Editors' Picks
What the astronauts really said
Apollo "onboard voice" recordings captured the moon astronauts' conversations -- cussing and all -- when no one else was listening.
Drones for Hire
The newest eyes in the sky are drawing the attention of power companies, conservation groups, and the ACLU.
Five Reasons to Like NASA’s Asteroid Retrieval Mission
So it's not the Moon or Mars. Get over it.
The Invention of Flight
Inventors, dreamers, daredevils, charlatans: Aviation's early years had them all.
Disaster at Xichang
An eyewitness speaks publicly for the first time about history’s worst launch accident.
Page 11 of 31
Who can forget billionaire ex-spaceman Jeff Tracy and his five sons (Scott, Virgil, Alan, Gordon, and John), each named after a Mercury astronaut? Remember how they—through their organization (International Rescue)—um...rescued people...internationally? Ok, so they were puppets. Deal with it, peop...
May 05, 2011
| By Rebecca Maksel
Air traffic controllers have been in the news several times in the past month. First came the "asleep in the tower" stories at Washington National Airport and Reno, Nevada. Then the First Lady's airplane had to go around at Andrews AFB because it was too close to other traffic. The 24-hour news mon...
May 02, 2011
| By Steve Satre
It's summer 2005. In Afghanistan, a four-man U.S. Navy SEAL team has been ambushed by the Taliban. A Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopter is immediately sent to extract them, but as it approaches the rescue site, the Taliban fire a rocket-propelled grenade, hitting the Chinook's fuel tanks. All 16 crew ...
April 27, 2011
| By Rebecca Maksel
On March 23, 1944, a British Lancaster bomber over Germany's Ruhr River took heavy flak and exploded. As his oxygen mask and goggles began to melt, and his flight suit burned, tail gunner Nick Alkemade heard the pilot ordering the crew to bail out.The aircraft was at 18,000 feet, and while Alkemade...
April 26, 2011
| By Rebecca Maksel
Each year, the National Aeronautic Association (NAA) and the National Association of State Aviation Officials (NASAO) organize an art contest meant to encourage young people to become familiar with (and participate in) aeronautics, engineering, and science."The quality of the art we see is unbeliev...
April 25, 2011
| By Rebecca Maksel
Admit it: Sometimes you want to skip all the technical hoo-hah and get straight to the jokes. For your enjoyment, today we're resurrecting a bit of aircraft maintenance humor that has been roaming the Internet since 1997, and circulating on hard copies before that. The jokes have been attributed to...
April 21, 2011
| By Rebecca Maksel
I became fascinated by the Xbox 360 Kinect system long before it hit the stores—back when Microsoft was still developing it under the name Project Natal. The commercial product hasn't yet delivered on the full promise of this demo, but I expect that it will, and fairly soon. Kinect is already the f...
April 18, 2011
| By Tony Reichhardt
When the Hindenburg flew toward the the Naval Air Station in Lakehurst, New Jersey on May 6, 1937, it was the airship's eleventh voyage to the United States. The nearly 804-foot-long ship, the pride of Nazi Germany, had been carrying passengers on excursion flights since 1910 without a single injur...
April 15, 2011
| By Rebecca Maksel
Washington Dulles International Airport opened in 1962 and serves over a million passengers per month today. But it wasn't always that way. For the first couple of decades of its existence, Dulles was a virtual ghost town when compared to other major airports in the country.I clearly remember the t...
March 31, 2011
| By Steve Satre
Wow. Aviation pioneer Otto Lilienthal would have loved this. German automation company Festo has built a "SmartBird" modeled on the herring gull that, according to the company, can take off, fly, and land autonomously—just by flapping its wings.The design features a number of innovations, including...
March 28, 2011
| By Tony Reichhardt
I'm just back from recurrent training — two days of fun and games in the simulator. It's kind of like a trip to the dentist: not something you look forward to, but it feels pretty good when it's over. And it's definitely worthwhile.Each day we showed up at 5 a.m. for the briefing, then went into th...
March 11, 2011
| By Steve Satre
"Here is a group of feminine flyers who don't just fool around with flying," reported the Los Angeles Times in January 1934. "They hardly ever powder their noses. They don't even carry mirrors. They'd rather poke their not unhandsome little noses into a balky carburetor than riffle up a pack of bri...
March 11, 2011
| By Rebecca Maksel
And the winner is: The Boeing Company.Michael Donley, Secretary of the Air Force, announced today that Boeing will supply the U.S. Air Force with 179 tankers derived from the company's 767 widebody to replace the aging KC-135 refueler fleet. The contract is estimated at $35 billion and is expected ...
February 24, 2011
| By Mike Klesius
I should be in Stockholm right now, but instead I'm sitting at home typing this. We had several delays last night and ultimately timed out —i.e., we couldn't make the flight to Stockholm because we would have been on duty more than 16 hours by the time we landed, which is against the rules.The firs...
February 24, 2011
| By Steve Satre
Ever wonder what kind of takeoff a Viking Twin Otter can achieve with a stiff headwind and no sumo wrestlers on board?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PG6eJP7SBQI&feature=related
February 15, 2011
| By Mike Klesius
They work in all weather loading and unloading your suitcases, the mail, freight, even dead bodies and wild and domestic animals. They deice the airplane in winter, and clean it between each flight. So spare a thought for the airline industry's baggage handlers.Liesl Miller Orenic, an associate pro...
February 03, 2011
| By Rebecca Maksel
Pretty cool video here of Sikorsky's latest whirlybird, the X2 demonstrator, which has hit 262 knots, or 300 miles an hour, a record for a helo. Nice acceleration too. The coaxial rotors spin in opposite directions to keep the aircraft from stalling at high speeds. It's no easy feat, as this articl...
February 01, 2011
| By Mike Klesius
Once you get used to the slightly overcaffeinated host, this is a pretty cool project —to drop a bunch of paper airplanes from a high-altitude balloon and see where they land. The team launched their balloon earlier this month, as the video shows. But, from what I can tell on their website and Twit...
January 31, 2011
| By Tony Reichhardt
The latest in sightseeing tours, brought to you by Count Ferdinand Von Zeppelin.
March 2011
| By Marshall Lumsden
When I first started flying, I bought half interest in a Cherokee 180, N7728N. My partner was a veterinarian who had owned his half for several years already. He only flew on Thursdays, and then only if the weather was beautiful. What a great deal for me — I had the plane available to me six days a...
January 21, 2011
| By Steve Satre
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