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Air & Space Magazine

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Space Scientists in Training

Planetary scientist Dan Durda was the co-leader of a two-day training course held this week at the National AeroSpace Training and Research (NASTAR) Center for scientists who want to learn the ropes of suborbital spaceflight.Durda sent back these dispatches from the NASTAR center in Pennsylvania. D…

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“Space Tourists” at Sundance

Christian Frei’s film “Space Tourists” makes its North American premiere at the Sundance Film Festival next week. Frei, whose documentary about war photographer James Nachtwey was nominated for an Academy Award in 2002, followed Anousheh Ansari’s visit to the space station in 2006 (she shot much of…

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A Composite Option

Works for airplanes. How about spaceships?

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Robotic Sample Return and Interpreting Lunar History: The Importance of Getting it Right

Deciphering the cratering history of the Moon is an important scientific problem.

The Horten Ho 229 V3 awaits restoration at the National Air and Space Museum's Garber facility.

The Luftwaffe’s Flying Wing

The Horten Ho 229 is on the short list for restoration at the Air and Space Museum.

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Cataclysmic Events on the Moon

NASA recently announced that it has down-selected three New Frontiers mission concepts for additional study.

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Kepler’s First Planets

It’s nice when an expensive new machine works as advertised—nicer still when that machine has the ability to revolutionize a whole field of science.At this week’s meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Washington, scientists couldn’t stop gushing about the exquisite performance of NASA’s K…

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“Latham Flies Into Clouds”

The early history of aviation wasn’t just a matter of flying faster and farther, but higher, too. On this day 100 years ago, French aviator Hubert Latham flew an airplane above a kilometer altitude for the first time, breaking his own record by nearly 2,000 feet. He took off in his Antoinette from …

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Orbit Rocks

A mix of Mt. Everest and moon for the ISS.

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What’s In a Name?

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet wrote Shakespeare in 1594, but he wasn’t naming airlines, was he? Coming up with a catchy company name is hard, but it’s not that hard. The name can convey the romance of early air travel, much like “Pan American World Airways,” or “Trans World Airline…

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Going Forward in James Cameron’s Wayback Machine

The gunships in the movie Avatar surely were inspired by the Bell Aerospace Textron X-22A of the mid-1960s (below), one of the many iterations of mankind’s unquenchable thirst for Vertical-Takeoff-and-Landing machines. Although the tails of Avatar’s VTOLS were lifted from the Bell-Boeing V-22 Ospre…

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Night Light

You could read a book by these candles.

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An Airplane in Antarctica in 1914

Archaeologists researching the 1911-14 Australian Antarctic Expedition have found pieces of the first airplane ever taken to a polar region. Details are at the project’s blog.

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The First Overhead Blimp Shot

ESPN’s website has an interesting feature on the origins of the overhead stadium shot—first used in 1960. Or was it in 1959?

Mikhail Gorbachev (left, signing an arms treaty with Ronald Reagan in 1987) publicly opposed space weapons, even as the Soviet Union’s prototype laser satellite (painted black) sat on the launch pad.

Soviet Star Wars

The launch that saved the world from orbiting laser battle stations.

The Douglas Model 1211-J was a grand scheme that existed only as a model and in blueprints.

The Do-Everything Bomber

With its bid to replace the Convair B-36 bomber, did Douglas promise too much?

Behold, the Bolingbroke: a slack-jawed patrol bomber that could set a young imagination on sub-spotting missions.

Ode on a Canadian Warbird

The author remembers childhood, with round engines.

Actress Ann Jillian joins Hope in a duet on the Forrestal in 1984.

Thanks For the Memories

Air crews recall their service as roadies for Bob Hope’s USO show.

Lon Holtz had been a KC-135 navigator before skimming the treetops in the A-37A.

Legends of Vietnam: Super Tweet

Yeah. The A-37 was small. So was Napoleon.

All About Autorotation

Deadstick Landings

Brace for impact! Unless you’re the pilot!

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