Time
Explore Air & Space articles by century or aviation era.The story of aviation from early flight to the modern era
Apollo’s Army
It took 400,000 people, working under extreme pressure, to reach the moon in 1969. Like any army, they suffered casualties.
June 18, 2009 |
By The Editors
The day Amelia Earhart became famous
Nowadays, Amelia Earhart is remembered for her last, lost flight. But in her time, she was best known as the first woman to fly across the Atlantic, an adventure that began on this day in 1928.Earhart wasn't the pilot, but a passenger. In the months after Lindbergh-mania hit America, publisher Geor...
June 17, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Pundamentals of flight
If Broadway entrepreneurs were to adapt Wolfgang Langewiesche's classic tutorial for the stage, it would be retitled...."Shtick and Rudder."Posted in honor of the late Master Punner Donald S. Lopez
June 09, 2009 |
By Pat Trenner
"Miracle on the Hudson" hearings this week
The National Transportation Safety Board is holding three days of public hearings this week on the ditching of US Airways flight 1549 in the Hudson last January. The hearings will be webcast live here.
June 09, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Flight 447: Small airplane, big ocean
Now that searchers have found wreckage from Air France Flight 447, we can hope they’ll also locate the data recorders and solve the mystery of what happened, which could lead to safety improvements on future flights.But earlier this week, it appeared that just locating the downed airliner in thousa...
June 03, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Flight 447: Was it turbulence?
We're still in that spooked stage following the disappearance of Air France flight 447 off the coast of Brazil in the early morning hours of June 1, UTC. What's so spooky is that airplanes don't just fall out of the sky. Why this one did is far from being solved. According to a recent Boeing study,...
June 02, 2009 |
By Mike Klesius
Who holds the altitude record for an airplane?
Depends on the category—and on who was watching.
May 29, 2009 |
By Rebecca Maksel
Sullymania
Captain Chesley Sullenberger was thrust into the media spotlight in January, when he landed his stricken Airbus in the Hudson River and the aircrew evacuated all passengers, largely uninjured, to safety within minutes. A remarkable piece of airmanship by the entire crew, to be sure. But since then,...
May 27, 2009 |
By Pat Trenner
"Amiable Strangers"
Three distinct personalities, one goal: reach the moon.
May 21, 2009 |
By Michael Klesius
Neil Armstrong's X-15 flight over Pasadena
In my last post on Neil Armstrong, I mistakenly repeated the fable that as a test pilot, Armstrong once looked out the window of his X-15 rocket plane just prior to landing, and saw the Rose Bowl instead of the Rogers Dry Lake at Edwards Air Force Base. Makes for good bar talk. But here's the truth...
May 20, 2009 |
By Mike Klesius
Voices from the Moon
What it was like, in the astronauts’ own words. Excerpts from a new book by Andrew Chaikin.
May 20, 2009 |
By Andrew Chaikin with Victoria Kohl
The Great North Dakota Dash
I just read the manuscript for a book to be published in the spring of 2010 by the University of Nebraska Press. Never Land: Adventures, Wonder, and One World Record in a Very Small Plane is written by Scott Olsen, whose most recent book is Hard Air: Adventures from the Edge of Flying. (Disclosure...
May 14, 2009 |
By Pat Trenner
Cracking down on "laser losers"
The advent of cheap, powerful hand-held lasers has become a real problem for aviation, with daily reports of pranksters (or, according to various headlines, "thugs," "idiots" and "laser losers") shining laser penlights into cockpits and temporarily blinding pilots. The number of incidents is on the...
May 07, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Amy Johnson's excellent adventure
Reading the stories of early aviators always makes me shake my head with admiration. Consider, for example, Amy Johnson, who on this day in 1930, set out from Croydon, England, bent on becoming the first woman to fly from England to Australia—which she did, in 19 days, alone in a de Havilland Gi...
May 05, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Above and Beyond: My Enemy, My Friend
Dan Cherry and Hong My met in the skies over North Vietnam in 1972, then again 36 years later.
May 2009 |
By Dan Cherry
Legends of Vietnam: Shoulder to Shoulder
The Grumman A-6 was ugly, but it sure could cook.
May 2009 |
By Rafael Lima
The War Between the Wars
In the skies over Spain, pilots and airplanes rehearsed for World War II.
May 2009 |
By Carl Posey
Vietnam: Reconciliation II
Might Dan Cherry have a third career as an ambassador to Vietnam? The retired Air Force Brigadier General met the Vietnamese pilot he shot down in 1972 about a year ago. When Cherry returned home, he set about arranging for Hong My to visit the U.S. The two made presentations at the Sun & Fun f...
April 27, 2009 |
By Pat Trenner
