Editors' Picks

Is SpaceX changing the rocket equation?

1 visionary + 3 launchers + 1,500 employees = ?

The Spirit of Santa Monica

Between 1920 and 1975, Donald Douglas’ company—and a southern California city—helped shape aviation history.

Killer at 70,000 Feet

The occupational hazards of flying the U-2.

The Weird World of Folk Aviators

With his whimsical sculptures, Gregory Bryant celebrates early ideas about winged flight.

High Spy: The Amazing U-2

Still keeping watch after more than 50 years.

Trending Topics

  1. Fighters
  2. 21st Century Aviation
  3. Military Aviators
  4. Jet Aircraft
  5. Lighter Than Air Aircraft

How Things Work: Dropping in on Mars

NASA's Curiosity rover will try a new way of landing on another planet.
January 2012 | By Tony Reichhardt

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Robert Hyman helped search for fellow adventurer Steve Fossett. The undertaking inspired him and other Fossett searchers to create MAST.

A new team sets out to solve old disappearances.
September 2010 | By Michael Behar

The tricks that keep the engine from knowing it’s not right side up.
May 2002 | By Patricia Trenner

The systems that cool the threat from heat-seeking missiles.
July 2003 | By Sam Goldberg

X-rays enter Chandra’s pairs of nested mirrors.

The Chandra X-Ray Telescope, explained.
January 2008 | By Damond Benningfield

All the shuttle

Why the space shuttle can withstand reentry temperatures up to 2,300 degrees.
May 2006 | By Damond Benningfield

Engineer to airplane: Stifle
January 2005 | By Roger A. Mola

The IFLOLS aboard the USS George Washington.

Pilots who make it safely to the deck of an aircraft carrier have seen the light.
May 2005 | By Sam Goldberg

A guide to the meaning of the myriad signs, lines, circles, arrows, numbers, letters, and lights on the airport grounds.
March 2005 | By Patricia Trenner

Even the wing tips and the midwing "super pods," which look like fuel tanks, are crammed with sensors and electronics. Its paint scheme makes it look stealthy, but a U-2 is detectable by radar.

The secret to a spyplane's eternal youth is a new suite of gadgets installed on a classic chassis.
March 2005 | By William E. Burrows

In the Icing Research Tunnel of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Ohio, granular “rime ice” chunks obliterate an airfoil’s smooth surface.

Ice kills. That's why engineers continue to invent new ways to keep it off airplane wings.
March 2004 | By Tim Wright

In which we survey the variety of objects to which a jet engine can be affixed.
May 2004 | By Roger A. Mola

Never operate your airplane engine lean of peak exhaust gas temperature. These guys aren't buyin' it.
July 2004 | By George C. Larson

Installed in the cargo hold, the FAA’s onboard inert-gas generation system prototype made nine test flights in an Airbus A320 last year.

Once airliners implement this pending FAA rule, a spark will no longer become a flame.
July 2004 | By Damond Benningfield

The truth is that portable electronic devices can emit powerful electromagnetic radiation that can muck up an aircraft’s navigation and communication systems and actually endanger a flight.

For those who've use portable electronic devices aboard airliners: Here's why they're dangerous.
September 2004 | By John Croft

Pointers and illuminators that project infrared light, invisible to the human eye, enable ground commanders and combat controllers in Iraq and Afghanistan to identify targets and designate them for pilots with NVGs.

Night vision goggles can save a pilot's life or, if he hasn't had adequate training, take it.
November 2004 | By John Croft

The SBX, shown here on a cargo vessel in Texas, practiced two days of "weather avoidance" when Hurricane Emily arrived in the Gulf of Mexico during 2005 testing. The range of the array inside the dome is limited only by Earth

It takes a big eye to see a missile coming.
July 2006 | By Sam Goldberg

A 1942 Fairchild PT-19 Army Air Forces trainer, now owned by Wayne Boggs in Plant City, Florida, wears a Sensenich wood prop, model W86RA-61, for authenticity, and the prop even has original Sensenich decals.

Wooden propellers are like Louisville Sluggers: The distance.
July 2003 | By Tom Harpole

Prop, swept wings, a huge T-tail—the XF-84H was one of a kind.

That's the sound of the prop-driven XF-84H, and it brought grown men to their knees. It didn't fly all that great either.
July 2003 | By Stephan Wilkinson

Jackson and his technicians recently refurbished a civilian transport that had been converted from a Douglas A-26 Invader.

"Uh oh. Why is this piston rod left over?" Meet the pilots who are gutsy enough to fly freshly restored airplanes.
July 2003 | By Mark Huber

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