Aerospace Technology
Inventions and engineering achievements, including rockets, jet engines and navigation systems
Cameron’s Camera
Avatar’s creator hopes to direct the first movies shot on Mars.
March 23, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Falcon 9 on the Launch Pad
SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket—which the company hopes will usher in a new era of lower-cost commercial space travel—has arrived at its launch pad in Cape Canaveral, Florida.Engineers are checking out the vehicle's fuel, liquid oxygen, and gas pressure systems. Once they pass muster, the launch team will...
February 22, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Virtual Flight Over Mont Blanc
More coolness in Google Earth: A virtual helicopter flight over the Chamonix Valley in France, including Mont Blanc, the highest mountain in western Europe. Take the whole tour at this site (you'll need the Google Earth plug-in, which is easy to install) or watch a short YouTube video below:
December 22, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Googling Mars
Real Mars exploration has been at an impasse lately, what with the Spirit rover stuck in the sand, and the Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft both experiencing service interruptions.But virtual Mars exploration is going gangbusters. Google Mars, if you haven't tried it yet, is...
December 14, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
The Soyuz Goes South
Russian rocket engineers do things a little differently from their American counterparts. They assemble the rocket with the vehicle lying on its side, then hoist it into launch position at the pad (watch a video here).That practice will continue when Soyuz rockets begin launching from the European ...
December 01, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Spoiler Alert
A shame that Cessna doesn’t seem to recognize a potential PR gold mine. Remember when Mathias Rust landed a rented Cessna 172 near Red Square in 1987? Not a peep from Cessna headquarters. Now the company appears to have missed out again: In the mega-apocalyptic move 2012, a lowly Cessna 340A saves ...
November 18, 2009 |
By Pat Trenner
Video: Ares 1-X, All the Way to Splashdown
Check out how good the camera technology has gotten for tracking a rocket booster all the way to 150,000 feet and back to the ocean. This high-definition video was taken during NASA's Ares 1-X launch on October 28, 2009, with a gyro-stabilized camera on board a Cessna Skymaster purring along at 12,...
November 10, 2009 |
By Mike Klesius
Video: Indoor Helicopter
Robot aircraft keep getting smaller and smarter. This one, built by a team at MIT, won the International Aerial Robotics Competition 5th mission challenge, which required that it enter a building, find its way around (through hallways and open windows), and send video back to home base. All autonom...
November 05, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Now You See It, Now You Don’t
Blinding us with science: the next generation of stealth.
November 2009 |
By Damond Benningfield
Ares I-X: "Frickin' Fantastic"
Score one for the rocket engineers.To quote Ed Mango, the launch director for today’s Ares I-X rocket test, his team at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center did a “frickin’ fantastic” job on their first outing, which gathered data for the designers of NASA’s proposed Ares 1 crew launcher. It appears the eng...
October 28, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Anatomy of an Airliner
Our maxim: The airlines giveth, and the airlines taketh away.
September 2009 |
By The Editors
Spin Doctors
For that satellite dish on your roof and the phone calls you make to Japan, you can thank Harold Rosen.
September 2009 |
By Guy Gugliotta
The Road to the Future… Is Paved With Good Inventions
We bring you 10 great ideas that made flying safer, easier, or just a whole lot more fun.
September 2009 |
By The Editors
Hot-Rod Helicopters
There’s just no way to add 100 mph to the speed of a helicopter. Or is there?
September 2009 |
By James R. Chiles
The Department of Never Mind
A collection of six inventions that prompt a single question: What the…?
September 2009 |
By The Editors
Mars, and Step on It
When it’s not the journey but the destination that counts.
September 2009 |
By Michael Klesius
