at least to anyon...
November 30, 2010
| By Steve Satre
The Daily Planet Blog
Shuttle Program's Value: $12 Billion
This line from a recent NASA Inspector General report jumped out at me:
In addition to managing Shuttle funding challenges, the transition and retirement activities associated with the end of the Shuttle Program present one of the largest such efforts ever undertaken by NASA. The Shuttle Program is...
November 29, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
The View from 30,000 Feet Blog
You Think You Have a Bad Commute?
I live in a suburb of Washington, D.C., and heavy rush hour traffic is a common source of complaint around here. Downtown office workers often have drives that are routinely in excess of an hour and sometimes far longer.A long commute is a fact of life for a large percentage of airline pilots and f...
November 24, 2010
| By Steve Satre
The Daily Planet Blog
T-bird Low Show
Are the United States Air Force Thunderbirds offering a new "low show" when cloud cover is below minimums?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUdHAx6gZqg&NR=1
We contacted the demonstration squadron and asked. Their reply: "Thank you for your interest in the USAF Thunderbirds and for taking the tim...
November 24, 2010
| By Mike Klesius
The Daily Planet Blog
Engine Hiccups
Here's some interesting video taken by a passenger aboard the Quantas A380 that had a Trent 900 engine blow shortly after taking off on a flight from Singapore to Sydney on November 4:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4Pv9u_yHwIAnd later, the landing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EimwaGXr6p0&f...
November 23, 2010
| By Mike Klesius
The Once and Future Moon Blog
Keeping an eye on NASA
Credible rumor has it that NASA has initiated a “lessons learned” postmortem of Project Constellation in order to camouflage their failure to implement the 2004 Vision for Space Exploration (VSE) and to justify their new direction. I had originally intended to expand on the agency’s postmortem pur...
November 21, 2010
| By Paul D. Spudis
The Daily Planet Blog
Nanosail-D Sets Sail
Update: Successful launch! Follow the mission's progress on Twitter.In this season of solar sailing (Japan's IKAROS is still going strong), another ship is about to leave the harbor.NASA's modest solar sail demonstrator, Nanosail-D, is due to launch tonight on a Minotaur 4 rocket from Alaska. You c...
November 19, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
The View from 30,000 Feet Blog
Over the North Atlantic
I'm writing this longhand as we fly back from Frankfurt, Germany. We're over the North Atlantic, a few hours from landing in New York. Out here there are no controllers to talk to, and not much to do except monitor the instruments and make the occasional position report.It's been a routine trip. Go...
November 19, 2010
| By Steve Satre
The View from 30,000 Feet Blog
Canceling Flights for Low Loads? No Way.
I just had a nice stretch of days off and went on a five-day golf trip with my brother and 30 other guys. It was a little chilly on Amelia Island and I performed about like you'd expect a 15 handicapper to play. But it's not the golf that I want to talk about. Instead, I want to address a common mi...
November 18, 2010
| By Steve Satre
The Daily Planet Blog
The Rutan Turkey Timer
Today's New York Times dining section features the Perfect Roast Timer, by Kikkerland in SoHo. Florence Fabricant writes "Just when I thought the chicken should be ready...the legs of the timer whipped straight up from horizontal to vertical."In case there is any doubt that the Perfect Roast Timer...
November 17, 2010
| By Pat Trenner
The View from 30,000 Feet Blog
First Solo
It's been a long, long time since my first solo flight in an airplane and I still remember the mixed emotions of excitement and fear. Glancing over at the empty right seat during the takeoff roll, I realized what a huge commitment I was about to make. As the plane climbed out, I couldn't get out of...
November 17, 2010
| By Steve Satre
The Daily Planet Blog
Walter A. Soplata 1923 - 2010
Walter Soplata, a carpenter who saved numerous World War II aircraft and engines from the cutting torch and amassed a legendary collection on his Ohio property, died on Friday, November 5, at age 87. His son, Wally, wrote about his father in the November 2007 issue of Air & Space. Today, he wri...
November 15, 2010
| By Pat Trenner
The Daily Planet Blog
Space Specs
It's no secret that the astronaut corps today, with an average age between 47 and 48, is a bit older than the in-their-primers of Mercury and Gemini. And eyesight, it turns out, is one measure of age. Approximately 80 percent of the current astronaut corps wears eye correction (i.e. glasses or cont...
November 12, 2010
| By Mike Klesius
The Daily Planet Blog
Happy Veterans Day
It's not often that you get to see a Boeing C-17 Globemaster make a flyover down a palm-tree-lined street, but it happened one recent Veterans Day in Long Beach, California. Enjoy. Gotta love the car alarm going off in the background at the end of the video—no flyover's complete without one.
http:/...
November 11, 2010
| By Mike Klesius
The Daily Planet Blog
Chinese Moon
What impresses me most about the new photos of the moon taken by the Chinese Chang’e-2 orbiter is not their beauty (although they are pretty) nor their sharpness (NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter returns higher resolution images). It's the fact that they were unveiled by Premier Wen Jiabao (left...
November 10, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
The Daily Planet Blog
Air Force Sloganizing
The U.S. Air Force recently announced its new motto: "Aim High...Fly-Fight-Win," which generals chose out of five contenders suggested by airmen and the general public: Fly Fight Win, Aim High, Above and Beyond, Air Power, and Wings of Freedom.
This from the same people who named the Boeing C-17 ...
November 09, 2010
| By Pat Trenner
The Daily Planet Blog
Western Low-Fly Zones: Not in My Sky
The Air Force is looking for places in the American West where pilots can practice flying special operations missions over terrain similar to the rugged mountains of Afghanistan. One proposal would call for a new Low Altitude Tactical Navigation area straddling the border of Colorado and New Mexico...
November 08, 2010
| By Tony Reichhardt
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