Aerospace
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All Eyes on Falcon 9
SpaceX CEO and chief designer Elon Musk could be forgiven if he feels a little under-appreciated on the eve of his Falcon 9 rocket's first launch (liftoff is scheduled for 11 a.m. tomorrow from Cape Canaveral).The guy has been trying his damnedest for several years to bring down the cost of reac...
June 03, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
520 Days in a Can
Three Russians, a Chinese, a Frenchman and an Italian walk into a simulation chamber...and don't come out for 17 months.That's pretty much the idea behind Mars 500, which starts tomorrow and aims to be the highest-fidelity simulation of a Mars mission ever conducted—as well as the first to last as ...
June 02, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Stupid Pilot Tricks 2.0
Several people received minor injuries when the powerful rotors of a Marine Corps V-22 Osprey, landing at a Staten Island park during a Memorial Day aerial demonstration, created mini-tornadoes of dirt, brush, and debris. Air & Space hereby bestows upon the crew the 2010 Stupid Pilot Award, fir...
June 02, 2010 |
By Pat Trenner
The Battle of Britain Beacon
To mark this year's 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, the Royal Air Force Museum has begun initial planning for a new exhibition building, tentatively called the Battle of Britain Beacon.The 350-foot-tall structure (taller than Big Ben, the Statue of Liberty, and the United States Capitol...
June 01, 2010 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Holiday Sampler
For the Memorial Day weekend, an assortment of news from the world of air and space:► The field of hypersonic flight has a new record: The Air Force's X-51A Waverider reached Mach 5 in a 200-second scramjet engine burn over the Pacific on Wednesday. Video below:► What looked at first like a sma...
May 28, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
American Heroes
Memorial Day weekend is upon us, so thoughts of heroes and remembering them are foremost in my mind. As a kid growing up in the Sixties, I saw a lot of change in our country. There was upheaval and tension here at home and around the world but the U.S. space program was a shining light that inspir...
May 28, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Why They Stopped Flying
The risk to airplanes from the recent eruption of Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland was more than just the danger of jet engines shutting down in flight. The ash could also have led to long-term damage that's harder to spot. After a NASA DC-8 flew through a volcanic ash cloud in 2000, researchers...
May 27, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Uniform Justice
Ah, uniforms. People either love 'em or hate 'em. One could argue that the U.S. military has a good number of attractive uniforms: think of the Marine Corps dress uniform, the blue Army service uniform, the Navy's full dress whites, and the Air Force flightsuit.But it seems that our illustrious mil...
May 25, 2010 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Slurp or Gulp?
"Well the rain exploded with a mighty crash, as we fell into the sun..." As a kid, when I heard Paul McCartney sing those words, I sort of envisioned this:Now astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have envisioned something like this happening to a planet orbiting a star 600 light-years away....
May 24, 2010 |
By Mike Klesius
It’s the Space Economy, Stupid!
Those of us in favor of human lunar return have been called “dinosaurs” because, as it’s being told, we want to repeat what this nation already did 40 years ago. If that were our mission objective, such a characterization might be valid. But who really is the dinosaur?At a recent Senate hearing, ...
May 21, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
A&S Interview: Ray Puffer
The former Air Force historian asks, "Can anyone dispute that I had the most interesting job in the entire Air Force?"
May 2010 |
By Perry Turner
"Do these long wings make me look fat?"
At an "Ask An Expert" lecture by John Anderson, National Air and Space Museum curator of aeronautics, I learned that although Howard Hughes' H-1 racer is displayed wearing its cross-country "long" wings, the high-speed-dash wings, which are shorter, are in storage at the Museum's Garber facility in...
May 19, 2010 |
By Pat Trenner
Better Than Hubble—From the Ground
In the age of orbiting telescopes such as the Hubble and the not-yet-launched James Webb Space Telescope, it's worth giving a nod to the dramatic advances made in building ground-based telescopes.The board of trustees of the Carnegie Institution for Science just authorized the release of $59.2 mill...
May 18, 2010 |
By Mike Klesius
Inside the Enola Gay
Close-up photographs of the legendary World War II aircraft.
May 18, 2010 |
By The Editors
From Beyond
A new exhibition of awe-inspiring photos from the first 50 years of planetary exploration.
May 18, 2010 |
By The Editors
Book Club July 2010: Fighter Pilot
The memoirs of legendary ace Robin Olds.
May 17, 2010 |
By The Editors
Space Shuttle: The Time-Lapse Movie
A team of photographers captures Discovery's long journey to the launch pad.
May 17, 2010 |
By The Editors
Using the Earth to study the Moon
Last week, the Science Team of the Mini-RF imaging radar experiment aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission, met in Flagstaff, Arizona. We were there to conduct field studies of some interesting lunar analogs that occur in this area. Scientists study the planets through a variety of ...
May 15, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Japan Sets Sail for Venus
While the U.S. space program is mired in political arguments over how to reach Earth orbit (something we've known how to do for 50 years), Japan's space agency JAXA, with far less money, is about to take a small but noteworthy step into the future.An HII-A launcher is scheduled to lift off from the...
May 14, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
A New Arm for the Space Station
As the space station gets its finishing touches (Atlantis carries up a new Russian storage module on tomorrow's STS-132 mission), we'll see some new gadgets come into play. One is the European Robotic Arm, due to be installed on the Russian Multipurpose Laboratory Module in 2012. A spare elbow for ...
May 13, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
